Chapter 7
For Season Two, the intro credits changed from the initial mix of wedding-video, pop-star, and baseball footage to shots of Maggie and Jason together during Season One.
Five seconds of them kissing or swatting or flipping their hair, and then the image would pause and zoom in, like the intro to a sitcom.
Because Jason and Maggie were the only main cast, there was no “and Ann B. Davis as Alice.” Just the two of them, from different angles, at different times of day.
Maggie’s theme song, still respectably climbing the charts, remained the same.
My first day back on set, Jason was nursing a hurt shoulder.
I had thought, in my medical ignorance, that his baseball career had ended because he’d reinjured his elbow after surgery, but this was apparently not so.
The elbow was okay, as much as one that was reconstructed with a tendon from his hamstring could be okay, but the resulting way he’d thrown had put stress on his shoulder, and once that tore, there was nothing to be done.
That first day back, he had an ice pack wrapped on with ACE bandages, and he was crankier than I had ever seen him filming Season One.
“He was playing golf,” Lauren explained.
“Some guy recorded it all. Apparently Jason flipped him the bird and threatened to smash his camera. Between the network and his personal PR gal, they cleaned it all up, but I’d imagine that’s money out of our budget.
” This season, Lauren’s henna hair was bleached.
It washed her out. I’d barely recognized her when I first came in.
“How’s Maggie doing after her accident?” I asked. “That footage was gnarly.”
“She’s totally fine. Though I’d be shocked if that wasn’t to blame for Jason’s outburst. Sucks to think what would have happened for the show had that car crash been worse.” That was Lauren, always covering her own ass.
“Is it even legal for them to be taking all these pictures?” I asked.
“Who knows.” Lauren shrugged. “But it does give us juice.”
“You know there’s still a guy parked down by the entry gate, across the hedge, sitting in his car with a camera?”
“I did not.” She sounded pleasantly surprised.
Lauren, I learned, had a new spin on the second season—rather than just watching Jason and Maggie live their regular lives, we’d find activities for them.
They could get papped while going hiking, or throw a party, or drop in at a sports clinic for kids.
Now that they were a known commodity, we could easily book them joint gigs.
The show was no longer about a famous couple being married, but a couple being famously married.
Lauren said this with a flourish that made me think she was actually writing that dissertation I’d told my mom was inane.
But I figured she was right—a new angle never hurt anyone.
And we weren’t deliberately setting them up to fail, just setting them up to make good television.
Besides, fame was quite clearly getting to both Maggie and Jason, and if we were to be the documentarians of their actual life, we couldn’t avoid what it had made them become.
In the first Season Two episode, Jason and Maggie are attending a concert put on by a local school.
Initially, the idea was to get Maggie back to her old elementary school, but the McKees had moved around so much she had no tether, and it was cheaper to stay closer to home.
Therefore, she and Jason have dropped by St. Mary of the Cross, a Catholic school about five miles from their gated community that has fortuitously saved its winter concert until January.
It’s clear that Jason doesn’t want to be here.
His shoulder is still bothering him, and when he puts his arm around Maggie, he winces.
A little girl comes up and gives Maggie a card the class has made.
Maggie gushes over how cute she is and what an honor it’s been to hear them sing.
After posing for pictures, Jason and Maggie pile into the hired black car.
The camera follows her as she slumps in the seat.
“I am so stinking tired.”
He moves to kiss her, and she brushes him off.
“Whatever.” Jason stares out the window for the rest of the ride.
It wasn’t just the mood on set that had shifted.
I’d talked to Gabe on the phone a few more times in Pennsylvania, but he’d always seemed distracted.
I had struggled to make basic conversation, never mind letting him know I wanted more from our relationship.
Since my return to LA the week before, we’d only gotten together once—we met up briefly by his studio for coffee.
It was out of my way, and parking had been a bear.
Seeing him in person confirmed both my desire to claim him as my own and my inability to broach the topic of exclusivity.
His shirt smelled freshly laundered when I hugged him, and he drank an iced latte, and I wanted to loop my leg around his.
He was preoccupied with something. I kissed him on the cheek before he had to get back to the studio and I had to go to work, and I wondered if he noticed how awkward I was being.
Why did caring about someone ruin all the ease of a relationship?
I thought of this now as I watched Jason and Maggie, wondering if their bickering was a crack in their relationship or a sign their love was honest and real.
“Just take the trash out.” Jason sat on the couch, watching Maggie try to shove an empty milk carton into the overflowing bin.
“I can make it fit,” she said. She’d been growing out her bangs and had them held back with a headband, so there was no more floofing. Maggie grunted. The lining ripped, and barbecue sauce bled onto the floor. I made a move to go and help her, but Lauren held me back.
“Babe?” Maggie huffed.
“Yeah?” Jason had one eye on his basketball game, the other on his wife.
“Hey, babe?”
“Yes?” Whereas three months ago Jason’s tone would have betrayed his amusement, now he seemed purely annoyed. I mimed going to get Maggie a mop. Absolutely not, Lauren mouthed.
“I’m not really sure what to do here?” Maggie seemed like she might cry.
She had just gotten in from the airport after two days on a photo shoot in New York.
We all knew there was no chance she’d be given the benefit of that context in the episode.
Maggie McKee Cracks Under Pressures of Housework.
I could see the headline now, much more entertaining than Maggie McKee Exhausted After Long Red-Eye Flight.
Under any other circumstances, someone who spent more time at the house than Maggie—which these days meant pretty much any of us in the room—would tell her where to find the Pine-Sol.
But Lauren kept her fingernails dug into my arm, preventing me.
Maggie swallowed, and she grabbed some paper towels from the counter to blot up the sauce.
Finally, Jason stood up. He stretched his shoulder, looked right into Rahul’s camera with a roll of his eyes.
He took the entire trash can and carried it out to the garage.
Dan called cut so that I could get the proper equipment and mop up the spill. Maggie shut her eyes and pressed her lips together, then went back to cleaning out the fridge.
“I can finish that,” I said. Normally the housekeeper would have taken care of both the trash and the refrigerator, but Lauren had given her a few paid days off, timed perfectly to Maggie’s homecoming.
Of course, this wasn’t fair to Maggie, but as Lauren consistently reminded me, our job wasn’t about fair.
We were tasked with turning mundanity into a fairy tale.
Every hero had to have their trials; otherwise, the happy ending wouldn’t be earned.
I listened to Lauren explain this, and it made sense, but I still didn’t like it.
Jason came back into the kitchen with the emptied trash can while I was finishing up the floor.
“It’s not that hard to change the liner,” he muttered to Maggie. She looked at him pointedly, giving her head a little jerk over to me. “Oh come on, she doesn’t care.”
I forced a smile to show that I didn’t.
“It isn’t my job,” Maggie hissed through her own smile, “to take out your trash.”
Jason was smart—he started clapping out a random pattern with his hands so that, on the chance it was still being captured, Vinnie couldn’t use any of this audio. “Well, if you’d been home, it would have been your trash too.”
“I was working.”
“That’s my point.” All of this whispered, under the guise of their forced cheerfulness. I bent to get a new garbage bag from under the sink.
“It is not my fault,” said Maggie, now tapping her lavalier mic as she spoke, “that no one has hired you as a commentator.”
“That’s low.” Clap clap clap. “Even for you.”
Could I crawl into the space under the sink and hide, or better yet, come out through the cabinet around the corner? I wondered if it was smarter to remind them that I was here or be as still and silent as possible. I decided to brave it.
“All done!” I tucked the bag into the bin, aware that as I did so my face was contorting into an expression I hoped read none of my business. What was happening now between Jason and Maggie seemed like more than the cutesy back-and-forth they’d played on Season One. All signs pointed to trouble.
“Thank you, Cassidy,” said Jason. He was no longer clapping his hands.
“And thank you for your discretion,” said Maggie.
“We know you’ll keep this to yourself. Some things are better left off camera.
” She put a hand on my shoulder. “As in, say, making out in somebody’s private pool.
” Her tone was totally mild, clean of the frustration she’d had a moment ago when snapping at Jason.
It took me a moment to process what she’d said, and as I did, I felt the blood rise to my face.