The Charm Offensive

Television shows exploring dating, love, and commitment have been a part of the American entertainment industry since the mid-20th century. The Dating Game, a reality show where men and women answered questions without seeing each other, first aired in 1965. The show ended in 1999 after four successful, separate runs, and remains an icon of American reality television. In the early 2000s, reality dating TV capitalized on the public’s fascination with dramatic sensationalism featured in programs like Jerry Springer. Shows like Temptation Island, Flavor of Love, Parental Control, and Joe Millionaire exposed the contestants’ emotional vulnerabilities while highlighting arguments and fights. Similar to Maureen Scott’s vision for Ever After, these shows featured primarily white, cisgender and heterosexual couples, selling the promise of a happy ending while editing the contestants’ out-of-context comments to fulfill preconceived character roles. Modern streaming services like Netflix produce popular shows like Love is Blind and Too Hot to Handle that continue the tradition.

The Charm Offensive resembles The Bachelor, a reality dating competition show during which one man or woman dates dozens of contestants, eliminating participants weekly until, ideally, proposing marriage to the final contestant. Like Ever After, The Bachelor features extravagant one-on-one dates, group dates, and rose ceremonies similar to Ever After’s crowning ceremonies. Both Ever After and The Bachelor are initially filmed in a mansion in Los Angeles before a whittled-down group of contestants travels worldwide to beautiful destinations while competing for love. Several spin-offs like Bachelor in Paradise mirror Ever After: Summer Quest.

LGBTQ+ representation in reality dating television has been minimal. Before the Supreme Court’s 2003 ruling in Lawrence v. Texas, sexual activity between members of the same sex was considered illegal in 14 US states. Although LGBTQ+ representation emerged in various fictional platforms, reality shows shied away from featuring couples of the same sex for fear of public disapproval. Celebrities who publicly discussed their LGBTQ+ sexuality in the late 1990s and early 2000s faced backlash and threats of violence. However, MTV’s A Shot at Love aired in 2007 and featured a bisexual woman’s search for love in a Bachelor-style competition show casting both men and women contestants. More recently, Netflix’s The Ultimatum featured an entirely LGBTQ+, predominantly female cast. In 2018, Colton Underwood starred in The Bachelor with all women contestants. In 2021, Colton publicly came out as gay, a first in The Bachelor’s history. Similar to Charlie, Colton entered his season of the bachelor with limited sexual experience and a conservative upbringing promoting heteronormativity. Colton starred in a Netflix reality series, Coming Out Colton, in which he interviews influential LGBTQ+ people while speaking about his own experience discovering his sexuality.