Screens: MTV
Will Catfish Give Brittany A Shot At Love With Marine Sniper Bryon?
Single mother Brittany has fallen for a troubled ex-Marine she met online...but has she actually fallen for a bunch of BS?
Brittany, of Phoenix. Presented without commentary: she's a stay-at-home divorced mother of three, and she's twenty-four years old.
Bryon, a twenty-seven-year-old Marine currently living in Indiana.
Since messaging her at random on Facebook, Bryon's never agreed to meet Brittany in person or even videochat. She "had to beg him just to get him on the phone," and one of the aspects of their interactions that gives her pause is that, in their now-daily phone calls, "his voice does not match his pictures." Meaning? "It's more of a country voice?" Oh: also, Bryon is a total dreamboat. Seriously, he could be a model.
This is Brittany.
Brittany says Bryon initially messaged her because he thought she was "really pretty."
Since Bryon has PTSD from his military service, Brittany respects his boundaries and tries "not to push him too much." After Brittany tells Max and Nev in their first Skype conversation that she's been watching Catfish since Season 1, Nev asks, "How have you been watching four seasons of this show and still are dating a guy who won't videochat?" "I don't know!" chirps Brittany. "I fell in love." She later suggests that she might charge headlong into "love" with new people because she's never had great relationships with her parents: "I've never had that love and affection from anyone in my family." Case in point: she tells Max and Nev, "I just pray he hasn't lied about anything." "Well, we know he's probably lying about something, right?" says Max. "But if it's something so small?" Brittany vocal-fries. "Then it's just-- I'll brush it over! 'Don't ever lie to me again -- you can tell me anything! If you can tell me about your mom killing herself at two years old'" -- uh, when BRYON was two years old, I assume she means -- "and telling me something that that's so deep?" "But what if that's not true?" asks Nev. "Oh, I would be mad," says Brittany firmly. "'Cause you don't lie about something like that." I mean, if Bryon isn't who he says he is, maybe one could see how he would consider Brittany's attitude toward total honesty something of a moving target.
Then there's the matter of the traditional-hotness gap between Bryon and Brittany. "I'm just gonna ask it," says Nev. "This guy is very concerned with his appearance. Have you thought about his level of interest in you--" "Yeah, I even asked him," says Brittany. "I said, 'If we met on the street, I don't think that I'm your type! I'm not thin!' And he's just like, 'No, you're very beautiful and pretty." Max:
Nev and Max start with the information on Bryon that Brittany's sent them. First up: his Facebook profile. "He's got seventy-five friends, which is very few," says Max. Maybe not if he's only friends people he's close with and has mental health issues? Seventy-five seems like a fair number to me. There are a ton of photos on the account, many of which Brittany's already shown them, and including one of Bryon (or: the back of a human male's head that may or may not belong to Bryon) in the process of aiming a sniper rifle, which one of our commenters has already noted is a gigantic red flag. Sure enough, when they reverse-image search that photo, it turns out to appear on 1200 pages, so: sketchy.
Next, they click on a shot of Bryon at some event that's tagged as having taken place on Long Island either at a place or thrown by an outfit known as "Thirsty Entertainment" (appropriately enough for this show and its many thirst traps). They make what seems to me a rather unlikely leap and look at Thirsty's friends, and it turns out that "Bryon" actually is lame enough to be friends with a bar or party company -- oh, and also, his name isn't Bryon at all.
Clicking on this Joseph character brings Max and Nev to his profile, of course, where they find pretty much all the same photos as have been fleshing out the Bryon profile. Joseph is "also" a Marine, and there's a lot more convincing proof all over it of his connections to other real people and institutions and such. "So, case closed on the mask," says Max, summarizingly.
Time to move on to "Bryon," starting with his phone number, which returns a result: it belongs to a Heather [Redacted], of Owenton, Kentucky. Since neither Max nor Nev says it, I'll conjecture that the location may explain what Brittany had characterized as Bryon's "country" accent. They search Heather's full name on Facebook, but nothing really comes up. And in keeping with the extraordinarily efficient/fake investigations that have marked this back half of Season 4: that's it.
Max and Nev go back over to Brittany's, apparently interrupting a maxi-dress party she had thrown for herself and her cousin Renee.
Before they get into it, Nev and Max quiz Renee about Brittany and what she's like in relationships. Renee says that Brittany's lived with her "off and on" since Brittany was fifteen, and that when she has romantic disappointments, she'll "take a week off" and go cry it out at Renee's, kids in tow. "A week off" from what, if the kids are with her? Brittany doesn't have a job! Renee pleases Brittany by saying she can tell Brittany's happier since she started "seeing" Bryon...but off Max's question admits that Brittany does have a tendency to rush into relationships: "She trusts real easily, and it worries me. I just don't want him to not be who he says he is and for her to get hurt in the long run." BUT WHAT ARE THE ODDS THAT WILL HAPPEN?
Brittany doesn't seem too alarmed by the reveal that the image of him totally in the middle of sniping is probably clip art. But when they show her "Bryon"'s face on Joseph's Facebook profile, she starts to flush. Furthermore, the page indicates that he's currently stationed in Japan. "So he hasn't even been in the U.S. during the time that you've been talking to 'Bryon,'" Max spells out -- and rightly so, since as we'll soon see (spoiler), this is a lady who's pretty determined not to notice things any one of us would find impossible to ignore. Nev: "Which would then, in turn, suggest that most if not everything you've been told is--" "Lie," finishes Brittany. "False," Nev confirms. Brittany breaks, at last, and starts bawling that she's angry at herself.
"You're not stupid," says Renee. Well, she's not NOT stupid -- though exactly how stupid she is remains to be seen. (Spoiler: quite!) Renee puts the blame back on Bryon -- which, to be fair, is where more than half of it belongs though maybe not much more than half -- rhetorically asking, "Why would you do that to somebody? How could you do that to somebody?" "How could you talk to my daughter?" says Brittany melodramatically -- because, oh yeah, Brittany's told her kids (the oldest of whom is, at most, eight) all about Bryon and let one of her daughters talk to him on the phone, because at some point one of them saw Bryon's photo on her phone when they were speaking and asked who he was. "I'm not going to lie to my kids." - Brittany. Uh, really? Because your kids are little. There are things they don't need to know. Although I guess if she's (probably) keeping up the story of Santa Claus for their sakes, she might easily make the logical leap and make them believe in Bryon, another man who doesn't exist. Seriously, though, responsible single parents will see new romantic prospects for months before putting their children's hearts at risk by bringing them into their children's lives, and this one thinks she should just go ahead and involve at least one of her children in a "relationship" with someone she's literally not even "seeing" and who is (supposedly) unstable due to PTSD? Great parenting; it's pretty clear why neither of the men who are her children's fathers thought it wise to let Brittany put their kids in front of MTV's cameras.
In spite of all this, I guess we're supposed to feel bad for Brittany as she shuffles off to some other part of the house to cry...harder than she was crying at the table, which is pretty hard and, under the circumstances, undignified, if I may be as completely honest as Brittany seems to think we should be at all times. Renee doesn't help by going after her and suggesting, "Maybe he just used a different name. Like, you never know." Sometimes you do? This may seem like the right thing to say in the moment, but giving Brittany what is pretty clearly false hope is not a loving act, RENEE.
Finally, Brittany comes back out and apologizes. Max nicely says "it's shocking" (not really), and Nev adds, "No one wants to get lied to or deserves to be tricked." As I feel I must keep noting as long as this show is going to keep coddling its dupes: if you're not going to do the actual bare minimum of sleuthing on your own to determine the truthfulness of what a complete stranger on the internet is telling you about ANYTHING, you kind of do deserve whatever pain befalls you as a result. Do you want to be this girl?
Of course you don't. So learn from her failure and don't be a simpleton. Be a champion, like this girl.
Nev moves on to show Brittany the cell phone registration information for Kentucky Heather. Though anyone would find this pretty damning, Nev tries to soften the blow by suggesting that Bryon could be Heather's brother or boyfriend or something. Renee:
Brittany's like, I know you want to say "I told you so," so just do it, and Renee demurs, but tells Nev and Max, "I always tell her, like, 'Learn how to just be by yourself and spend time with just you and your kids.'" "Find myself," Brittany agrees. That is actually excellent advice that I have zero confidence she will ever take, so good luck to her children, since Brittany seems to have no interest in Renee's reminder that they will give Brittany the unconditional love she was apparently so desperate for that she let herself believe all this goddamn nonsense.
Whatever: does Brittany want Nev to try to set up a meeting with whomever she's actually been talking to? She does, so he goes outside to call Bryon, but the call goes straight to voicemail. When he goes back in to report on what's just happened, he's already referring to the person they're trying to reach as "them" and not "him," and though he corrects his pronoun mid-sentence, I think we all know which way Nev is leaning on this one. Nev also reminds Brittany that they have the address where Bryon's cell phone owner lives, so they could just go there. Another ambush? God, this season's getting repetitive.
Nev and Max are in the car on their way back to the hotel when Nev's phone rings with a call from "Bryon's sister." Max:
What do you know, her name is Heather. Nev recaps the message he left on "Bryon"'s phone as though he doesn't know Heather heard it, because she is Bryon, and Heather says she's calling not because she is Bryon but because she thinks coming on the show wouldn't be good for Bryon. Nev butters up Heather by saying she sounds nice, but also, that they know the "Bryon" Facebook page is fake and that "Bryon"'s phone is registered to her and that if "Bryon" were a real person he would spell his name one of the two accepted ways. (Some of that might be me editorializing.) Heather says she doesn't know what Bryon does online, but cops to the phone thing, saying they have a family plan. Nev asks Heather to speak to "Brrrrrryon," and Heather says she'll see what she can do. "That could be the sister?" Nev shrugs. Max:
Nev calls Brittany to report what Heather told him and how fishy it all is, basically. He thinks they should plan to go to Kentucky regardless; Brittany agrees. The next day, as they're heading for the airport, Nev lets Brittany send "Bryon" a text from his phone, and when Bryon replies that "he" is "kinda scared" about how "super-fast" this is, Nev is back to using "them" again before dictating a text for Brittany to send about being honest and arranging a place to meet, and then they're at the airport.
Later, in her hotel room in Louisville, Brittany has apparently taken a shower and then put her stank plane clothes back on (gross) as she reports that "Bryon" has sent her a text whining about not being ready: "If you love me, don't make me go through this." Brittany responds by saying they "just flew almost 7 hours" to see him, which makes her having put her airplane outfit back on that much more disgusting. There's a cardigan. She must be so pitty and crotchy right now. Those garments should be in a hotel laundry bag in a closed drawer until she's ready to pack up again and leave, not on her showered body. What's that? Her hygiene isn't the point? Maybe it should be. The end of that text is "The least you could do is meet me." Now Brittany's pissed off at "Bryon," whoever he is, for being a baby.
The next day, we have to hear these whiny texts again, read in Brittany's whiny voice. Bryon had promised her that he would text her in the morning about whether he would relent and meet her, but so far he hasn't. Max brings up the ambush option again, so Brittany texts, "We're here and ready to meet. Are you?" While they wait, Nev psychoanalyzes Brittany since they have nothing better to do, and she promises that, per Renee's advice, she's going to be "more guarded now." She won't, but it's cute she thinks she will. Bryon texts back to say he's nervous because he lives with his parents and doesn't want them involved, and then gives some incredibly convoluted directions to another relative's house that will keep them off roads where anyone would see them, none of which, for whatever reason, gets cut for air as if we care about the back alley to "Bryon"'s aunt and uncle's house when WE ALL KNOW BRYON IS NOT REAL.
Five hundred years later, Max and Nev and Brittany end up in a driveway behind someone's house. While Max and Brittany wait, Nev creeps into the garage and up to the inside door and actually GOES IN because I guess he thinks the cameras make him invulnerable and/or give him law enforcement powers? Whatever: after the commercial, someone comes to the door we actually didn't see Nev knock on, and out comes Heather.
Brittany is immediately combative; Nev starts to ask whether they should expect anyone else-- "To come the fuck out?" Brittany finishes. Look, ding dong, Heather was obviously wrong to lie, but you're the one who decided to believe it. Heather says no one else is involved: "I made it up." "That's the voice on the phone," says Brittany, and if you had any empathy for Brittany in this matter, it has to evaporate as soon as she makes it clear that Heather never even tried to disguise her voice; if Brittany was talking to "Bryon" on a daily basis and "Bryon" sounded like that, Brittany was in willful denial about what was actually going on. Is Heather even a Marine? No. The Bryon Facebook page was partly aspirational, and partly to "escape what [she has] to deal with at home." Brittany, starting to cry, reminds Heather that she told her from the beginning not to lie to her, whining, "I put my kids involved in this shit." Heather, totally composed, says she knows, and she's sorry.
As Brittany pathetically tries to collect herself, Nev asks what Heather's actual deal is, and Heather reports that she's a security officer, studying to be a police officer. She's twenty-five. Max asks if both her parents are alive, and Heather says her biological mother isn't, but she hasn't even managed to say what her mother's cause of death was before Brittany butts in: "So that's the real thing all about it-- That's the only real thing that you've told me." Brittany, we get that you're upset; you don't have to keep screwing up the syntax of common English phrases to convince us. Heather replies that her feelings are real. "Did you think telling me now, and me finding out now, you-- You think that I want to be friends?" babbles Brittany. "You think that I'm gonna put myself in that situation to be friends, and just forget about everything? I won't! I can't." Unless something was cut here, no one said anything about thinking or hoping you could be friends, so get over yourself, CONCEITED. Heather says Brittany's feelings are understandable, and that she knows what she did was wrong, but given how calm she is, it doesn't really seem like her "feelings" are especially "real" or that she cares, particularly, whether Brittany hates her forever. (Max breaks in to check, I guess for the official record, whether "Bryon" was Heather's first fake Facebook account; Heather says it was.)
Back to Brittany and her extremely performative pain: she's done being indignant and bawls, "You were honest and real and you wanted a friend: I would've been your friend! I'm okay with everybody! YOU. WENT. TOO. FAR. Like, way too fucking far with my kids. Like, that's bullshit." Heather:
Brittany: "I told you personal things about my life -- like, shit that I've been through that not even my mother knows." Heather just repeats that she's sorry, and Brittany takes off to blubber in the car like a ridiculous idiot. While Max pretends to feel sorry for Brittany's stupid ass -- again, she says, "She went too far," but like, no, girl, that was you, putting her on the phone with your kid! -- Nev follows Heather into the house to hear more of her story, but you probably can already guess: she lives with and among homophobes and never felt comfortable being herself. Heather also cries as she tells Nev how guilty she felt about deceiving Brittany, and how she never got any traction when she tried online dating. "I guess when I made the Facebook page, I made it as somebody in my own image, if I wasn't me," she says, "not necessarily saying I want to be a guy, 'cause I don't. But I felt like I was more accepted that way." Nev asks whether Heather ever thought at any point that this could end with her and Brittany getting together as a couple, and Heather defeatedly says, "I know there's nothing there that would ever, possibly, in any way whatsoever have worked out for us to be together. I knew that." I don't know, Heather. You might have a chance! Brittany's pretty needy.
And then I guess everyone really just wants to wrap the season, because there's no talk of everyone cooling down and regrouping tomorrow: Nev just goes out to the car to retrieve Brittany to talk to Heather now. She's sufficiently recovered to permit this, believe it or not, and goes inside, where Nev frames this dispute as "a classic case of two people who desperately needed something, and kind of just went looking in the wrong place for it, so it's not necessarily anybody's fault." To Heather, he says, "Yes, you lied, but you're both equally responsible for yourselves." Brittany clearly doesn't enjoy hearing this, but she goes along with Nev's premise, as she should.
Nev and Max decide to give Brittany and Heather some privacy, which apparently Brittany takes as her cue to start crying and spraying recriminations at Heather again. Heather:
Heather apologizes for the millionth time, and then tells Brittany what she told Nev about her difficult early years, adding the detail that she was bullied so much, she had to be home-schooled; she still gets "nervous" easily. "You need to learn how to be yourself," lectures Brittany, as if she has her life together enough to tell anyone else how to live theirs, but Heather agrees that she does need to learn how to be more social. "And don't be ashamed to be gay," Brittany adds, like, again, maybe look at the self-esteem beam in your own eye before going after the mote in Heather's, you sanctimonious dick. "I'm not necessarily ashamed of being gay," says Heather, a little tightly. "It's just--" "Fuck what your family thinks," Brittany interrupts. "People talk crap about me being a single mother." Yeah, that's the same. (They probably also talk crap about your hair, if you're making a list.) Brittany goes on: "And I could care less because my kids are taken care of, they're loved, and I'm there for them." Wasn't this speech supposed to be about Heather? Because it was when it started. Quit self-fluffing. Brittany adds that she was depressed after her divorce and that Heather was there for her, which Brittany won't forget: "But I don't know if I could ever be friends with you." "I understand," says Heather. "I don't really want to be friends with you anymore either," she does not add. And then Brittany says, "I'm done," which I guess means everyone is.
Nev and Max each hug Heather. Brittany does not, forcing Heather to be contented with a handshake.
Two months later, Brittany got a job "working with people going through detox," which is good for her since it falls into the relatively narrow category of "Jobs Where They'll Hire You Even If You Have A Neck Tattoo." She has had no further contact with Heather. Nev asks whether she's talked to her kids about "Bryon," and she says they don't talk or ask about him "anymore," possibly because she doesn't talk about him anymore, which makes me wonder (a) how much she was yammering about "him" to HER POOR CHILDREN before, and (b) whether it even was as big a deal as she made it out to be that they ever talked to someone purporting to be him on the phone. Heather has started dating someone, and applied for a police officer job.
Claiming PTSD is a good if not especially ethical way of weaseling out of shit you don't want to do. If the online boy- or girlfriend you've never met is so good-looking you can't believe your luck, you definitely shouldn't believe your luck. Leave your kids out of your internet dating adventures. It's never too late for adult braces. No one at either MTV or this production thought it was important to end the season on a high note, because if they had, "Falesha & Jacqueline" would have certainly closed us out. When this is all over for real, Max is going to change his number and never give it to Nev.