Photo: Bravo
Last week, I joked that with two days off at a villa, it was like the crew was going to Casa Amor. But the way this episode goes, it’s barely a joke; “Bad Romance” was like an alternate-dimension dating show in which contestants suffering from Stockholm syndrome compete for Solène’s attention. At various points this week, people pulled each other aside “to chat.” It’s annoying because if I wanted to watch Love Island, I would simply watch Love Island — and, with the possible exception of Jess and Bárbara, there are no couples to root for, since most of the options are Solène with someone else. I’m not sure what’s more frustrating: the fact that Solène has managed to make herself the protagonist of this season, or the fact that the cast is letting her get away with it.
The boatmance landscape is summarized thus by Fraser: “First, I kissed Damo in the hot tub (good times!). Then, Solène kissed Kyle. They were a thing for a minute, then Jess kissed Solène, but Solène and Kyle have been secretly kissing. Classic love triangle. Then Damo kissed Solène. And now, Jess just kissed Bárbara. Things are getting really messy.” How did we get here? When we open on “Bad Romance,” the original love triangle between Solène, Kyle, and Jess is still intact. Damo shakes things up by asking Fraser out to drinks. Fraser is suspicious of Damo’s motives because he maintains that he’s straight, but they have a nice time talking about their childhoods — Damo opens up about his difficult relationship with his dad, while Fraser tells him that he didn’t start speaking until he was six and has only felt fully like himself in recent years. Nothing else happens between Fraser and Damo for the rest of the episode, and Fraser later tells Bárbara that it wasn’t a date, so I think it’s safe to declare this couple DOA.
Meanwhile, the love triangle threatens to break. Earlier in the day, still on the St. David, Bárbara advised Solène to draw clearer boundaries. In a gloved way, she tried to explain that calling Jess “a friend” while sleeping with her every night could cause some distress. It’s wise advice that falls on deaf ears — or rather, indifferent ears. Solène continues to flirt with Kyle over dinner. Jess pulls her aside to say that she doesn’t want to keep hearing from other people that Solène is going behind her back, and they agree that they can both kiss whomever they wish; that is, Jess can, since Solène has never considered another person’s feelings besides her own. While Jess tells us in a confessional that she can’t help her feelings — “She likes me, and that’s enough,” she says, painfully, to Rainbeau — Solène confesses that the person she most wants to be in a relationship with is herself. We know, Solène! We can tell.
Alarms blare in Jess’s brain. She tells Bárbara that her key takeaway from the night is that she needs to keep to herself and not get involved with her feelings. In a confessional, Bárbara wonders if something is brewing between herself and Jess, but it’s hard for her to take the notion seriously when, as soon as they’re back on the boat, Solène and Jess are all over each other in the hot tub. Jess can ignore the alarm all she wants, but she can’t shut it off: In the crew mess, Solène says she really likes her as a friend. After all of this, Bárbara still insists she won’t get involved with Jess out of loyalty to Solène. What on God’s green earth makes her think that Solène gives a flying crap?
All Solène cares about is how the love triangle can benefit her. She monopolizes the girl group by keeping Jess close, knowing that Bárbara, whose Achilles’ heel is to actually care about how people feel, will follow. At the same time, by keeping tabs on Kyle, she can wield influence over the boys. Playing them both at once, she secures her place in most of the season’s storylines, thereby guaranteeing her screen time. Later, at Carnival, Solène kisses Damo, and her coup is complete — she has managed to wrangle an entire department under her control. Hugo seems too … normal to get caught up in this scheme, but it hardly matters, since she already has the majority. It’s like she’s playing Survivor with a Love Island approach on Below Deck. Still, seeing Solène kiss Damo hurts both Jess and Kyle. Damo tells his friend about the kiss right away, and later they agree never to let a girl come in between them “until a girl comes in between them.” Jess confesses that the kiss makes her “feel weird” but doesn’t say anything to Solène about it.
Instead, she makes a play for Bárbara’s attention, who rejects her at first. They kiss, finally but briefly, and later that night, Bárbara texts Jess that she “feels bad” about Solène. Damo is the only person who seems to have a clear-eyed view of the situation: He knows that Solène will do what she wants, when she wants. Unless people wake up to this reality, I’m afraid we’re going to have to put up with this bullshit (excuse my strong language) for the rest of the season.
But there is hope yet that Solène might be dethroned. When they wake up the next day, Jess shows Fraser the texts she exchanged with Bárbara. At the beach club, after some encouragement from Fraser and Rainbeau, Jess calls Bárbara aside “to chat” and asks, point blank, “Are we having a thing or no?” In so many words, Bárbara tells Jess that she doesn’t want to be second best simply because she’s a lesbian who’s available. She is worried that Jess is only coming onto her because she can see Solène screwing around with Damo and Kyle, which is a much fairer objection than worrying about Solène’s nonexistent feelings. But Jess has her charms; she tells Bárbara that she’s moving out of her room that night and only wants to kiss her. They make out, and for a second I thought this might be the beginning of the end of Solène — but she’s watching them with calculating eyes, and she won’t go down without a fight. In the preview, we see her swift move on Damo.
Our only hope is that he’ll retain his lucid perspective of Solène’s romantic manipulations, and maybe, in a dream world, even join forces with Rainbeau, the target of Solène’s professional scheming. “Bad Romance” opens on Rainbeau crying after the other stews threw her under the bus to Fraser. She explains to the chief-stew that she asked Bárbara and Solène to do cabins after the tip meeting and the girls failed to communicate that they’d done everything but the primary bedroom, taking it for granted that Rainbeau would do it herself. Fraser asks her to trust that he’s going to deal with it, but he doesn’t do much besides saying that. Rainbeau claims she’s done “protecting the team,” but when they discuss the issue again, all she does is apologize. Things are only going to improve for Rainbeau once she tells Fraser in plain English that Solène is a deadweight who expects everyone to finish whatever tasks she doesn’t feel like doing. Their conversation is so misdirected and influenced by Rainbeau’s desperate need for affection that, when Fraser swears to have her back, she reciprocates the feeling by telling him that Anthony’s been talking behind his.
Earlier, Anthony caught her up on last season’s drama before asking if Fraser has been saying anything about him, a totally paranoid concern. Rainbeau told him that even if he were, she wouldn’t say anything about it because, unlike Barbie, she wouldn’t go behind her boss’s back. As screenshots of tweets criticizing Fraser flash on the screen, Fraser tells Rainbeau that Anthony is only mad at him because of social media — the truth is that Anthony’s performance was plummeting, and while Fraser didn’t have the authority to fire the man, he did have a responsibility to tell Kerry the truth about how Anthony’s mistakes were affecting the overall performance of the crew.
Before they head out for Carnival, Anthony and Fraser exchange little digs — “I’m not happy with you,” Anthony says, to which Fraser replies, “That’s your problem” — but things don’t blow up until plenty of alcohol has flowed. Upon their completely shitfaced return to the villa at 3 p.m., Anthony tells Rainbeau that his problem is that he trusts people too much. That may well be; he trusted that everyone would help him make dinner as planned when in fact everyone is chilling, taking photos and drinking while he mans the grill with Hugo’s sole help. It makes Anthony so mad that everyone is “waiting like it’s a restaurant” that he storms off to his room, punches the air-conditioner remote on the wall and slams the door. Damo tries to talk to him, and while they set the table, Rainbeau tells Fraser that Anthony’s anger might have something to do with how often he’s been bringing up last season’s drama.
Fraser goes to speak to him. You, like me, may have thought that this was it: the big blowout we’ve been expecting, the big fight that has been so zealously set up. But it’s all over in like, ten seconds. Anthony cries while telling Fraser what Barbie said, and Fraser counters that not only does he not care about Barbie, but he’s the reason Anthony even has a job on the St. David again. Ultimately, Anthony cries about how much he loves and needs Fraser, who reciprocates his affection. They kiss, hug, and go back to the table. Anthony then goes a step further and apologizes to the whole crew and says he loves them. Everything is fine.
Don’t get me wrong — I like this conclusion. In a crew racked by the machinations of the heartless Solène, Anthony’s genuine regret and disappointment are a balm. But it’s honestly berserk that after all of this buildup, this is how Anthony’s private war against Fraser ends. It’s not even the most dramatic thing that happens over dinner: Solène finds a way to nab the spotlight. When someone asks about her roses and thorns from the last charter, she says that her thorn was that Rainbeau told her to go to bed before changing her mind and ordering her to “wash all the toilets.” What really happened is that Rainbeau told her to go to bed then remembered that the dayheads had to be checked and asked her to do that quickly before clocking off. Rainbeau tries to stand up for herself, saying that Solène is lying about what happened, and Solène warns her to “be careful.” Even though she is wrong, Solène is louder and pettier, so she gets the last word. Rainbeau goes to the bathroom to collect herself, and in a confessional she tells us more about growing up in a household that didn’t respect feelings.
At this point, I wish Rainbeau would just blow up on Solène. She gets close by stating that if Solène wants to be a bitch, she’ll be a bitch right back, and venting to herself that Solène is “a lazy wannabe famous, only here to be on TV, doesn’t give a shit, can’t even do the fucking job.” But that’s only after she foolishly tries to air it out with Solène. She tries to get it into her head that she’s doing everything she can so that Solène can have the least possible amount of work, and how big of a deal that is in yachting. But Rainbeau’s method is flawed in one important respect: For it to work, Solène would actually have to care, if not about the job, then at least about Rainbeau’s feelings. Instead, Solène feels entitled to Rainbeau’s time and only resents that she is expected to say thank you. Solène is obviously pissed at Rainbeau for being the only person onboard who doesn’t automatically bow to her every wish. Here’s hoping Rainbeau can sustain her lonely rebellion — maybe she’ll even be able to recruit people for her ranks.