‘Below Deck’ Recap: Season 12, Episode 6

Below Deck

Yacht-Chella

Season 12

Episode 6

Editor’s Rating

4 stars

Photo: Fred Jagueneau/Bravo

If some of this season’s episodes have felt frantic, even rushed, “Yacht-chella” (a ridiculous title) takes its time leading us through a couple of eventful days on the St. David. Not only is Solène’s monopoly of the boat’s social dynamics rippling through several departments and creating problems both personal and professional, but we also get some beyond-obnoxious guests onboard, the likes of which we haven’t seen in some time. These people suck. Even though it’s annoying that Solène is so careless about her job that she nearly misses the guests’ arrival on the dock, it lights up that old fire in the viewer to see the guests being so rude to her about it. To side with the crew against awful rich people is a nostalgic pleasure of Below Deck.

This week, we pick up with Caio’s firing, which he takes on the chin — or on the chest, as we’d say in Brazil. Caio doesn’t look all that banged up about it; it’s a surprise to absolutely no one on deck that Captain let him go, and any scramble to find a new bosun was avoided by Kerry, who started looking at résumés as soon as he realized Caio’s days were numbered. So much for my hope that Jess would get a promotion! The next day, New York City’s own Hugo arrives. His self-assured, confident air instantly makes Kyle feel more secure on the boat, especially as he helps Kerry through a steady undocking and maneuver through the bridge. Damo isn’t as quick to trust: He resents it when Hugo tells them to be careful not to spill their coffees on the teak. It’s a silly overreaction from Damo, though, and all told, everything is pointing to Hugo’s success.

The deck crew will need a strong leader, as Solène is creating problems even outside her department. She was already worrying about Kyle liking her too much before going out with the crew on their night off. They’re all in matching black outfits except for Anthony, who inexplicably wears a white button-down shirt. Solène tells the girls in the van that she’s not “feeling it” as much as Kyle. The poor “Scottish” tries with Solène all night, but by the time they’re at the club, Jess takes Solène into the bathroom and they make out. Though at first Solène considers the possibility of keeping their kiss “a secret,” she sees an opportunity to wedge some distance between herself and Kyle by continuing to make out with Jess in front of everyone, Scottish included. It’s an ice-cold move. When Jess says that Kyle is going to kill her, all Solène says is “I don’t care. That’s life.”

Back on the boat, Kyle vents to Damo that twice on the St. David, he has been “a shit judge of character” and been played, once by Barbie and now by Solène. The only thing worse than being rejected is being made to look like an idiot, and it pains me to see Kyle so dejected about Solène’s dumb cruelty. She has the whole boat wrapped around her finger and no scruples about manipulating everybody to her advantage. This canniness might be rewarded on a show like Love Island, but on Below Deck, it’s just mean and borderline sociopathic.

Jess and Solène’s developing boatmance creates awkwardness between Jess and Kyle. Chatting with Damo while cleaning the deck, Jess speculates that Kyle might have thought they were headed somewhere more serious than Solène did, and overall she seems to have a levelheaded-enough view of the situation not to get too carried away with Solène, who tells us she is a “straight” girl in quotes. In a confessional, Jess says it doesn’t exactly bother her to be an experiment to straight girls; Solène tells her later that while she has flirted with women before, she’s never spent more than one night with another woman. At least not until now: For the rest of the episode, Jess and Solène cuddle and sleep together every night.

But Solène is not totally done with Kyle. Not satisfied with hurting his feelings in front of all of his co-workers, the next day she approaches him with puppy eyes to ask if he’s mad at her. They hug it out, then exchange a couple of kisses on the cheek and some biting on each other’s shoulders while Jess looks doubtfully on. In the crew mess, Solène tells Bárbara that the biting “made [her] nipples happy.” On the first day of the charter, Kyle and Solène sneak a kiss as Fraser takes the guests on a tour of the boat, and in a confessional Solène says that she hopes she doesn’t have to choose between the two deckies — of course she does! Much better to have your cake and eat it too.

Solène may be wreaking havoc, but the way Jason — primary Leslie’s husband — speaks to her as soon as he’s in view of the St. David is not right, either. Leslie, Jason, and their gang of cronies start creating problems before they’ve even gotten onboard. For their second night, they request a “full-on concert” complete with a performance, VIP area (there are, like, seven of them), and a stage. Fraser has to hustle to find an event planner who can put such a demand together in one day for $20,000, the budget allocated for this insane whim. Since it’s Carnival in Sint Maarten, he asks the planner to arrange for both Carnival dancers and a DJ to perform for the guests on top of putting a stage together on the dock. I don’t understand the point of something like this. You’ve chartered a yacht — you didn’t buy tickets to a music festival. Why not float in the ocean, take advantage of the fact that you can have a cold cocktail in hand at any minute of the day, and just relax for a minute?

The concert request was warning enough, but as the guests are coming down the dock, Solène, who is late, has to run to make the lineup before the guests have greeted every crew member. Jason is immediately rude to her, saying that she has to get on top of her game, then asks what the crew is waiting for to get back on the boat. After the walk-through, Fraser tells Captain that they have a rough charter ahead, and as the alcohol starts to flow, Kerry becomes increasingly concerned about the interior’s well-being. During lunch, he calls a meeting with Fraser and all the stews to tell them that the minute they feel disrespected, they should speak up. “Demand, we can do,” he says. “Rude and demeaning, we cannot do.” Tell them, Cap!

Though Anthony feels confident about lunch, Jason is immediately shitty to him about it, telling the chef that he has to “practice” his veal piccata more. Anthony gamely makes him a new one while the stews take and stir their own shit at service. Bárbara doesn’t like it when Rainbeau lightly taps her with her foot to ask her to move aside; she thinks she should have just said “Excuse me” instead. Point well taken, and again: I will always side with a compatriot, but this obviously bothers her only because it was Rainbeau who did it. At this point, Rainbeau could do anything and Bárbara and Solène would find fault with it, simply because they have decided they don’t like the girl, who is trying her darndest.

Still, as we’ve discussed, it would only benefit Rainbeau to be more outspoken about her dissatisfaction. It’s as though she thinks that white-knuckling her suffering makes her more noble, an attitude that definitely has one or two things to do with Fight Island. When they were out at dinner before the beginning of the charter, the topic of the stews’ schedule briefly came up in conversation, but it dissipated before Rainbeau could tell Bárbara that while she might not have to wake up at 5 a.m., she still has to stay up nearly to that time to finish all the work Solène doesn’t do. On the first night of the charter, Rainbeau asks Solène to do simple things like check the toilets before she goes to bed, and Solène drags her feet through the task. Damo, also on the late shift, knows how much more Rainbeau is working to compensate for Solène’s negligence, and he wisely tells her that taking one for the team is different than working more so other people can work less. Now would be a great time for Rainbeau to bring up this imbalance with Fraser, who seems to have noticed something wrong with Solène’s performance for the first time this season; he calls her out on her lateness in meeting the guests.

The dinner theme for the first night is … “’90s teenage shows”? “To pussy and gunpowder: Live by one and die by the other. We love the smell of both,” goes the eloquent toast of guest Lauren. However foul those words may be, they are on the minor side of the day’s offenses; the worst of the guests’ behavior can be attributed to Jason (so rude) and a woman by the name of Dawn, on whose picture Fraser draws Devil horns. Dawn yells at Rainbeau all day and night, telling her that her shots suck, that she should be able to intuit that Dawn, the Queen of the Universe, doesn’t like tequila. Mercifully, the guests go to bed after dinner, for which Anthony serves a seafood paella and a lemon tart with candles to celebrate Jason’s birthday, and both are so good that even these demons can’t find anything wrong with them. Anthony has been doing an excellent job since rejoining the boat, and though he keeps telling us that he is so mad at Fraser, he has yet to do anything about that.

The next morning — Bárbara’s birthday! — Fraser is understandably stressed about the success of the “Yacht-chella” plan that night. With seven hours to go until the concert, he gets a ride with Kerry to the dock to check on the stage’s progress. It’s a good thing he did because the progress is zero. Kerry tells the planner that the guests are insanely demanding, and if they can’t deliver, the crew will take all the heat. This is a cliffhanger I can get behind, though the outcome seems obvious: The guests will hate whatever Fraser is able to put together because they are hateful people.

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