Below Deck Down Under broadcasts misconduct, firing of cast members/employees

Bravo’s reality machine hit a new intersection between the worlds of “television content” and “genuine HR issue” this week, with Entertainment Weekly reporting that a recent episode of Below Deck spinoff Down Under featured the firing of two cast members, one of whom was directly confronted by the show’s producers about sexually inappropriate behavior.

As with the main series of Below Deck, Down Under concerns itself with “stars” who are also “employees,” in this case the crew of the superyacht Northern Sun. The show’s most recent installment focused on disciplinary action against two such people: Bosun Luke Jones and second steward Laura Bileskalne. Bileskalne was accused of making multiple unwanted advances against a fellow crew member, including entering his cabin without permission and climbing up on his bunk to massage him. Jones, meanwhile, was found having entered a fellow crew member’s cabin while she was unconscious and he was naked; the show’s producers eventually forced him to leave her room.

These would (at least, we hope they would) be massively fire-able offenses at any workplace, regardless of the reality-distorting presence of cameras. The strange thing about Down Under, though, is that the show then chose to film and air the subsequent disciplinary meetings with Captain Jason Chambers, who dismissed both crew members—which has the bizarre effect of transforming genuinely inappropriate actions, and their response, into just more content for the show.

It’s hard, then, not to view these firings in light of Bravo’s recent, highly lucrative intersection between the worlds of reality TV and genuine life-destroying shit, Vanderpump Rules’ infamous Scandoval. The Below Deck incident is a bit more intense on that score (if less high-profile), what with the “entering an unconscious person’s room without their consent while nude” of it all. But it still feels like a natural progression of what’s increasingly seemed to be the Bravo formula: Put volatile people into high-pressure, alcohol-heavy environments, wait for them to do something bad, and then—and this is the part that feels especially Scandoval-y—film and broadcast them receiving the consequences of their actions. (Thus, you could argue, getting both the value of looking “responsible,” and giving viewers the thrill of seeing consequences meted out.)