Is Chef Ben Robinson and Second Officer João Franco‘s friendship permanently fractured after their guest cabin blow-up on Below Deck Down Under?
Apparently not — but it took some mediation from Captain Jason Chambers to get Ben, João, and Chief Stew Daisy Kelliher in the same room and remind his self-proclaimed “dream team” why they were chosen in the first place.
The tension erupted in the previous episode when Ben, hoping to clear his head and get a good night’s sleep before the final charter, settled into a guest cabin that had already been prepared for incoming guests. Daisy was furious, arguing that her stews had spent valuable time getting the room charter-ready and that Ben’s decision was disrespectful to their work. João stepped in after noticing Daisy was too frustrated to confront Ben herself, but his involvement quickly escalated the situation, resulting in the two friends hurling expletives at each other.
When Captain Jason summoned his HODs, he clearly wasn’t accepting any pushback. “We have to clean up this mess,” he tells his team, adding, “Enough’s enough. Remember where we were at the start of this when we all came together and we said this will be the nucleus, the four of us?”
He continued, “We said we were all going to stick together. And what happens? Lack of accountability. Less communication. Egos. We’re bigger people than that.”
Captain Jason said tensions between the interior and galley reached a boiling point the previous night, adding that with a 24-hour turnaround, it wasn’t okay for Ben to jump into a made bed the night before. “That’s disrespectful. That’s the tone that I’m actually seeing that’s not right,” Captain Jason said, reiterating that they have one more charter and they should remain a united front and an example to the rest of the crew.
“I’m going to take ownership of this and try better, do better,” Ben admits in a confessional, reflecting on his behavior.
João apologized to Ben after Daisy and Captain Jason left, leaving the two to hug it out. Later, Ben approached Daisy to “hash out a couple things,” where he apologized directly to Daisy for sleeping in the guest cabin. She pointed out that his insistence on sleeping in the guest cabin was also disrespectful to her stews.
“You are my friend, I want you to know that,” Daisy said to Ben as they had a moment of levity when João emerged from the bathroom in the cabin where they were meeting, joking that Elena “Ellie” Dubaich was still in the tiny bathroom behind him.
Despite their disagreements, Daisy, Ben, and João left Katina as friends, ending another successful charter season.
