Captain Jason manages to get the situation between Daisy, Ben, and João under control just in time to have a fruitful final charter.
Photo: Bravo
What a season it has been aboard the Katina. To think of how far we have come! The entire cast of Real Housewives of Salt Lake City on charter: Were we ever so young? In this season finale, several pithy statements are made about the intensity of the season, but I think Captain Jason summarized it best: “At the end of the day, people grew up, relationships were mended, egos were checked, and respect was earned.” By the time the crew is celebrating over drinks, you’d think they never once had a problem with each other. I, too, would be happy to kiss and make up if my wallet was over $26,000 fatter.
Lately, the Below Deck franchise has left me cold at the end of a season. Between the reliance on stunt casting and the “Love Island–ification of Bravo,” I think many of us have felt as if the essence of Below Deck — to watch people navigate a difficult work environment while living with strangers in tight quarters — had been lost. But this season of Down Under was a reminder that if you throw a bunch of hardworking yachties together and let them do their thing, they will deliver on entertainment and professional achievement. All told, the clashes between departments this season were less a product of incompetence than of conflicting communication styles. When there was incompetence — as with Mike, or with Alesia in the galley — it was dealt with. For the first time in ages, I agree with Jason when he says the season was one for the books.
If there was a single problem that ailed this crew, as Daisy points out, it was ego. When the episode picks up this week, João and Ben’s ego battle is still at full throttle, with Ben calling João every name under the sun and refusing to leave the made-up guest cabin. João tells Daisy that — surprise, surprise — his attempt to talk reason into a drunk and tired Ben did not go well, and even declares that their confrontation was a “turning point” in their friendship, for the worse. Everyone in the crew, interior or not, is ticked off at Ben’s blatantly disrespectful behavior. When Barbie catches Ellie up in their cabin, even she agrees that Ben crossed a line. She tells him as much the next morning, comparing what he did to if someone messed up the galley they had prepared for charter.
Before the end of the night, both João and Ben text Jason about their confrontation. Ben writes, “Daisy tried to come at me tonight, so I put myself in a guest bedroom to stay out of the situation,” which is a gross misrepresentation of events. The best way to avoid conflict is to not create it; there’s no reason Ben couldn’t have had a calm conversation with Daisy, even if they disagreed. Being able to disagree with someone and not blow a gasket is just called being an adult. More than that, even if he did think the best thing to do was to wait to talk to Daisy in the morning, he had several options available to him other than going into a guest cabin, at least one of which was to lie down in his own bed.
The problem with unmaking a made-up guest cabin aside, Ben’s use of tone and words, combined with the fact that he was slamming doors, don’t make what he did any less bad than Jenna’s recent drunken blowout. In fact, Ben’s behavior is worse, because as a head of department, he’s supposed to be a model. Still, Ben isn’t met with any specific repercussions. Maybe because it’s the last charter, or maybe because, as many readers pointed out, there is one glaring difference between Jenna and Ben: Only one of them is a woman. Most likely, it’s a combination of both, but even then, it’s not like Ben gets off scot-free. In the morning, Jason pushes back when Ben says that the crew was “sniffing around for drama and bullshit,” maintaining that the interior department was within their right to get upset. The captain also gets João and Daisy’s sides of the fight and gathers the HODs for a meeting. He reminds them of the optimism with which they started the season, agreeing to use their shared “experience and professionalism” to run an exceptional boat. But he also holds each of them accountable for their part in the mess: Daisy shouldn’t talk back, João should have de-escalated, and Ben behaved regrettably — particularly when the galley has been “up and down” throughout the season.
João and Ben talk and hug it out, then Ben and Daisy do the same. Ben apologizes for dismantling the guest cabin and admits to being selfish. Daisy appreciates his apology and uses the opportunity to tell him what she never got the chance to say the previous night: Ellie should not be promoted. “She’s lucky to have a job,” Daisy says, given “the way she has behaved this season.” In a confessional, Ben admits that maybe the reason why Ellie has come such a long way is because she started from such a … turbulent place. Still, Ellie has every reason to expect a promotion that has been “dangled like a carrot,” to use her expression, in front of her. She asks Ben about it later, but alas, the title of sous-chef never comes to be. Elsewhere on the boat, Daisy checks in with Alesia about the conversation they had the previous night — about Alesia’s dream of being second stew — and Ben apologizes to Alesia for creating extra work for the stews. By the time the guests arrive, everyone is in good spirits, and it seems as though the storm has passed. But before the crew can get too comfortable, here is an impossible group of guests to give them a final test.
Primary Brandon — the very same who was nearly kicked off the boat for drunk swimming when last he was aboard a vessel captained by Jason — requests a “seafood extravaganza” for lunch, to be served at 2:30 p.m. Driven by the hope to do better, I guess, Ben checks in with Brandon before lunch to confirm the plan still sounds good, something we have hardly ever seen him do. He also speaks to Brandon’s “fuhgeddaboutit” friend, Patrick, who only eats Cap’n Crunch and burgers with no ketchup. Despite being the pickiest eater to possibly ever live, Patrick is chill. You can tell that he knows he is putting people out, so he compensates by being nice about it. An actually difficult person would ask for a seafood extravaganza and then complain that all there is to eat is … seafood (and that odious food group, vegetables).
When Ben comes up to give Patrick his condiment-free burger, Brandon tells Ben he is disappointed. By “seafood extravaganza,” he meant lobster and shrimp, not … lobster and shrimp, like Ben prepared. When co-primary Carmen asks how he liked the lobster, Brandon says that he didn’t eat it, because he “doesn’t do that.” I felt like I was hallucinating. It’s obvious that Brandon is acting for the cameras, which is even more annoying than if he was genuinely dissatisfied with the food. In any case, there’s nothing like an impossible guest to bond the crew together. Daisy reassures Ben that he did nothing wrong and the food looked great. Jason does the same.
Thankfully, we are spared any more time with Brandon as a montage rushes us through the day. For an extra $10,000 on the tip, Jason agrees to wear a Brandon-fied Speedo; the guests spend the afternoon in the water; and they enjoy their surf-and-turf dinner (Patrick has what looks to be buttered noodles). They celebrate Brandon’s birthday with ten individually baked cakes that Ben surreptitiously brings in from the grocery store, which I would have taken issue with if I didn’t agree that the request for ten individual cakes is ridiculous. Besides, these guests don’t know a good meal if it’s right in front of them; only one person picks up on the cakes’ grocery-store flavor.
In the morning, Brandon asks for a bagel. When Ellie radios that it’s ready, her calls come in as static. While Ellie and Ben wonder where the stews are, Daisy and Jenna wonder when the bagel is going to be ready. When she goes downstairs to check, Daisy is irritated that Ellie didn’t bring up the bagel herself, if it was just sitting there. A follow-up question: If no one has copied or responded, wouldn’t it make sense for Ellie to check that her calls were going through in the first place? If it were any earlier in the season, a communication mishap like this might create an episodes-long battle, but by this point, everyone is too tired to care. You can almost hear them being like, “Here is your cold bagel, Brandon.”
The day goes by uneventfully. Daisy gives Jenna a word of encouragement before the last dinner service, and Jenna sets a phenomenal table for a seven-course meal themed after the seven deadly sins. For the occasion, each guest dresses up as a sin. In the galley, Ben stresses out about serving several courses to a perennially dissatisfied primary. Ellie, for her part, is proud of her cheesecake contribution to the meal. When she offers a taste to Alesia and Jason, Ben asks her to “stop engaging with the crew” in an unprecedented show of concentration. The plan for how to deal with Patrick is to reduce his service to three courses that seem like they were thought up by Kevin McAllister: a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich, a scoop of lemon pasta, and a cheese pizza. (When the PB&J comes, Patrick complains that the peanut butter is crunchy. Honestly.)
Still, Patrick is happy with his meal, but Brandon isn’t. Daisy relays the primary’s complaint that Patrick doesn’t have as much to eat as everyone else to Ben, who quips: “I don’t even think he eats seven things.” Ben’s final straw is when Ellie tells him not to serve Patrick’s pizza on a cake stand, because it will be too hard to eat (maybe she doesn’t know that in ’Murica, we eat pizza with our hands). Ben snaps at her, but Ellie maintains her composure. She thinks it’s indicative of her “personal growth” that she doesn’t talk back or escalate the conflict; that’s how low the bar is. After the pizza has been served on the cake stand, Ben apologizes for being short-tempered. Here’s a fun Below Deck Down Under season-four drinking game: Take a shot every time Ben apologizes for something. Overall, dinner is a success. No one except Brandon complains about anything. The final charter is a hit.
The next morning, Jason has João dock the boat, and Jenna gets her well-earned stripes back from Daisy, with the captain’s permission. The feedback cards are overwhelmingly positive, and the guests leave a whopping, deserved $34,500 tip, which comes out to $2,900 each. It’s a generous tip, but commensurate with the amount of work they created for the crew. No one gets the helmet, though Jason playfully wears it out for drinks with his crew later that night. The vibes at the bar are immaculate, as if everyone were best friends all along. Alesia pulls Jenna aside to say how much she respects her and to apologize for anything she might have said about her throughout the season (I imagine she was thinking about her confessionals). The best part of the night is when Betul makes a speech thanking Jason and João for having her back. She reminisces on the talk she had with the captain all the way back on the second charter, about how hard she has worked to make a life for herself. Betul forever!
Now that work is done, Daisy hopes to be able to invest some more time and energy into her fling with João. They are lovey-dovey at the bar and the next morning, but they seem to leave separately. João, who may have gone to too much therapy, if there is such a thing, feels “privileged to have [Daisy] trust me with her emotions.” Ben sleeps in a guest cabin just for good measure, thrilled to be able to go back to calling everyone “babe” again. He pays Ellie the balance of his “honeypot” jar, into which he deposited a bean for every pet-name he called her, and tells her he would recommend her as a sous-chef to anyone. The heads of department leave all animosity behind them and end the season as friends, with a swell of good feeling toward their captain. That is, at least until the next season begins. See you there, same place, same time?
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