Screens: MTV
Will Catfish Prove To Devan That Rylan Really Is Marriage Material?
Devan's never met his online girlfriend Rylan, but he's pretty sure she's The One anyway. Is he right, or is he just a clotted cream-for-brains? (That insult would work better if he spelled his name right.)
Devan, a college student and pizza deliveryperson in Canyon, TX.
Rylan, sometime personal trainer, of Austin, TX.
In the eighteen months or so since Devan found Rylan on MeetMe, the latest on a list of websites I only know about because of this show, "she's never been able to Skype." They arranged on at least one occasion for her to drive to Canyon and meet him -- he even gave her gas money -- but she never actually made it. She's not on Facebook. When, on a whim, he drove to an address she'd given him and asked for Rylan, the man who lived there said no one named Rylan lived there.
When she was on her way to meet Devan in person, she got part of the way there and then got so nervous that she turned around and went home. When he sent her a card with money in it for her birthday, she claimed her roommate ripped it up. The man who denied a Rylan lived at what Devan had been given to understand was her address was, she said, her uncle, who lied about her living there since he didn't know who Devan was. "She doesn't have the data or something like that" to FaceTime with him. This is as good a place as any to note that today's substitute Max is a certain Todrick Hall, of whom I was naturally dubious since I have been burned by so many of these temps in the past, this response to Devan's sketchy "data" explanation...
...is the moment he starts to win me over.
Nev and Todrick start in the most obvious place: a Facebook search on her name, even though Devan's already told her she's not on it. All the people named Rylan Collins (which, if we're seeing her full name, is kind of a tip-off that it's fake) are men...uh, except one.
Next, they search Rylan's phone number, which is apparently registered to a Cassie [Redacted] in Georgetown, TX, which Todrick (who's originally a Texan) says is outside Austin. Nev then tries searching her name, and immediately comes up with what is apparently a mug shot. While Rylan looks like this...
...Cassandra looks like this.
And she's been in the news! For having taken police "on a stolen vehicle chase" when she was eighteen; she's also been charged with "debit or credit card abuse." Todrick is scandalized!
Next, they search the "Rylan" pictures they've gotten from Devan; the second one comes up attached to a Facebook profile of Savanah [Redacted], where they also find a bunch of the photos Rylan had sent Devan...and one she didn't.
You can't really tell because the quality on this video is so crappy, but she is definitely wearing a ring on her left ring finger in this photo, I promise. And this photo is from January, so it's within the period that Rylan's been talking to Devan and being told he loves her and stuff. Savanah's profile apparently doesn't indicate where she lives, but all her friends seem to be in the Austin area, more or less. Needing to figure out how Rylan and Savanah are connected, if at all, they message her asking to talk. When she doesn't respond via Facebook overnight, they find her on Instagram and DM her a photo with a second request to chat. While they wait, Nev gets the idea to follow the geotag on Savanah's latest Instagram selfie and track it to...the same block where Rylan had told Devan she lived. This is very risky behaviour for a liar!
Okay, so even though it seems like the Cassie lead is a dead end, when Nev and Todrick show Devan the evidence of her arrest (in May, so around the time Rylan was on her way to see Devan, supposedly), Devan shrugs that he knows she's been arrested but that she's told him "they got it all taken care of." Nev asks whether Rylan told him what she was arrested for; she did not. "And you just didn't...care to know," says Todrick, incredulously. "I wasn't going to try to push," says Devan.
Look, there's being polite, and then there's pursuing a reasonable line of inquiry with SOMEONE YOU HAVE ASKED TO MOVE IN WITH YOU. If you are so uncurious about the details of your supposed girlfriend's life, you deserve whatever bad consequences follow, in my opinion.
Moving on: Devan is "astounded" at the proof that the photos of "Rylan" actually belong to Savanah, possibly married Facebook user; he doesn't seem comforted by Nev's suggestion that "Rylan," whom he's been talking to, actually is Savanah, dissatisfied with her possible marriage and looking for companionship elsewhere. I get that people sometimes smile when they feel awkward because they can't express their real feelings, but this is also an extraordinarily slappable face to make under the circumstances.
"It's not fun when you're lied to, ever," murmurs Devan. He's right, of course, but also, if you don't want people to lie to you, don't make it so easy for them. After some pro forma hemming and hawing, Devan says he does want to meet whoever Rylan actually is, so he lets Nev call her. After some even more perfunctory "I'm scared"s from Rylan, she agrees to meet.
But first! After Nev, Todrick, and Devan all fly out to Austin and get up the next day, Nev checks his phone and sees that Savanah has responded to one or the other of his messages; he gets in touch with her by phone...
...and she agrees to Skype. Nev gets Devan down to his room so that he can be part of the conversation. Todrick gets right to it, asking whether Devan is familiar to her at all. "Nope," she chirps. "I'm sorry," Nev tells Devan, who is sad, but also maybe deserves to be disappointed if he's going to be so credulous. Nev explains the situation in brief, and Savanah says that, around three weeks ago, one of her neighbours came over to Savanah's house to tell her that "her roommate or friend or something" had been using Savanah's photos on a fake profile. Todrick:
Savanah knows the girl who was using the photos, because they're Facebook friends, though they've never met; her name is Michele. She used to live with this neighbour who warned Savanah about the photo theft, "but she moved or they got in a fight or something." While they're talking, Michele texts Nev to say she's at a friend's house all day, and supplies the address. Off they go!
Things start out poorly: as Nev goes to knock on the door, Todrick and Devan stand in the driveway, from which location they can see someone on an upper floor peeking at them through the blinds. "Rylan" then calls Nev to say she doesn't know if she can do this: "I see him and it's scary." Lady, come on. This Kenneth the Page-looking motherfucker is "scary" to you? Do you not see his haircut? It must be even more goober-y from above! She asks Nev if she may speak to him alone first, to which he agrees, and while Todrick and Devan continue waiting in the driveway, Nev goes in. Bizarrely, the camera just shoots this woman -- who is, in fact, the Michele Savanah spoke of -- from about her navel down...
...like, we already know she's not Savanah; does she not have a head or something? Nev asks what Michele's so nervous about, and she mumbles, "His reaction, I guess." Nev tells her she needs to get this over with, and she lets him lead her outside, which is where we first get not just definitive proof that she does have all the normal body parts in the usual places, but that she's perfectly cute (way cuter than this nerd she's so worried about having pissed off, in my completely subjective opinion).
Michele confirms what we already know: she and Savanah are Facebook friends; Savanah's neighbour "was [her] best friend," but that they're "not on good terms right now." When Nev asks how much of Rylan's story coincides with Michele's, she replies, "The only thing that wasn't true was obviously who I was and my name, but everything was real." Kind of rudely, given that Michele is slightly on the heavier side, Nev mentions that she'd told Devan at some point that she was a personal trainer, and she's like, oh right, that too; she was actually working at a prison at the time. What about the time when he drove to that house to meet her? "I was inside," she confirms. That was her uncle, but he wasn't exactly covering for her since he didn't know anything about her "relationship" with Devan: he was just telling the truth when he said no one named Rylan lived there.
The rest of this is boilerplate: Michele liked Devan because she could tell him anything; he feels hurt and betrayed because she lied to him. "I feel like Devan would have been there for you anyway, just as a friend, if that's what you truly needed," offers Todrick, on no evidence, "but it's really not fair for you to have wasted his time if you just kind of are making all these excuses and saying everything was real, but everything wasn't real." Guys? She gets it. She's not defending anything she did. She feels bad. (And she's clearly the one who contacted the show and not the other way around, which I assume is why her ex-friend went to Savanah's three weeks ago to narc on Michele, but anyway.) "I've got a lot of problems, and he was always there," mopes Michele, starting to cry. Devan barely meets her eye. Nev mercifully ends everyone's torture.
The next day, Nev & Co. make arrangements to meet with Michele again. Todrick has conditions, though.
Michele gravely promises that she won't.
This Couch Time is pretty standard fare, too. Devan's not really that hostile anymore because he can tell Michele's a sad person who's had a sad life, though it's not until Todrick asks her to talk about her background that we understand how sad: she and her mother don't get along because, she says, they're too much alike; her dad not only was never there for her and has made promises to her that he's never kept, but she's one of thirty-plus children he's sired. PAGING IYANLA. Todrick kindly chalks Michele's online fraud up to her father's absence, and when she adds that her insecurity stems in part from her being the only biracial person in her family and that she always wanted to be "straight white," he assures her, "There's a whole huge world outside of this, like, small area in Texas of people who literally are like, 'I love me a tall, caramel, curly-haired, like, girl with a gap in her front teeth'....Those are the people that you need to find."
Michele has also written Devan a letter about how happy he's made her and how safe he made her feel and so on: "I'll always love you. You're my best friend and you deserve to be happy, and I pray that everything you set out for, that you achieve it. Love you, Devan." "I do want to be there for you, still," says Devan after this outpouring. "I've just lost the little romantic part of it." Devan, you dope. You think your bowl cut earns you an upgrade from Michele? It does not. Michele is dismayed, but she's happy about being able to stay friends, because she doesn't really have any choice?
There are hugs all around.
One month later, Devan has texted Michele a few times, but they don't talk like they used to. "Just doing me right now," he says. Michele feels better having everything out in the open. She's trying to get a job and not trying to get into a relationship, which I guess makes sense since how can she possibly match the giddy heights of "being with" someone like Devan?! (That's sarcasm, he sucks.)
It's okay to ask your online girlfriend what she got arrested for. If she won't Skype, it's not because she "doesn't have the data." Don't have a haircut like Devan's. Or be named "Devan."