Alesia just pulled off the most ballsy career pivot in Below Deck history.
Photo: Bravo
You kind of have to give it to Alesia. I mean, I understand: She was unhappy, and there’s no reason she should torture herself. But the absolute ballsiness with which she managed to turn an entire hierarchical arrangement in her favor is … something. The whole Alesia-versus-Ben feud ends in an unexpected new hire. Ellie, the stew from season nine of Mediterranean who got herself caught in an infernal love triangle with Joe and Bri, is back. And Ben had been DM-ing her on Instagram before she came on. And she is immediately in a bubblegum-pink, sparkly minidress.
Here is how we get there: When we pick up this week, Alesia and Jason are still talking on the bridge. It becomes clear that a significant reason why Jason won’t send Alesia on her merry way is that they are friends off-camera. He is also still under the impression that Alesia wants to be a chef, so he encourages her to give it some time and work toward a better environment in the galley. The conversation stalls — she’s not interested in improving either her skills or her relationship with Ben — without any specific plan forward. Any changes will have to wait: It’s the last day of the charter and high time to send off these Housewives.
They have not stopped fighting for even one second. They fight through morning yoga with Jason on the sundeck and over breakfast. At this point, it’s boring: Daisy and Jenna have learned how to block it out. Dragging the spirit of hostility into the galley, Alesia tells Ben that, despite loving and respecting him, she cannot bear working with him for a moment longer. Ben admits that pressure and perfectionism are inevitable demands of a professional kitchen, and he learned harshness from working in such kitchens, but he does apologize for his rudeness. He wants to be a good boss, so Alesia’s retreat makes him feel bad. Because I am a naïve person, I thought maybe this open acknowledgment and reflection would lead to a more communicative environment that might even become fertile ground for improvement. How foolish I was.
Meanwhile, Meredith — in cahoots with Bronwyn and wearing those incomprehensible inflatable costumes — puts the last word on her fight with Britani by throwing her creepy Jared-voiced stuffed unicorn into the ocean. In a perfect display of the upstairs-downstairs dynamic that fuels this whole franchise, João has to then tender out to pick up the damn thing. Littering is not only a fineable offense, it’s also just shitty behavior. Later, as the ladies are leaving the dock, Daisy runs after Britani to return it. We are spared any further Housewives drama, but I hear tell things got worse once they were on the plane home.
In one of two novelties this week, Jason inaugurates a new last-day-of-the-charter practice: feedback cards. Before leaving the boat, each guest will fill out a comment card, which Jason will then review and assess, presenting his findings to the crew at the tip meeting. Daisy seems a little nervous, but ultimately thinks it’s a good idea: The only way to improve, after all, is to know what you’re doing wrong. As a professional practice, it’s reasonable and common; hotels often do this kind of thing. As a potential creator of reality TV drama, it is also great. Not yet, though: At the tip meeting, Jason announces the feedback was stellar all around. To show how good an experience they had — or to compensate for the hell they put the crew through — the Housewives tip a whopping $35,000, the highest tip Jason has ever seen. It makes Alesia forget she ever meant to quit. The Disco Helmet is back this season — that’s when Jason gives an underperforming crew member a disco helmet to wear on their night off in order to “reflect” on their mistakes — but this week, Jason doesn’t think anyone underperformed. I thought Alesia maybe deserved it, but Jason is right: If anyone truly deserved it, it was one of the Housewives.
As the crew gets ready to go out, two potential couples emerge: Jenna and Ben, and Alesia and Eddy. Jenna is confident, witty, and charming in her advances, but the night doesn’t lead anywhere romantic for them. Eddy seems to be making way with Alesia when she tells him, on the dance floor, that she has a boyfriend — a guy she met in Canada whom she’s been dating for the last couple of months. Eddy, dear boy, is shocked and confused. The revelation so kills his vibe that, despite murdering the dance floor, he goes straight to bed while the rest of the crew goes to the jacuzzi. It was the right call: The jacuzzi quickly turns into a battlefield.
Daisy starts them on a game of “Shag, Marry, Kill,” saying she’d kill Ben, marry Mike, and shag Jenna. Alesia goes next and says she’d also kill Ben, but whereas he took Daisy’s pick in jest, he doesn’t think Alesia’s dig is funny. They enter a shouting match. Topics discussed: They should have each other’s backs; Alesia isn’t familiar with the “camaraderie” of the kitchen; it’s not right to talk like this to a head of department. Everyone intervenes, and ultimately, they shake hands. Ben breaks down in tears. In a confessional, he tells us it’s been a hard yea.r. His ex-fiancée was cheating on him with his friend, which is what broke up their engagement. He feels disappointed in the world. It’s an obvious overreaction to a game, but I felt for him. So does Daisy, who comforts him and gives him permission to sleep in a guest cabin so he can get some better rest.
Mike, who has been half-pining for Daisy in obscurity this whole time, tries to kiss her. She literally goes “ew.” In the morning, he apologizes for trying, and she tells him that she has a rule that she doesn’t date people in her own department. Jenna finds them in the crew mess just in time to wrangle Mike back to work — he’s in interior before the new stew gets there the next day. It’s becoming clearer with every episode that Mike is more inclined to shoot the shit than do his job: Earlier in the same day, João has to send him back inside when he catches him chatting with Eddy about the latter’s shattered prospect with Alesia. Speaking of the devil, in the morning, Alesia tells Jenna she feels “disgusted” with herself for shouting at her boss. Jenna advises Ben to apologize and “be the bigger person,” which Ben takes to heart.
Not that it will matter at this point. It’s before Ben gets to the galley that Alesia lays down the law for Jason: Either they get a new sous and she leaves, or she becomes a stew and stays. She says it just like that, in a really ballsy tone to take with the captain, not that he minds it. In fact, Jason seems mostly caught off-guard. She wants to be a stew? It would’ve helped to know that before she got on as a sous and/or Jason hired someone else. The new stew is already on her way, and as he’ll tell Daisy, he can’t tell her to simply turn the plane around.
Daisy tells Jason a bit about last night’s fight; she agrees with Alesia that, as it is, the galley will never survive the season. She’d be happy to welcome Alesia into her team, depending on how the new stew might feel about working in the galley. All of this accommodation is a bit ridiculous. It’s unfair to ask a person who has been hired as a stew to perform a completely different skill set; besides, there are tons of trained sous-chefs, I’m sure, looking for a job. If I were Ben, I’d be annoyed: This is an opportunity to get someone with real kitchen experience and ambition onboard. Jason is disappointed in Alesia but ultimately lets his personal feelings interfere with both his leadership and his authority. Who’s to say other crew members won’t want to hop departments when things get tough? Ellie agrees to try her hand in the galley, and when Jason tells Alesia she’ll be moved to interior, at least he doesn’t mince words. He makes sure she understands the position she put him in, that she should’ve tried harder to make things work in the kitchen, and that now she will have to give 200 percent in order to make it all worth it. She promises she will.
During the preference-sheet meeting, we get this week’s second novelty: We see a little snippet of what life is like for the incoming primaries, Christian and Annette, in their Greenwich, Connecticut, estate. They will be celebrating Christian’s 50th birthday with friends from “elite polo” on charter, and we see them preparing a picnic basket to go to a game. Respectfully, I don’t care about the guests’ personal lives. I just want to see them act insane onboard, and it looks like they’ll deliver. Annette, who is dressed to go to a 1920s ball, once made someone go to Athens from Mykonos to retrieve a pillow she’d forgotten. Yet the guests’ demanding profile is not even the most pressing issue at the meeting. Jason brings up the situation in the galley with Ben, who wants Alesia to give the kitchen one last chance, but it would be too much flip-flopping to do it now, with Daisy potentially having to wait too long to train a new stew. Jason reminds Daisy there’s no guarantee Alesia will do well in interior, either; this is just an experiment.
Since she doesn’t have any more experience in the kitchen than Alesia did, the only way it would work out with the new sous would be if she had a better attitude and endurance. The episode withholds the information that the incoming stew is Ellie, notoriously explosive, competitive, and a poor receiver of feedback, until the very end. The preview gives us a foregone conclusion: This will not go well. Not that Ben is worried right now. All he is thinking is that he knows Ellie, and everyone except Jenna is excited that she is beautiful and speaks seven languages. Jenna keeps any thoughts to herself, though she throws daggers with her eyes when Ellie finally arrives. She’ll be glad they don’t have to work together in a few days.
Besides, Jenna has other things on her mind. Now she has Mike and Alesia to train; maybe she can teach Mike how not to break every single glass he picks up. She shows Alesia the ropes the next morning, after Alesia and Ben hug it out in the kitchen. He apologizes for his rudeness and vows to be a better boss. One relationship that is developing into wholesome camaraderie is the one between Betul and João. He has been keeping his promise of being professional and mature, at least so far. He’s better off not being the purveyor of drama, leaving it to Ellie to take us there.
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