I have to start this week’s recap of Below Deck Down Under with an admission. Every week I think of something relatively clever to title these recaps. I really do. Believe it or not, I put work into writing these despite several readers telling me how terrible I am at simply breaking down what happened each week in the comments. But this week, there’s absolutely no way I can possibly top what someone at Peacock thought up as the title for this otherwise fairly transitional episode. “Benny and the Jet Skis”?!? I give up, Peacock. You win. Best episode title possibly ever. At the very least since “Adrienne’s Fashion Show” in Season 2 of RHOBH. Maloof Hoof, who?!?
So, we pick right back up amid the chaos happening on multiple places onboard Thalassa. Downstairs, Aesha Scott is crying to Brittini Burton about Chef Ryan McKeown and Magda Ziomek talking badly about her behind her back. And upstairs, Ryan is confronting Tumi Mhlongo in the hot tub for spilling the gossip to Aesha in the first place. The chef feels it’s a betrayal since Tumi was one of his few allies within the crew. But the second stew couldn’t care less. She’s done having compassion for the finicky galley master. But even after he storms back down to his cabin, Magda’s still not finished complaining about her own issues with the chief stew. However, the rest of the crew is more interested in the sexual tension brewing between Brittini and Culver Bradbury…
The next morning is pickup day for the next charter. Jamie Sayed gifted the deck crew with a 9:30 a.m. start time. However, Captain Jason Chambers wakes to find the entire boat a mess after the crew’s night of partying. A messy boat is one of his pet peeves, and he’s not about to let the crew sleep in while Thalassa is in squalor. Instead, he wakes everyone up and holds a spontaneous all-crew meeting. And he decides this is the perfect time for him to bring up the garbage issue from the crew’s day off. He wasn’t too happy about finding the leftover bags filled with maggots and lobster juices. But no one on the deck team wants to step up and claim they forgot to take the bags off the boat.
So Captain Jason gives Jamie an ultimatum: get someone on the deck crew to ‘fess up or take the heat himself. The bosun pulls his team aside but everyone stands around silently. A flashback reveals that it was Culver who said all the trash was off the boat. But really, it’s just an accident that the whole team overlooked. So Jamie goes back to the Captain and takes the bullet himself. It results in a “verbal warning” per Captain Jason. Which feels like a bit of making a mountain out of a molehill, but OK. He really cares about the trash, I guess.
At the same time that Jamie‘s getting a lashing over garbage, Aesha pulls Magda aside for a heart-to-heart. She calmly confronts the third stew about everything Tumi told her. And to her credit, Magda doesn’t deny any of the things she said. However, instead of taking full accountability for them, she claims that maybe she was just projecting her tense dynamic with a previous chief stew onto Aesha. Umm…OK? Not sure if that’s truly introspective or Magda was simply looking for a way to pass the buck, but it seems to satisfy Aesha and the two hug it out. The chief stew’s confrontation with with Chef Ryan, on the other hand, isn’t quite so warm and fuzzy. She says what she has to say and he mostly points the finger at Tumi for stirring the pot.
Ahead of the charter, Captain Jason holds a hurried preference sheet meeting to get the heads of department on the same page. The next primary is a who moonlights as a musician. And he really loves Christmas. So much so that, not only has he recorded his own Christmas album, he’s also asking the crew to throw a “Christmas Down Under” themed party during the charter. For the third time this recap, the general reaction is, “Umm…OK?” And as far as food goes, the guests are giving Chef Ryan free rein to be as creative and fun as possible. So we all can guess how that will go…
The guests arrive and the first thing the primary’s wife asks for is oysters. She wants to be surprised! But the surprise ends up being a bad one when the edible mollusks come out au natural on the half shell. With basically no work put into their preparation besides being shucked. Because Ryan is Ryan. The guest complains to Aesha, but a lunch of chili crab goes over much better. For the charter, Jamie‘s also switching up shifts. He wants to pull Benny Crawley off of lates because none of the overnight work seems to be getting done. Never mind that Benny had to put up with the last group of guests fishing until all hours of the night on the previous charter. But of course, Jamie doesn’t tell Benny any of this. Instead he informs Brittini and puts that grenade in her lap to deliver should she wish.
After lunch, Culver and Jamie takes the guests snorkeling to look at manta rays. Meanwhile, the water is too shallow for the boat to anchor. So Thalassa just has to drift along with engines off. Despite the strong current and the water being quite choppy, all the guests ensure the deckies that they’re strong swimmers. This is Australia, after all. And yet, just a few minutes into the excursion, one of the male guests is crying out for help in the water. Which gives Jamie the perfect opportunity to show off the lifeguard skills he loves to talk about so much. Turns out the man had a leg cramp. And Jamie’s pleased as punch to get him back to the tender in safety.
Later, Captain Jason anchors the boat at Gloucester Island. And that’s when Benny starts getting on Jamie‘s bad side. Again. First he gets caught taking selfies in the tender. Which Jamie reprimands him over for not staying behind the steering wheel. That’s strike one for the day. Then he talks back when Jamie calls him out for leaving a trail on the teak when he was taking out the trash. That’s strike two. Going into the Australian-themed dinner, Benny’s on thin ice.
Ryan, in contrast, actually gets high marks for the meal — particularly the kangaroo in a cherry red wine reduction sauce. He’s also amenable and calm and not giving Aesha any problems in the galley. What is happening here? Is he self-aware enough to realize Captain Jason‘s about ready to replace him? Before the late shift, Brittini pulls Jamie aside to complain about the Benny situation. She doesn’t appreciate the bosun passing what should be his responsibility to talk to Benny onto her and Culver. But…Jamie doesn’t really care. Benny never listens to him anyway, he argues, so what’s the point?
Well, naturally, this all boils over the next morning. Bright and early the deck team is working together to get the jet skis in the water. And an over-eager Benny starts using the remote life before Culver can manage to get the jet ski hooked up. As a viewer, it seems like yet another minor issue. But it gets blown out of proportion when Jamie tries to reprimand Benny for it. The junior deckhand doesn’t think he did anything wrong. And can’t help but argue his position. Which promptly causes Jamie to lose his cool and storm into the wheelhouse to demand Captain Jason fire Benny. And…cliffhanger!
TELL US – SHOULD CAPTAIN JASON FIRE BENNY? DOES JAMIE HAVE IT OUT FOR HIM? DID JAMIE DESERVE CAPTAIN JASON’S VERBAL WARNING? IS MADGA DEFLECTING HER ISSUES WITH AESHA?
[Photo Credit: Peacock]
