Is Lara The Most Disrespectful Stew In ‘Below Deck Mediterranean’ History?

Join me in loosening your shoulders, jaw, and knuckles after taking in what was one of the most cringeworthy episodes of Below Deck Mediterranean across the entire Below Deck franchise. While most stewardesses know that you wait until at least passing the halfway point of a season before you start rolling your eyes and confronting your chief stew, that clearly does not apply to Lara Flumiani. The second stew dropped breadcrumbs of disobedience in the first episode of the season, but now that we’re at the second episode, she’s already gone full witch.

It all started during the breakfast shift when she was rude to both third stew Jess and chef Kiko, and ultimately the guests as she ignored their eggs already cooling in the galley instead of delivering them to their table. She was then double rude to Hannah while the chief stew tried to show her a refrigerator storage space, and things got super heated by the dishwasher when Hannah told her to drop what she was doing and head to the laundry room instead. “In my own time I stop,” Lara told her boss. “We collaborate otherwise it doesn’t work,” she told her with a shrug, simply refusing to take orders from her supervisor.

As she tried to move Hannah out of the way, we got the trailer-teased moment of Hannah sternly telling her, “Lady, don’t touch me,” despite the fact that Lara argued, “I’m being very polite. Polite and tranquil, this is how I live my life.” After observing that Hannah seemed stressed, Lara busted out the old, “Maybe it’s not the job for you.” The chief stew stormed into the galley, saying, “I’m gonna fucking punch that bitch in a minute,” to which Jess replied calmly, “I almost did earlier, what happened?”

Oh, but that’s certainly not it. The two come face to face again in the laundry room where Lara tells Hannah, “This is a misunderstanding, there is no point in carrying on with this confrontation because this is something personal so I can’t change that.”

Hannah finally turns to Captain Sandy for advice who notes, “I feel her energy is very negative,” and encourages Hannah to sit down with Lara and be a leader, a manager, and figure out how to turn it all around, despite Hannah assuring her she’d rather do the next charter with just Jess, hoping Lara quits. But she takes Captain Sandy’s advice, calls Lara to the salon — who is then shown saying “Fuck you,” to the call — and attempts to talk it out. But before Lara even sits down, she whines, “What do you want?” My god.

“The more you piss me off the less I will do,” she states to her boss, saying, “That’s how this works,” and when asked to give examples of disrespect from Hannah, can only offer, “You made me so uncomfortable that I don’t even remember.” She goes on to tell Hannah, “You work it out in your head,” and, “Get your shit together and be nice,” comments that even a Facebook bully would think twice about typing to a stranger, let alone their direct manager.

“You know what, you’re disgusting,” Hannah says with a pained wince, letting Captain Sandy know the situation is so dire she doesn’t even have time to have a bowl a cereal. Meanwhile, the exterior crew is still trying to figure out if her name is Laura, Lana, or Lata, which is just about the amount of respect she deserves at this point anyway.

While she explains in her interviews that she was taught to stand up for herself, she must’ve skipped the lesson on respecting your superior. We’ve learned from the four previous seasons of this show (well, really just three as all the stews got along during Season 4) that Hannah has her own management style and perhaps that’s not for everyone. But Lara clearly boarded the boat with a chip on her shoulder (or like, a full bag of them), resentful she wasn’t in the chief stew position herself. But this is just beyond rude.

The way she dismisses, disregards, and disrespects Hannah feels wildly unjustified and simply not okay. We’re learning that chef Kiko is a sweet soul and that she wasn’t fully pleasant to him is nothing short of a warning sign. It was hugely uncomfortable to watch this episode, maybe due to the mixture of her blatant refusal to listen and her creepily calm demeanor during discussions. We’ve also never seen Hannah this angry, ever. Unless Hannah did actually punch her in the face and we didn’t see it, this display goes beyond the excuse of editing. Why is Lara so disdainful and angry so quickly? It’s charter one! This feels antithetical to the beginning of a Below Deck Mediterranean season, and perhaps a sign that there are some major waves ahead before true tranquility can be achieved.

Below Deck Mediterranean airs Monday at 9pm ET/PT on Bravo. 

Where to stream Below Deck Mediterranean