I tell myself I don’t believe in witchcraft, or magic, or ghosts, or any of that stuff, but I have to tell myself that because I’m really not so confident some of the time. And this episode of Below Deck is one of those moments. Things on deck and interior start going to shit right as a witch comes onboard the My Seanna? I’m with Eddie — we can’t rule anything out.
Our witch guest Rachel (not to be confused with the chef) must have particularly strong powers, because things start to go wrong hours before the fifth charter starts. Jess wakes up looking and feeling worse for wear (“like Martha Stewart in prison”), so she goes to have a chat with Heather. And we all know where this is going. After deciding days before that she’d tough out the rest of the season, Jess has reneged and is going home. Right now, actually, less than three hours before guests arrive, without saying good-bye to the rest of the crew, never mind Captain Lee. Finally, some drama from Jess!
As the ever-so-wise Nicole Scherzinger once said, “Be careful what you wish for ’cause you just might get it.” It doesn’t take Fraser and Heather long to realize that, as much as they didn’t want Jess around, they needed her for this charter. Heather slowly spreads the news across the crew. Lee says he’s never had a crew member leave without saying something; Rachel respects it, even if she likes “to say ‘fuck you’ before I leave”; Wes is sad that Jess didn’t feel enough of a connection even to wave good-bye. Maybe if he’d kissed her the other night, this all would’ve gone differently?
Poetically, things go to shit before the crew heads out to Shitten Bay, where again, they are getting ready for guests up to the minute before they arrive. And if any charter needs a full interior, it’s this one, where one of the primary guests, Chelsea, has her jaw wired shut after a bike accident. She’s looking forward to spending a few days drinking Champagne from a straw and having all her meals liquefied, as she soon informs Rachel in the galley.
Rachel, for her part, says she’s actually had a guest with their jaw wired shut before, which, what? But she still has trouble adjusting to Chelsea, as evident from the beginning of lunch, when the guests are served naan and chutneys before Chelsea gets some bread-and-chutney juice. Her sister and friends ask Heather to get Chelsea some food and to make sure she’s always served first, so Rachel sends out a glass of hyperstrained curried squash soup. It looks objectively gross, but Chelsea loves it, along with the lobster juice that follows. Note to self: Never get in a biking accident and have to get your jaw wired shut!
That afternoon, as the guests are enjoying the water, a Jet Ski drifts away from the boat right in front of Rayna’s eyes. Eddie has the crew get the ski back before Captain Lee (“the white wizard”) can come outside to notice, but shortly after, it happens to the Jet Skis again. Lee sees this time and is mad — Eddie says the clips got caught and became undone, an excuse Lee doesn’t buy, saying he prefers to blame the deck crew. (Does it feel like Eddie and Lee are bristling more this season? I wonder if that’s going to come to a head.) Also, bear in mind that these issues are happening with a fully staffed deck crew. Meanwhile, the short-staffed interior team is somehow balancing blowing up balloons, making lattes, and steaming shirts! Before, Eddie wondered if Rachel the Witch and her broom were here to save interior; Now, he thinks that broom, Sally (yes, it has a name), has put a curse on the boat. “I guess I shouldn’t have talked shit on Sally,” Eddie figures.
Curse or no curse, that isn’t stopping Eddie from getting his crew in line. “Don’t put my head on the goddamn chopping block,” he says in the crew mess, bringing Lee’s anger toward him down the line. But the bigger crew-mess drama (crew mess?) comes after Rayna asks Heather not to grab food with her hands. Sure, Heather is overworked, as she and Eddie both tell Rayna. But that’s missing the point — there’s some bigger unresolved tension between Rayna and Heather, and as I worried might happen, no one else is holding Heather accountable for saying the N-word yet this episode. (But more on that in “Tips.”)
Rayna is glad to go to the galley, then, to get away from the rest of the crew and help Rachel. Rachel is not glad to be in the galley, with the frustrations of blending Chelsea’s food. Let’s be clear: Rachel is the most skilled chef any iteration of Below Deck has ever seen. But watching a chef get tripped up is one of the true joys of this show, and as much as I root for Rachel, I’m savoring this rare obstacle for her. “Fuck me running with a chain saw,” she declares.
The guests start with a cucumber soup, which is too thick for Chelsea, so it goes back to Rachel to be restrained. Strike one. Then, Rachel serves oysters and crab legs as the next course, but she repeats her mistakes from lunch and doesn’t have any oyster-and-crab juice (bleh) to serve Chelsea. This sends Chelsea into, in her words, “a meltdown,” to the point where she has to leave the table and go to her room to cry with her husband. And I do feel bad for her, really! The episode ends with Chelsea wondering if chartering a yacht with her jaw wired shut was “a mistake.” This much drama, with the rest of dinner, a pink party, and a beach party to go for the night? At least it wasn’t a television mistake.
Tips
• The Captain Lee–ism of the week, on Jess quitting: “It’s as fucked up as a Georgia road lizard.”
• Finally, the episode we’ve all been waiting for: The One Where Rachel Hits Jake’s Bare Ass With an Electric Flyswatter.
• Despite his struggles on deck, Eddie is the MVP of stepping up to help out interior. He washes dishes, shucks oysters, and helps Fraser with turndowns, on top of speculating about curses.
• The later-this-season teaser promises that Heather will eventually have to answer to her use of the N-word, and it even looks like the incident will make its way to a pissed-looking Captain Lee. Plus, the whole crew seems mad about their replacement stew, and there’s a “love triangle” brewing between Jake, Rayna, and Fraser. I don’t want to speak too soon, but I think this is one of the best seasons of Below Deck we’ve had in a while?