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Things are starting to look worse for Wihan, but they’re still not bad enough. Jason has decided to take it easy on him, even after a series of mistakes this week proves beyond a reasonable doubt that his bosun is slacking. Where does this goodwill toward Wihan come from? Compared to the hard line he took with Adam last season, Jason’s flexibility seems misplaced. I’m not even arguing that he should fire Wihan, but when he passed him up for the disco helmet at the tip meeting again, his favoritism started to bother me. The overfocus on Wihan is stalling the season, and it’s boring. Something will have to give, and soon either Jason will have to be firmer with him or one of his mistakes will have to be grave enough for repercussions to be unavoidable.
The beach picnic where we left off last week, as it turns out, wasn’t much of a disaster at all; the guests were still able to enjoy a nice lunch and some time on the beach with Johnny’s photography direction while Wihan and Harry chilled on the boat. Alesia — who, as many readers pointed out, won MVP for refusing to make a cheese board for Wihan in the middle of her shift — decides to walk back her home run and text Wihan an apology for being rude. That’s the downside of the isolation of reality-television shooting; she has no way of knowing how right she was in her instinct. It still flatters her that she felt the need to apologize to him: At least some people aboard know that the way they treat one another impacts the morale of the whole boat. Having permanently taken up residence in another reality, Wihan convinces himself that the reason she texted him is that she likes him and wants to make him jealous.
I was ready to gloss over this delusional moment, but here’s an opportunity to consider an ancient yet easily overseen type of misogyny. In Wihan’s mind, Alesia, the wicked seductress, positions herself in relation to men with the sole purpose of torturing them, which is a function of her desire. She pretends to like one in order to spark the “thrill of the hunt” in the others — in other words, to Wihan, Alesia fits the archetype of the cruel tease. Harry, who listens to all of this slack-jawed, summarizes it well when he puts it like this: “This isn’t The Bachelor; it’s a superyacht.”
The spot where the Katina is anchored gets some swell, so Jason has to move the boat elsewhere. While Johnny struggles to bring up a tangled anchor line, Wihan looks at photos from the beach picnic on Adair’s phone. On deck, Harry mentions that it seems as if it’s taking a long time for the anchor to lift, but Wihan shrugs him off. Through the CCTV camera feed on the bridge, Jason sees Wihan and Adair chilling and radios them in an indignant tone: “Why are you guys just standing around?”
Jason is angry, but with one more day on the charter, he decides to wait until after the guests have left to talk to Wihan. In the meantime, he starts noticing other problems. When he swings by the galley to ask Tzarina how the beach picnic went, she tells him about how disorganized it was, even in its most basic aspects — the scheduling of the lunch, the transportation from the catamaran to the van to the beach, the fact that Wihan didn’t go on the excursion, which, as the leader of the activity, he was expected to do. Even worse, the next morning, Jason is sitting in the crew mess when he sees Adair come inside from her shift to make coffees for herself and Wihan. Jason asks him whether she’s on break — if not, then why does she have coffee? Does it make sense to have a breakable cup while working on deck?
It’s during dinner service on the last night of the charter that communication between departments reaches nearly unmendable levels of fracture. Somehow Wihan manages to make things worse even as he tries with every ounce of his being not to be part of service as it’s happening. Tonight’s theme is Jungle Safari, for which Tzarina did not make a single souplike dish (growth!) except for … bat curry. After having a nice dinner with the captain, the guests request a series of extreme, Fear Factor–style challenges. Last week, I pointed out that primary Caroline and her guests had the potential to be obnoxious, but for the most part, I thought they blended in the background, especially when so much of the drama this season happens below deck. But with this request, they proved their insane-rich-people bona fides. Later at drop-off, Caroline mentions that one of her “goals” in coming to the Seychelles was to have some “exotic” experiences, which really tells you everything you need to know.
As Lara tries to figure out how she’s going to turn the sundeck into a stage for increasingly disturbing stunts, Harry helps by offering some ideas. They concoct a plan to punch a hole through black plastic bags and use them to cover some buckets so guests have to reach their hands in to guess what’s inside. Wihan comes up to “help,” but when Lara asks him to get the buckets, he literally sighs and groans, then hands the task back over to Harry.
For the first third or so of this season, Wihan and Harry were a sturdy alliance. After the initial mishap over Bri’s attention, Wihan stopped seeing Harry as competition and instead took to asking him for romantic advice, perhaps because he could see that Harry is a sensitive man everyone likes. But being sensitive doesn’t mean he’s an idiot, and it soothed something in me to see Harry stand up for himself this week. No one seems more surprised by Harry’s reversal on Wihan than the bosun himself, who keeps forgetting that his actions have consequences and that his subordinates expect him to lead the team.
After some episodes bumbling around, Harry resurrects. He spearheads the Fear Factor theme night, emceeing the challenges, and then confronts Wihan directly about the disorganization plaguing the deck team. He asks for a written schedule that clearly delineates everyone’s shifts and responsibilities. Then he takes his complaint to Captain Jason, relaying how disorganized the schedule has been for the crew and how the bosun’s negativity is affecting the team’s morale. Better yet, the next day he steps up with Bri: He gets Lara’s permission to make up the guest cabin for them on their night off. Welcome back, Harry!
When dinner service finally begins, Adair asks for Wihan’s help with the cabins, which he offers obligingly, of course, when she’s the one asking. Adair still isn’t totally convinced about Wihan, but she’s willing to wait and see if a spark will ignite with time. Not to put too cynical of a read on it, but keeping emotional tabs on Wihan makes Adair’s life easier. He is supremely light-handed with her — during service, he repeatedly tries to get her to stop working even as Lara is explicitly asking for help — and as long as she gives him just enough to believe that they could be something, he’ll continue to be more worried about her attention than her performance. Maybe that’s ungenerous, but my patience is running short with Adair. She seems gladder than anyone to follow Wihan’s pretend-you’re-busy code.
Instead of focusing on beds and bathrooms, the deck team takes being out of sight of the captain and the guests as an opportunity to play loud videos on their phones and laugh about the sound turtles make when having sex. Marina, who, God help her, is just trying to do her job, angrily stomps out to a different cabin. Lara radios Wihan and Adair to help run up dessert, but either they’ve turned their walkies off or they are intentionally ignoring her calls. When they finally make it to the galley, Tzarina immediately begins laying into Wihan. His slacking is creating pressure for the interior — if he’s not there to help run up dishes, then Lara has to scramble, which throws the whole service off.
The next morning, Wihan talks to Lara about Tzarina’s comment. Lara, whose patience is starting to reach Mother Teresa levels of exception, tells him that beyond it being frustrating for the rest of the crew to watch the deck team hang out while they are working, it’s also obvious that the lack of structure on deck is compromising the efficiency of the entire boat. Looking out for him, she even mentions the run-in between Jason and Adair in the crew mess, which made him look bad. But it’s impossible to tell someone something they don’t want to hear, so Wihan simply storms off.
Later that day, after the guests leave, Jason calls Wihan to the bridge. I thought Wihan was finally going to meet his comeuppance: Between the beach picnic, the CCTV footage, Coffeegate, and Harry’s complaints, it seems as though Jason has more than enough to get to the bottom of what’s going on with his bosun. Instead, he tells Wihan that he needs to lead his team and cut the “negativity” unless he wants the captain to have to step in for him and treat him like a deckhand rather than a head of department. Jason is firm with him but ends the meeting on a vote of confidence: He knows Wihan is qualified to do the job, so he should just do it. At the tip meeting — Caroline and her guests enjoyed their exotic time, so they tip $24,000, which comes out to $1,840 each — he gives Marina the helmet because it’s her birthday. What?
Jason then briefly addresses the miscommunication problem plaguing the crew and leaves the heads of department to kill one another over it. It seems odd that he wouldn’t talk with Tzarina and Lara individually and then speak with Wihan so their conversation could get somewhere productive. Left to themselves, Tzarina and Lara raise the same concerns they have already aired hundreds of times to someone who doesn’t feel beholden to them and doesn’t want to listen. Wihan argues that his team needs a lot of sleep and rest because they all work outside with cranes rather than making beds all day. Honestly, it makes a person want to break into the television set and take matters into their own hands.
Mercifully, some other non-Wihan-related events occur this week: Alesia gets romanced by Johnny, who asks for (and secures) Jason’s permission to take her out on their day off. Marina, who is sick of being in housekeeping, wonders whether Lara is keeping Bri in service because she likes Bri better. But when Lara stays up late to decorate the crew mess for Marina’s birthday, the gesture makes her feel valued and loved. It’s stupid that Wihan has the chance to learn from Lara how to be a firm boss who cares and then he chooses to ignore everything she says instead. Between the interdepartmental tension and three developing boatmances, next week’s night out has every reason to be the crew’s most chaotic yet. Maybe it can even save the season from this tedium!
