Screens: MTV
Will Steven's Hopes For A Future With Samm Get Scuttled By His Mom?
Steven's mother is concerned that he's pinning all his romantic hopes on a girl he's never met, so she's written in to Catfish on his behalf. And you thought yours was embarrassing when she wrote little notes on your lunch bag!
Steven, a high-school student in Fort Worth, Texas...sort of. He hasn't actually sought Nev and Max's help: his mother, Aurora, wrote in for him because she's worried about how close he's gotten to a girl he met online -- and the last time Steven was in a relationship like this, it turned out not to be legit. (The way Aurora puts it is "he's been catfished before," but as you know, I refuse to use the word that way.) We never find out exactly what about it went wrong, but since Aurora suggests more than once that Samm "could be a guy," I suspect...it was that.
Samm, also a high school student, in Hanford, California.
In the six months they've been talking since he got to know her on Twitter, Steven and Samm have never videochatted. He's hardly talked to her on the phone. But the most suspect elements of Samm's online identity are her photos, which, given that she's a wrestler, are suspiciously pinuppy...
...and she's sent very few of them to Steven directly -- mostly he's just seen the ones she posts publicly. There's also the fact that her name is Samm; the extraneous "m" makes it look fakey.
When Aurora told Steven she wanted to videochat with Samm to make sure she was who Steven thought she was, he told her, "She doesn't have Skype," but when Max and Nev get to Steven's house, he says that he and Samm have tried but that it never worked because the connection was bad.
Both Max and Nev are predisposed to disbelieving Samm's official story, Max going so far as to suggest after Aurora's initial email that "Samm" could be Aurora herself, trying to teach Steven a lesson, as if a mother of four has time to make almost 6000 tweets just to prove a point; Nev is mostly unconvinced by Samm's sexy photos and the fact that virtually none of them have been for Steven alone. Plus, as always, the failure to videochat -- and it's the last of these that's especially damning once they find out that she has a YouTube channel on which she's posted some of her wrestling videos, so video technology is not beyond her, and maybe she's not videochatting with Steven "for a reason," as Max suggests portentously.
Since the Twitter feed seems to line up with what they know about Samm so far, they decide to contact some of her IRL friends, starting with an Erick, who confirms that he wrestled with her in high school. Nev tries to get him to confirm that the number Steven has been using to text Samm is the one Erick knows; Erick says he can't really remember...but then adds that for a while Samm was sharing a phone with someone named Jasmine. This tidbit throws Max and Nev into a tailspin of conjecture about whether this Jasmine -- who they find on Twitter and who seems to be pretty depressed -- is the one Steven's actually been speaking to, and who hasn't videochatted because she's been using Samm's photos to reel him in. They also find a tweet from Samm about a cute message directed to a friend whose account is or was linked to hers, which bolsters the new theory that Steven's real girlfriend is Jasmine...until you remember that this is the "midseason finale" and that there's a Chatfish yet to come. Just saying.
Poor Steven listens intently to the beginning of Max and Nev's story and gets way too excited way too fast.
Steven doesn't know anything about Samm and Jasmine having accounts that were linked in any way; in fact, he's never known Samm to talk about anyone named Jasmine at all, which is curious considering that Erick said Samm and Jasmine were very good friends (which I guess they'd have to be to share a phone). Steven lets himself be talked into the possibility that Jasmine could be talking to him using Samm's photos, and when they pull up Jasmine's Twitter feed and point to a few notably morose and self-hating tweets -- way more, I guess, than Samm has tweeted (or they just didn't look for any there) -- Aurora remembers that it was a sad tweet from Samm that made him reach out to her in the first place. Steven says that when he communicates with Samm one-on-one and she's feeling low, she texts stuff like he's seeing in Jasmine's tweets right now. Nev and Max try to gauge how interested Steven would be if "Samm" does turn out to be Jasmine, and when he cautiously says he might still be open to having a relationship with her, Aurora jumps in to contradict him: "That's starting it out as a lie. 'Cause he doesn't even know her real name."
When Steven says he still wants to lay eyes on the person he's been talking to, whoever she is, they have Steven text her a photo of himself with Nev and Max and ask her if she'll pick up when Nev calls. (I feel like maybe this is the point where they should have asked Aurora to extract herself from the proceedings. I mean, fine, she's been part of the story because she was the one who got the ball rolling initially, but Steven's been willingly co-operating in all the normal ways, so maybe she could let him be a big boy all on his own? He's eighteen; if she's okay with him volunteering himself at a naval recruiting centre, she should be okay with him going to California with a camera crew to protect him.)
Anyway, considering that this is what Samm texts back to Steven's photo with the stars of the show...
...she really overplays her hesitancy to meet Steven in person when Nev does get her on the phone, but she agrees, duh, adding that there's something she needs to tell Steven. HMMMMM. Nev comes in and tells Steven the good(ish) news, and hey, would Aurora like to come too? She sure would!
@PreviouslyTVNow Mom needed to hide her joy about the free trip to Cali a little better. #Catfish
— Maura (@Mauracarney1) May 7, 2015
Aurora and Steven get driven to Samm's house in separate cars to ratchet up the tension, but when the door from the house to the garage opens, out comes...
Steven is dopily psyched to see that it's really her.
After Aurora and Samm compare trashy Frenches...
...Max wants to know what the big secret is that Samm wanted to tell Steven in person. Turns out all that business with Jasmine was a total red herring (and if you'd hoped she would get some kind of attention to deal with what appears to be of depression, you're out of luck and so is she?): Samm's confession is that she was seeing a guy IRL during the time she was talking to Steven. The show wants us to regard this as a huge betrayal, but like, Steven and Samm lived two time zones apart; not even Steven seems like he's able to feel that upset about it, particularly after she says "I'm kind of just focused on him." You know who actually IS upset about it?
Steven finally takes the hint and says, "I do feel hurt about that," but immediately laughs and adds, "As long as the other guy's out of the picture...!" Aurora jumps in to tell Samm that Steven's so crazy about her that he'll forgive anything. Max tells Samm that Aurora's actually the one who wrote in to the show, and Samm says, "Thank you," and maybe I'm just saying this because I know where things are going but is this maybe where Samm's aforementioned "feelings" start to get a bit less "real"? "If you spent time texting him, you know how him and I are, right?" says Aurora warningly. "He's probably told you. We're really close." Samm says he has...but maybe she didn't realize just how "close" Steven was with his mommy until she showed up at Samm's doorstep with him? I mean, we saw the nail pic: Steven clearly has a type. "It's tough for moms to see their sons in...love?" says Max, milliseconds before Steven tells Samm, "We do have to talk about our future together." Samm:
"I mean, I want you to do best for what's in your future, me to do best-- I mean, yeah, just realistic." YEP, YOU GUYS ARE DEFINITELY ON THE SAME PAGE, NO PROBLEMS HERE! Nev has to order Samm to hug Steven again because he's shaking, and then Max, Nev, and Aurora clear out so that Samm and Steven can explore their connection together, which is ELECTRIC.
After reporting to Nev and Max and MOM that he's still trying to get over his jealousy that Samm was seeing other guys while she was texting with him, he claims to be feeling "a lot of conflicting emotions," so the good news is that they're going to take him for some one-on-one time with Samm over milkshakes so he can really hold her accountable for her shocking infidelity!
JK, Steven obviously knows Samm is way out of his league, so after a couple of inquiries as to how far things went with the other dudes he's just now hearing about, Steven's only concern while he's in town is to lock Samm down: "What about the future? Do you-- Do you think you could see a future with us together?"
After a pause I pray wasn't really as long as the editing makes it seem, Samm offers, "Over texting, I felt like we were heading, like, towards a relationship, maybe?" But then he showed up with his mom and it was a huge turnoff? She doesn't say that: I'm just guessing. Steven looks down. "I feel like the connection is kind of different?" Samm adds. "In a way, I still feel, like, the connection, like, we've always had as friends and stuff, and we can talk all day, and we can do whatever, it's just that-- It's just the friend connection I feel in person, really." "So you don't have feelings for me," says Steven, tragically, on national television. Samm doesn't know: "I have feelings for you, like, as, like a best friend."
Well, that's a shame. Steven wishes he were dead for a minute, and then presses, "What about when we text?" Okay, at the risk of sounding old: what is that supposed to mean? Texting is the most impersonal form of communication, I don't care how much you do it or how many emojis you use! How shallow have Steven's past relationships been -- if, indeed, he's had any, which he may not have -- if he could have placed so much importance on six-words-at-a-time blasts that Samm typed with her thumbs, probably while watching TV and/or texting seven other people at the same exact time? "What about when we text?"? Yeah, how dare she be so cavalier in her use of a technology she also employs to ask her dad to grab toilet paper on his way home from work!!! Steven appeals to her memory that their text relationship is real, with its pet names and so forth, but it's not working. "In person, we're strangers," says Samm, accurately. She doesn't want a relationship right now: "I just want to go to college, wrestle...." Sure, who among us hasn't said those exact words?
If that's the case, Steven says, he doesn't see the point of being in Samm's life, so after a long sigh, he takes off to cry in the rental car, leaving her to cry in her milkshake.
Samm and Steven had those two hugs hello that we saw, but no hugs goodbye.
Annoyingly, they make us wait for Chatfish, but: Samm and Steven have managed to become "friends" after all, and I put it in quotation marks since Steven's still clearly into Samm and trying to act like he's not.
Don't convince yourself that your texts and those of your beloved are freighted with import and suitable to be collected as a volume of poetry. Don't bring your mom to meet your online girlfriend. Don't trust anyone in a French manicure.