Ahoy, mates! This week, we pick up where we left off, in the middle of a breakfast disaster. Chaos reigns on the Katina: Tzarina struggles to fill egg orders while her sous-chef stands uselessly by; Lara is overwhelmed by guest orders despite a decade of yachting experience; Harry, a deckhand, learns how to make cabin beds. But Lara isn’t the only one to be overwhelmed — later on in this episode, Bri says that she has laundry to catch up on because there’s been “so much these past few days.” Okay, the Katina is a bigger boat than usual, and proportionally, the interior department is understaffed, but honestly, this is the second day of the first charter. What past few days? The season has barely started! Lara’s outburst probably doesn’t have as much to do with the demands of her job as it does with the presence of cameras as she tries to meet them. I suspect anyone would be a little worse at their job if there were cameras following them in hopes of catching a mistake.
That unspoken pressure is captured by the editors, who, taking a crack at interpreting the inner workings of her brain, flash back to all of Lara’s failures the night before in a split screen as she cries. It’s a good bit; Lara kind of gives off a Stepford Wife vibe, like her inner life has been sacrificed on the altar of her efficiency. We get two personal moments from her this week: She tells us that her perfectionism comes from a childhood need to seek her father’s approval, a psychological affliction so classic it should be in the DSM-5, and later about the renovation project for her barn, where she plans to live in tranquil solitude with her dogs.
The vibes in the kitchen remain dismal. Extending an olive branch to Anthony, Tzarina sends him to the beach to barbecue for the guests and puts him in charge of crew lunch. When he floats the idea of focaccia sandwiches for the crew, Tzarina tells him the captain likes fresh fish and salads, which hurts his porcelain feelings. He retaliates by throwing a random tantrum. He questions whether Tzarina will do her job and prep for the beach barbecue since it’s her “position to cook for the guests,” though he’s been whining and begging to be more involved. With saintly patience, she reassures him that she’ll set him up nicely: All he has to do is have fun grilling some meat. “I go from being the dishwasher to doing beach canapés,” he says. “It’s a bit weird.” Is it? What do you actually want, my man?
I’m going to skip over primary Mark’s gross sexual remarks and move on to the beach lunch. Anthony does a good job with the barbecue (annoying), and the beach is so beautiful that it doesn’t even look real. It’s 94 degrees with 79 percent humidity, which sounds extreme to everyone except Marina, to whom this is just another normal day. In a sweet confessional, she tells us that she’s working hard to become a chief stew and one day buy a house for her grandmother.
On the boat, we catch up with our Kronk, Johnny. He wants to redeem himself from the Jet Ski incident, so he stays behind to clean the deck. Captain and Tzarina also take advantage of the guests being away to debrief about the tension afflicting the kitchen, and though Jason knows from experience that Tzarina tends to be her own worst enemy, he has faith in her leadership. I, on the other hand, am not sure Tzarina has the emotional sharpness needed to handle Anthony’s dumb personality. I’m already a bit tired of how the fight in the kitchen is monopolizing the season’s story lines. The sous-chef position is new to the Below Deck franchise, and it’s good TV that it’s causing so many problems, but I want to know more about how the other crew members are getting along. Tzarina and Anthony’s bickering is so circular that it gets boring. I want more of Kronk’s misadventures at sea!
Besides, the other departments don’t seem to be doing splendidly. Jason calls Wihan to the bridge to ask him to move the deckhands’ shifts to 6 a.m. Jason and Aesha’s camaraderie over the last couple of seasons has set the bar through the stratosphere, but Wihan is confident that he and Captain will be best friends by the end of the season. Interior is managing — Marina makes clericot for the guests’ welcome drink on their return to the boat. “Cleri,” as we sometimes call it, is a type of white-wine sangria tailor-made for tropical heat and poolside lounging. It would put anyone in a good mood; Anthony could use some! Riding on her good performance, Marina goes on the submarine excursion with the guests. The submarine looks like a toy submarine, which is pretty scary given recent events. Exhausted, Marina plans to rest a little, but her slumber is interrupted by Blair, one of the guests, who demands dinner be on the table at 8 p.m. sharp — whether or not they’re there. I can’t understand this. One, you’re not the primary. Two, if that’s what you want, why can’t you be ready by 8 p.m.? You are in the middle of the Indian Ocean; you run no risk of the train running late or getting stuck in traffic. Do you have control over your own actions?
The vibes in the kitchen improve minimally, to Tzarina’s credit. They even exchange some jokes at the expense of the concept of a “surf-and-turf Texas-style barbecue hoedown,” the incomprehensible theme of tonight’s dinner. I wonder what result we would get if we were to tally how many surf-and-turf dinners have been served across all seasons of Below Deck. One hundred million? As they prepare, Tzarina asks Anthony what he was like as a kid. “Did you get arrested?” I laughed out loud — what a bizarre question. The meal, inspired by Tzarina’s trip to … Arizona, is family style, so the chef plans to set out several meat dishes and vegan sides. She tells Anthony that she’ll explain the dishes to the guests and offers to point out which ones he prepared since he doesn’t want to join her upstairs. But he doesn’t want her to give him credit; not because he’s nervous the food won’t be good, but because he thinks it’s not good enough for him. “If it were my menu,” he says, he would’ve “been out there with the barbecue, making it a more immersive experience.” Not an awful idea. I wondered why he didn’t suggest it until I remembered he has hatred in his heart and a tiny crystal angel for an ego.
At 7:55 p.m., Marina reinforces that Blair had asked for dinner to be served at 8 p.m., whether or not they were ready, but Lara makes an executive decision to wait. It was kind of annoying for Marina, who was on the receiving end of Blair’s ridiculous insistence, but ultimately, she conceded Lara was right: The guests don’t show until almost 8:30 p.m. When they do, Mark is disturbingly in assless chaps. Dinner goes much better than the night before. A shirtless Harry comes out riding an inflatable horse, and Adair leads the hoedown — finally, everyone has fun! Compared to last season’s relentless entertainment, this charter has been a slog. As the night winds down, Lara gives Bri some welcome pointers in housekeeping, and in their cabin, Anthony complains to Harry that Tzarina is “too dirty,” unlike him, who is the Ideal Man.
Thankfully, it cools down for the last day of the charter: It’s a mild 90 degrees. When Lara asks Adair to help Bri with cabins while the guests have breakfast, Adair is bold enough to wonder, to the chief stew, why they have to make the beds if the guests are leaving in two hours. Not an unreasonable question, but Adair forgets that most things in luxury service don’t make a lot of sense, like demanding your food be put out half an hour before you’re ready to eat it.
Meanwhile, the deck crew gears up for their first windy docking, which the captain predicts will be a test for the team. They fail. Too many voices overlap on a noisy radio, and if it’s confusing for Jason to untangle Wihan’s convoluted directions, there is no way I — a person who doesn’t drive cars, let alone boats — can totally understand what went wrong. Ultimately, they come in too close to the dock, and one of the fenders rips; damage one for the season and strike two for Wihan on this charter. The bosun’s mistakes earn him Jason’s traditional “encouragement award”: a disco helmet the recipient must wear out that night so they can “reflect” on their mistakes, one of Jason’s methods of keeping high standards on the boat while maintaining a good sense of humor. His postmortem with the deck crew is representative of his best qualities as a leader: He communicates where Wihan went wrong without undermining his authority as a bosun, and while still imbuing the team with a sense of their potential to do better.
Luckily for the guests, it starts raining just as they leave. They are grateful for a great trip, though Anthony doesn’t believe it when Mark says “the food was exquisite.” They tip $20,000, which comes out to $1,540 per person and puts everyone in good spirits. The crew finally gets out of uniform and into some going-out clothes. Bri wears a twisty white top that makes the boys go goo-goo-ga-ga. Wihan is already developing a crush on her; he thinks she’s “the prettiest girl onboard.” Earlier on, Bri had already friend-zoned the chronically friend-zone-able Harry, who thinks she’s way out of his league anyway. Justice for Harry! He’s funny, handsome, and kooky, and last season, he stood up for Margo when it really mattered. Why must nice guys finish last?
We leave the crew in the middle of dinner as Tzarina gets up to have a stress cigarette. When she asks Harry what Anthony has been saying about her, he tells her Anthony complained about all the cleaning up. She gets understandably annoyed: That’s part of his job as a sous-chef. Meanwhile, Anthony tells Lara barefaced lies like “I don’t care for ego” and “I don’t need direction.” Last week, I said Tzarina should be humbler, but I’m switching sides: Anthony is impossible. He spent the past two days saying he wants to work as a team and showing no actual willingness to work together. Besides, he’s been complaining about Tzarina to everyone onboard while she’s been putting in a real effort with him. The preview for next week teases Harry getting caught in a potentially dangerous situation, which worries me. Likely, though, it’s one of those Below Deck tics where they make it seem like the boat is going to sink, but it turns out that what they were about to hit was not a rock but a leaf.