Page 8 of Fan Favorite

To: Peter Kennedy

From: Jessa Johnson

Subject: Show me the money

Peter,

First of all, I just want to say, words mean nothing. MONEY TALKS. And since I’m basically single-handedly delivering you the most dramatic season ever, I’m expecting a sizable bonus or raise or EP title. I just want to put that out there so we don’t spend the rest of production strangling each other. Please, just make it happen.

Stop rolling your eyes. Because I found Bennett Charles’s high school girlfriend and she isdesperateto join the show and win back her man. Oh, and she is A MESS. Her entire personality is “obsessed with Bennett Charles.” I got her on your calendar at 11 a.m. tomorrow. Apparently, they were deeply in love—wait till you see the pictures. Let’s just say, if you crossed Screech Powers with that guy fromFrozen, you know, the snowman who was also the original messy missionary brother inThe Book of Mormon? And sprinkle in some asthma and psoriasis? That’s high school Bennett Charles.

You’re welcome,

Jessa

5

This Edie Pepper situation was giving Peter Kennedy formidable heartburn. He sat at his computer, loudly chewing a handful of Tums and anxiously awaiting an eight a.m. status call with the network. Since the Wyatt Cash incident, the network had kept Peter on a tight leash. In addition to the status calls with RX chair and chief content officer Carole Steele—now there was a woman who really gave Peter indigestion—he was also expected to check in via hot sheets and dailies, the contestants were required to meet with the resident psychologist weekly, and any deviation from the standard horse-drawn carriage, fairytale narrative was to be explicitly cleared by the top. Peter was still debating whether to tell Carole about his impending meeting with Edie Pepper—pros: honesty; cons: verbal assaults on his intelligence—but since he’d already decided to put Edie Pepper on the first plane back to wherever the hell she was coming from, he determined the juice would, in fact, not be worth the squeeze.

Peter rubbed his temples against a looming headache. Jessa was great at following her instincts in the field, and the contestants loved her, but this Edie Pepper situation reflected just how little she understood about the future of the show post–Wyatt Cash. Fleeing advertisers, budget cuts (at $2 million per viewable hour,The Keywas not a cheap show to make), and a desperate need for sponsored partnerships with resorts, airlines, and even stupid things like Crest Whitestrips were vital just to keep them going. They had to deliver the under-budget, redemptive season that Carole Steele and the network expected if they were going to survive, and their focus needed to be on resurrecting America’s faith in true love andThe Key’s process. They were making a fairy tale aboutsoulmates, not some tedious C-plot featuring a tragic high school girlfriend. Regular people ruined the fantasy—that was a fact. And from what he’d seen on Instagram, Edie Pepper was so average she could’ve been some girl he’d walked right past at a bar. Every time she appeared on-screen, people would think about going to bed early, not drooling over gorgeous people in a hot tub or buying product placements on their phones during commercial breaks. No, what they needed to do wasstick to the format: fireworks and helicopters, bungee jumping and slow dancing, hot air balloons and hot bodies.

Peter’s Apple Watch buzzed, and he looked away from his email to the hourly stand notification on his wrist. He retrieved his jump rope from a desk drawer and started in on a one-minute burst of cardio. He’d heard there’d been a lot of suspicion from the network about what he did or did not know about Wyatt Cash. Look, he hadn’t knownanythingabout Wyatt Cash. Peter began to jump faster. He hadn’t knownanythinguntil he saw theUs Weeklycover with the rest of America. Well, that wasn’t exactly true—they’d called him for comment a couple of days prior and he’d done his best tosquash the story, calling in favors from reporters and editors who could pull strings. But in the end, it was just too big. No tabloid could be expected to shelve photos of the cattle-ranchingKeysuitor at a gay bar in Miami, making out with a man in a thong at a foam party.

Yes—fine—it was Peter’s fault he’d let Wyatt out of his sight. But Wyatt wasn’t ahostage, and Peter had believed him when he said he was going home for the weekend to see his sick mamaw in Abilene before they started filming for ten weeks. It’d seemed reasonable!

Had there been signs? That’s what everyone wanted to know. How the hell was Peter supposed to know? Last time he checked, gender didn’t exist anymore, and everyone was pan or sapio or poly or some other term he hadn’t heard of yet because he was thirty-fucking-nine and worked three hundred hours a week. And he was divorced, so he didn’t even have a wife to keep him in the loop on things. So how the hell was Peter Kennedy supposed to know that Wyatt Cash was gay? Or bi? Or demi? Or whatever! Sure, Wyatt spent a lot of time on his hair, but so did all the guys these days. And they wereallon Rogaine. (Peter wasn’t because he didn’t need it.) (Secretly, he took pride in that.)

Honestly, Peter had always been a little suspicious of Wyatt’s cowboy hats, wide stride, and hokey aphorisms, but he’d chalked it up to a Southern thing that Peter just didn’t understand because he was from Connecticut. He didn’t think it would benefit him to mention that now. Peter dropped the jump rope and went back to his computer.

Of course, the story exploded. Every news outlet covered it, former contestants showed up on entertainment programs and podcasts to weigh in, and for two daysBrokeback Mountainwas the most streamed movie on the internet. Even Jake Gyllenhaaltweeted about the tender way Wyatt had cupped that guy’s ass. The ensuing think pieces were eviscerating:

DECOLONIZING DESIRE: HOW WYATT CASH DRAGGEDTHE KEYINTO THE 21ST CENTURY

THE KEY’S BIG LGBTQIA+ PROBLEM

THE KEYAND THE FEMINIST WORK THAT REMAINS UNDONE

BREAKING UP WITHTHE KEY

GEN Z DOESN’T NEED ENGAGEMENT RINGS:THE KEYAS A RELIC OF MODERN ROMANCE

OPINION:THE KEYHASN’T BEEN ABOUT LOVE FOR A LONG TIME

It was that last one (and all the others like it) that really hurt. They argued the show had become an empty fame factory, churning out social media stars for a morally bankrupt audience. That there hadn’t been aKeywedding in four seasons (true). That the show’s lack of diversity and heteronormative, patriarchal agenda were outdated at best, corrupt at worst. The bloggers and podcasters rang the death knell forThe Key, the advertisers panicked, and the network, struggling to forge its own identity in a new woke world, had threatened to pull the plug entirely.

But after much pleading and assuring, the network finally acquiesced to recasting the lead and moving the twenty-second season forward on a slight delay. So, while Wyatt Cash began a LGBTQIA+ press tour and inked deals for underwear endorsements and nightclub appearances, Peter scoured the Earth forhis replacement. The requirements: Must be able to start filming immediately. Must have zero connection toThe Key, reality TV, or anything or anyone in the show’s universe—this time they’d start fresh. Must be willing to get engagedno matter what.Must be good-looking and charming enough to make the women of America fall in love with the show all over again and save all their jobs.

Peter knew that times had changed sinceThe Key’s humble beginnings in the mid-aughts. Over the past few years, social media had become a major part of theKeyexperience. It was one of the few shows left on network television whose audience watched live and zealously discussed episodes in real time. The audience loved following the contestants on social and the contestants loved being followed. The people who went on the show wanted to be famous, and the show’s exposure gave them notoriety they could monetize. Peter couldn’t control that.

But in a particularly confounding ouroboros, the bigger the cast’s social accounts became, the less earnest they appeared, undercutting the very spirit of the show, which wasearnestlyabout a male or female suitor finding theirsoulmatethrough dates focused on discovery, compatibility, and one-of-a-kind adventures. Contestants had to at least give theappearanceof being in it for love. Because Sydney from San Diego, who’d been on the show for two fucking weeks getting paid to schlock laxative tea to fourteen-year-olds on Instagram did not read as “here for the right reasons.”

Audiences were fickle. They might give you a million followers. They might like some winks and jokes. But the second they thought you were being insincere—that you were playing them—they’d turn on you. That’s what was exciting about it—finding the authenticity under the farce. (The first layer being the cameras, of course.) So, in what was a particularly genius move in Peter’s estimation, he’d decided to go straight to thesource and search for men already established as mid-level influencers. Men who, sure, the show could help, but who also didn’t really need the show. Men who could carry anI’ve got everything, I just need someone to share it withstoryline, both on the show and off.

Enter Bennett Charles.

He was well known to a niche audience—adventurers, extreme sports lovers, travel bloggers. He was a little old (thirty-five) but came with a great backstory totally new to the franchise: guy spends his twenties traveling the world, eventually turns adventure into a “career” in endorsements, inspirational speaking engagements, and some minor philanthropy, until finally rootlessness begins to plague him. A steady itch of loneliness somehow making everything lessfun. When Peter showed up, Bennett was already looking for an answer—all Peter had to do was hand it to him. Wife up.

On their very first call, it became clear that Bennett Charles had never had an original thought in his life. But after the Wyatt Cash debacle, that’sexactlywhat Peter (and the network) wanted. Sure, perhaps using words likedude, andbro, andsickwasn’t in Peter’s natural wheelhouse, but this wasn’t the first meathead Sigma Alpha Whatever-the-Fuck Peter had produced, and the visuals would be stunning—mountain vistas, shirtless rock climbing, fresh water and fresh air, and Sweaters for Sherpas fundraising initiatives. Peter could already hear the opening narration:Will Bennett Charles finally find the woman of his dreams? Is he ready to give up a life of globetrotting adventure to settle down and start a family?What the viewers wanted wasfantasy, and what was more fantastic than a guy who’d summited Kilimanjaro?

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