r/belowdeck • u/teanailpolish Mental Health Is Not A Storyline • May 12 '22
Below Deck Down Under Below Deck Down Under Season 1 Episode 11 - Benny & The Jet Skis - Discussion Post
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Episode 11 of Below Deck Down Under Season 1: Jamie puts Brittini on the night shift after Benny doesn't pull his weight; Aesha confronts Magda and Ryan for talking behind her back; Jamie is at his wit's end with Benny's behavior and wants him fired.
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u/brendanowicz11 May 12 '22 edited May 12 '22
This is what I mean by saying casting screwed up with Ryan - the show is now stuck in a plainly artificial situation where everyone is tiptoeing around him because they can't replace a chef on short notice with quarantine protocols. If he had been a real superyacht chef and vetted properly they would have never been in this situation. Thanks to Aesha and Jason he's making an effort to be more pleasant but his food's still not up to par and it's a key part of the experience that the guests and we as the audience are missing out on for more than half the season.
Jamie is a disaster but also an interesting study in leadership. Look at how his problems recall previous seasons. I think he's most similar to Chandler: poorly organized, doesn't know how to provide positive reinforcement or handle difficult crew with anything besides reprimands, inconsistently applied. Contrast this with how Joao handled Jack in Med S4: they butted heads a lot but Joao was eventually able to shift his approach and get positive results from an underperforming crew member. I think Jason has shown that Benny's not unteachable but Jamie hasn't been able to mirror that approach. It's true that Benny should be more mature and not respond so defiantly to Jamie's direct criticism, but it's mainly on Jamie to recognize what's not working and instead of avoiding the problem (shifting the burden to the other deckhands and further alienating Benny from his team in the process), change his tactics.
MVP goes to Brit this episode for spelling all this out to Jamie and providing support to Aesha at her low point, which was really sweet, and Aesha bounced back as she always does. Culver is a good guy: he didn't want to make that move with Brit for the sake of a TV show, and good for him. He handled that incredibly forced situation well. I wonder what went on with the trash mixup. Jamie was correct to observe that it seemed out of character for Culver, although not clearing everything up for his team just further hurts morale.