Photo: Fred Jagueneau/Bravo
In a lyric, the great David Berman alluded to the myth of King Midas by imagining him in isolation, as a “sad king trapped in his golden room.” That’s, more or less, the state at which Solène has arrived. Having manipulated everyone to her advantage only to systematically disappoint them, she’s now isolated. Everyone is done with her, perhaps no one more than Jess, once her staunch defender. Imagine how validated Rainbeau must feel, like Chicken Little when the town wakes up to the fact that aliens are actually coming.
Solène can’t defend herself effectively because not only is she lacking in actual defense ammunition (the complaints against her are indisputable), she also rejects the premise that she has something to defend herself against wholesale. I guess that’s one way of living your life, just pretending like the problems you have caused are in other people’s heads. When we pick up this week, Rainbeau and Solène are in the midst of their fight, with Solène whining about Rainbeau’s long to-do list. She complains to Jess at the bar, who is quickly losing patience and empathy. As if on cue, Rainbeau walks in mid-complaint to ask Solène to bring some drinks for the guests on the sundeck. Even though they are mostly just pours — rosé, Champagne, one tequila cocktail — it takes Solène forever to make the drinks, which she then proceeds to spill.
Earlier in the season, I was frustrated with Rainbeau’s white-knuckle method of dealing with Solène. I believed that if only she were to tell Fraser what was going on, the problem could be addressed and resolved. I was, of course, sorely mistaken. At this point, Rainbeau has voiced her frustrations to both Fraser and Solène a maddening number of times. Tonight, she covers all bases, first by texting Fraser — “I don’t know what to do” — then asking to clear the air with Solène directly. For someone who self-describes as explosive, Rainbeau continues to demonstrate impressive amounts of game-ness. They agree to try harder to get along the following night, high-fiving to seal the deal.
Solène’s main refrain is that she doesn’t like the way people speak to her, alternately as a lowly servant and “a baby child.” Mostly, it’s obvious that she doesn’t like to take orders. Nothing inherently wrong with that, but it’s sort of a major part of a job in the service industry. Even then, when people try to talk to her like an adult, as Rainbeau did, the message doesn’t compute, either. Perhaps noticing this, Fraser tries a new approach. In the morning, he tells Hugo that he will send both Rainbeau and Solène to the beach excursion, and asks him to tell his crew not to talk to Solène. The idea is to eliminate the opportunity for distraction and to prevent her from causing it. Hugo agrees to the plan, relays the message to his crew, then wonders: “How difficult could it be?” No such question has ever been asked of something easy.
To Solène herself, Fraser only says that Rainbeau is in charge and to do what she says. Wondering, at this point, if a more honest approach wouldn’t be more effective — “you need to talk less and work more,” for example — is pointless. After talking about Solène’s lackluster work ethic with an incensed Jess in the crew mess, Bárbara seems confused about why it’s suddenly news that Solène is bad at her job. She becomes convinced that Jess’s disproportionate investment in Solène’s performance has to do with unresolved feelings. Later, she tells Fraser as much, and she’s probably at least a little bit right.
The beach team heads out to set up, and Kyle asks if Damo also “got the talk” about not speaking with Solène. They chuckle about it. Earlier, Kyle told Bárbara that though Solène — incapable of understanding anything that puts her in an unfavorable light — still doesn’t see how what she did to him was like what Jess did to her, the fact that Bárbara and Jess are now together means he can pursue Solène again. In fact, it seems like Solène is the pursuer: she chases him around the entire episode, even going to his cabin to kiss him good night one evening (in the middle of service). “Solène has come crawling back,” Kyle tells Jess, semi-triumphantly. It makes me feel like I am going insane.
For now, though, Solène is at the beach, still in the dark about the embargo. An abridged list of questionable actions: she licks the Kewpie bottle being used to make food; attempts to wash a knife with sand, then sticks the knife in her pants, sharp-edge up, perfectly positioned to stab her in the armpits. (A clarifying text appears onscreen: “53 days of yachting.”) She tells Damo that she loves “to escape,” meaning to escape from work, and he tells her she’s just like Anthony — all day, they complain about the work they have chosen to do. “You’ve got a problem with me?” Solène replies.
This will come to a head later that day, but for now, an interlude reminds us that these people are working on a boat, so there are boat-related tasks to attend to, such as mid-moor anchoring. “The biggest two things that all captains fear in the Caribbean,” Kerry explains nervously, “are going through that bridge” — we know the one — “and tying up at St. Barths.” The moment he mentioned the bridge, I knew things were going to be fine. You can’t trick me, editors! The mid-moor anchoring involves moving the boat after the anchors have been dropped, though nobody explains why that’s a requirement in St. Barths. One issue is evident: the dock is packed with boats, and the St. David is enormous. Kerry approaches the task like the scene in Oppenheimer when they test the bomb. The deck team’s reactions to Kerry’s nervousness perfectly encapsulate each of their personalities. Jess: “This is what we’ve been leading up to all season.” Hugo: “There’s a bit of a safety risk, and there’s a lot more pressure on Kerry.” Damo: “I’m just glad I’m a deckhand in charge of an anchor and not a captain in charge of a ship.” Kyle: “I’m fucking shitting myself.” In the end, it all works out. Kerry is so happy about it that he shakes everyone’s hands.
In the crew mess, Kyle, Damo, and Solène have dinner together while Fraser eats at a separate table. Solène tells Damo that she noticed a change in his attitude toward her that day on the beach. Damo deadpans: “We were told we’re not allowed to talk to you.” Fraser’s eyes widen. “Because you don’t do any work when we talk to you,” Damo continues. Also on late shifts, Damo sees how much Rainbeau works to pick up Solène’s slack, and he seems annoyed that no one is being straight-up with Solène. “They’ve told you enough, so now they have to tell us instead,” Damo concludes. Solène looks surprised but not as rattled as she will seem to be later, when she uses the whole exchange as fuel for drama.
Fraser immediately tells Hugo what happened. They agree it was out of left field for Damo to have said something; it seemed obvious that the deck team wasn’t supposed to tell Solène about the embargo. But when Hugo talks to Damo about it, the deckhand isn’t too sorry. He seems frustrated with the indirectness of the whole thing, with how much everyone has to continuously accommodate Solène’s feelings. “Sorry I put you in a bad place,” he tells Hugo, “but this is not my fault.” Fair enough, I think. However rogue of a move on his part it may have been, it must be super annoying to have to bear the responsibility of Solène’s ineffectiveness when she herself is barely putting in any work. For his part, Hugo is so over it that all he can muster up to say is: “I don’t know, just don’t talk to her and don’t tell her I told you not to.”
Solène complains to Fraser and Rainbeau about the rule, and Rainbeau points out that she did this to herself. In a confessional, Fraser tells us that he won’t “give up” on Solène and is determined to “fix this.” Through what method, it’s impossible to say, unless he can find a way to manually rewire her brain. The rest of the night goes by without a hitch; Kerry enjoys dinner with the guests, and Emily loves her boob-shaped cake, which Anthony half-stressed about when requested but ultimately made him feel like Michelangelo carving a sculpture. Before going to bed, Damo and Solène clear the air. Solène, “feeling persecuted,” says she is determined to find out who created the rule.
Then again, she is always doing stuff like theatrically falling over the guests’ luggage. After drop-off, the crew gathers to receive their $1,615 share of the total $21,000 tip, which raises everyone’s spirits — only for them to plummet over lunch in the crew mess. In front of everyone, Solène asks Kerry, who is eating with them, if he was the one who told the deck team not to speak to her. Kerry explains that he knows Fraser asked the deck team to stop “harassing” her so she could complete her work, a distorted and generous presentation of the facts: She is the distractor! He asks her if she understands, and she says no. After Kerry leaves, she asks Jess and Bárbara if they think the captain was upset about her questioning him. “You shouldn’t have asked, babe,” Bárbara replies.
The rage and resentment that had been building in Jess throughout the charter find an outlet. No doubt piqued by Kerry’s view of the situation, she tells Solène that her poor work ethic is tarnishing the team’s reputation and that she must take responsibility for her own actions. Solène tries to argue that “it’s not like that,” but everyone agrees: it is exactly like that. Solène tries to say that she “doesn’t know.” What she doesn’t know is unclear. How to respect the boat’s hierarchy? That there is one in the first place? But Jess is not taking it — she says Solène knows better than to ask the captain questions like that. It can’t feel good to be in a room full of people telling you, basically, that you suck; then again, it’s not like Solène ever had much regard for other people’s feelings. At first, Jess apologizes for raising her voice, but when Solène tells her it’s too late, she doubles down and says she’s not even sorry, actually. Later, Damo says that this outburst has a lot more to do with Jess than it does with Solène, echoing Bárbara’s suspicions.
Taken aback, Kerry asks Fraser to explain to Solène that her question was inappropriate. Fraser tells Kerry it’s been a struggle with Solène since day one, though he is “very proud” of how far she has come since the beginning of the charter. Sure, she has gotten better at the basic requirements of the job — like making cabin beds, for example — but at least from where I’m standing, it seems integral to know how to be a part of a team in a job like this, and in that sense, she has a long way to go. Fraser tries to explain all of this to her in a one-on-one. Solène counters that no one has said she hasn’t been doing a good job until now, and we cut to a succession of instances when Fraser told her not to take random breaks or be late for guest pick-up. Unwittingly, she exposes the whole problem with Fraser’s approach when she states, “Stop telling people I’m doing a bad job. If I’d been doing a bad job, I’d have left earlier.”
Fraser doesn’t want to fire Solène because it’s the “easy” route; we see a clip of last season, when, in the throes of his worst fights with Barbie (a difficult person to deal with, but excellent at her job), Kerry told him that leadership is also about knowing how to strengthen the team. The fact that Solène seems surprised that her work has been less-than-sufficient only demonstrates that building a team has to do as much with critical feedback as it does with praise. That’s assuming that Solène would have taken the critical feedback to heart, but still. There was a third option there, at one point. Now, with one charter to go, it might be too late.
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