Mates, welcome to the start of Wihan’s downfall. Not to toot my own horn, but I called it in my last recap, when I wrote that all that attention could not possibly be good for a male ego. “Submergency” is a great episode of Below Deck because the fractures that had already been set up between Marina and Tzarina deepen while new points of tension between Lara and Wihan emerge. If the crew spent the first few episodes of the season appearing to build a strong foundation, now the cracks are beginning to show.
This episode’s relentless, delectable gossiping starts in the crew mess. Lara and Bri eat Ferrero Rochers and talk about Bri’s nice date with Harry and about Wihan and Marina’s whereabouts. When they return, they are greeted with oohs and aahs by the crew, including Tzarina. I know I’ve made a big thing out of being compatriots with Marina, but she’s so mean about the love triangle. She boasts about how well the date went and how much she likes Wihan in front of Tzarina, which she definitely didn’t need to do, and then, just to kick a woman while she’s down, she mocks the way Tzarina has clipped her hair.
Wihan tells Lara and Bri that he enjoyed the date, but he reserves his juicier insights for Harry. The next morning, in their cabin, he tells Harry that while he is attracted to Marina’s forward approach, he really likes … Adair, effectively turning his love triangle into what Harry later describes as a “love asterisk.” Adair is blissfully unaware that she is involved in this mess, as are the other two women. Tzarina even tells Lara that Marina has thrown “girl code” out of the window. Lara lets her vent, but in a confessional, she dishes about Tzarina’s desperate search for love: On the last boat they worked together, Tzarina supposedly left a trail of sweets leading a guy from his cabin to hers, Hansel and Gretel style.
I feel for Tzarina, but I wish she would double down on self-respect rather than on her efforts to secure Wihan’s attention; I cringed at her telling him “love you” every time he exited a room, and at how she keeps literally jumping into his arms like she did on her way to the preference sheet meeting. Incoming co-primary guests Aisha and Gai, boat owners and restaurateurs, are on vacation with their sorority sisters. Jason also tells Tzarina that a new sous chef, already briefed on the non-glamorous aspects of the job, will arrive in three days.
After delegating tasks — Bri will be on service again, and Marina on housekeeping — Lara gets to work on what really matters, which is securing more gossip. Lara tells Bri that Tzarina was complaining about Marina earlier, which prompts Bri to tell Lara — stay with me here — that Harry told her that Wihan told him that he liked Marina’s forward approach. Hoping to get to the bottom of it, they grab Harry for more details. That’s when Harry lets them in on the latest: Wihan actually likes Adair. After recovering from the initial shock, Lara advises Harry to tell Wihan to just nip it in the bud with Tzarina. But when Harry brings it up to him, Wihan isn’t the least bit concerned. It’s not his fault that all the girls like him and that he’s trying to kiss them all before making up his mind on who he likes best without once considering their feelings. Ultimately, both Tzarina and Marina are delusional: Tzarina for believing that Wihan has thought about her at all since their drunken hot tub kiss, and Marina for believing that she has his devotion. Honestly, ladies. This guy isn’t even that hot!
Unfortunately, Below Deck isn’t made from pure gossip, so the crew has to get to work when Gai and Aisha arrive with their guests. Not that it’s easy for Wihan to recover his focus. Lara asks the deck team for help bringing up the luggage and Wihan radios, saying that they will as soon as they’ve changed into their blues. While she struggles with the bags, Wihan takes his time in his cabin, asking Harry’s opinion on what move he should make on Adair (who is, may I remind everyone, his subordinate).
As the day goes on, Wihan’s focus problem only worsens. After a successful lunch, Lara radios Wihan to get someone to tidy up the mess in the sundeck. He copies but then forgets, so she has to call him upstairs to ask again. Politely, Lara tells him that in the future, it would be nice if she didn’t have to ask once, never mind twice. After all, the cleanliness of the outside areas is the deck crew’s responsibility, and coming up with a checklist for what needs to be done after every meal service is Wihan’s job. Her request gets on Wihan’s nerves. I understand why — it’s annoying when someone who is not your boss tells you how to do your job — but Lara is trying to communicate as one head of department to the other.
Besides, it seems that Wihan just does not want to work. While Marina is buried under messy cabins and the captain helps with the dishes in the kitchen, Wihan and Harry are chilling in the sundeck, talking about how lost Wihan gets in Adair’s pretty green eyes. He is so averse to doing anything above the bare minimum that he asks Harry to talk him through what should go on the post-meal cleaning checklist. Harry admits this is bizarre: How can the bosun not know what cleaning the deck entails?
On the beach, Bri helps co-primary Aisha get into her mermaid’s tail. Johnny gets a kick out of her attempts to replicate what is probably a CGI image of a girl lying on the beach in full mermaid garb. Aisha keeps getting washed out on the shore, but Johnny rises to the occasion: He takes charge of the photo shoot, art directing, photographing, staging, and helping with costuming. I love Johnny. Why is no one fighting over him?
By the time they make it back on the Katina, the guests are wasted. They ask if Lara and Bri have boyfriends. Harry walks up just as Lara is telling them that Bri does, kind of. One of the women asks if Harry is going to invite Bri to go to Australia. “Maybe!” Harry replies stupidly, which irritates Bri. I would probably be annoyed too, but Bri misreads Harry’s blunders. She worries he is playing “mind games” when really what she is experiencing is the attention of a man who is completely terrified by her. The tension doesn’t last long, and they sweetly make up later that night.
One person who is manipulative is Wihan. He tells Jason that he’s setting up checklists for the deck crew because they keep missing stuff, which earns him kudos from the captain. This is frustrating because the checklist was Lara’s idea, which Wihan then had to ask for Harry’s help making, so he’s taking credit for something that didn’t come from him at all. To make matters worse, when Lara asks Wihan for help setting up the sundeck for dinner, Wihan tells her he’ll send someone — and then puts everyone on break. By the time Johnny is ready to help, Lara is done. I get that setting up decorations is not the deck crew’s responsibility, but after doing the bare minimum all day, it wouldn’t hurt for him to be a team player. There are only three stews on this enormous boat, and everyone has already demonstrated plenty of willingness to help. So much so that, after getting into his blacks, Johnny helps Tzarina peel carrots in the kitchen.
The dinner theme is silver to celebrate 25 years of sorority sisterhood. The decorations look great, the guests are all dressed up, the deck crew is shirtless, and Tzarina has devised a menu that doesn’t include a single soup. Everything seems to be going great until Marina finds a truly astounding amount of sand in the cabins and asks the deck crew for help getting rid of it. They help a little, but while Lara and Bri continue service and Marina finishes the cabins, the deck crew hangs out in the main salon. An astonished Lara asks them to move to the crew mess, which makes Wihan huff and puff in irritation. Amazingly, he admits that “If I go down there, then I need to wash up or go clean cabins.” Yes, Wihan — you work on this boat, regardless of your tired, sore feet. From his whining, I can already see that Wihan might try to spin this situation to make Lara out to be uptight or neurotic, which will drive me crazy. He shouldn’t be hanging out in a guest area in the middle of service!
Dinner takes a turn for the worse, too. Three guests send back their steaks to get cooked more. Though three can’t possibly be a coincidence, Tzarina isn’t wrong to expect restaurateurs to enjoy their Wagyu steak at the correct temperature, which is medium rare; even Jason agrees. Ultimately, she redeems herself with a beautiful and delicious-sounding coconut pineapple Malibu cake, which pleases everyone.
After dinner, gossiping resumes in the galley. Marina tells Tzarina that Wihan used to be a stripper, which is information she got from Lara, who got it from Harry, who got it from Wihan himself. By the time the story reaches the end of the telephone line, it’s changed: Wihan didn’t strip, but he worked at a strip bar. Tzarina jokes that she’ll “give it a good ol’ go” on their next night out. “You’d have to fight me for that,” Marina replies. Several confessional cuts: Tzarina says she doesn’t have to fight for a man. Marina says there is no competition. Adair checks her teeth.
The next morning, Tzarina mentions to Wihan that Marina is being possessive about him. Even though he knows that Tzarina has been upset and that she has a crush on him, all Wihan tells Tzarina is that he’s not anyone’s boyfriend and that he likes that Marina asked him out. He doesn’t try to reconcile the situation or remove himself from it, which is what he should do, given that he doesn’t even like either of them! In the meantime, Marina is upstairs telling Lara that Wihan didn’t even look at her when she did her hair and put on perfume last night, which made me repress a scream.
It’s not just the feelings of women on board that Wihan ignores; he doesn’t seem that worried about safety, either. Taking out the Jet Skis, Adair and Johnny notice a couple of them are filled with water. Worried they could sink, especially when one of the guests, India, doesn’t swim, they bring up the concern with Wihan, who tells them it’s normal. He doesn’t even look at them before putting the Jet Skis in the water. Wihan drives one Jet Ski and Johnny the other, taking India out for a ride. She’s scared at first, but after she relaxes, she agrees to try driving the Jet Ski. Of course, that’s when it flips, with Johnny behind her. I’m sure she’ll be fine — she’s wearing a lifejacket, and there are plenty of good swimmers around to rescue her — but the way the sequence is edited suggests the accident might have had something to do with the Jet Skis being filled with water. I don’t know anything about motors or boats, but I live with someone who does, and he said it’s normal for a Jet Ski to fill up given that its engine works by taking water in and shooting it out. Another classic Below Deck red herring? I’m getting sick of those!