Ten Weeks Later
TED ANDERSON
Off the clear Caribbean beach, four bodies smack hard against the water.
Cherry struggles the most. As soon as she stands on the paddle board, her legs wobble. She falls quickly with a yelp. As her head comes out of the water, she brushes her hair behind her ears with a cute, camera-ready smile.
Natalie is pretty good. She’s figured out how to stand up and stabilize herself within a few minutes. But Natalie lacks the proper form, the arm strength, and the interest to do more than drift in a slow circle.
Olive is unbothered by this week’s challenge. Through an unfair amount of practice living on the upper-east coast, she has paddled so many laps around the other three that she looks like a show-off. Olive’s only difficulty seems to be some water in her ear, as she keeps tilting her head to the side.
Perhaps trying to make up for her stunning loss in last week’s bikini pie-eating contest, Aria is trying hard. She stands on the board without too much trouble and can move around at a respectable pace. Aria’s problem is other people. Any disturbance, the tiniest wave from another person’s paddle, sends her crashing down. Eventually, she gives up and lies on her back, drifting around and breathing in the ocean air.
I’m standing about twenty feet away, looking at them through a large TV camera mounted on a tripod. As the host of this godforsaken show, I’m sometimes placed on cameraman duty. I have no impressive skills in this area, but I can follow instructions.
Olive stands back up from a rare fall. She spreads her arms out in mock triumph while Cherry tries to splash water on her. I’m also technically on lifeguard duty. The producers said there’s supposed to be a storm later tonight and to call them out early if there’s a signal.
Feeling impatient, I look back at the top of the island house. The opaque glass chimney stands about ten feet over the rest of the building. The contestants don’t know this, but that chimney hides several well-placed cameras that surveils the island at 360-degrees.
I turn my attention back to the ladies, who seem visibly tired. It can’t be much longer now. Natalie and Cherry are sitting on the boards gossiping, their hair sopping wet. I’m still shocked at the lengths people go to stand out. Putting their bodies on the line and emptying out their personality for a shot at fame. This group is no different.
Sure enough, my earpiece pings a moment later. But the message isn’t what I expected. “Okay, Ted, we’re done here,” says the blasé producer’s voice. “Please move the camera forward about five feet and tilt it to the right.” In a familiar chore, I part-carry part-drag the tripod where they ask. “We’re gonna have Christopher run up and get the ladies out of the water. Keep the camera where it’s at so it can film him. Go get ready for The Cut this evening, and be at your typical spot in about forty-five minutes.” The crackle of the voice and the static in my earpiece stop.
Across the beach, a tall, chiseled man begins running toward the ladies. Christopher Jope to the rescue. But the way he is jogging is strange. At some points he’s running at full speed, rushing toward the girls, but then he will suddenly decelerate and move almost in slow motion. This is no doubt an instruction from the producers to get footage of him at multiple speeds. They will edit this to make his run look natural and sexy, but in real time from my perspective it looks absolutely ridiculous. Once he’s about halfway between the house and the shore, he tears his white button-up open and tosses it on the ground, buttons flying onto the sand.
Ignoring the producers’ instructions, I briefly move the camera from the girls over to the boys standing on the house patio. Their heads are all cocked to the side. They look at their celebrity lover with tense smiles. The boys know that Christopher will eliminate one of them tonight.
I reset the camera and begin walking back to my shack for my wardrobe change. I’m mildly annoyed that they had me stand and look after the girls for almost a half hour when I could have just set the camera up and left. My legs feel stiff from standing in one spot for so long.
I would have rather filmed the dinner date that Christopher was on with the boys the whole time. Part of the reason I used to like this job is that I have a somewhat detached, academic interest in romance. Although I’ve had sex before, I wouldn’t recommend it. It’s been this way for as long as I can remember. From what I’ve been told, puberty hits most people like a ton of bricks, reorienting their entire world toward getting into bed with important people. But puberty hit me like a feather.
My shack is about a quarter mile from the side of the house, far enough for me to get some headspace away from the day-to-day drama of this show but close enough to have reasonable plumbing and electricity. I unlock the front door and go into my oasis. From my biased opinion, this shack is the best part of what I’ll admit is a pretty nice island. I walk over to my fan and flick it on the low setting. The best decision I’ve made for my career was insisting on having a space physically separate from Heartbreak House during the negotiations after my first season. After haggling about the cost of building the shack, I agreed to forego a substantial pay increase to make it happen. It was easily worth it. On warm nights, I crack my window and fall asleep to the sound of high tide.
I go to sit at my vanity and look into the dressing mirror. Taped to the corner is a picture of me and season four’s star, a tragically underrated singer-songwriter named Scarlett Stegosaurus. We had won an award for best reality TV show that season. The picture shows the two of us on stage accepting the trophy, my eyes looking misty. I pull out a comb from my dresser and start doing my hair.
I joined Star x Lovers after the first season. It was just eight episodes filmed by a small production company renting this house from a New Zealand billionaire. Patricia Huff, a dancer-turned-actress was the lead. Five amateur actors and five amateur dancers competed for her heart. The ratings were okay, but the show might have been cancelled if it weren’t for an overseas investor who took an interest and bought the rights. The identity of the show’s new owner turned CEO was never revealed, but this mystery figure worked quickly. In the six months before season two, they built the Love Love TV network as a corporate structure to manage the show, fired the old production company, purchased and upgraded this house to the camera-filled monstrosity we use to this day. Lastly, they hired me, a completely unknown guy who just happens to look the part of a host you’d expect on TV.
When I accepted this job in between seasons one and two, I knew it would be my break. My original plan was to be here for two or three successful seasons and then leave. Afterward, I could create my own show or direct a movie maybe. And I was right, the show became a hit within a few seasons. But what I hadn’t expected was just how hard it would be to get out. When my agent and I started contacting folks for other opportunities, the rejections were polite but firm. Almost every contact we reached out to was too scared of the Love Love TV network to poach me and start a legal battle. Or they just wanted me to play the exact same role I had now in some knock-off version of this show.
So I stayed. And over time, Star x Lovers just kept getting worse. The initial goal of the show was to give a group of attractive yet decidedly not-famous singles the chance to win the heart and talented mind of a celebrity. And for the show’s early seasons, the show leaned in hard into that star’s particular art. When the season featured a singer, for instance, the contestants would all be different musicians. They would write and perform songs for their celebrity crush. Even when the romances flamed out, which was most of the time, the show was a unique spectacle of creative energy mixed with drama. This season’s guy for instance, Christopher, isn’t a bad actor. If this had been a few years ago, the contestants would put on monologues and whole plays. At the show’s best, the house transformed into this twisted group of contestants competing and channeling their over-the-top feelings into energetic displays of art.
Eventually, this art-to-TV dynamic became too complicated to manage. It was too hard to find local artists who were attractive enough to be a potential match, talented enough to put on a performance, but not so attractive or talented that they wouldn’t steal the show. Stars became jealous of their contestants. Then there was the problem of people going on the show to jumpstart their careers, a trend that did not go unnoticed by the fanbase and hurt viewership.
And that was when Star x Lovers slowly descended into the same trashy sex game drivel that’s on every other Tuesday night channel. This season has a strange lethargy to it too; I feel both disappointed and annoyed by the lack of twists or tensions with this cast. Something will need to happen to shake things up soon.
A couple soft beeps play in my head. I give my earpiece a tap. “Be in the cutting room in ten minutes.” I let out a sigh and set my brush down, standing up to go put on my suit.
I’m not sure how long I can do this anymore. While it started out fun, reality TV is a slow, subtle poison for me and everyone else involved. I need to get out of this place.
