Below Deck Down Under Recap: Enemies to Enemies

Ellie and Alesia decide the midseason lull is the perfect time to manufacture drama and sow chaos among the crew.
Photo: Bravo

About halfway through the charter season, the housekeeping team — ahem, Mike and Alesia — is still dropping the ball, earning the crew only two stars on “cleanliness and comfort” on Marc and Clay’s feedback cards. At least, the crew’s narrative roles have mostly been defined. Mike, for example, is completely infuriating at his job, but dramatically, he is like a character out of a 19th-century novel whose only function is to gather and disperse information. The commitment with which he has embodied this role is almost endearing enough to win me over; I couldn’t help cracking up this week, watching him eavesdrop all around the Katina. 

Every season of Below Deck has a villain or two. In the last season of Mediterranean, Joe and Kizzi collaborated on the role. This season, we have two crew members competing for it: Ellie and Alesia. Though they work in different departments and have had little to do with each other up until this episode, their desire for prominence, and, let’s be real, male validation, has put them in competition. What’s engaging about their rivalry is that they are in conflict with each other and also with everyone else.

We pick up this week on Ellie and Ben making amends on the bridge. She’s calmer now, even willing to concede that Ben’s use of pet names was not purposefully derogatory. Ben says it was just the opposite: he hoped his “British colloquialism” would be “a diffuser, rather than a fuser.” But he understands where she’s coming from, and offers to install the swear jar system in the galley, repurposed as a “honey pot.” Every time he says honey, a dried kidney bean goes in the pot. Ellie gets the satisfaction of seeing her boss degraded to a system made to teach children action-and-consequence, and Ben has the incentive not to degrade himself. Win-win.

In their conversation, Ben is a lot more deferential than Ellie. She admits to being embarrassed about her excessive behavior in a confessional, but with Ben, she gets away with a minor “I’m sorry.” They leave the bridge with something for Ben to work on and no notes for Ellie. You almost have to applaud her. Ben, for his part, is just relieved. He gets into his robe and a bathtub as soon as possible. He’s still in the robe for the tip meeting; Jason teases him by calling him granddad. Jason tells the crew that the situation in the galley is resolved, but won’t be tolerated again. Before handing out $1,692 each from a $22,000 total tip, he calls the interior team out on substandard housekeeping. Jenna gets the disco helmet.

I understand that, as second stew, housekeeping is Jenna’s responsibility, but it doesn’t seem fair for her to take the blame for Mike and Alesia’s inattention. Worse, Mike doesn’t feel inclined to take orders from someone wearing “the dunce cap.” He is either too dense or too proud to recognize that she is wearing it in part because of him. Daisy gathers her team for a quick meeting, in which she reminds Mike and Alesia that when she’s not there, Jenna is in charge. At this point, Daisy and Jenna seem at a loss about how to ensure that Alesia and Mike use their God-given brains. It doesn’t help that the two of them don’t seem to think they’re doing anything wrong. Later, at dinner, Alesia will tell Daisy that she doesn’t like being called “a junior,” since she earned her “metaphorical stripes.” Daisy comes back: “You have one stripe.”

Having resolved her issues with Ben, Ellie is onto her next task, which is to secure João’s attention once and for all. She struts into the crew mess and offers to give him a massage. In a confessional, she tells us that she refined her massage-therapy skills by working as a masseuse for “the richest person in Russia.” João, no fool, accepts the offer readily, even if he wishes the attention were coming from Daisy. He’s still worried that if he comes on too strongly, “beautiful, sweet, kind, protective” Daisy will retreat. He may have been too careful. When Jenna tells Daisy that João told her that he likes the chief stew, Daisy shrugs: She’s not about to get involved in a love triangle, and besides, she’s “really just here to work.” Even if he did like her, the situation with Ellie is a turn-off. If only Alesia had one-third of this maturity, she might not have lost the goodwill of almost every woman onboard.

There is nothing more admirable than a confident woman who knows her worth, but watching Ellie fight for João’s attention is making me want to crawl out of my skin. Was I hallucinating, or did she ask him if he’s been squatting while massaging his butt? On the way to dinner, Ellie tells the girls (Alesia, Jenna, and Betul) that she hasn’t kissed João yet because they’re “easing into it.” Alesia hypes her up, which is why Ellie is irritated when, at dinner, Alesia talks to João a little too much. It’s a bit of an overreaction on Ellie’s part, but Alesia doesn’t have the best track record. In fact, though Eddy and Jenna spend the whole dinner talking and bonding over the fact that they were both brought up in the church, Alesia doesn’t waste time dancing with Eddy at the club. Jenna vents to Daisy and Betul, and when Ellie joins them, she adds fuel to the fire: it “started at dinner with João.” But really, it’s much worse between Alesia and Eddy — on the dance floor, she told him that it’ll never work between him and Jenna, that he needs someone else. That’s just malicious.

Meanwhile, Mike tries to understand why João won’t just make out with Ellie. “I like Daisy,” he explains. The next day, Mike tells this information to anyone who will listen. Eddy tries to pull Jenna aside to talk, but she doesn’t want to speak with him. She cries in the van going back to the boat, frustrated about being in competition with other girls and getting emotional about “average men.” Alesia, totally hammered, doesn’t share either of those concerns. She rides back on the boys’ van, and when they get out on the dock, she pulls João aside to talk. She asks him if he’s “trying to pull” Ellie. João is confused. What does she care? But the optics of their chat look bad to Ellie, and, briefly, to Daisy. “I hope you and Alesia had a great time,” Ellie texts João, kind of crazily. Alesia’s history makes it seem like she’s trying to “steal” João from Ellie, but it seems like a stretch to me. What could she possibly have wanted from that conversation on the dock? It didn’t really make sense … smells like manufactured drama to me.

On the Katina, Ben and Jason have a nice, almost romantic night cooking steaks and chilling in their robes, so they wake up fresh and rested, while the rest of the crew wakes up hungover and feeling bad about themselves. No one, perhaps, more than Eddy, who cried himself to sleep. In the morning, Jenna goes over to his cabin, willing to “try again.” They kiss and make amends, but I’m not really buying it. Alesia is manipulative, but she doesn’t act alone: it literally takes two to tango. It’s too easy, if not simply backward, to blame the seducing evil woman rather than hold men accountable for their actions. I was almost ready to take João’s side in this whole thing until I remembered that.

João’s conversation with Alesia was random and weird and not his fault. But he’s not handling this thing with Ellie very gracefully. Despite telling people that he likes Daisy and knowing that the information will reach the chief stew, he indulges Ellie. Later that night, when she comes over to his cabin to talk about the previous night, they make out in his bed. It’s aggravating when he says he was “cornered” by Ellie, though he admits he acted like a “cowardly dickhead.” It’s a disappointing turn of events for João, whose evolution from immature boy to responsible man has been so satisfying. He sounds softer and more self-aware than his old self when he admits he shouldn’t have let things go this far, but here’s the problem: He did.

In bed, Ellie tells João about how she went off on Alesia. They had a bit of a villain-off while the ever resourceful Mike eavesdropped. What happened was that Ellie gave Alesia the cold-shoulder, which prompted Alesia to ask if she’d done anything wrong. Ellie told her yes: she is disrespectful to girls and only thinks about herself. “She ruined everyone’s night,” Ellie reasons in a confessional, “somebody has to say something.” Never one to stay out of drama, Mike tells Alesia that João told him that he doesn’t even like Ellie; he likes Daisy. That information gives Alesia reason to dismiss Ellie’s outburst: she’s off her rocker, anyway. When Alesia tells Jenna what Ellie said, Jenna admits to also feeling disrespected. Alesia apologizes … sort of. The tension between the two of them comes out in their fight for a multi-colored penis plushie the charter guests gifted Jenna — throughout the episode, they move the thing from one bed to another.

While the messy people go about their mess, the heads of department get together for the preference sheet meeting. Incoming is Tyler, a socialite from New York whose “trip of a lifetime” is being bankrolled by his “very successful and incredibly private” partner. Tyler is flying in his glam technician for a secret drag night he’s going to surprise his friends with. It’ll be a demanding charter, so it’s a good thing that the crew has another night to get a good night’s sleep and prepare. Daisy’s idea of doing that is having a glass of wine in her pajamas while displaying Olympic levels of indifference as Ellie tells her she’s baking João a cake for his birthday.

The fact that everyone except Ellie knows that she is João’s second choice makes me feel for her. She works hard at her bravado, which, of course, is a way to hide insecurity. On the line-up at the dock, Daisy asks Ellie to switch places with Jenna, since Jenna is second stew and therefore ranks higher. Ellie is offended. As a former second-stew, she probably feels demoted. In the galley, she asks Jenna if she was the one who asked Daisy to swap them. As a sous-chef, she argues, they are the same rank. Jenna, imperturbably cool, wants to know how that figures, since Ellie is actually a galley-hand. Ben knows that Jenna is right — “chef assistant” is just a nicer way to say galley-hand — but he’s not poking the bear. He tells Ellie that he noticed the swap, but it doesn’t matter.

The guests request a beach dinner with a “lost at sea” theme. Going to the beach at night makes Daisy nervous, but it’s worth it: Jenna sets a gorgeous table, and the guests enjoy a nice sea breeze while watching a beautiful sunset. More guests should do this, it’s a cool idea (sorry, Daisy). Making drinks, Daisy asks Alesia about the drama with Ellie, and ultimately decides it doesn’t concern her — she wants nothing to do with this thing between Ellie and João. Angry at Ellie and hoping to throw fuel on the fire, Alesia tells Daisy that she heard João likes her instead of Ellie. It’s amazing that she thinks this is new information. This drama is in danger of becoming stale. Let’s move on?