Season 20, Episode 12 “Re” #2
Shawn had been waiting at Cedars-Sinai with Jenny, Melange, and the kids when we landed in LA.
He’d even picked them up at the airport the day before.
He’d buzzed his hair and wore a crisp blue dress shirt, almost resembling a young teacher, especially with Wallace clinging to his leg.
He was so stalwart, fetching meals for everyone, showing the kids movies on his laptop, making notes each time the doctors shared information.
Two days later, we were at last alone, my aching hand in his, when he firmly declared, “We’re never doing this again. ”
“Agreed. No more hospitals.”
“Well, definitely that, but I meant reality TV. Any of it.”
“I… sorry, I wasn’t expecting you to say that.”
“After everything with Barnes and Troy, I figured you’d be the first person saying to run for the hills. Seriously, how many times have you said you were done with Endeavor?”
I hadn’t told him yet. There hadn’t been time.
However, the news I was moving to LA was quickly overshadowed by the reason why.
I recited the benefits—the money, the control, the chance for us to make the new show whatever we wanted—but he just stared at me, absolutely stunned. “You want me on camera with him?”
“No, you don’t have to film with Barnes—”
“This is insane. Think of what you’ve been through. Why would you expose the kids to this bullshit?! Luke, you can’t agree to this.”
“I already did.”
He leaned back in his chair, shaking his head. “Well, so much for never blindsiding me.”
The next day he said not to contact him. It would be too confusing, too painful, that he’d go anywhere with me except down this road. He wanted me to choose him, and I thought I already had, by agreeing to LA, to the show, that choosing those things meant choosing him.
But I’ll see him tonight for the first time in almost six months. Live, in person, and broadcast to the world.
The network has booked the live Reunion in their most cavernous studio. The season’s been the most highly rated since the first—a feat in the age of streaming, Barnes has informed me. It’s shocking, since it’s universally known nobody wins. The triumph is everyone survived.
As we enter backstage, Melange scuttles from her dressing room like a crab. Giant red wings cocoon her scarlet dress, and a halo of fake rubies is pinned above her tresses, ever on theme. “Let me guess, you’re a Victoria’s Secret fashion show refugee?” Barnes asks.
“I didn’t sit in three hours of makeup for you to run your mouth,” Melange says, a slight edge in her voice, the last holdout on the Barnes Appleby Rehabilitation Tour.
The worker bees diligently dart through the hallways, and I still vaguely expect Troy to materialize like the resurrected serial killer in a slasher film.
According to Greta, however, Troy’s abdicated Los Angeles.
“He’d be lucky to produce public access in Poughkeepsie,” she’d cracked.
“You cost a media conglomerate that much hush money, you’re kicked out of the garden.
” He apparently fled back east to his roots in politics, trying to parlay his media savvy into a job on one of the campaigns before 2016.
“Three guesses which one, and the first two don’t count.
” Greta had grimaced. “If anyone would hire a disgraced reality TV producer…”
Zara greets us next in a chic pantsuit, and I’m unaccustomed to seeing her out of flannel. “I’m off the clock.” She shrugs. “There’s a whole different production company handling the Reunion, since it’s a live broadcast. I’m here solely for appetizers and company.”
Balthazar, his faux-hawk now turquoise blue, appears down the hallway, and Barnes panics. “Hide me. Last I saw him, he wanted to do a joint astrology reading on La Brea.”
“You didn’t want to learn about your signs?” I ask.
“His sign is Idiot,” Barnes replies, sneaking away.
Imogen steps into makeup, while Zara and I walk onward, catching up. Aspen pops out of the raucous green room tinted a fresh shade of orange, and Zara follows my anxious gaze to the cast’s voices. “Shawn’s not coming,” she says, still never pulling a punch.
“Oh, I… I just figured they’d pay him to show up.”
“They tried, believe me.” Then Zara looks past me. “Though someone didn’t say no.”
I see a tall couple stride in. PB and Jiamin, hand in hand.
I haven’t spoken to PB since he quit. He notices me, then mutters something to Jiamin and darts into a dressing room.
By contrast, Jiamin approaches to embrace me.
“I meant to call after the accident, but by the time I heard about the LA move, it felt too late… I’m just thankful you’re all okay. ”
“Don’t give it a second thought,” I assure her. “How’s Vanessa?”
“Rehab seems to be taking for once, believe it or not.”
“Is she coming tonight too?”
“No, Vanessa has unfinished business here, but she’s not ready yet. Maybe one day.”
“I might have accumulated some unfinished business of my own,” I say tentatively.
She sighs. “When PB gets hurt, it’s hard for him to let things go. It’s just who he is.”
I nod, not wanting to push it. “He’s okay though?”
“He’s going to be a father, actually.” She can’t suppress her smile, nor I mine. “Early days, summer baby. The surrogate’s in Connecticut. I already intimidate her apparently.”
“Well, you are a supermodel.” I grin. “So your parents finally came around?”
“Not quite,” she replies. “They cut me off, thus tonight’s cameo. God knows what the job prospects are for an ex-model and a blacklisted stockbroker, but PB swears he won’t compete on the show again. So that’s something. It’s something to be the one that’s chosen.”
“Yes,” I answer. “It is.”
The finale transpires like a documentary, a “just-the-facts-ma’am” approach that’s a strong format deviation.
During the last commercial break of the episode, we are briskly shepherded from the monitors in the green room to sit onstage for the Reunion, three rows arranged in elimination order, with PB silent behind me.
The live studio audience cheers, the juggernaut imminent.
I assumed the episode would end with my fall, but Endeavor still has a twist up its sleeve.
We hover above Milford Sound from a helicopter, three figures floating below, then cut to a Queenstown hospital.
My unconscious body passes on a gurney—so sickeningly pale and lifeless that I look like a corpse, continents of blood-black bruises blooming over my body almost in real time—and every instinct to forbid the kids watching this is totally validated.
We cut to a heretofore unseen Greta comforting Erika in the waiting room when Barnes suddenly collapses.
As they hurry to him, Zara descends like a fury: “I said turn the damn cameras off!”
It cuts to black, and a firm hand grips my shoulder. In my ear, PB whispers gently, “Wipe your eyes. Don’t give anyone the satisfaction.”
Drew Ecklund somberly struggles to declare we are “Live from Hollywood,” and the next hour passes in a perfunctory blur.
Nonetheless, the machine still knows what’s required.
Chrissy and Melange must exchange just enough barbs.
Hartt must promise his vengeance. Greta of course must tease her upcoming arc as a high school principal—with secret motives!
—on the network’s teen vampire drama Wuthering Bites.
Everyone must play their roles. Except me, Barnes, Imogen, and Erika.
We remain too numb from what we just saw, though Fortune is classically placid.
But any time Drew comes to one of us, the circus is for once united, someone always to the rescue.
Often Melange, Greta, or Jiamin. But mostly PB. Without fail, PB.
“Thanks,” I tell him during the Reunion’s final commercial break.
“What can I say? You were looking… totally doomed.”
I might not get another chance. “PB, I’m—”
“I know. You should be.” He coughs. “Still. Everything I said—”
“Was correct.”
“It doesn’t mean I meant it. Well, not all of it.” For someone so verbal, it’s strange to see PB quiet. “Lunch tomorrow?” he finally asks. “You’re buying.”
“I figured.”
He resurrects his wicked grin as we return from commercial. “Buddy, I’m irrevocably unemployable. What choice do I have but to spend your primetime blood money?”
I suppress my laughter, and Ecklund rouses the audience one more time. “Well, folks, we can agree that was an unprecedented season, but before we go, I have one last question… did you ever imagine an Endeavor finale where no one won?”
Scattered answers sing out from the audience. Of course not. Who would?
“Well…” He pauses dramatically before screaming, “You still haven’t! Roll that tape!”
The screen bursts alive with footage from the single camera that recorded me before I took my plunge.
Away I go, and the camera dully hits the damp grass, the cameraman’s feet bolting away.
Two bodies then stagger into frame and tumble to the ground, one tightly wrapping her arms around the other…
unknowingly crossing that painted finish line.
“The winners of Endeavor Season 20… Erika Bhaduri and Imogen Cuthbert!”
Ecklund brandishes the giant foam check, thunderous confetti raining down. Barnes nudges a stunned Erika forward, actually laughing, “Hurry, it’s live television!” Imogen too at last rises, gripping my hand as she passes me and not letting go until long after we hear “cut.”
Imogen has officially won the most seasons of Endeavor and the most cumulative prize money in the show’s history.
Hers is the unimpeachable legacy. As for Erika, she’s the first trans winner.
She’s also the first person to win after another family member won previously.
Perhaps a less revolutionary headline, but it’s meaningful to me.