The Charm Offensive(96)
Mark laughs, and Charlie kind of squawks, and then Dev is out of the limo again bounding over to Charlie. Dev reaches up and his fingers are in Charlie’s hair, adjusting his crown. Charlie blushes at Dev’s touch, and it’s right there for viewers to see. Charlie, an hour after they met, falling over himself because of Dev instead of Daphne.
“You can do this,” Dev says, and Charlie gives a shy little smile, twisting something inside real Dev’s chest on the couch. “I believe in you.”
Dev steps out of the shot, and the normal show starts up again, with Angie getting out of the horse-drawn carriage.
“You guys, what is this?”
“This is what we’ve been trying to get you to watch,” Jules says smugly. “This is Ever After.”
Back on-screen, they show what happens after the carriage exits are over, after Skylar calls cut. “You’re doing bleeping spectacular!” Dev tells Charlie. Charlie smiles back, earnest and huge, and it feels like watching part of Charlie open for the first time.
When the second episode starts up instantly, Dev doesn’t move from his seat. There’s so much footage of Charlie and Dev he didn’t know existed: footage of Dev sitting beside Charlie the day Megan faked her injury at the jousting Quest; footage of Dev trying to calm him down later that night after Charlie kissed Angie for the first time; footage of them laughing on set, footage of them joking between takes, so much footage of Dev fixing Charlie’s hair.
Through it all, it is still a normal season of Ever After. There are still Group Quests and women gushing about Charlie, and Charlie gushing about the women. All the drama unfolds like it’s supposed to, with the women fighting back at the castle, and Megan’s perfect turn as the villain, and the suspense of the Crowning Ceremonies. The editing team has simply gone through and expanded the scope of the show just a little to make room for Dev.
The episodes are flying by. When Charlie has his panic attack with Daphne at the ball, and he runs into Dev’s arms, it’s so obvious on Dev’s face that he cares in ways he shouldn’t. Watching himself fall in love with Charlie is like falling in love with him all over again.
Dev sits in the living room where he first discovered Ever After, and he doesn’t move, doesn’t get up to go to the bathroom, only eats when his mother directly inserts food into his mouth. He watches a scene with Charlie and Angie in Germany he didn’t know existed. “I just want Dev to be okay,” Charlie says, sounding pitiful.
“Sweetie, I know. I know,” Angie says in return, and America must know, too.
Dev watches the Leland Barlow night. There are interviews he never saw. Daphne, looking giddy: “He told me about the plan the other night! I think Dev is going to be really surprised.”
Angie, looking knowing as hell: “I think this might be the sweetest thing anyone has ever done for their producer.”
Then Charlie explains for the audience: “Dev, my handler, went through a difficult time in Germany, and I wanted to do something special to cheer him up. The show was going to fly this country singer down to Cape Town, but I was able to change their minds.”
They show Dev losing his damn mind over Leland Barlow, and then they show the dance party with the contestants and crew. Jules twirls Dev into Charlie’s arms, and they do their awkward dance together on the night Dev realized he was in love with Charlie.
And then he’s watching that last night.
At the Crowning Ceremony in Macon, Daphne asks to speak to Charlie, and the cameras follow them to the alcove. Right there, on his parents’ television screen, Daphne tells Charlie she’s done pretending until Maureen Scott calls cut and steps viciously into the frame.
The show abruptly cuts to Charlie sitting on a bed in a hotel room. It takes Dev a second to recognize it as the hotel room. At the Courtyard Marriott. The last place he saw Charlie Winshaw.
“It is time for me to be honest,” he is telling the cameras in a confessional. “I came on this show for the wrong reason. I wanted a chance to rebuild my career, and I know now that what I did was unfair—to the women who came on this show for love and to the people who work here. But the thing is…” There are tears filling his beautiful gray eyes. “I didn’t think it was possible to find love on this show. And I was wrong.”
They cut back to Mark Davenport in the studio. He stands onstage, wearing his bespoke suit, his face somehow grim and optimistic at the same time. “It’s been quite a journey up to this point, and I’m sure it hasn’t been the journey you were expecting. To be honest, we weren’t expecting it either. But that’s the thing about love, isn’t it?” he says with a glimmer in his eye. “Sometimes it comes when you least expect it. When it comes down to it, this show is about helping people reach their happily ever after. Will our star find that? Tune in next week for the heartbreaking finale you won’t want to miss.”
And that’s it. It’s over. There is nothing more to watch, because they don’t have the live finale. It hasn’t happened yet.
Dev leaps up out of his seat, unable to contain the nervous energy inside of him. His body explodes with shooting pain from sitting in the exact same position on the couch for an entire day. He looks around the room. At his dad, sitting at the kitchen table. At Ryan, asleep in his dad’s recliner. At Parisa, sitting on the love seat with his mother, and at Jules and Skylar, still flanking him on the couch. They never left his side. Not once, for twelve hours straight.