Portrayed by: Michael Bradway
Book | Show: One Golden Summer and Every Year After
There’s something about an eldest son who harbors all the family trauma and is simultaneously full of deep self-loathing that’s the best kind of character to write about. Someone who’s so layered, you can consistently try to peel back until all that’s left in the middle are soft edges barbed by wires. That’s Charlie Florek in a nutshell, both in Carley Fortune’s Barry’s Bay duology and in Prime Video’s Every Year After.
Still, Alice Everly says it best toward the end of One Golden Summer: “I know that he’s worth so much more than he thinks he is. Because I know Charlie. The incorrigible flirt. The human beam of sunlight.” There are a lot of characters that are often described as human sunshine, but there’s something special about Charlie and how Fortune writes him. How he comes alive with so much ease on the page, and now, how Michael Bradway captures that light, bringing it to the surface in every scene. It’s remarkable, really.
Charlie Florek, the Human Sunshine
He’s quiet when we first see him on our screens, overcome with grief but masking his sorrow for everyone else. Or, at least in this case, for Percy. That immediate showcase of his loss makes the sunshine even more necessary when we go back in the past and see how wildly different he is from his younger brother, Matt Cornett’s Sam.
To start, when he’s much younger, a number of Charlie’s decisions make him reckless and impulsive, but where his heart is concerned—metaphorically, given the circumstances of the Season 1 finale—it’s always been with his brother. It’s always in the right place. To protect Sam, to care for him, and to shield him from all the ugliness in their lives. This is exactly why the decision that he and Percy make to sleep together haunts them both so badly, because it’s completely against what they both stand for and who they are. In that moment, Charlie wasn’t thinking of Sam or Percy. But it’s exactly what makes his regret so achingly palpable because we get a clear sense of how much it guts him in the present when all he’s ever wanted to be is a light for his brother.
Season 1 doesn’t exactly give us too much time to spend with the best version of Charlie, but we still get enough to see that all his life, he’s believed that he isn’t good enough. “I think I’m f–ked up,” he says at one point. Sue, in flashbacks, even tells Percy that part of the reason Charlie has such a hard time trusting people is because of everything he’s had to endure while she lost herself in her grief. “My whole life was set to protect you,” he tells Sam. Characters continuously voice how no one goes to Charlie for relationships. He’s heard every name in the book at this point. And as we watch him wrestle with Sam’s anger, we get a clear sign of just how intensely his light has dimmed. How he’s covered in darkness and pain. How he’s harbored and internalized every bad thing said about him and worn it around his chest like armor. Why bother trying if he’s no good anyway?
But that’s not the case, is it? Because he does try. Or at least he attempts to when he starts to second-guess himself over and over, and he questions whether he and Delilah could be something more. Charlie’s trying, even if he’s putting up a facade, and that’s where his character journey shines best in Season 1.
I often think about what he says to Alice in the book when they’re talking about the photograph and how remarkably Bradway brings those emotions to life in the finale before his heart attack. It’s such a small moment, but if we get some version of it on screen, it’s going to hit like a ton of bricks. “You should’ve said hi,” he tells her. And Charlie Florek was the boy who would’ve said hi back—the man who’d say it in the present day, too. But the realization and understanding of how much the photograph means to him because it reminds him of simpler times is something that I imagine future seasons will touch on with such nuance that I can’t wait to experience it.
Still, there’s so much to appreciate about Charlie Florek and every smirk we get from him. Every gaze that lingers for a few beats too long. Every decision he makes that’s in favor of someone else. Every impulsive moment that brings light alongside darkness. There’s so much to unpack here, and with Every Year After thankfully renewed for Season 2, I can’t wait to see more of his journey when he finally meets Alice Everly.
Writer’s Note: This deep dive will be expanded in Season 2.
First Featured Image Credit: ©Justine Yeung/Prime Video