Screens: MTV
It's The Hairiest Episode In Catfish History!
No, Nev doesn't take his shirt off again. Hairstylist Solana has fallen for thick-coiffed Elijah. But when she finally gets to meet him, will she wig out?
Solana, a hairstylist from Ocean View, DE.
Elijah, of somewhere in Minnesota.
After meeting on MySpace many years ago, they developed as lovey a relationship as one can when one is fourteen (as Solana was at the time), his profile suddenly just straight disappeared one day, only to resurface two years later and contact her through Facebook, but since he'd vanished so suddenly before, she was never certain that it was definitely the same guy from MySpace; they've never videochatted; they haven't even spoken on the phone in six years, so she has no idea what his voice might sound like as an adult.
Elijah doesn't have a webcam; he's never been able to text her because texting wasn't really a thing when they first knew each other, and now because he doesn't have a cell phone (though he uses a texting app on his iPod); the reason he left MySpace so abruptly was that his mom "had him on lockdown" and wouldn't let him use the internet OR the phone, and I guess still won't even though now he's twenty???
Since the target's full name is Elijah Prok, it seems like it should be pretty easy to find him on the internet? Pretty uncommon names both separately and together? (Though now that it's been used on TV I look forward to seeing it on a villain in the next Star Trek movie.) Nev and Max start with the only number Solana's ever had for Elijah -- the land line at his mom's house. It belongs to a Denise Prok -- "possible sister," according to Nev, just because Spokeo says she's thirty-three, as if that information has never failed them in the past. "Maybe she could be catfishing Solana," Nev suggests. Might this not be the mom, with the wrong age? Although I guess moms can be Catfish too, AS NEV WELL KNOWS. They really quickly talk themselves into the possibility that "Elijah" isn't a dude now and maybe never was, since he and Solana only talked when he (or "he") was young enough for his voice maybe not to have changed, so that now, since reconnecting (or "reconnecting"), the woman who might be faking it as Elijah COULDN'T talk to Solana on the phone without giving herself away.
Then they search "Elijah Prok" on Facebook and find a profile with like a million selfies of the guy we've already seen. NOW Nev and Max are suspicious that all his photos are of him alone. "Where are all his friends?" Guys, he looks like this.
Would YOU be photographed with him?
Anyway, the more Max and Nev search, the more profiles they find with people's real names and then "(Elijah Prok)" after them. Nev: "Is 'Elijah Prok' just some sort of like made-up embodiment of all emo dudes?"
There are so many fakes that they write off Facebook as a dead end. But then they image search one of his photos, which leads them to Elijah's YouTube profile, where he demos scream-singing (lord) and, in another clip, addresses Christina Grimmie from The Voice. When Elijah mentions in the video that he just got a new camera, Max snorts, "New camera." YES, MAX. WE SEE THAT ELIJAH HAS ACCESS TO A VIDEO CAMERA IN THAT WE ARE WATCHING A VIDEO OF HIM THAT A VIDEO CAMERA, BY DEFINITION, MUST HAVE RECORDED.
Conclusion: the guy in the pictures is really named Elijah Prok. But is that the person Solana's been talking to? HER RELATIONSHIP TO HER NEW REAL-LIFE IN-PERSON BOYFRIEND DANNY HANGS IN THE BALANCE.
Nev and Max lead with the Denise reveal. "Had you ever considered that--" "No!" Solana insists that Elijah is a boy...but as Max and Nev press the idea that she could have been speaking to a girl all along, she sighs deeply. She gets much more upset to see that Elijah has a YouTube channel that he's never told her about. And when they play her a video of present-day Elijah, she can't tell if it's the same voice she spoke to because it was so long ago. "Why is this Elijah that you're talking to so private and hard to get in touch with when he's got a Skype...?" Nev asks. Solana doesn't have an answer for that. "How can I, like, have missed that?" Solana asks. Because, like everyone on this show, you are dumb? If you weren't dumb you would have been able to solve this problem yourself without involving these two boners? "I guess I pushed it out of my mind, to look for him." I GUESS.
No sooner has Solana asked, "What am I supposed to say to him to get him to reply?" than she gets a notification on her phone: it's Elijah, texting. "That's weird," she croaks. Don't you guys text every day? Seems pretty normal to me. So she texts back this whole explanation of the situation which is so banal it's not worth transcribing. Elijah responds right away:
Which seems provocative, but then again, Solana did just tell him that she had enlisted Catfish in her quest to meet him, so assuming that Elijah lives IN THE WORLD, he knows that means she's suspicious of him. "Regardless of who you are physically, you're still the same person on the inside, and that is what matters to me" Solana texts back, and even though that's what they all say at THIS stage, I will give her credit for using "regardless" rather than "irregardless." Elijah texts back, "I guess we can do this," but that he's nervous, and Nev tells her to pursue it before Elijah can change his mind. Then they have to Skype Danny -- who knows the whole story and didn't have a problem with her finding out what Elijah's deal is, if she could -- and tell him that Elijah agreed to meet, so she's going to Minnesota. Danny has a dumb tank top and dumber angel wing tattoos, but he's obviously pretty secure and doesn't seem to care that Solana's doing this. Although, if she's shown Danny photos of Elijah's stupid face, Danny knows he shouldn't have anything to worry about.
Solana has made a lot of styling errors in advance of the crew showing up at the address Elijah has supplied.
And after some interminable business around Nev knocking on the door or ringing the bell (seriously, this episode is so boring that they LEFT THAT IN), this dude emerges.
"Elijah?" asks Nev hopefully, since even if his hypothesis about Solana's unwittingly sapphic relationship apparently isn't going to bear out, there COULD still be a faker to make things interesting. But no, this guy says he is Joshua, and is like, "You guys wanna come in and meet him?!" They do. Leaving them upstairs to loiter alone, Joshua disappears to the basement for SUCH a long time that Solana starts freaking out that they're all going to get killed or something -- SO LONG that they actually cut to commercial...
...and when we return, this dude shows up.
I know MTV puts that little ID pointer on everyone...but I still choose to believe they did it this time because Joshua was gone so long that we all assumed this was him in a wig. Honestly, Elijah doesn't do himself any favours in the credibility department by going through life with THAT on his head. IT LOOKS SO FAKE.
Though it's pretty clear that Joshua and Elijah planned that whole door bit because they know what Catfish is, Elijah plays it off like he didn't come to the door himself because he was doing his hair, and then tousles it, I guess so we know it's actually attached to his head. He can't Skype with Solana because "that computer broke"; his YouTube videos were made with "a really nice camera" that he later sold to pay rent (at his mom's house? Geez, Mom); and he really, really doesn't have a cell phone with texting capabilities. Okay. MAYBE QUIT DYEING YOUR HAIR AND BUYING FLAT IRONS AND ACQUIRE A PHONE, BRO, IT'S 2014. His explanation for the many fake profiles is that the Christina Grimmie clip got him some attention?
After a while, Max and Nev decide to leave the two of them alone to have an extremely awkward conversation in his basement bedroom. It's the usual "I can't believe I'm talking to you." They're both fine? But now that the mystery part of the story is over, they are not intrinsically interesting.
Not so much a confrontation as a hangout. Everyone goes to some indoor skate park to watch Elijah on his skateboard, during the course of which he takes Solana aside and suggests that they get tattoos together -- not each other's names or anything, but he had an idea involving a lion...? Spending the day together hasn't made their chemistry very much more explosive.
Then they break the show format a little to show us Solana at the end of her visit, reading a journal entry about falling in love without our knowing which of the two guys she means, intercut with shots of Solana and Elijah at the tattoo place together because...ugh, jesus, they did it.
But surprise! She's in love with DANNY! She and Elijah, united forever in ink, are Just Friends.
There is a very long hug.
We have to wait until the stupid aftershow to find out that, two weeks after her Minnesota adventure, Solana and Danny went to the courthouse and got married. Elijah is also talking to some girl. Don't care; don't care.
Try searching the internet A LITTLE before you email Nev. Spokeo can be wrong about stuff, like the age of your internet crush's mom. Glomming on to a singing show contestant can be enough to make you internet famous now. And THAT HAIR IS REAL.