Screens: MTV
What Kind Of Wicked Game Is Isaak Playing With Courtney?
It's a superlative Catfish as the most useless co-host imaginable assists Nev in the most irresponsible investigation yet.
Courtney, a bartender and single mother in "a little town in Georgia."
Isaak, occupation unknown (though the online dating profile Courtney interacted with states, "I do massage therapy"); he also lives in Georgia.
Here's where I have to explain how ass-fucking-backwards this entire episode is. Nev lays it out up top to Cassidy Wolf, Miss Teen USA 2013, his co-host for this episode, and herself a victim of cyberstalking. (Her stalker hacked her computer to watch her via her camera and tried to blackmail her over what he saw, which I'm going to assume meant she was either jerking off to online porn or picking her nose a lot because what else would he have on her? Anyway, he's in prison now.) What is happening in this situation is that the show got an application purporting to be from a Courtney, who wanted to get to the bottom of the motivations of a person named Isaak that she'd met online. Except when the show's producers reached out to her, Courtney knew nothing about it, and hadn't filled out the application at all. The natural assumption is that this guy Isaak (with whom Courtney had communicated via text after they connected through OKCupid) filled it out FOR her to try to do a REVERSE investigation that would force her to do what she had so far refused to -- meet him in person -- and while my first impulse is to ask why he ever thought this would work...it did? Which is the problem? But I will get to that.
Anyway, even though Courtney did not actually initiate this whole process, we wouldn't be watching it if she wasn't interested in (or hadn't been persuaded into) meeting Isaak and finding out what his deal is, so here are the clues that Isaak wasn't the guy for Courtney that made her break off contact with him in the first place. Isaak reeled Courtney in by saying that even though he was on OKCupid, he wasn't interested in a sexual relationship because he identifies as asexual, but then started complimenting her a lot (in a way that suggests to me that he was hitting on her in the conventional, non-asexual fashion, not that Courtney says that). Courtney agreed to meet him in person, but then, although Isaak's main profile pic was this obvious stock photo of a model...
...before they met, he sent Courtney a photo of a totally different person and said it was him as well.
When Courtney called him out for the discrepancy, she told him not to contact her again, and apparently he hadn't, because she says she hadn't given him a thought after that until the show called her. "There's a really weird, dangerous side to this guy in how far he'll go and what he's willing to do to get your attention," says Nev, apparently deciding that the right course of action with such a person is to reward him with exactly the kind of attention he's seeking. "I think it'll be a lot safer for you to know who this person is, too," Cassidy adds. Great job, champs! It's the first of a series of choices by Nev/Production with regard to this case, every one of which is completely wrong and makes me wish this show could spend some of its "hilarious sepia westernwear olde-tyme photo shoot for Max and Nev" budget on the services of a legal consultant and/or social worker who could have intervened at this point, stopped Nev from proceeding, and kept this episode from ever getting in front of our eyes. Guys: if someone ever stalks you like this, DO NOT ENGAGE HIM (or her, but...him) and certainly do not agree to meet in person. Courtney did, so...let's get on with it, I guess.
When Nev and Cassidy get to Courtney's house, she doesn't really tell them much more than she had on Skype, but we do get some insight into why Cassidy was chosen to be the co-host on this particular episode: she's going to fill in all of Courtney's blanks with her own narcissism!
Cool.
No excuses offered, apparently.
"This guy is really prepared to do anything to get this girl's attention," says Nev. "That's a big concern." So big you're going to give him exactly what he wants, apparently! You are great at this!
Cassidy is so useless for this assignment that seeing Nev do a Google Image search astonishes her, and she announces that she's never done it before. Don't say that out loud, dumbshit -- and anyway, you didn't have to, because we all assumed you hadn't. They find the obvious stock photo on another dating site with all the same info filled in as the OKCupid profile Courtney had connected with. But they find the second possible self-portrait Isaak sent Courtney on Asexuality.org, attached to a post in which he says he masturbates "a lot," but has "never thought about the naked body towards either gender while masturbating," which apparently is not unusual for people who identify themselves as asexual. What he DOES think about when he jerks off is feet.
When they look back at the application Isaak filled out -- in which he writes about Courtney's misgivings about him as Courtney, which is so creepy -- they see that he included the email address for the "significant other" (himself), which is isaak[surname]@[whatever]. Could that be his real last name? TO THE INTERNET!
Searching the full name turns up a reference from GSUProblems, and a case in which Isaak went on Judge Mathis to settle a dispute involving his having given a girl rent money in exchange for her letting him massage her feet, except maybe it was just a loan, and she never paid it back. A producer in Cassidy's earpiece (I assume) tells her to point at a Karla, a commenter, and say that they should reach out to her for more colour on her view that, having worked with Isaak, he is a creep; someone else says he puts ads on Craigslist offering girls free foot massages, which seems pretty sexual for an asexual.
When Karla gets back to them, she tells a tale very similar to Courtney's: he seemed kind of strange, and when he pursued her past a point she was comfortable with, she stopped responding to him; he then he came to her workplace one night looking for her. Ugh. Long story short: the preponderance of evidence indicates that there will not (or should not) be any kind of love or friendship connection for Isaak and Courtney at the end of this.
When Nev (and Cassidy, whatever) show Courtney what they've found, starting with his post on Asexuality.org, Courtney says he'd told her that he never masturbated. Here's where I start to feel Courtney is SOMEWHAT responsible for his interest in her, because is it normal to ask someone you've never met whether he's ever had an orgasm, as she did? No. Then they get to the foot fetish.
Judging by the laugh in Nev's voice, he finds Isaak's rather vanilla fetish completely hilarious, but when he asks whether that ever came up in Courtney's conversations with him, she is grossed out.
The Judge Mathis thing is also news to Courtney, and when they tell her about Karla's experience with Isaak's unwanted advances, she dubs the whole thing "scary." Cassidy is scared too, and here's where I'd just like to break in and ask, if someone had approached her when she was in the middle of her own stalking drama and offered her the chance to meet up with him just to say hi, would she have taken it? Well, since she later says that if she were Courtney, she would NOT want to meet Isaak, WE ALL HAVE OUR ANSWER, and yet she goes from telling Courtney, "I'm scared for you" to joining Nev in coercing Courtney -- who says she doesn't know how to describe how she's feeling, but "it's scary," so maybe the word you're groping for is "SCARED"?! -- into setting up an in-person meeting. "Is he going to listen? Is he going to leave me alone?" asks Courtney. Hmmmm, well, since meeting him will demonstrate to him that if he just bugs you enough he will provoke you into a response, probably not?
But, of course, we wouldn't be watching this if Courtney didn't agree. Fucking Courtney, you idiot.
Nev calls Isaak, who's excited about getting contacted by the show (a good reason, once again, that the show should end, honestly), and instead of just jumping to setting a meeting place and time, starts pre-confronting Isaak about his relentless texting having escalated to a fake show application, behaviour he describes as "borderline obsessive." "Well, what else was I supposed to do?" asks Isaak, tone-deafly. "You can only text so many times and have those texts go unnoticed until you just run out of ideas, and I just took a few minutes to put in one little application to you guys. It's not like I hired a private investigator or drove by her house or anything." First of all, do we believe he never drove by her house? Cassidy, for one, later says she doesn't. Second, see, Nev (and MTV), how this show's existence has become PART OF THE PROBLEM PEOPLE HAVE WITH ONLINE RELATIONSHIPS GOING SOUTH?!
Nev says they want to let Isaak tell his side of the story -- preparing Isaak with a warning that Courtney's not that cool with any of this -- and Isaak agrees, saying that he just wants "one chance, one date, one conversation." So if he still thinks a "date" might happen, he's definitely not hearing that warning. Uuuuuugh this should really never ever have gotten to this point.
Well...yeah.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: nothing good ever happens in parks, and this is no exception. Right off the bat, Isaak -- the guy in the second self-portrait, duh -- comes across as unconventional by shaking with his left hand.
Note how Courtney doesn't want to get anywhere near him.
So, here's Isaak's spiel: he thought the stock photo looked similar enough to himself that he could get away with pretending it was his; he didn't want to put his real photos up online for fear of someone misusing them -- you know, kind of like he did with that stranger's? He admits that it was dishonest, and apologizes. So that's a wrap!
Just kidding. Nev says he wants to know more about Isaak's intentions toward Courtney, and Isaak says that "Aside from, you know, she [sic] being beautiful," they had great, meaningful talks; he appreciated the way he could open up to her and not feel judged by her, and he liked how open-minded she was. It's good that he's using the past tense on all these verbs because present-day Courtney is resolutely not making eye contact with him through almost all of this, if the editing is to be believed. He stands by his claim of asexuality, saying he's interested in "a nonsexual relationship with a lovely female." PULL THE PLUG.
No, no, of course there is more. Isaak is working on his massage therapy license. He has a portable massage table; it's in his car right now!
Isaak acknowledges that his last conversation with Courtney ended badly, due to his photo deception. Courtney hammers way too hard on this point, forcing Nev to be the one to say that the greater issue is that Isaak impersonated Courtney to apply for the show??? "I just didn't know how else to do it again, that's all!" he pleads. Courtney gives him a hard look, to which he replies EVEN MORE TONE-DEAFLY by saying, "Y'all are the only ones wanting to taaaaaaalk! I want her to get to know me!" I mean, I can understand his confusion on this point? Because she's here? But she does not want that.
Nev and Cassidy take Courtney aside, where Cassidy says she "can't get a good read" on Isaak. What aren't you getting, HE'S BEHAVING IN AN EXTREMELY OFF-PUTTING WAY. Courtney says it doesn't seem like he gets how serious this is: "You can't make anybody be a part of your life." Except he did. You're here. "It would be good for him to hear this from you," says Nev, incorrectly, because she HAS already told Isaak exactly that -- "Don't contact me again" is unambiguous -- and he plainly CAN'T hear it and definitely won't now that his hard work has totally paid off!
Meanwhile...
Courtney returns to say that when she and Isaak were talking, she was willing to meet up and try to have some kind of friendship, "until I realized that I had been deceived." But if there had been any chance of her getting past THAT, he killed it by impersonating her to MTV, "and invaded [her] life with this": "I didn't ask for this." Welllllll...no. But she could have said no at any time. That's on her. Isaak apologizes, and says he won't make any more attempts to get to know her.
In maybe the worst move of all, Courtney says, "I have compassion for how difficult I would think it would be for you to find the situation that you're looking for, you know, but I think that there might be hope for you in the future to find someone if-- if you are honest from the get-go, about everything." No no. Now he thinks there's still a chance that he can play on your stated empathy. As they leave, Nev and Cassidy congratulate Courtney for saying something so nice. No, no. No.
Oh god, and then when they get into the car, Nev asks Cassidy how that was for her as if anyone gives a shit, and she STARTS FUCKING CRYING. You fucking attention whore! Hit the bricks!
Since Courtney has zero interest in being anywhere near Isaak ever again, he has to settle for Couch Time with Cassidy and Nev, and here's where things get -- if you can imagine this -- even fucking creepier. There's so much that I just have to point-form it.
- When Cassidy tells Isaak about her stalker: "I hope you don't look at me the same way you look at that guy." Cassidy: "...Similar in a sense."
- "Things can easily get misunderstood with girls sometimes."
- "You didn't give her the money in exchange for her letting you massage her feet?" "Well, I never gave her the money. It was a loan."
- "I didn't know about sex until I was almost twenty." !!!
- When Nev and Cassidy are like, um, what, he explains, "I thought it was just a way of having a baby: I didn't know it was something that couples did regularly for pleasure at all."
- Nev doesn't understand how Isaak could reach adulthood without having any "concept of casual sex through pop culture," to which Isaak says his family didn't have cable until he was almost in high school, and his mother "was very picky about the shows we could watch."
- Cassidy's like, your parents never told you about sex? "Never." "None of your friends never [sic] brought it up?" "Never."
- "I'd love to keep meeting people, but I'm more than okay being single for the rest of my life." Uh, good call.
Cassidy congratulates Isaak for being true to himself. No.
There are no hugs.
Three months later, Courtney still hasn't heard from Isaak, and is on a break from online dating. She's okay being alone for now and focusing on her son. Isaak is now using real photos of himself online; he's still a proud asexual, still upset not to have gotten to meet Max, and still really wants to get on a reunion show. PLEASE. NO.
Well, Isaak has learned that he can do what he wants online if he only uses his real photo, and that if he's persistent enough, the targets of his stalking will eventually relent and meet. WE have learned that if someone scares you and you never want to meet him, TRUST YOUR INSTINCTS. Just because nothing bad has followed Courtney's experience with Isaak -- at least, not in the three months directly afterward -- the insights in The Gift Of Fear are as trenchant today as they were in 1999, and I hope someone gives her a gift basket of copies.