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Since the new season is premiering tonight, I checked my bookmarks to see if my thread from Season 3 was still active. It's still in the live forums but it's being locked for archival so no more posting in it, which means a new thread! In 2010, a documentary film came out called Catfish. In it, a filmmaker named Nev Schulman had become romantically involved with a girl named Megan online...or so he thought. He had also become friends with Megan's family over Facebook, including her mother Angela and Angela's husband Vince. He tracks down the person he thought he'd been carrying on a relationship with only to find out that the person he'd been talking to was actually Megan's mother, Angela, a middle-aged married woman with two mentally challenged kids that she takes care of full-time, who claimed to have cancer just to make things interesting in her relatively uninteresting life. We later find out that she never actually had cancer and Megan was not a real person. Basically, just about everything Angela had told Nev was a lie. What is a "catfish", you ask? Well: Wikipedia posted:Vince, talking with Nev, tells a story. He says that when live cod were shipped to Asia from North America, the fish's inactivity in their tanks resulted in only mushy flesh reaching the destination; but fishermen found that putting catfish in the tanks with the cod kept them active, and thus ensured the quality of the fish. Vince talks of how there are people in everyone's lives who keep us active, always on our toes and always thinking. It is implied that he believes Angela to be such a person. Flash forward to 2012: Following the success of the film, Nev and his filmmaker partner Max Joseph decided to reach out to people across the country who were in relationships either online or over the phone but had never met the other person and believed they might be getting "catfished". Hence, Catfish: The TV Show was born. In order to track down the "catfish" in an episode of the show, Nev and Max will use various tactics such as looking up phone numbers/addresses online, using reverse Google image search, talking to friends/family members, etc. And a lot of the time, the catfish will be someone the person knows, like a friend, family member, former friend or ex-girlfriend/boyfriend. To give you an idea of how crazy the show can get, here's the story from an episode last season: This girl Carmen writes in to the show, as she is concerned that her cousin Antwane is being catfished by a guy named Tony he met through a gay phone chat line. Antwane and Tony have been talking to each other for 3 years but have never met. Antwane barely knows anything about Tony: not his last name, not what he looks like, not where he lives, etc. Nev and Max do some research and discover that Tony might be in jail. But since they aren't completely sure, they decide to check out 3 different addresses that came up in their research. 2 of the addresses have residents but the residents do not know who Tony is. The 3rd and final address is an abandoned, padlocked house in a terrible part of town. After finishing looking around at the 3rd house and feeling discouraged about their search, out of nowhere Carmen blurts out "I'm Tony." As it turns out, Antwane had said some bad poo poo about her years ago and so Carmen, vowing revenge, created the Tony persona and decided to get Antwane on Catfish so she could reveal herself to him on national television. She has different voices she uses, so Antwane never caught on that it was her. At the end of the episode, Antwane, feeling betrayed, decides to no longer maintain any type of contact with his cousin Carmen. So if that sounds enough for you and you want to start watching the show, it airs Wednesday nights on MTV at 10/9c. And after each episode airs, there's a live show called Chatfish in which Nev, Max, the catfished and the catfish themselves are all in attendance and talk about the episode. The season 4 premiere is tonight (Wed. 2/25/15). and here's the setup for the episode: Official Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOkk4IRYBzQ Max was directing a movie at the start of the shooting of this season, so Nev has enlisted various celebrity guest hosts to go on the first few episodes with. Then Max will return later in the season. In the past, Catfish has been some great trash TV for the most part. Some episodes are duds that aren't worth discussing at all, but then others really make you want to evaluate the entire human condition. So let's hope that this season has some real weird episodes with some real sociopaths doing the catfishing, as those are always the most interesting. Rageaholic fucked around with this message at 07:25 on Feb 25, 2015 |
# ? Feb 25, 2015 07:17 |
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# ? May 3, 2024 01:22 |
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If you're wondering whether or not this show is scripted, this vulture.com article explains the process of casting and making an episode from beginning to end:quote:
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# ? Feb 25, 2015 07:19 |
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This show is prime Guilty Pleasure at full volume and I love Nev and Max so consider me psyched.
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# ? Feb 25, 2015 07:50 |
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That article makes this show sound way less exploitative and lovely than it looks on the screen.
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# ? Feb 26, 2015 00:52 |
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One of the best episodes was Artis & Jess from season 2. Basically, this guy named Artis was in a relationship with a girl in real life, but he also thought he was in a relationship with a girl named Jess online. Along with Nev and Max, he met up with who he thought was Jess and it turned out to be a dude named Justin. Justin acted like a dick/literal crazy person to everyone, said he wasn't gay when Nev asked him point blank if he was, etc. Justin later revealed that his girlfriend had been cheated on in the past, so he made it his mission to pose as a woman online, make guys who were in relationships already fall in love with this fake girl and then reveal himself to them, embarrassing the poo poo out of them and making them think twice about cheating on their girlfriends. It was easily one of the most outlandish reveals of the entire series. There's no good version of the reveal clip on YouTube, but here's a recap of the episode along with part of the reveal on MTV's site: http://www.mtv.com/shows/catfish/catfish-the-tv-show-season-2-ep-9-recap/952292/video/#id=1713521
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# ? Feb 26, 2015 01:21 |
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"She owns a fishnet top and I'M BASIC?! " So at first I thought it was pretty weird how that went from how it started to how it ended up, but then when Nev sat down with Kara, it became pretty easy to understand. Also , the new season of Teen Mom is called "Teen Mom OG" and they're bringing back all the girls from the first season. That's gonna be a loving trainwreck and I kind of want to watch it.
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# ? Feb 26, 2015 05:01 |
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Episode isn't on MTV's website yet Though I realized I never watched the last couple of season 3 episodes, which are on Hulu.
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# ? Feb 26, 2015 06:20 |
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Here's the scoop on tonight's episode, guest hosted by Cassidy Wolf (Miss Teen USA 2013): Also, uh oh, precision, you and I can't be the only ones that get any enjoyment out of this dumb show, can we? I thought there would be a bigger audience for this show than just a couple of us, but maybe not.
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# ? Mar 4, 2015 08:24 |
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# ? May 3, 2024 01:22 |
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I watch every episode, and I think I just realized the last post here was March 4th and not May 4th. Ooops
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# ? May 16, 2015 01:42 |