What Below Deck\u2019s producers do is set up drama dominoes and put them on the most unstable surface: quick turnaround charters populated by rich asshole fame whores. <\/p>\n
That works brilliantly when the focus is on the work<\/a>; when it\u2019s on the love drama, not so much<\/a>. And so far on BDDU 4, we\u2019re into the work.<\/p>\n 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\u2019t murder all of them<\/a>, too. <\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re Down Under\u2014the Caribbean,\u201d Jason explained, giving us a funny verbal eye roll, acknowledging that the title has no meaning, and that he\u2019s just as baffled as we are. <\/p>\n But I don\u2019t know how he got through saying \u201cI need professional, seasoned heads of department\u201d and calling Ben, Daisy, and Jo\u00e3o \u201cthe best of the best\u201d without rolling his eyes all the way back to his spine.<\/p>\n The editing did that for him, giving us flash-forwards to their lack of professionalism and Jason saying \u201cfail fail fail.\u201d <\/p>\n Of course that\u2019s where this is going: as his leads, the producers have cast: <\/p>\n hothead chef Ben (a last-minute replacement) to oversee a sous chef who doesn\u2019t know how to cook<\/p>\n \u201cagressuve, fucking psychotic\u201d<\/a> (to use Hannah\u2019s words) bosun Jo\u00e3o, who insists he has \u201cgrown up now,\u201d so he\u2019s apparently getting Nathan\u2019s storyline from last season but hopefully hasn\u2019t yet created a human life<\/p>\n chief stew Daisy, from Below Deck Sailing Yacht, who I\u2019m looking forward to seeing with a better captain and without romantic interest in a pest\u2014oh wait, just watched the season preview, never mind, ugh. Daisy is hilarious, though, like when she said she\u2019s excited to be on \u201ca boat the doesn\u2019t trash itself every time it hits the open water.\u201d<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n We\u2019d barely met poor stew Joe, who was getting into her whites when she found out that her grandfather\u2014who has cancer that spread from his lungs to his brain\u2014is in the hospital, presumbly dying.<\/p>\n She got immediate and professional support from her leaders: \u201cdo not stress,\u201d Daisy told her, even though, as she told us, \u201cWe\u2019re fucked.\u201d And Jason said, \u201cyou\u2019re doing the right thing.\u201d No shaming her for leaving or leaving them shorthanded.<\/p>\n And as much as last season\u2019s two inexperienced deckhands being replaced by Joe seemed like an obvious set-up by the producers to bring Joe back, I don\u2019t think that\u2019s the case here.t Of course, the producers have replacements standing by, and it better not be Gary. <\/p>\n In the galley, Ben is incapable of communication, teaching, or both. She burned a frittata; he called it \u201cthe fuck-up of the century.\u201d (Ben, turn on the news.) <\/p>\n Then she grabbed a hot plate\u2014apparently in a place it shouldn\u2019t have been hot\u2014and burned her hand, as did Ben when he stick his hand there to check. His empathetic reply: \u201cit\u2019s not that bad a burn though. Just take some Advil.\u201d <\/p>\n Meanwhile, Chef Genius re-made the frittata in a nonstick pan and\u2026it stuck to the pan. Jason popped his head in and said, \u201cLooks functional in here, doesn\u2019t it?\u201d Alesia told him, \u201clooks are deceiving.\u201d \u201cEarlier, Jason told her, \u201cif you can keep that sassy banter going, he will just love it.\u201d What great advice for dealing with a boss.<\/p>\n Alesia was in her cabin crying before Ben served any food, and later told him, \u201cI can\u2019t read your brain, Ben.\u201d He said, \u201cI don\u2019t expect you to.\u201d She compared herself to a marionette, but I think it\u2019s more like she\u2019s a marionette puppet that he\u2019s mad won\u2019t move by itself. <\/p>\n The new crew members have promise:<\/p>\n Mike, the deck\/stew, is a \u201cbit of a chatterbox.\u201d Jo\u00e3o offered a decent plan to split his workload and also acknowledged Daisy would need Mike more, considering the boat\u2019s size. <\/p>\n Jenna, second stew, told us it\u2019s \u201cso expensive to be Jenna\u201d and \u201cI love a luxury lifetstyle\u201d which I guess is why she needs to be on Bravo cleaning toilets. Though she said, \u201cI\u2019m not scrubbing toilets until I\u2019m 30.\u201d<\/p>\n Eddy, deckhand, already shared his sad story of being ashamed that his peers developed faster than he did, and now \u201cI\u2019m the first one that whips his towel off.\u201d He\u2019s already noting that there\u2019s a mismatched number of men and women on the boat, as if that\u2019s just how this works, like it\u2019s Love is Blind.<\/p>\n Betul, deckhand, is my favorite so far, just because of the way she explained that, in Turkish, her name \u201cmeans virgin, by the way.\u201d She told us \u201cmy parents tried to tell me something\u201d and made faces to indicate that something didn\u2019t stick. <\/p>\n The arrival of The Real Housewives kicked things from a 4 or 5 to a 10\u2014and I mean 10 million. Jason started the flirting\u2014saying they\u2019d \u201chopefully get you wet\u201d to the group\u2014and soon Heather was on his back in the water (\u201cYou\u2019re riding him, finally\u201d; \u201cI\u2019ll ride him like a fucking bronco\u201d).<\/p>\n I don\u2019t watch RHOSLC regularly, so I didn\u2019t immediately recognize anyone other than Meredith Marks and Mary Cosby, so I don\u2019t have context for whatever argument is continuing here. But since their trip was already featured on three episodes of RHOSLC<\/a>, I may watch those this week to catch up.<\/p>\n But you don\u2019t have to know anything to appreciate the demanding chaos they brought to Jenna and Daisy, especially: <\/p>\n Heather lost her nipple cover and sent Jenna looking for it<\/p>\n They asked for their bags to be unpacked, and Jenna discovered a fresh cucumber in one suitcase<\/p>\n Mary ordered dinner in bed<\/p>\n Angie barfed through her fingers on a raft<\/p>\n Heather demanded, \u201cslap it on there\u201d after Jenna brought her a new nipple cover<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Daisy said \u201call of these demands\u201d are \u201cunhinged,\u201d and Mike called them \u201cproper nut jobs.\u201d He added, \u201cthey sound like the group from my local pub.\u201d 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.<\/p>\n The cliffhanger came during dinner, when Daisy couldn\u2019t serve a new course because they started throwing drinks. Watching Mike attempt to vacuum while they all kept screaming and shouting was pure comedy. <\/p>\n I just hope this new Bravo cast member doesn\u2019t 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\u2019t want that any more.<\/a><\/p>\n All of reality blurred\u2019s content is independently selected, including links to products or services. However, if you buy something after clicking an affiliate link, we may earn a commission. Learn more.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Below Deck Down Under season four is already a delightful chaos, thanks to the Real Housewives of Salt…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":264858,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[156,111,139,69,437],"class_list":["post-264857","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264857","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=264857"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264857\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/264858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=264857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=264857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=264857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Below Deck Down Under chief stew Daisy Kelliher and captain Jason Chambers (Photo by Fred Jagueneau\/Bravo)<\/p>\n