Below Deck Down Under Recap: Am I The Problem?

Below Deck Down Under
The Garden Party
Season 4 Episode 16
Editor’s Rating ★★★★
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Remember a couple of weeks ago, when Jason woke up to the boat’s main salon in a state of disarray after the crew’s night off, and how exasperated he was at the mess they left? That’s how I felt returning to “Coconut Bar” with the crew this week. Nothing is in its place, everything is chaos. While Jenna and Ben have their break-up conversation, João continues to try to convince Daisy to date him, and Barbie encourages Eddy to walk away from Jenna once and for all. By the end of the night, all perspective has been lost. People are yelling, slamming doors, and stomping up and down the stairs.

Well, by “people,” I mean Jenna. Still at the bar, after Ben walks away from their conversation, she cries to Daisy that she likes both Eddy and Ben, and Daisy — never one to mince words — advises her to “stay the fuck away from the two of them.” Instead, Jenna confronts Eddy about showing Ben her text. Eddy looks her dead in the eye and lies, saying that he didn’t show Ben the text, only told him about it. Everyone’s erratic behavior is, of course, exacerbated by the fact that they’ve been doing shots all night — which also explains why, back on the boat, all inhibitions fly out the window. 

In their cabin, Ben tells Eddy that he and Jenna kissed “a week ago,” the night Jenna cabin-hopped from Ben’s bed to Eddy’s. Eddy wants to talk to Jenna and straighten things out, but Ben advises him not to. She’s playing them both! “You’re being a wuss, dude,” Ben lamely says. Barbie, having experienced this shitshow for 12 or so hours, declares that she’s “done being on Eddy’s team,” as he’s determined to “chase [Jenna] around like a puppy.” Eddy chases Jenna, but Jenna chases Ben: She tries to make amends, but Ben tells her that he doesn’t care to start whatever it is they were about to start anymore. 

Jenna loses it. She goes on a rampage, stomping up the stairs to yell at Eddy in front of the rest of the crew, climbing over the furniture, and escaping Daisy’s grip. Alesia and João try to talk her down, but Jenna is not in any state to listen. She even takes a dig at Alesia about her former almost-involvement with Eddy, and when she finally gets back to her cabin, she locks the door and refuses to open it to Daisy, who bangs on it. It’s very “teenage girl in a fight with her mom” vibes. The crew goes to bed with that drunken sense of foreboding about what the morning will bring: remorse and a brutal hangover. Only João has a positive experience of the night, because he gets to share his cabin with the love of his life, Daisy. “This has been my favorite season because of you,” he tells her. Daisy is sufficiently charmed that she climbs into his bed and kisses him good night. 

Before we address the repercussions of Jenna’s rampage, a word on Daisy and João: By the end of the episode, their reluctant fling seems to be a-go. On a wine date, João wants to talk about Daisy’s hot-and-cold behavior: They cuddle at night, but in the morning, she tends to act as if nothing happened. “This will break us,” he dramatically says. Daisy assures him that she likes him, but doesn’t give him much more than that. “I’m having my own inner conflict,” she explains; she has been the victim of one too many disastrous boatmances. Despite vowing to keep up with her pace, all João is doing with these conversations is pushing Daisy to get involved. If you strip away the niceties, what he’s asking sounds a lot like: “Why haven’t we made out yet?” 

In the morning, sweet, oblivious Eddy texts Jenna: “Can I come give you a hug?” Little does he know Jenna is in the guest cabin with Ben, making up. Eddy looks all around the boat for Jenna while she and Ben talk about how Eddy is not “strong” enough to be with her. Jenna tells Ben, “I need a dominant man so that I can be submissive,” then proceeds to make out with him. I’ve defended Jenna this whole season because I think she is funny and a hard worker, but this is where I draw the line. I want to mail her a copy of The Second Sex or something. Eddy finally finds Jenna in bed with Ben. He mopes around for the rest of the day. Jenna and Ben recognize they went a step too far; Jenna admits that she wouldn’t have liked to be treated the same way. Ben goes to Jason for advice. The captain encourages him to have a difficult but honest conversation with Eddy, but Eddy doesn’t want to talk. He doesn’t want to talk to Jenna, either. In fact, he doesn’t want to talk to anyone.

I feel for Eddy. I do! I know boatmances move at an intense clip compared to real-life involvements, and that there’s incentive from production to ramp up the drama. That said, Eddy and Jenna went on one date. It seems like Eddy is less hurt that Jenna doesn’t want anything to do with him than that he got played on television, which has to sting. But I’d rather he be upfront about that than affect this sorrow over a week-long relationship. Jason speaks to Eddy. His solid advice is that if it’s this hard to get along with someone, they’re probably not the right person for him. This is the moment that got teased at the end of last week’s episode and made me think Eddy would quit, and though he tells Jason, “I don’t know if I want to be here,” the captain talks him out of it. He assures Eddy that he’s a great person and a “vital part of the crew,” and encourages him to focus on work so they can finish the season strong. Jason gives him a nice, big, dad-like hug. It’s what Eddy needed. Okay, that was touching.

Meanwhile, the rumor mill gets to work. Ben tells João that he and Jenna kissed, and João relays the information to Daisy, Barbie, and Alesia. Jenna admits to the kiss to Alesia and Betul, who is the only one to point out, in a confessional, that Eddy “did a really similar thing with Alesia.” The gossiping is interrupted by the second-to-last preference sheet meeting of the season. We meet James and his boyfriend Kai, who are coming from Los Angeles with a group of friends. James is a landscape designer, and in perfect L.A. fashion, he name-drops several celebrities when explaining his job. They come across lowkey enough on the preference sheet — they want a “Garden of Adam” theme for dinner, but leave the food up to the chef — but when they get onboard, they have several shirts to be steamed, request their things to be unpacked, and have highly specific drink orders, like “Grey Goose with still water and muddled ginger.”

Before the guest pick-up, though, Jason has to mend his broken crew. He calls Daisy to his office to get a full picture of what happened. Daisy is not pleased with her second stew’s behavior — Jenna caused discord among all departments. Jason is surprised that Jenna acted out so badly when she’s been a solid second stew, and worries that if things go on this way, he might lose a deckie. So, the next morning, he decides to teach Jenna a lesson by taking away her second-stew stripe. Her offense is not grounds for dismissal, but he needs to uphold the standards he has been setting throughout the season. Jenna takes her demotion like a champ and only cries when she gets to the pantry downstairs. Alesia comforts her and encourages her to work hard to earn her stripe back, but in a confessional, she says that Jenna deserved it.

Everyone on the boat agrees that Jenna deserved a little reprisal. Even Jenna’s mom tells her over the phone that she needs to stop seeking male validation and focus on herself. That her mom is so reasonable and direct, and that Jenna is genuinely remorseful, are the two things that redeem her messy behavior. To me, it’s obvious that Jenna is still kind of a kid — she’s only 22! — and she regrets her actions. Eddy doesn’t want to listen to her apologies, preferring to get his closure from dubious-sounding podcasts about women’s evil ways. He also doesn’t want to hear apologies from Ben. First, when Ben tries to make up, Eddy rejects his apology: “I’ll be honest,” he says, “I think you’re a massive prick.” The next day, his head cooled a little, Eddy tells Ben that he was emotional the day before and knows they both got played, so he wants to make sure Ben is okay, too. Ben appreciates the gesture and promises him not to pursue things with Jenna any further. 

The most touching moment in this emotionally fraught episode is a brief exchange between Betul and Jenna. After Jenna tries to apologize to Eddy again, to no avail, Betul comforts her crying friend. “I fucked up, Betul,” Jenna laments. “I know,” Betul says, rubbing Jenna’s back, “Sometimes, we all fuck up.” Without absolving Jenna of her mistake, Betul gives her some grace. It’s the rare kind of humanity extended to another person on reality television, where mistakes and lapses of judgement are plot fodder. It’s indicative of the strength of this season that we get a moment like this on air. It’s also indicative of the strength of the season that, after 30 straight minutes of interpersonal drama, we get to watch the workplace fall apart. It’s relentless! 

Daisy and Ben start bickering when Daisy asks Ben to set out the crew lunch earlier next time. Ellie suggests they serve Lucky Charms to the crew instead, which makes Ben laugh and would almost certainly make Daisy apoplectic if she heard it herself. When, later, Jenna quips to Daisy that at least her demotion means Ellie gets to move up in the line-up, which she has been dying to do since the minute she arrived, Daisy is ticked off. As a galley-hand, Ellie still ranks below Jenna; or, in Daisy’s words, “She’s the lowest person on the boat!” Yet all Ben does is “inflate her ego.” 

While the guests enjoy the water toys, Ben comes up to the bar to break things off with Jenna for good… I think. He puts it very confusingly. “Look, there’s quite a few moving parts on this, but I feel like it’s pretty easy to screw up on my position,” he says. “There’s no hostility, I’m here to do a job, that’s the main thing.” Ben is twenty years older than Jenna. His saying, in a confessional, that Jenna’s demotion is “an example for everyone” is unseemly at best. He could stand to take way more responsibility for this whole mess and be a lot wiser.

He could also be wiser about dinner service. He wants to serve whole snapper, which would require the servers to filet the fish table-side. Daisy tells him, in no uncertain terms, that his idea won’t work: Not only does no one know how to filet a fish, but she doesn’t have enough hands to do that in a timely manner. She asks Ben to come up with a different plan, but he maintains that a whole fish presentation is what the snapper deserves. Both Daisy and Ben expect a difficult service, but they are both too headstrong to budge. Ben doesn’t change the snapper’s presentation, and Daisy doesn’t come up with a plan for how to tackle the filleting table-side. So, what happens when the fish finally comes to the table — including to Jason, who is eating with the guests — is that no one knows what to do, least of all the guests. 

There were at least a couple of alternative solutions: Ben could have taken a second to demonstrate to the stews how to do the filleting, or he could have deboned and butterflied the fish himself. But both of these options would involve a lot more work when time is in short supply. The service is embarrassing. The guests fumble with their fish; Jason has to help them, and even João steps up. To make matters worse, when Ben comes upstairs to help where he can, there is not a stew in sight — Jenna and Daisy are both inside filling drink orders while Barbie and Alesia are in cabins. I’m Daisy’s No. 1 defender, but she did jump ship when things didn’t go her way. She could’ve at least tried to figure something out. Either way, the blame game is unproductive. As Jason points out, the real culprit is the miscommunication between the galley and the interior.