Screens: MTV
Will Chitara Find Her Thrill With Priscilla?
Chitara's online girlfriend dumped her ass, and even though they never met, she's desperate enough for closure to go on this show to track her down.
Chitara, which I am not thrilled about and neither would you be about watching a whole TV episode about a person whose name sounds like "Shit[your first name]," of Durham, NC.
Priscilla, also of Durham.
Even though they lived in the same city as far as Chitara knew, Priscilla would never tell Chitara where she lived, and would always blow off plans to meet up in person at the last minute; they never videochatted either.
When Chitara got suspicious about Priscilla always cancelling their plans and asked her straight out if Priscilla was catfishing (ugh) her, she said she thought Chitara might ask that, but that "things just keep coming up." When Priscilla told Chitara that her mother had passed away, Chitara felt like Priscilla had started to withdraw from her. Also: "Last month, she told me that she no longer loved me, and everything she said and felt was nothing but lies." Specifically: Priscilla was attracted to someone else, and that person was a man.
Nev and Alex Shaffer -- Nev's co-host for the week, the star of Max's movie, and charisma-free non-improviser with nothing to add about anything -- start by searching a couple of different shots of Priscilla, finding no matches when they Google image search them. Alex suggests going to Priscilla's profile on MocoSpace, apparently a thing that exists, and when they do, they find a lot of posts on her wall (???) from someone named Kiloni -- including one from May in which Kiloni opined, "Ovoo [sic, she means ooVoo, a Skype knockoff] last night was too much." "Why would she videochat with this girl Kiloni and not with Chitara?" Nev wonders aloud. Digging into Kiloni, they find an apparently legit Twitter feed with 29,000 followers...and a shitload of fake Facebook profiles using her name and photos. Nev assumes that the Kiloni on MocoSpace is probably a fake, which is probably a safe bet given the odds. But the real smoking gun here is that this Kiloni's MocoSpace profile was created at exactly the same time as Priscilla's; they also both logged in on the same date. "These pages are definitely both run by the same person," says Nev. Well, this is a whole lot of nothing.
Before Alex and Nev can tell Chitara the two things they've found out after spending six minutes on Google, we have to watch them goofing around with Chitara and a bunch of her friends at a go-kart park or something, which I assume is just so that they can include this comment from Chitara's friend Jameka...
...to make me think Priscilla's going to turn out to have been Jameka all along. Or, maybe it's just to fill time because there's so little to this episode -- so little that they recap every single step of their investigation. "There's still a ton that we don't know," says Nev. Well, yes, because even though you have Priscilla's phone number, you apparently didn't search on THAT to see if it's registered to a different name or located in a different city?!
But whatever: having gotten to the point where they all agree that both the Priscilla and the Kiloni accounts are fake, Chitara wants answers even more than she did before. Nev texts her, in part, "If you still care about her as much as it seems you once did, please contact me so we can try and work something out." I mean, I guess I'm the only one who remembers her telling Chitara she wanted to break things off because, on her side, their "relationship" was "all lies"? Therefore she is on the record as stating she doesn't care about Chitara now, if she even ever did? And I guess I'm right, because the text goes unanswered overnight, and Chitara has to phone her the next day to try to set up the meeting. "My feelings were real, but I moved on and I think she should move on, too," says Priscilla. See?! Through the call, which Nev takes over almost immediately, Chitara is all nervous energy, first jittering her whole torso back and forth...
...and then (ugh) worrying her (uuuuuuugh) tongue barbell in her teeth...
...as if to remind the whole audience why you DON'T GET THOSE.
GOOD POINT, PRISCILLA, AND I AGREE. But obviously she agrees to meet. Chitara, having spent the whole call in a silent fury, working that barbell like a Jolly Rancher she's trying to suck into oblivion, tells Nev after they hang up, "She made it seem like I was thirsty! I don't like that!" Maybe you don't like that because it's CLEARLY TRUE? Real or fake, she dumped you, and you're the one who's decided to make a federal case of it because you can't get over her. Or you just want to get on TV. Either way, none of this looks good on you.
Priscilla texts Nev her address, over an hour's drive away in Greensboro, and apparently he and Alex and Chitara all get into the car and drive there immediately. When they pull up to the house, Chitara -- with some surprise, somehow? -- says the house doesn't look the way Priscilla described it at all. Well, she should get used to that feeling, because even though Chitara's spent their whole online acquaintance thinking that this is Priscilla...
...this is the person who comes out.
Well, I guess I owe Jameka an apology! Nev's like, "'Or whatever'?," and this girl says her actual name is Ashanti. Nev brings her over closer to Chitara, who still keeps her distance, warily.
Nev asks Ashanti how old she is, and she tells him she's eighteen. Priscilla:
LOL, editor.
"Why," asks Chitara, though she's smiling and not nearly as pissed off as she was when Nev had "Priscilla" on the phone earlier. "Why what," says Ashanti flatly. "Why do all of this?" Chitara asks. "I tried to break it off," Ashanti reminds her. "Not once did you ever say, 'I'm lying to you,'" says Chitara. I mean, maybe not in so many words, but if she was sufficiently shady that Chitara -- by her own admission -- believed that she was and confronted her about it before deciding to believe the lie anyway, then one might say part of the blame for this is on Chitara for not (a) trusting her instincts and (b) not doing her due diligence in investigating "Priscilla" herself? Chitara says that she "opened the door" for Ashanti to come clean about the whole scheme when they had that conversation about Catfish, and after getting defensive about whether she could or could not have walked through it then, she tells Priscilla, "I kind of thought that you knew."
Apparently not! "This, what you're doing, is a dangerous game!" Chitara lectures, and Ashanti snaps, "I don't do it anymore. You're the last one." "I'm gonna chalk all this up to the fact that you're eighteen," says Chitara condescendingly. Hmmmm, well, we haven't heard how old you are and you fucking fell for it, MA'AM. As Chitara starts mugging for one of the cameras (that this same editor who inserted the "mature" text earlier doesn't cut to, hee hee) about how Ashanti isn't only eighteen -- she just TURNED eighteen a matter of weeks ago -- Ashanti talks back to her and Chitara tells her she's having a conversation with herself: "Dismissed." "Bitch, don't fucking do that shit to me," says Ashanti, and at that epithet Chitara takes her jacket off, I guess in preparation to throw down? Ashanti goes back into her house, but not before flipping Chitara the bird. I guess the wedding's off!
Alex ineptly tries to calm Chitara down, but she's still outraged that Ashanti lied about her age: "She can't even sit at the bar with me and have a drink." Take her to Quebec?
Meanwhile, back at the house, Nev is trying to good cop Ashanti so that there can be a future Couch Time. Ashanti is very matter-of-fact with Nev, starting by telling him she's been using fake profiles online since she was thirteen.
When Ashanti told Chitara she had met a guy, that was true. And her mother's death?
Look, it's terrible to lie about a dead mom, but also, they all do it, and when Ashanti says she thought Chitara knew, what she should have said was "You should have known." Because she should have.
Ashanti says she feels bad about having lied about her dead mother, but nothing about her manner makes her seem remorseful at all. Asked about the other people with whom "Priscilla" had relationships, Ashanti says that some of them were probably in love with her, but she doesn't seem remorseful about that either. To Chitara, who's been silent except for some mouth noises, Ashanti says, "I did have feelings for you." I'm not sure I believe that either?
Nev asks Ashanti to "fill in all the holes" of her backstory, and while the soulful piano music wants us to feel emotional about it, there's really nothing here. "When I was thirteen, there was a whole bunch of drama going on." She was separated from her mother, who was trying to find a place for them to live, and one day she created a fake profile as a way to escape. "Now I understand a little bit more about your situation with your family," says Nev. BOY, THAT WAS EASY. Asked about Chitara, Ashanti says she was scared to confess the truth. "At some point, you have to face whatever it is that you're going through," says Chitara, wearily. "If you don't, it's a downhill [sic] spiral after that." Ashanti just nods, instead of saying what I might say in that situation, which is, what are YOU not facing, Chitara, that you could put so much importance on a relationship that isn't real with someone you never met even one time? Shouldn't you perhaps be focusing more on your TWO CHILDREN than on this illusion, especially after you saw through it and then let yourself be re-convinced that the lie was true? Accept some responsibility for things having gone this far: IT'S AT LEAST 50% BECAUSE YOU ARE DUMB.
None of that occurs, of course. Ashanti continues her pantomime sad faces and Chitara continues feeling superior for no reason.
There are no hugs -- just half a side hug from Nev.
Well, at least she remembered they exist. She's also had no contact with Ashanti since their last coffee date. Ashanti refused to come back on the show for a follow-up, but when she said Chitara was "the last one," it may be true, because the Priscilla account is still offline.
If you ask your online girlfriend whether she's "catfishing" you and she doesn't immediately prove she's not by getting on a videochat with you, then she's lying. Alex should stick to gigs where others supply dialogue for him. Chitara may need to recalibrate her parameters for what "maturity" actually means.
For Dick Week we remind you:
Max is back on the show in Episode 6, and when it comes to the question of whether he or Nev is the bigger dick, you HAVE to pick a side.