Below Deck Down Under season four is already a delightful chaos, thanks to the Real Housewives of Salt Lake City and words losing all meaning, from the yacht’s “Down Under” location to Jason calling his heads of department “the best of the best.”
These are not, of course, the best of the best. The best in yachting are not looking to be cast on Below Deck any more, which is why we get former Love Island reality TV stars as stews and, this season, a deck/stew whose penis you may recognize (NSFW, duh!) from Dating Naked UK.
What Below Deck’s producers do is set up drama dominoes and put them on the most unstable surface: quick turnaround charters populated by rich asshole fame whores.
That works brilliantly when the focus is on the work; when it’s on the love drama, not so much. And so far on BDDU 4, we’re into the work.
Below Deck Down Under chief stew Daisy Kelliher and captain Jason Chambers (Photo by Fred Jagueneau/Bravo)
Below Deck Down Under season four has moved to a new location, Canouan, and when that appeared on screen I pulled up a map: Is that off the coast of Australia or New Zealand? Oh, Venezuela. Hope Pete doesn’t murder all of them, too.
“We’re Down Under—the Caribbean,” Jason explained, giving us a funny verbal eye roll, acknowledging that the title has no meaning, and that he’s just as baffled as we are.
But I don’t know how he got through saying “I need professional, seasoned heads of department” and calling Ben, Daisy, and João “the best of the best” without rolling his eyes all the way back to his spine.
The editing did that for him, giving us flash-forwards to their lack of professionalism and Jason saying “fail fail fail.”
Of course that’s where this is going: as his leads, the producers have cast:
hothead chef Ben (a last-minute replacement) to oversee a sous chef who doesn’t know how to cook
“agressuve, fucking psychotic” (to use Hannah’s words) bosun João, who insists he has “grown up now,” so he’s apparently getting Nathan’s storyline from last season but hopefully hasn’t yet created a human life
chief stew Daisy, from Below Deck Sailing Yacht, who I’m looking forward to seeing with a better captain and without romantic interest in a pest—oh wait, just watched the season preview, never mind, ugh. Daisy is hilarious, though, like when she said she’s excited to be on “a boat the doesn’t trash itself every time it hits the open water.”
Failure on any of their parts does not mean a bad season of Below Deck, of course. And reality took over before the dominoes could even start falling.
From a stew who left the boat as the guests were arriving to Real Housewives of Salt Lake City throwing drinks and breaking glasses at the dinner table, Below Deck Down Under season four brought the drama immediately.
We’d barely met poor stew Joe, who was getting into her whites when she found out that her grandfather—who has cancer that spread from his lungs to his brain—is in the hospital, presumbly dying.
She got immediate and professional support from her leaders: “do not stress,” Daisy told her, even though, as she told us, “We’re fucked.” And Jason said, “you’re doing the right thing.” No shaming her for leaving or leaving them shorthanded.
And as much as last season’s two inexperienced deckhands being replaced by Joe seemed like an obvious set-up by the producers to bring Joe back, I don’t think that’s the case here.t Of course, the producers have replacements standing by, and it better not be Gary.
In the galley, Ben is incapable of communication, teaching, or both. She burned a frittata; he called it “the fuck-up of the century.” (Ben, turn on the news.)
Then she grabbed a hot plate—apparently in a place it shouldn’t have been hot—and burned her hand, as did Ben when he stick his hand there to check. His empathetic reply: “it’s not that bad a burn though. Just take some Advil.”
Meanwhile, Chef Genius re-made the frittata in a nonstick pan and…it stuck to the pan. Jason popped his head in and said, “Looks functional in here, doesn’t it?” Alesia told him, “looks are deceiving.” “Earlier, Jason told her, “if you can keep that sassy banter going, he will just love it.” What great advice for dealing with a boss.
Alesia was in her cabin crying before Ben served any food, and later told him, “I can’t read your brain, Ben.” He said, “I don’t expect you to.” She compared herself to a marionette, but I think it’s more like she’s a marionette puppet that he’s mad won’t move by itself.
The new crew members have promise:
Mike, the deck/stew, is a “bit of a chatterbox.” João offered a decent plan to split his workload and also acknowledged Daisy would need Mike more, considering the boat’s size.
Jenna, second stew, told us it’s “so expensive to be Jenna” and “I love a luxury lifetstyle” which I guess is why she needs to be on Bravo cleaning toilets. Though she said, “I’m not scrubbing toilets until I’m 30.”
Eddy, deckhand, already shared his sad story of being ashamed that his peers developed faster than he did, and now “I’m the first one that whips his towel off.” He’s already noting that there’s a mismatched number of men and women on the boat, as if that’s just how this works, like it’s Love is Blind.
Betul, deckhand, is my favorite so far, just because of the way she explained that, in Turkish, her name “means virgin, by the way.” She told us “my parents tried to tell me something” and made faces to indicate that something didn’t stick.
The arrival of The Real Housewives kicked things from a 4 or 5 to a 10—and I mean 10 million. Jason started the flirting—saying they’d “hopefully get you wet” to the group—and soon Heather was on his back in the water (“You’re riding him, finally”; “I’ll ride him like a fucking bronco”).
I don’t watch RHOSLC regularly, so I didn’t immediately recognize anyone other than Meredith Marks and Mary Cosby, so I don’t have context for whatever argument is continuing here. But since their trip was already featured on three episodes of RHOSLC, I may watch those this week to catch up.
But you don’t have to know anything to appreciate the demanding chaos they brought to Jenna and Daisy, especially:
Heather lost her nipple cover and sent Jenna looking for it
They asked for their bags to be unpacked, and Jenna discovered a fresh cucumber in one suitcase
Mary ordered dinner in bed
Angie barfed through her fingers on a raft
Heather demanded, “slap it on there” after Jenna brought her a new nipple cover
Bronwyn arrived late, but thankfully already had her life preserver on, sewn into her dress, which will be useful if one woman tries to throw her overboard, and already helped as she banged into a wall.
Daisy said “all of these demands” are “unhinged,” and Mike called them “proper nut jobs.” He added, “they sound like the group from my local pub.” And that is, of course, the appeal of The Real Housewives: the petty, sometimes drunk drama from the local pub, enacted by people with bank accounts and faces that have been overstuffed.
The cliffhanger came during dinner, when Daisy couldn’t serve a new course because they started throwing drinks. Watching Mike attempt to vacuum while they all kept screaming and shouting was pure comedy.
I just hope this new Bravo cast member doesn’t get any ideas from them about how to make good reality TV this season. Below Deck should be a real-life workplace drama, though it increasingly seems like Bravo doesn’t want that any more.
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