Below Deck Season 11: Captain Kerry Has a Huge Firing Decision to Make for Episode 4

This Below Deck article contains spoilers.

When the Below Deck yachties teased that season 11 would feature more firings than fans are used to, we still didn’t expect the first one to come up as soon as episode 3! But that’s where the show left things this week, with chief stew Fraser Olender informing Captain Kerry at the end of the episode that he’s already had quite enough of Barbie Pascual’s attitude. This came after Barbie spent much of the episode arguing with Fraser and being rude to fellow stew Cat Baugh because she felt she was being treated unfairly. The spat with Fraser about whether to put orange juice in a margarita or not certainly didn’t help…

“I’m dealing with a lot of snap backs and a quite hostile attitude from Barbie,” Fraser told Captain Kerry after handing him his espresso. “We had an incident in the first charter, she was a bit harsh and just a little bit disrespectful to [Cat]. We’re requesting that we were all as nice as we could be to Cat. And [Barbie] things that we’re all now against her.

“I said, ‘That’s certainly not the case. However you have been vile to me for the past two days,'” Fraser continued. “That’s where I’ve come to, Captain. I’m a very kind, caring person, but I’ve said my piece. To be quite frank with you, I’m done with this.”

The episode ends with a “To Be Continued” and without any previews of what’s in store next week. While this would seem to set up the first firing of the season, a sneak peek at episode 4 shows that Barbie won’t just get sacked at the start of the episode. Instead, it looks like Captain Kerry wants Fraser and Barbie to try to work out their differences.

“I don’t like letting anybody go. I can’t just go, ‘Bang-bang, you’re gone,'” the captain says in the clip above. “What are her strengths? Is she good at service? Does she have an eye for detail? Are you happy with her work? Can she be an asset to us if her attitude changed? We need to think about it a bit, both of us take a few breaths, and come from a better place. Think about it open-minded but professionally.”

Fraser answers all of the captain’s questions in the affirmative, as Barbie has shown that she knows what she’s doing in the interior. In a confessional, Captain Kerry explains his decision to not immediately fire Barbie, saying, “One thing I’ve noticed with my conversation with Fraser is that there’s a lot of emotion involved. If she’s good at what she does, you can utilize that. You don’t have to like her. Let’s find a way for her to shine.”

Meanwhile, Barbie tells bunkmate Sunny Marquis that everyone on her team “fucking hates me” and that she feels so underappreciated despite the fact that the guests love her. She explains that she’s “just not sweet and fluffy,” which she thinks may be the reason she’s clashing with Fraser and Cat. “I’m in a really hard place and it really sucks.” At the end of the clip, we watch as Barbie calls her mom to complain about Fraser’s management style, just as Fraser is arriving to help set up an excursion.

In other words, this sneak peek leaves many questions in the air about whether Fraser and Barbie will be able to squash their beef. If they don’t, that means Captain Kerry will have some decisions to make about Barbie’s future on the St. David.

While it’s certainly not exactly rare for firings to happen this early in the charter season, both Fraser and lead deckhand Ben Willoughby have alluded to the fact that this year’s captain is a lot more willing to part ways with crewmembers who aren’t meeting his standards.

“You either sink or swim with captain Kerry,” Willoughby recently told E! News. “And rightly so, he’s come onto a 190-foot yacht, which is huge. He doesn’t know any of the crew, he’s gotta get through six weeks of charter and I don’t blame him now for being as stern as he was. I would have probably been even more sterner if my license was on the line.”

“He’s very stern, very much a captain who says ‘if you mess up, that’s strike one,'” Willoughby added. “Whereas if you got Captain Sandy, she’s very much like a motherly figure, kind of comforting, wants you to learn and nurture. And Captain Lee is just very much ‘all right, you messed, up do better.'”

Could Barbie be the first to get on the captain’s stern side next week? It’s certainly beginning to look that way…

Below Deck airs on Mondays at 9 pm ET on Bravo.