This charter is the gift that keeps on giving. You, like me, might have thought things would slow down after the demonically intoxicated Kelly was manhandled off the boat. Primary Helen heroically offers to accompany Kelly to shore and make sure she stays there, planning with Kerry to get picked up the next morning. The rest of the charter guests are apologetic about Kelly’s insane behavior, and they are also hilarious. Last week, Brian told the crew he “didn’t want this broad to come.” Now, he assures his friends he would never have anything to do with Kelly: “I don’t date trainwrecks, sorry.” Usually, I would find this to be a mean remark, but that may just be my Democratic disposition. Brian sounds reasonable when, over the phone, he encourages Helen to leave Kelly to fight her own demons and come back onboard to enjoy the vacation she is paying for. 

Fraser hopes against hope that this whole debacle will increase their tip, however meagerly. This week, much tension is squeezed out of speculation about this upcoming tip — between dealing with Kelly and Stillie’s attention to the primary’s breasts, expectations are running high. It has been only a couple of episodes since I wrote that the season was dragging; recognizing a golden opportunity in this charter, production mines it for all it has to give. We are now three episodes deep into Helen’s trip, when, earlier in the season, entire days were compressed into montages.

After Kelly is escorted out, Damo teases Kyle, “That’s what happens to you when you’re told you’re cut off.” Kyle jokes that it’s the kind of tantrum he would throw when the lead deckhand and his mate both stole his girl. They laugh and hug, if a little awkwardly. Kyle is still so inexplicably banged up about Solène that, at one point, he calls a friend to vent about being “spun out.” I’m starting to think Solène emanates some kind of hypnotic fume that has the power to debilitate a person’s critical faculties — they went on one date! Then again, I guess it’s easier for us, on the other side of the TV, to see through Solène’s machinations. As Hugo points out to Jess later, the boat’s close quarters warp perspective. It’s hard to have a long view when you can see only in close-up.

With Kelly off the boat and Cowboy Night underway, the drama shifts back onto — who else? — Solène. In the aftermath of their unproductive talk at the villa, Rainbeau has finally let go of any pretense of niceness toward her. When Rainbeau finds her staring out into the ocean, taking one of her self-mandated “baby breaks,” she puts the stew back to work. Later, Rainbeau finally pulls Fraser aside to enlighten him on Solène’s glacial pace. I was happy to see Rainbeau take this step, but my happiness was short-lived: Her complaint doesn’t go anywhere. When Fraser asks how Solène reacted to being directed back to work, Rainbeau tells him she accepted the task and went to it — to Fraser, that’s progress. He promises Rainbeau for the 200th time that he’ll keep an eye on Solène, something he has been saying for weeks that has led absolutely nowhere.

At least Rainbeau can derive some justified Schadenfreude from the fact that Solène, Bárbara, and Jess’s friendship trio is falling apart — and that Bárbara and Jess are finally waking up to Solène’s lackluster work ethic. In the crew mess, after telling Solène to get back to work lest they get in trouble for distracting each other, Jess vents about how awkward it is between her and Bárbara, who is proving herself to be a virtuoso of the silent treatment. Bárbara doesn’t even nod in recognition when Jess tells her she doesn’t have to wash her stuff in the laundry. Is the silent treatment a healthy form of communication? No. Is it sometimes efficient? Well, it seems to be sinking in for Jess that, by indulging Solène’s “No one matters except for me” attitude, she hurt a person who really cared about her and Solène, too. The girls have lost not only the potential for romance but also one another’s friendship — and that, Jess muses, is the worst consequence of her actions.

It’s incomprehensible to Solène that Jess could feel guilty about what happened with Bárbara. All she gets from Jess’s venting is that a part of Jess likes Bárbara, and that Solène cannot stand. She tells Jess that if she likes Bárbara, she should go back to sleeping in her own bed. In a confessional, she says if things were to end with Jess, she would feel “like a fail” — of course she would! Stillie is done with her shenanigans, and Damo always knew there was no point getting involved; Jess is the only person she has left to manipulate, her constant source of attention. She cries crocodile tears, wondering if she’ll be hurt, while Fraser looks for her to do her job.

Having noticed that simply kissing every available mouth cannot sustain the kind of protagonism she seeks, Solène shifts her approach: She is now the unsuspecting victim of a whirlwind romance that breaks through her tough armor, leaving her vulnerable. On the phone, she tells her brother about the crush she has on Jess and how upset she was that other people came between them. Earlier, Bárbara pulled Solène aside to make sure they were okay, and Solène told Bárbara she was upset because she “really likes” Jess. Bárbara cries because she thinks it’s “all her fault,” while Solène admits in a confessional that she doesn’t feel the same sense of guilt regarding Stillie because “it’s not the same.” Of course not, when you’re getting your cake and eating it, too! Bárbara and Solène make up, but things continue to be awful between Bárbara and Jess.

It’s still Cowboy Night if you can believe it, and the crew gets a kick out of it. Anthony is feeling more confident after exorcizing his demons at the villa and reconnecting with his passion for cooking. The next morning, back on the St. David, Helen thanks Kerry profusely for handling the Kelly situation efficiently and graciously. In the galley, Damo and Rainbeau joke that Kelly has been eliminated from the boat Survivor-style; they fake-snuff a torch. I find these two have one of the most unexpected, authentic connections of the season, and I wish they would get together.

If you thought things would slow down and stagnate here with Solène still unable to do her job — she asks Bárbara whether “turn-up” refers to their own cabins (?) — the action only ramps up when the guests go on their beach excursion. Helen and her friends were already feeling feisty over breakfast, asking Kerry if he’s single (they obviously didn’t watch last season, when Kerry diligently worked on his Turkish Duolingo every time the boat was anchored), but once Helen has gathered enough liquid confidence to take her bikini top off at the beach, all hell breaks loose.

Helen — who gets uncomfortably close to all men onboard, including Fraser and Kerry — asks Kyle to be her “floating raft” in the ocean, which means she wants him to hold her in the water. Later, Stillie tells Damo that she kept moving his hands up to her breasts, which he resisted at first. “Stillie is in there either making our tip,” Damo muses to Fraser, “or losing our tip.” Helen’s husband, Richard, looks on at Helen and Kyle’s handsiness the entire time, except for a brief moment when he takes a nap. The whole thing is unsettling; the dynamics of a paying guest being so sexually demanding of a crew member are anything but funny, even if Kyle has a mischievous twinkle in his eye. “Anything for the tip,” he justifies, but that doesn’t make it right.

Meanwhile, back on the St. David, Solène’s work ethic creates more problems. When Kerry radios to let the interior know he’s inbound with the guests, Bárbara — who had already asked Solène to help her with welcome drinks — calls Solène to join her in welcoming the guests. But Solène moves at her own indifferent pace, and Bárbara is still calling her name by the time the guests arrive. With smoke nearly coming out of her ears, Bárbara takes both the towel and drink trays downstairs. When Solène finally shows up, she is upset that Bárbara “yelled” at her. Bárbara, who can see the guests a few feet away, maintains a neutral expression on her face as Solène demands to be spoken to nicely, at which point Jess interferes and tells them to save it for later. Bárbara counters only that she knows what she’s doing and that she didn’t have time to be nice to Solène when the guests were nearly there. Solène’s sole defense is that she doesn’t care.

After seeing all this play out, Jess asks Bárbara if she’s okay, but Bárbara still isn’t ready to talk. Jess mentions to Hugo that the welcome-drinks fiasco wasn’t the first time she’d heard complaints about Solène’s work ethic, and Hugo counters that the love triangle is too messy; Jess should just go back to her own bed. Before this whole thing with Solène, Jess was a competent, focused leader — it seems she has lost her purpose on the boat to the maintenance of this romance. She may finally be persuaded to let go of Solène after she talks to her about the welcome drinks. As usual, Solène maintains that she doesn’t like to be yelled at and, in so many words, implies she also doesn’t care about keeping her job. “Maybe I prefer it when we don’t talk,” she tells Jess, who leaves the crew mess in a huff. She tells us she’s not attracted to people who aren’t driven. From the edit, it seems as though Rainbeau and Fraser eavesdrop on their conversation.

Upstairs, the guests are having a good time at their eight-course lingerie-themed dinner, which Kerry has joined. Anthony is stressed about his performance as usual, but he reassures himself with chants that he is, in fact, a winner. So far, so good — we’ll see how it ends next week. It would be awesome to get some more of Damo and Rainbeau doing Mafia bits in the galley, too. Given next week’s preview, all that’s left for us to wonder is, Did Kyle have sexual relations with that woman? If so, when?

 Bárbara and Jess are finally waking up to Solène’s lackluster work ethic.