Below Deck Season-Finale Recap: Out with a Bang
Every insane season of reality television must come to an end, and Below Deck’s season-12 finale could not have been more season 12 if it tried. This week, we get a little of everything that has defined the chaos of the past six weeks: Solène and Rainbeau fighting; everyone kissing everybody; feelings getting hurt; Anthony freaking out and then apologizing. Of course, we couldn’t say good-bye to Sint Maarten without crossing the bridge at port one last time. “The deck team this season is the best deck team I’ve had,” Kerry says, with a smile on his face. He is simply “tickled pink.”
It’s true that the deck team pulled it together, especially after Kerry fired Caio, the season’s first bosun and my melancholy compatriot. Hugo kept his cool as his crew became increasingly ensnared in Solène’s machinations and managed to keep a respectable distance from the interpersonal drama of the boat. At times, this approach rippled through the interior department, as was the case with the Solène-embargo fiasco. But mostly it served him well: The deck crew worked steadily. Save from isolated slip-ups, all addressed by and mended with the captain, there were no big issues.
You couldn’t say the same for the interior team. They were doomed from day one. Rainbeau fought to maintain her dignity and sanity on late-night shifts with Solène throughout the entire season. It seems never to have occurred to Fraser to switch Solène and Bárbara’s shifts, or to rotate the stews in general. I have never stepped foot on a yacht, and Fraser surely knows better than me how to run a team, but it gives a person vertigo to watch the same fight time and again.
On the last night shift of the charter, after pouring herself a glass of wine for her hard work, Solène announces to Rainbeau that she “decided [they’re] not going to fight.” Upstairs on the sun deck, Damo flirts with the guests and works for his tip. He suggests that they bring out the “shot deluge” for the ladies. The shot deluge is a curved dispenser with a spout with which to deposit alcohol straight into a guest’s mouth. One of the women asks Solène to do a shot with her, and Solène complies. Damo doesn’t say anything about how the crew is not supposed to drink with the guests. In fact, he pours the shot.
You can almost see smoke coming out of Rainbeau’s ears when she walks into this frat-party tableau. Things only get worse when, after the guests go to bed, a tipsy Solène does cheerleading stunts with Damo by the Jacuzzi instead of working. Rainbeau asks her to focus so that they all can go to bed; Damo, in la-la land, chases Solène. No one mentions Kyle at all, though not hours before, Solène cuddled him in his cabin and kissed him goodnight. When Damo wraps up, he asks Rainbeau if he can help her with anything. She’s already done and waiting for Solène to clear out her tasks before going to bed; the camera cuts to Solène doing handstands in the main salon. “She’s not a yachtie,” Damo says to Rainbeau about Solène. “She’s a socialite.” Damo is not, like Kyle or Jess before him, fooled by Solène’s attentions: He knows that she wants notoriety, and her actions have nothing to do with affection or yachting. This clarity allows him to detach from her in such a way that his involvement with her becomes inconsequential, spur of the moment. It’s admirable and frustrating at the same time. He knows he shouldn’t enable her, yet he washes his hands of responsibility when he acts like none of it is his business.
After Damo goes to bed, Solène tells herself: “I’ll do what I have to do — it’s three o’clock, almost.” But then she finds a half-drunk glass of wine by the Jacuzzi and gets distracted. She brings the glass of wine to the main salon, then promptly tries to hide it when she sees Rainbeau is there. At first there are tears of frustration in Rainbeau’s eyes when she reminds Solène that they are not supposed to drink. She pleads: “The only reason I am still awake is that you’re taking so long to finish.” Then, unbelievably, Solène laughs in Rainbeau’s face. It’s so crass that it’s hard to watch. Rainbeau goes red from head to toe as she says that Solène is the worst, most selfish person to work with and that she is thankful they never have to work together again. Solène tries to follow her around, saying she doesn’t have to get so worked up, but Rainbeau is done. She texts Fraser everything that happened, including the drinking, while Solène clocks out at 4 a.m. It’s unclear whether or not she finished her tasks.
When he wakes up and sees the texts, Fraser shrugs his shoulders: “What am I supposed to do?” It’s the last day of the season, the final drop-off day. He tells Rainbeau that he is sorry she had a rough night and leaves it at that. I think there was an opportunity for Fraser to sit them down and clear the air, as well as validate Rainbeau’s frustration. It’s one of the boat’s top rules that you are not supposed to drink on charter, and Solène broke it with zero consequence. Besides, left to their own devices, Rainbeau and Solène can’t make amends. Before they leave, Solène remembers something her mother said: that the way you treat people is more important than how well you do your job (I can’t even begin to unpack the levels of irony in such a statement coming out of Solène’s mouth). Solène apologizes and expects Rainbeau to apologize, too, but when she doesn’t — she doesn’t have anything to apologize for — Solène takes it back and says she’s not sorry anymore. An evaluation performance for Solène would be a waste of time, since there’s no way she’ll pursue non-Bravo yachting, but it seems unfair that she got away with … all of it. If nothing else, it isn’t good for the boat’s reputation. There may be a number of prospective stews watching and thinking they can get away with murder as long as they kiss every mouth onboard.
Before all that happened, though, there was the eight-course dinner, which went totally fine as predicted. Anthony was feeling okay again by the time he introduced the first course. He flambéd a number of things, from steak au poivre to baked Alaska. His most mind-boggling concoction was a “spicy cucumber-bell-pepper cappuccino,” the taste and texture of which I had a really hard time imagining. When the after-dinner fireworks were set off, it felt, as Fraser had planned, like a celebration of the whole season. The guests were delighted by the surprise fireworks show. Throughout the sequence, slightly ominous music played, which made me wonder if the boat was going to catch on fire.
The captain was so happy with Anthony’s performance that he stopped by the galley to shake his hand. Anthony got emotional and said, “This one is for you, Daddy,” which I thought was really sweet. That is a guy with very intense emotions. By the end of the charter, his relationship with Fraser is totally repaired. It seems like forever ago now, but Anthony returned to the St. David with a personal vendetta against Fraser, and their friendship only ended up stronger. We know now to take Anthony’s outbursts of frustration with a grain of salt. In a double confessional, he tells Fraser: “Without you, I would never be at this level.” Fraser encourages him to have more confidence. They hug and kiss and say how much they love each other three more times before the end of the episode.
Not everyone’s bond is similarly strengthened. While the last guests were still onboard, Jess and Bárbara made loose plans for the off-season: Jess would come to New York to visit in August, once Bárbara was off, so they could spend quality time together. But as much as Bárbara likes Jess, the prospect of a long-distance relationship worries her, and she’s not confident their romance can survive it. Over drinks before dinner, she tells Jess she wants to prioritize her career — it’s the first time she has enough money to save up for her future. Besides, she has too many trust issues to date long-distance. Jess is compassionate and understanding. They end their fling like true caring adults.
At the last tip meeting, Kerry congratulates his crew on a job well done. They get a big, fat tip: $28,000, which comes out to $2,153 each for the charter and $15,037 each for the season. Would you put up with Solène’s antics for 15 grand? I feel like I could do it. The captain takes them on a hike to a fort at St. Louie, where Solène flashes the camera for a group photo. No one even bats an eye. Kerry laughs. If that’s not enough to make you feel like you’re going crazy, watch Solène’s behavior toward Kyle and Damo for the rest of the night. It goes like this: First, she kisses Kyle on the way back to the boat. Then, at dinner, Kyle says that he would like to see her again and asks what she would like. She says she doesn’t know; in two days, she might want someone else. They hold hands.
At the club, everyone besides Hugo and Anthony kisses one another in various combinations. Even Fraser makes out with Rainbeau and Damo. Solène tells Kyle that they should feel free to kiss whoever they want, but they’ll sleep together that night. He says he doesn’t want to kiss anyone else, but she makes out with Damo. At least she warned him? “I’m not a good person,” Damo says in a confessional. “Everything I do is motivated by myself.” I don’t like this sleazy, half-baked “honesty.” Damo is not a bad person; he is just being a jerk. In the vans going back to the boat, Anthony asks Solène, who is sitting next to Kyle, “Why do you do this to him? You’re not married, but it’s not fair.”
Back on the St. David, Solène asks Kyle if he’s mad at her, then makes out with Damo some more. Before we see an uncomfortably close shot of her sticking her tongue down his throat, she wonders if they are being “fair to Scottish,” which is crazy since she did not consider the same question when kissing Damo right in front of his face at the club. Meanwhile, Kyle sends her texts to the tune of, “You just played me so bad, it’s horrible.” Wrapping up with Damo, she asks Kyle to meet her in a guest cabin to spend the night together. It’s far from me to slut-shame anyone. I think women having sex with as many men as they want is good for society. But this ping-ponging gives me whiplash, and besides, it doesn’t reflect well on anyone. Kyle is so deeply entrenched in this mess that this is how he describes his inability to stay away from Solène: “If somebody dropped a sack of ten grand in front of you and it was covered in cow shit, would you pass it up?” That is a messed-up way to describe an experience with a woman. And I can’t even get that worked up about it because Solène didn’t treat Kyle as anything more than a sack of money covered in dung, either.
The next morning, in the galley with Bárbara, Fraser draws a diagram of the boatmance dynamics, coming to the conclusion that all lines lead to Solène. Rainbeau cries saying good-bye to Fraser — she’s the MVP of the season. She stood her ground, killed at her job, and didn’t lose her head. Jess and Bárbara say bye to each other, and Jess skateboards away. Before he leaves, Kerry tells Kyle to focus on his potential rather than his partying; we can only hope he’ll take the advice to heart. He and Damo leave together, buddies after all, with nothing to say sorry for. Anthony and Hugo both leave happy with themselves and in outfits that make them look like they’re in 2003. Fraser gets emotional as he says good-bye to Kerry and reflects on a hard, but ultimately rewarding, season. His one goal was to keep his interior team intact from start to finish, and he did, whether or not it was the wisest choice. Kerry signs the logbook, and we’re officially off. It was fun watching this unhinged season with you all — thanks for keeping me real. Until next time!