Page 103 of The Charm Offensive
Dev settles onto the couch between Skylar and Jules, and everyone else finds a seat. The sweeping theme music fills the room, and Mark Davenport is on the screen, looking ageless and dashing. “Are you ready to meet your Prince Charming?” he asks cloyingly. Dev’s heart constricts in his chest, knowing he is going to see Charlie on the screen soon. Jules takes his left hand. Skylar takes his right. They both hold tight.
“You’re in for one wild ride,” Mark says on-screen. “This season is quite literally like nothing we have ever seen before. It’s a game changer.”
“We say that every single season,” Dev mutters. Jules punches him in the leg to shut him up.
Mark Davenport continues the voice-over. The first shot of Charlie is him blurry on a horse at the infamous shoot that led to Ryan’s job reassignment. Then the camera cuts to Charlie standing on a cliff looking windswept and lovely, and Dev chokes on all the old feelings. It barely looks like his Charlie—his limbs are stiff, and his posture is too good, and his face is twisted into a grimace. He is still the most beautiful man Dev has ever seen.
Mark wraps up the show’s intro. “Are you ready for a new quest for love, America? This isEver After.”
They go to the title card, and this is usually where the show begins in earnest. Instead, it cuts back to Mark Davenport, this time in the studio where they’ll film the live finale, pacing elegantly. “Now, before we dive in, I should warn you… our prince this season isn’t polished. He isn’t always camera ready. This season ofEver Afteris different. We’re going to peel back the curtain for you a little bit, give you unprecedented access to what really happens on set. Nothing is off-limits.”
Dev knows several things are off-limits, but he’s still sucked in by the time the show truly begins. A commercial break, and then Daphne Reynolds is stepping out of a carriage, and Dev is thrown back into that night, embarrassed for Charlie all over again. Charlie’s interaction with Daphne is cringey. He’s wooden and uninteresting, and the secondhand humiliation is so extreme, Dev’s about to insist they turn it off when somethingtrulyunprecedenteddoeshappen.
Dev is on-screen. He steps into the shot and waves his hands at the cameras. The boom picks up the wordsgive me fivebefore he darts across the shot into the limo.
“Wh—”
“Just watch,” Jules hisses.
He watches, and he sees something he didn’t see that night while he was in the limo convincing Angie to dance with Charlie. Mark Davenport steps over to Charlie and puts a hand on his shoulder. “I know you’re nervous, but don’t worry. Dev, your handler, is the best. He’s going to take really good care of you. He won’t let you look like an idiot in front of twenty million viewers.”
Mark laughs, and Charlie kind of squawks, and then Dev is out of the limo again bounding over to Charlie. Dev reaches upand 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 isEver After.”
Back on-screen, they show what happens after the carriage exits are over, after Skylar calls cut. “You’re doingbleepingspectacular!” 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 footageof Dev fixing Charlie’s hair.
Through it all, it is still a normal season ofEver 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 CrowningCeremonies. 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 discoveredEver 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 asthehotel 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.”
