Tonight’s episode picks up from last week’s 3:15am crash cliffhanger, which I’ll be honest, I totally forgot about because we know they’re not really going to crash. As soon as that little 1 percent of me starts believing they might, of course the ships somehow turn to be more parallel than perpendicular. They’re still too close for comfort, so the whole crew’s getting woken up as Gary yells to the smaller boat trying to get someone on board’s attention to tell them they’re dragging. Keith returns on the tender with the guests from the club, who see this as just more entertainment. Brandon films as Keith knocks on the windows of the other boat. Finally, a face-blurred guy wakes up and seems undisturbed by the whole thing. They smell weed and chalk it up to that.
The next day, everyone’s a bit more sleep-deprived than normal, but that’s not an excuse for Emma’s continued lack of initiative. The producers wanted to make her failings very clear, to the point that the repetitiveness got a bit exhausting. A non-exhaustive list of Emma’s exploits on her (spoiler alert) last day alone:
• Struggles to get a cover off a lounge chair, then takes a smoke break.
• Flies the flag too low so Gary has to show her how to do it again.
• Can’t catch the rope swing. Even more embarrassing, this is in front of teens. A true nightmare.
• Ties the tender incorrectly; Gary has to do it.
• Doesn’t know which lines are the heaving lines.
• Thinks she doesn’t know how to get the heaving lines ready for docking. Gary demonstrates, then she remembers he showed her a few charters ago.
• Messes up tying a basic clove hitch knot.
Whew, I’m tired. Gary and Glenn agree that Emma just doesn’t get it, and they don’t feel fully manned, which is especially an issue when emergencies like last night come up. Glenn texts a staffing agent looking for a replacement deckhand. In an interview, Emma claims she knows how to do all these things and has done them before but is making stupid mistakes. After her miserable performance during docking, Davide finds her crying. He thinks she’s so scared of screwing up that it’s preventing her from doing the job well.
Emma isn’t the only sourpuss today; Danni is being a real pill. She complains about Daisy and Diana to Keith, who tries to give her sound advice (to not put all the blame on them) that she doesn’t want to hear. Later, Keith calls a pancake a pikelet. Danni hasn’t heard of a pikelet and says it’s not an Aussie thing. Australian Keith jokes, “What, in all of three months you’ve lived there?” She does NOT like this and calls him a) mean when he’s in uniform b) the rudest person she’s ever met and c) a dick. She’s trying to fight with him as if they broke up, even though they were never together. Keith smartly doesn’t engage, and nails Danni with the assessment that she dishes it out but can’t take it.
Post-charter, Daisy meets with her stews to ask if they have feedback or ideas where they can improve. Their silence is deafening. Daisy says they can be faster with decorations, a critique obviously aimed at Danni, but Daisy uses “we” language instead of calling her out. Danni still sees this as being number one on Daisy’s target list, and Daisy can tell Danni doesn’t like her. Danni tells us she’s not trying to be chief stew, but believes Daisy is intimidated. We Below Deck fans are truly blessed with no shortage of overconfident stews to stir up drama. Much to be thankful for this holiday season.
At the tip meeting, Glenn commends Cloyce for stepping up. There wasn’t a packaged yogurt or scrambled egg mountain in sight for breakfast this time; he made cinnamon buns, banana bread, and eggs benedict. Good job, Cloyce. Less congratulatory, Glenn says the deck team wasn’t firing on all cylinders. Bad job, Emma.
Gary and Glenn discuss Emma again, coming to the conclusion she’s not a capable deckhand — she can’t even tie knots! — and it’s time to bring on someone new. Glenn thinks they’ve given her ample opportunity to prove her value and she hasn’t shown it. This is true, but from what we’ve seen, they never gave her an explicit warning that she was close to being fired. I wonder if that approach (the Captain Sandy technique, if you will) would’ve finally lit a fire under her. More likely, it would’ve made her spiral further, but maybe confirming her suspicion that she was about to get fired could’ve helped her feel less manic.
They sit Emma down to let her go. Glenn says they just need someone with more skills. In tears, Emma doesn’t want to keep talking, thinking she’ll embarrass herself. It’s clear they’ve made their decision, so she goes to her cabin. There, Daisy encourages her to finish the conversation in order to have growth. Somewhat ironically, Emma calls Gary a coward. It’s within her right to not have to receive feedback after being fired, but if she wants to work more in yachting, she needs to at least pretend to take their feedback to heart. The interior girls give Emma a pep talk, and she finally returns to talk to Glenn. For all the build-up, the conversation itself isn’t much. The captain says she just needs to gain more experience.
Emma doesn’t say goodbye to Gary or Keith (who’s asleep), but she departs on good terms with everyone else. I’m so relieved she’s gone because, as a fellow person named Emma, this will be the end of negative comments about her that give me a momentary panic thinking they’re about me. Good riddance. I’m looking forward to having a new deckhand, and of course Danni wants it to be a boy. But first, she’s hopeful for an opportunity to meet up with Anthony from the beach club on their day off tomorrow. They’ve been texting “almost every day,” which makes me think she only texts him on her nights out. Meanwhile, sweetie Keith somehow didn’t see Emma’s firing coming and is bummed he didn’t get to say bye. Glenn calls an all-crew meeting to explain that Emma was let go because she wasn’t able to do the job. In some cases, this would be a threat to do their jobs, but it seems like everyone left is on even footing for now.
Gary — getting such a nice edit — calls his mom, feeling bad about how the firing went. His mom definitely knows him well, because her advice is, “don’t get too drunk.” For a split-second, it seems like he might live in the sad moment as he brings a lower energy to dinner. Nope: he excuses himself and promptly goes against his mom’s counsel by drinking tequila at the bar. Daisy pulls him for a ciggy, and she affirms that he and Glenn made the right decision. It’s not enough to cheer Gary up. He drowns his sorrows with at least three more drinks on top of an espresso martini and the tequila, plus a sixth that looks like espresso and a seventh that seems to be white wine. While Gary always claims not to watch the show, I wonder if his mom does.
Back on the boat, Keith tells Daisy he doesn’t know how she does it with the stews being so reactive and immature. They have a gossip/smoke sesh, and there might be a vibe starting between the two. Keith says Daisy is the one person on the boat he can be himself around. You don’t want to go there, Keith! Gary interrupts this heart-to-heart, now in full-on party mode. His poor liver must reckon with another shot, this time a dark liquor. It’s a dangerous mix, literally. As he and Davide drunkenly play catch with lollipops, Gary beans Davide in the face with one. They’re laughing, but then it’s revealed Davide’s face is covered in blood. The blood is also on the white couch and floor. I mentally flash back to the tip meeting, when Glenn said he wanted the boat to be as clean as it was after the last night out. That’ll be bloody difficult. Between this and a new deckhand, it looks like there will be two kinds of fresh blood next week.
