This season is finally reaching a fever pitch, and I’m shocked it’s over actual job duties and not Joe making out with both stews. Somewhere on a sailing yacht, Gary is furiously taking notes like “How does this guy get away with it?” It’s not quite a Red Sowing like this week on House of the Dragon, as the only person we lost was Gael’s boyfriend. But a lot happened in this episode, sowing the seeds for potential departures to come.
Speaking of departures, it’s the last day of the charter for our unmemorable guests from Charleston. The Mustique prepares to leave Hydra to return to Athens. In a moment of déjà vu without the vu, Iain doesn’t see the port guys onshore to toss lines to. He explains he didn’t want to wait too long to answer on the radio. This hastiness leads him to not see the starboard line in the water, so Sandy has to correct him again; she doesn’t want any lines in the water while she’s moving the boat. Now Iain feels as though he’ll get in trouble for everything, which is reminiscent of the logic of a teenager who thinks everyone’s yelling at them when they’re not even raising their voice. Gael has his lack of accountability pegged, noting that he always points the finger at someone else. Sandy is annoyed, so she calls him to the bridge for a talk. Iain still doesn’t think he’s doing anything wrong, but he seems tired. I could see him bowing out himself and pulling a “You can’t fire me if I quit.”
When the guests leave, the primary, Kasie, shouts-out each of the stews by name, possibly just to show off that she learned them. They leave a nice $22,000 tip. I’m not sure why I feel obligated to include these numbers in recaps, because it really only matters when it’s low. If any readers have the skills to make a spreadsheet of all past tips and run some z-tests, I would love to know if there’s an actual correlation between tip and service quality.
While the crew gets ready for a night out, Aesha sees a club having a white party (in what looked like a disturbing close-up of a pube stuck to her fingernail?) and corrals everyone to dress accordingly. Ellie, usually overeager for a theme, must not have a seductive enough white outfit because she goes with a sparkly beige dress. At dinner, she shows Joe an “incredible photo” she just posted of herself. This man will say anything to get with her: First, he says her dress is white, then he fawns over her cringey selfie. He asks if he can put it in his wank bank, and she nonchalantly agrees. I have to pause the TV and take a walk around the block to recover from this interaction. Bri responds to it by ordering a whole bottle of wine for herself. Iain is not drinking tonight and orders a chocolate milkshake. Both are iconic behaviors.
Joe says he was looking at the comments men post on Ellie’s Instagram, and I realize this may be where he got the inspiration to go vulgar. She’s like, “You should see the DMs.” The two sit across the table from Bri but act like they’re on their own date. Does Ellie like cats or dogs? She’s a rabbit person. Bri says she had a bunny, too, but she’s got no chance — Ellie’s rubbing Joe’s back, staking her claim.
It’s an eventful dinner as Gael receives a breakup text and is clearly upset. Nathan tries not to appear too pleased, practically frothing at the mouth. Aesha goes off with Gael to comfort her. Gael feels like she gave it everything, sending a message every morning and night. Two texts a day is far from “everything,” but I can see how his anxious attachment style was too much. They return to the table, and she tells Nathan that her boyfriend noticed she couldn’t say “I love you” anymore. That’s a lot to put on a rebound, but he’s keen.
After dinner, Iain goes back to the boat, opting out of dancing. He wants to do better and avoid a hangover. This is a great choice but also likely influenced by the fact that none of the girls are into him. At the club, Ellie and Joe dance all over each other, and it becomes a make-out. Bri says she isn’t jealous but is annoyed it’s right in front of her. I’m annoyed that the club doesn’t seem to be enforcing the white dress code.
In the cars back by the boat, Ellie and Joe make out in one back seat, while Gael and Nathan cuddle in the other. Poor Jono, Bri, and Aesha. If I were Bri, I would choose the other car. On the boat, Bri is snippy toward Joe. He thinks she hates him now, but he’s a little too smug about it for my taste. Nathan and Gael cuddle on a deck couch and seemingly kiss, but we can’t see much from the camera angle. After seeing the mess with Joe, they’re wise to keep things between the two of them.
In the morning, Bri tells Ellie she’s not mad; she just asks that they don’t flaunt it in front of her. Their bubbling animosity could overflow the washing machines. When Aesha asks Bri about the laundry “burn book,” Bri goes straight for the kill, explaining that she thought Ellie was hiding laundry. This remains unresolved, and more laundry errors arise. Sandy wants to invest in Bri, but she doesn’t really listen when Bri starts trying to play detective about a pair of white pants. Aesha tells Bri that if she keeps making these mistakes, she’ll have to consider letting her go. Bri understands yet tears up because she feels like half the time she’s blamed for things that aren’t her fault. Bri’s tear ducts are working overtime since the laundry issues continue: Now Gael’s black pants are missing. Ellie ironed them and says she put them in her pile yesterday. Ellie: “Thank God everything’s recorded … You’ll see the pants were here.” I love when we get an acknowledgment of the cameras, and they do roll the tape, but I can’t tell if she hung them up or put them behind the hanging clothes. This evidence is inconclusive, though we can file another exhibit: Jono comes into the crew mess with pants that aren’t his, and it turns out Ellie erroneously wrote his name in the tag. Bri should add it to the notebook.
The conflict is quickly moving beyond laundry and into the interpersonal. Ellie — or Elle, as Joe calls her — feels that Bri is making the other crew members think she’s a bad person. Ellie apologizes to Bri for losing her patience but thinks Bri’s meltdowns are affecting others. I’ll concede that Bri is a crybaby, but “affecting others” seems to actually mean “I don’t want others to know I’m the one making you cry.”
The tears are flowing today as Gael calls her boyfriend and officially ends it. She didn’t feel supported, is sorry this is how it went down, and wishes him “all the happiness in the world.” Aesha comforts Gael by acting as a human weighted blanket. (Their friendship is a rare bright spot.) Elsewhere, the preference-sheet meeting warns of more dark seas ahead. The primary doesn’t like seafood and vegetables, while her friends don’t like eggs and meat. It’ll be a challenge for Jono and the stews; the guests fire off specific drink orders soon after they arrive. This group of ladies already has more personality than the last bunch. Ellie makes a mojito that looks suspiciously orange, and they say it doesn’t taste like a mojito, so she adds more Bacardí. I’m surprised they don’t have nicer rum.
Things go smoothly for the deck crew leaving the port, though Iain’s true saving grace for not being top of the firing list is Bri and Ellie’s hatred of each other. Aesha is worried Bri is on the verge of a mental breakdown and feels like she’s failing them as a chief stew because she doesn’t have the answers. Sandy spots Bri crying on her break and asks what’s up. Bri admits she’s struggling with Ellie but still wants to work and isn’t a quitter. Sandy asks what specifically is making her so upset that she’s crying. Bri feels as though she can’t stand up for herself, and Sandy volunteers to get involved. Bri says “no,” so Sandy counsels her to take control of her emotions and shake it off.
Bri comes off break to swap with Ellie and learns the second stew set the table for lunch but didn’t clean the guest cabins. Bri takes Sandy’s advice to stand up for herself, calling Ellie out for not prioritizing the cabins. She feels that Ellie did it on purpose and asks Ellie to leave her alone. While Bri starts cleaning, Ellie won’t leave. She pulls rank and repeats, “You don’t get to speak to me like this.” She goes full-on angry-mom mode, trying to get Bri to stop wiping and saying, “I expect an apology when I come back.” Ellie frames this as another Bri meltdown. It’s giving A Streetcar Named Desire with Ellie trying to commit Bri.
Sandy hears Bri crying again, but Bri professionally says they’ll talk about it later because she can’t be crying in front of the guests, who are on their way back from shopping in Poros with Aesha. As the only stew on duty, Bri has Sandy give the welcome-back towels so she can get the prosecco. Bri fills Aesha in, and the chief stew agrees that Ellie should’ve prioritized the cabins. Aesha asks for Ellie’s side of the story, and Ellie claims Bri berated her. Her voice wavers as she says her underling has been getting away with bad behavior. Aesha finds them both convincing, so she can’t tell what the truth is and asks Sandy to step in. Sandy tells the girls that if they can’t work together, she can’t let only one of them go; she’d have to let both go. The captain wants them to fix it and continue to do their job. Bri doesn’t think they can do that because she feels like Ellie doesn’t have her back. Ellie stutters, and Bri fights back, interrupting, which Sandy doesn’t like, finding it mean. She paraphrases Beyoncé: “Everyone here is replaceable.”
