Catfish Enlists Selita Ebanks To Help Bianca Find Brogan

Before Max and Nev even get to their first meeting with Bianca, Nev has to tell Bianca that a couple of weeks ago, he met Selita Ebanks. "She loves the show," he claims, though if you watched Chatfish you saw her say she'd only seen a couple of episodes (as many as she needed to make this parody, probably), so that's bullshit, first of all. And if you've EVER seen Nev on any Chatfish, you can imagine how smoothly he delivers all of this clearly scripted nonsense, which is to say, it is very, very stilted and uncomfortable. Anyway, Bianca is fine with Selita Ebanks tagging along on this mission for no reason, which is more than can probably be said for the audience.

On their way to what I assume is the one and only coffee shop with free wifi in Creedmoor, NC, our trio brainstorms reasons Brogan might have dropped offline for a year. Maybe she's in the military, Max suggests. Nev thinks maybe "her parents" (not being okay with her being gay, I assume). Selita thinks that Brogan "could have been pregnant," and that the guy in one of Brogan's photos that Bianca said was Brogan's brother could have actually been "her baby daddy." Max and Nev do the verbal equivalent of patting her on the head for this suggestion.

They haven't even started before Selita's Funny Or Die Catfish parody co-star David Spade "happens" to call, and just when you're getting annoyed that yet another celebrity is unnecessarily stepping on this episode, she and Nev tell Spade what's going on right now, and Spade goes ahead and speaks for us all.

Finally, they begin. Searching her full name, they find something on MeetBeat (?): Brogan Lynn Acaster, female, in Davenport, Iowa. They all seem to take this as a good sign, so I guess at some point Bianca said that's where Brogan's from and either I missed it (doubtful, I watched the cold open twice) or it got cut. They search a few of her photos and find nothing. Nothing on her phone number, on Spokeo -- and nothing on her name, either. "We're not finding anything fishy," narrates Max. "We're just not finding anything."

It's only at this point that it occurs to Nev to do a straight Google search of Brogan's name, so if all of Nev and Max's posturing about how much Selita's going to learn about online sleuthing didn't make her realize they're full of shit, the very late appearance of the obscure tool known as "Google" probably did. The one result that comes up is from a blog post (since taken down by the time they look for it) in which someone asks "Who the hell is Brogan Acaster?" Though that specific entry is gone, they go to the blog, click on the pics...and find this.

Bianca's already shown them that shot of Brogan's thigh tattoos, with the belly cropped out. So Selita was right, and gloats: "There's only a few reason why a bitch'll go missin'." Then Max does a bit where he gives her his toy camera, wanders out to the street, and pretends to try to hitch a ride to his new life. Sadly for Sarah D. Bunting, he comes back.

Nev the goddamn idiot suggests that the girl in the pictures COULD still be Bianca's Brogan, whereupon Max has to remind him about the taken-down blog post indicating that THE PERSON WHO RUNS THIS BLOG already KNOWS ABOUT THE ALLEGED BROGAN and isn't her. So Nev Googles the blog and finds it's owned by a nineteen-year-old named Chloe, who lives in the UK with a guy named Chris in what she describes as their "perfect home together." When they dig a little deeper, they see that "Acaster" is this Chris's name, and that he is the guy "Brogan" had told Bianca was her brother, and they find their way to Chloe's Facebook which has her last name as "Purdon," and Nev strikes out again. So does Bianca, but she seems nice (despite her absolutely enormous ear gauges), so I can't be happy about that part.

However, "not happy" is several degrees of magnitude away from the hand-wringing these three goons are doing. "Poor Bianca," says Selita. "This girl Brogan was going to be her ticket out of here, going to be her-- her ride and die, them two against the world. Now she's alone again." "WHAT does Bianca do now?" frets Max. Well, probably either fill the pockets of her widow's weeds with stones and walk into the ocean, or TURN TWENTY-ONE?! Bianca (despite her really excessively large ear gauges) is a very cute, very nice, VERY YOUNG woman. I think she will be able to bounce back from her disappointment in this person she's never met and try to find love again. CALM DOWN.