Below Deck Down Under Recap: Rocking the Boat

With only one episode left in the season — at the 45-minute mark of the game’s second half, as we’d say in Brazil — Below Deck Down Under gives us a dynamic week, filled with crew drama, nauseated guests, developing (or crumbling) boatmances, and even some technical mishaps. We’re finally pulling out of the vortex of the Lara and Tzarina fight, and I feel like I’m slowly waking up from a coma. This week, the crew holds it together as a unit, even as interpersonal conflicts continue to simmer.

At the forefront of “Come Swell or High Water” is the state of our couples and what’ll happen to them once the season is over. Preparing for the next charter, Bri tells the interior crew about her hesitations regarding Harry, while Harry tells the deckies he’s feeling confident about their relationship. In a confessional, he says he’s not worried about having an exclusivity talk with Bri since it’s obvious they’re on the same page. This is reminiscent of last season’s Margot catastrophe, but as it’ll turn out later in the night, things pan out okay — Bri agrees to be “exclusive partners” with him, a label she’s comfortable with because it’s one rung lower than boyfriend and girlfriend. My question is why she’d agree to take a step forward knowing she’ll have to take a couple of steps back. Also, “exclusive partners” sounds more like a Census Bureau designation than an affective label, but rock on.

While Bri forges on with Harry, Alesia decides to halt the progress of her own developing fling with Nate, which is a bummer, since he was already dreaming of having a white picket fence with her and five blonde rugrats running around. It’s a sweet fantasy, but if we’re being honest, it’s also a self-centered one: Nothing about Alesia suggests she’s ready to move to the suburbs. She does lead him on for most of the day, for which Tzarina calls her out, like a big sister. At dinner, while the boys go into the bathroom for another Boys Bathroom Chat, Tzarina gets real with her sous: “Do you want him or not?” Alesia finally gathers the courage when they’re back onboard to tell Nate she just doesn’t have “the mental capacity” to jump into something with him, and though he’s disappointed, he takes it on the chin like the gentleman he is.

Finally, Nic and Marina seem stable throughout, though Marina, reasonable as always, knows that it would be foolish to dream up too many expectations when their homes are on two different continents. Nic doesn’t know what he’ll do once the season is over yet, and Marina doesn’t feel totally ready to call it quits, though she’s proceeding with caution.

But let us back up slightly to go over the denouement of the Great War between Interior and Galley. When we open on this week’s episode, Lara is still crying for having been awarded the helmet and complaining that Jason never congratulates her on a good job, to which the editors –– still the people most committed to roasting the chief stew –– respond by flashing several instances in which Jason congratulated her. Meanwhile, Tzarina vents to her mother on the phone about how the situation is triggering for her because it reminds her of being bullied in school. Later that day, the crew is all hanging out having drinks by the jacuzzi (which had to be cleaned earlier in the day; it looked disgusting), and Jason stops by to have a beer with them. Noticing that something is still bothering Lara, he pulls her aside to ask her honestly why she doesn’t just say sorry to Tzarina for how everything went down and move on. “Every fire starts with a spark,” he reminds her, and the beginning of their tiff was just a negligible spark that can still be put out. He also assures her that he’s only putting this on her because he knows that she’s capable enough to pull out of it –– he believes in her, and tells her some hundred more times that she’s doing a great job.

In a confessional, we get one more layer of the Lara-Tzarina feud: Lara tells us that Tzarina became friends with her cheating ex-boyfriend shortly after their relationship fell apart, which is pretty similar to the João situation last season, when Tzarina said that he had been awful to her friend and then proceeded to fawn over him for the rest of the season. Finally, though, it dawns on both women that there’s no point ending the season holding on to this grudge. Lara rises to the occasion, takes the high road, and apologizes to Tzarina in their cabin. I have to say –– I really didn’t see this coming. I truly believed that we’d say goodbye to the Seychelles with those two still fighting, and I didn’t trust that Lara had it in her to be the bigger person and take the first step toward apology. But she surprises me with her genuine regret, and her sincerity compels Tzarina to also apologize, so that by the end of their reconciliation, they have both accepted responsibility for how sour their relationship had become. Lara even puts on the helmet to go out! What is this feeling in my chest? I’m proud of them? 

When the sun rises on the last pick-up day of the season, Bri and Harry each catch their departments up on their exclusivity conversation, though that wasn’t wholly necessary, since the rest of the crew all watched their talk (albeit without sound) from the crew mess the night before. Adair, direct as always, points out that there’s no real difference between being boyfriend and girlfriend and being exclusive. Nate also tells them about Alesia, and to further the romantic landscape, Lara tells Tzarina she had a sex dream about Jason that throws her off for the rest of the day, especially early in the morning at the preference sheet meeting. In their whites, Lara, Tzarina and Jason hug it out. Affectionately goading Lara on, Tzarina makes a joke about having a dream that was kind of like that…

As the crew prepares for the arrival of Win, the CEO of the headphone company JLab, his wife Lori and their friends, Nate learns that the tender won’t start, which means they have to get a new rental for the charter. Jason is still looking into it when the guests arrive by yelling out “Say what? Seychelles!”, an immediate vibe indicator that sent a chill down my spine. They are thrilled with the boat and with the great lunch Tzarina and Alesia –– who is happy about her development in the kitchen –– put together, if only it weren’t for the fact that as soon as they anchor out at sea, the boat starts rocking. I think they could’ve been a lot nicer asking Lara about the Katina’s stabilizers, and whether or not they’re working. I understand that when you’re paying thousands of dollars for a luxury experience, you expect the utmost comfort, but you are on a boat –– what is Jason supposed to do? Stop the swell with his bare hands?

By the time the Seychelles-Night-themed dinner comes around, the boat still hasn’t stopped rocking, and the guests become too seasick to fully enjoy the curry dinner Tzarina has made for the sixteenth time this season. One of them, Trevor, has to get up in the middle of the meal to throw up. They get through it, though, enjoying the food as much as they can, and as the night winds down, Tzarina thanks Jason for talking to Lara and helping them get over the hurdle. After telling Adair earlier that she’s nervous about bringing Harry to New Jersey, Bri briefly puts Harry on the phone with her mother. Excitedly, he tells her that they are now exclusive, but Bri’s mom doesn’t seem impressed at all –– it’s hard to tell whether the call cut off just in the moment when Harry was delivering the news or whether Bri’s mom knows something Harry doesn’t, but in any case, it’s pretty awkward.

The boat rocks for the rest of the night, disturbing even Jason’s sleep. In the morning, Tzarina and Lara have another brief tiff over breakfast-service communication. This one is on Tzarina, I think: for some mysterious reason she just doesn’t have her radio, which means Lara has to come up and down all those stairs just to tell her that the guests are ready. Tzarina immediately takes it personally, which is annoying: let it all go! You literally only have one day left!

As the guests finish up breakfast, the deck crew and Bri head to the beach to set up a pirate-themed scavenger hunt for the guests, which sounds pretty fun. The captain warns Nate that the tide goes out very quickly at the beach where they’re going, which means it’s crucial to get the timing right so that the rental tender can come in and out. Nate is waiting by the steering wheel for Harry and Adair to finish offloading and setting up when the tide, as predicted, starts to go out. It’s so shallow that the tender won’t start –– it quickly becomes clear that it’s stuck. Back on the Katina, the guests are itching to head out. In the teaser for the season-finale, we see that the tender never made it out of the sandbank, a pretty significant screw-up on Nate’s part.

It’s lucky for Nate that he can’t get fired on the very last day of the season, but from the teaser, several other disasters will seize the crew on their last night out; many of them, it seems, set off by Alesia’s singular commitment to YOLO. I’m curious to learn what will happen with all of these couples. I’m also hoping we will get even just one small insight into Adair’s brain. Where will she go next? What will she do? What does she think about literally anything?