From my perspective (which was limited from being strapped in my seat), the Captain was strapped in his seat the whole time and totally trusted his FA. From my experience of over 1 million miles flown, the crew on the flight deck will always defer to the FA's and treat them as part of the crew especially when going up against passengers. I cannot imagine a realistic situation where a pilot would take the side of a customer instead of an FA.

That doesn't mean that pilots don't yell at the FA's when they screw up. I see that fairly often. But as the pilots know that most FA's will not go to such great resorts as they did in this incident without reasonable cause, they usually trust their judgement.