Screens: MTV
Will Catfish Give Jamey And Ari A Meat-Cute?
Ari insists upon meeting meat cutter Jamey for the first time with Catfish cameras present. Jamey is, quite reasonably, concerned.
Jamey, an apprentice meat cutter, originally from Michigan but now living in Houston.
Arista, a.k.a. Ari, either an actual beautician or an aspiring one -- she's described both ways in the episode -- also in Houston.
It's kind of a big one: she has told Jamey that she thinks they should meet for the first time on Catfish.
I'm going to have to agree with Nev on this one.
Jamey says that part of the reason he and Ari haven't met is that neither of them has a car. But like...also the thing where she wants to have Max and Nev there as mediators. Since she brought it up, Jamey has tried to talk her out of going on the show, but according to the (probably fake) texts, she's been insistent.
When Jamey says they've Skyped, Nev assumes that Ari's webcam hasn't been working or whatever, but Jamey says no, it does -- she just keeps the video on a really tight close-up of her face, which Jamey says looks like the photos she's sent him and the ones that are on her public profiles. Since this is the show's fourth season, Occam's Razor has Nev and Max jumping to the obvious conclusion, which is that she's trying to hide from Jamey that she's overweight. "You don't seem to feel like that's a dealbreaker," says Nev, based on no evidence, but Jamey readily agrees with Nev's premise: "I've gotten to know her on a deeper level than just looks." Nev doesn't know what her secret could be, but he's intrigued, and he's not alone.
When they meet Jamey in person at least one day and possibly several months later, Nev has come up with another reason why Ari wouldn't want to show Jamey her entire body on Skype: "Maybe she's pregnant?" "She says she's a virgin, though," says Jamey. BACK TO THE SECRET FATTY THEORY, EVERYONE. "If it's not something that's terrible or unforgivable, I'd be down to see where it goes," Jamey declares. They ask to see some photos -- or, as Nev puts it, "Show us the bae." Out loud, he says that. To people. With cameras on him that are recording his voice. I really hope he heard it when he watched this back and realized how fucking stupid he sounds.
The first shot of Ari that Jamey pulls up is this one.
The next one he flicks to is this one...
...of which Max confidently states, "She looks bigger in that picture." I guess? It could just also be less flattering lighting, but also, Jamey's already said he doesn't care about her weight, so maybe shut up with your essentially baseless conjecture about it?
I'm going to shorthand the actual investigation because most of it just confirms that the facts about herself that Ari has supplied to Jamey seem to be legit -- and she's apparently told him a lot.
But the only thing that comes close to hinting at what her SHOCKING SECRET could be is a note on her Facebook page:
"Seen a different side to my man" is the next sentence after that, and Max and Nev soon also turn up a photo of Ari with what seems to be the "my man" in question.
Nev and Max wonder if Caz could be Ari's husband, and given "my in-laws," it's not a crazy supposition, but this is all on her Facebook profile, which we know Jamey knows about, so it would be very careless of him not to have noticed this post from December if they've been talking for five months (so even if they filmed this episode, like, last week, which is doubtful, Ari posted that status update during her acquaintance with Jamey). They're pretty sure they've cracked the case wide open, but before they can go see Jamey, they get a call from a Sophia, a Facebook friend of Ari's they'd reached out to. They ask her if she knows whether Ari has a boyfriend, and Sophia says, "Well, I do know Caz."
Nev asks whether Sophia knows if Caz and Ari are married, and Sophia suddenly shuts down, saying, "I'm pretty sure y'all are gonna meet, and you're gonna think, 'Oh, was Sophia telling the truth?' But I gotta-- I really gotta go." And hangs up on them. Nev and Max end their chat with Sophia even more convinced that Ari's secret must be that she's married.
After walking in on whatever all this is...
...Nev and Max sit down with Jamey and try to get a read on his mental state. Before they can even get to the conclusion they've reached about Ari, though, he tells them she keeps "blowing [his] phone up" -- and not to tell him how excited she is to meet, either. On the contrary, she's suddenly gotten supes hostile.
Even more confusing than Ari turning on Jamey AFTER INITIATING ALL OF THIS is that after she tells him not to text her anymore and he doesn't...that also pisses her off?
Jamey has no idea why she's acting like this. Max asks why Jamey would want to be with such a person, and Jamey says she's not usually like this, whereupon Max gives her the benefit of the doubt that it's the tension of the situation that's making her behave in ways that are out of character for her.
Moving on: Nev and Max proudly unveil the incriminating Facebook status...only to discover that it isn't news to Jamey at all, who knew that a while ago she was "messing around with some guy" and even gets his name almost right, calling him "Chaz." Max and Nev are a little deflated that Jamey isn't more shocked as he shrugs, "Maybe she's married." If not that, maybe she wants to tell Jamey she has to stop talking to him because even if she and Caz aren't married, maybe things are starting to get serious with him or something, and though Jamey is pretty flat and laconic generally, it seems like he's ready for this to be Ari's big secret.
So Max and Nev go back to their hotel and call Ari to set up a meet. In their first conversation, she seems really spooked, and after saying she didn't think things would ever come to this point and that now that it's actually happening, she thinks it was a mistake to involve the show, she hangs up on them. But they try her again the next day, at which point she apologizes for their previous conversation -- and, in a twist, she wants to meet Max and Nev alone first. GUESS WHERE.
Nev and Max roll up to a park and find Ari, an average-sized woman and not, as they've apparently stopped fearing, Jabba the Hutt.
But she does still have a secret, and she doesn't waste much time in telling them what it is: she's transgender. Given how sophomoric Nev and Max tend to be whenever an episode revolves around two women or even the possibility of a lesbian relationship, I feel like reacting to this announcement without losing their shit causes them both physical strain.
Mostly Nev.
Pretty respectfully, though, Nev asks what "transgender" means in this case, and Ari explains that she's going through the process of becoming "full girl," which at this stage involves taking hormones to prepare for sex reassignment surgery. Max, less respectfully, confirms that she has "no doubt" about transitioning, like, I think the social workers she's undoubtedly been talking to covered that before hormones were prescribed, Toy Camera. As for "the in-laws"? She's known the people in question for years; Caz is an ex; she'd told him she was transgender right from the start and he was fine with it. When Nev asks if that means she and Caz were "lovers" (that word bums me out unless it's between "meat" and "pizza," to quote someone very wise), Ari says yes, but when Nev further assumes that means she and Caz were having sex, she says they weren't: she's not sufficiently "comfortable with [her] body" to "be that intimate with someone," NOT THAT IT'S ANY OF NEV'S BUSINESS. She never thought she'd have to tell Jamey because she planned to keep things on the friend tip (after meeting him on a dating site? I DON'T KNOW ABOUT THAT, BUT WHATEVER), but now feelings have happened and she knows she has to tell Jamey the truth. Max tries to be reassuring by saying he doesn't think Jamey would want to hurt Ari's feelings when she tells him, but again, Max really has no way of knowing that. I feel like we can all agree that...this is kind of a bigger secret than secret fattitude, and as such, Max and Nev agree to tell Jamey the deal before he meets Ari in person, just in case he goes totally off the rails. Not a bad idea to avoid an ambush.
So I'm not so naïve as to think a seemingly not-that-worldly guy like Jamey is going to embrace this facet of Ari's biography; I'm mostly just hoping he won't hideously embarrass himself when Nev and Max tell him what they've just learned from Ari.
OH WELL. Max and Nev hasten to fill in the gap the Michigan public school system left, which is that "intersex" and "transgender" are not the same thing -- though I'm not sure if he's asking because he thinks intersex would be preferable? Regardless, he says it's "pretty fucking shocking," which...fair. They explain that Ari still hopes Jamey wants to meet her now that he knows what she'd held back until now, and he says he'll have to think about it. Also fair.
The next day (or whatever -- long enough for Jamey to have changed from his hoodie into a nicer buttondown, aw), Max and Nev show up to Jamey's uncle's place to drive him to the traditional park to meet Ari. He's nervous, and I feel safe in saying he's never run into any transgender people to this point or he probably would have mentioned it, so it's understandable that he'd be a bit jittery facing a meeting that's so far outside his experience. (I also hope he made sensible use of internet resources the previous night to educate himself a little -- and if you would care to do likewise, MTV recommends trans.lookdifferent.org).
Given the unfortunate "born with both" query earlier, it's a real open question how Jamey's going to comport himself, but he starts strong.
After Jamey and Ari confirm that this meeting is "surreal" for both of them, Jamey tells Ari, fairly calmly, that he's "definitely a little upset": "It was all real, except for this. We both told each other things that we probably usually don't share with other people." Ari nods. Jamey adds, "But you don't need to be ashamed, or-- I'm not passing judgment on you." "And your feelings for Jamey are still very real," prompts Max. "Is that a question?" says Ari -- kind of snarkily, under the circumstances, for my taste, but she says that she does still like Jamey, whose eye she can barely meet. She doesn't know what to say except that she's sorry, and Jamey says he doesn't think she intended to hurt him. However, he adds, "I was hoping I'd get here and potentially be able to move forward with you, but...." No against-all-odds love connection, then. Everyone is sad.
Jamey asks whether he and Ari can go speak somewhere in private, but on Catfish, "in private" is relative, in that it seems like you only get actual alone time together if Nev thinks you might fuck? In this case, since that seems to be off the table, Jamey and Ari repair to a picnic shelter or something where cameras are set up and left on tripods, and while Jamey tries to dig a little deeper into Ari's backstory in a friendly way, she's (reasonably) still stung by his declaration in front of America that nothing can happen between them, and shuts that down with a quickness.
Jamey says he's just trying to talk to her, but she says she'd rather not. "It would help me tremendously, if that means anything," but I guess it doesn't, because she says nothing. He keeps trying, and she keeps refusing, and finally he releases her and she gets up and leaves, not even pausing to give Max and Nev her parting thoughts. NOT EVEN MAX AND NEV.
There was that one at the beginning, but afterward: no.
Two months later, Jamey and Ari are still friendly, at least online. He's started dating IRL, but hasn't met anyone with whom he feels as connected as he did with Ari at their best. He says that knowing Ari has made him more understanding of people's differences, and he hopes his example can show trans people that not everyone is judgmental. I have to say, that's a great point, and other than the unfortunate "both" blip, he really acquitted himself in this episode far better than his taciturn and slightly dopey manner would have given me to expect. Good job, Jamey.
As for Ari: she took the breakup hard and doesn't like to talk about it, but today she'll make an exception. She apologizes for having been curt with Max and Nev on her way out of the park, but they forgive her. (She doesn't ALSO apologize for how shitty she was in her texts to Jamey that one day, and if you were hoping that there would be an explanation for that here, there isn't; there may be on Nev's podcast, but I can't confirm that now because that lazy fuck hasn't posted it yet even though as I type this it's 10:30 AM in California besides which he presumably recorded it weeks if not months ago after finishing the actual episode so GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER, NEV, AND QUIT MAKING YOUR PODCAST SO POINTLESS.) Ari's getting used to being friends with Jamey. She's still looking for love.
For as much shit as I give Nev and Max about...everything, Nev (or whoever wrote this for him) is right on in his post-episode PSA, and I will give him (or whoever wrote it for him) the honour of transcribing it in its entirety: "Transgender women like Ari are real women, and are not deceiving anyone when they state this. Telling people you're transgender is a decision you have to make for yourself, and it isn't something that all transgender people can or have to do. Ari chose to tell Jamey on her own terms, on our show." Max chimes in: "While we know that plenty of guys have great relationships with transgender women, too often, transgender women find themselves in dangerous or violent situations just because of how people react when they discover that they're transgender." That's it, and seems like a weird place for him to stop, but I assume the rest of that was saying it's the reason Ari wanted objective third parties present when she and Jamey met for the first time -- for her own safety just in case he might have attacked her if the cameras weren't there to stop him.
Anyway, judging by the comments on this episode, a lot of people are still of the view that only gay men would be interested in having relationships with trans women, and while sexuality is a spectrum and there are probably gay men who are into pre-operative trans women, straight men can be too, and if some straight men can't handle the idea of dating a woman who was once male...I mean, there are all kinds of things straight men aren't into, LIKE FATTIES, as practically a third of this episode revolved around, with Nev actually saying in so many words that he and Max wanted to "prepare" Jamey for the possibility that Ari's secret was going to end up being her weight. So: the lesson learned here is that straight men aren't right about everything and are, in fact, more often wrong, so don't worry so much about what they might think. In fact, your life might be better if you don't think about straight men at all!