Should You Investigate Nev Schulman's New MTV Show, Suspect?

What Is This Thing?

You know how Catfish is about regular people contacting MTV to get a couple of unqualified boners to look into the romantic partners they only know online because they seem super-sketchy? This is that, except with one new boner, and it's about and the "truth seekers" are looking for help investigating sketchos they know in real life.

When Is It On?

Wednesdays at 11 PM ET on MTV.

Why Was It Made Now?

I mean, with every new season of Catfish, I'm amazed that there are still people dumb enough (a) to fall for online scammers' obvious lies and (b) not to consider trying themselves the investigative "techniques" that the show has been demonstrating on TV for actual years. I assume MTV is also pretty sure the show's going to run its course any minute now, and have greenlit this slight variation on it so that it can fill the void when Catfish inevitably burns out. (Part of the calculation might also have, at one point, been a concern that co-host Max Joseph might soon leave Catfish to become a full-time feature film director, but I suppose that's not as pressing a worry as it once was.)

What's Its Pedigree?

Nev Schulman, of Catfish, is also a host/investigator here, but his new Max is iO (god) Tillett Wright, "an artist, activist, writer, speaker, actor and social scientist." So in other words, "unemployed"?

...And?

The first hour-long episode encompasses two separate stories, so I give the show's producers credit for recognizing that neither one was substantial enough to fill the entire running time.

...But?

But could both of THOSE have filled a half-hour with room to spare? Yes.

Regardless of how real you believe Catfish to be, the point of it is to provide a service to people who, in virtually every case, have been deceived by strangers, and who -- due to naïveté, technical incompetence, or pure denial -- actually need the help of a third party to get to the truth. But while Suspect tries to follow the beats of a Catfish episode to hook the viewer, it lacks the main thrust of a Catfish episode: figuring out who the real person is at the other end of an online interaction. Instead, Suspect's first two stories are just about people's who want to find out what's going on with real-life loved ones who, like, haven't answered their texts in a while.

In the first half, Nev and iO (come on) travel to D.C. to meet Allen, who's worried about Jonathan, his friend of fifteen years. (Allen and Jonathan are both gay, which means Nev feels it's acceptable to ask whether the two of them ever dated each other, and I guess the show's editor hates Nev and wants to make him look like an asshole because THAT FOOTAGE MAKES IT TO THE FINAL CUT.) In addition to Jonathan's textual unresponsiveness, Allen noted at one of their last interactions that Jonathan had lost weight; Jonathan had a bag with him that made noises like rattling pills; he's seen Jonathan take pills, and another time watched Jonathan kick some pill bottles under his bed. Allen has a theory:

Like that graphic? It appears a minimum of four more times in this half-hour.

So on Catfish, after getting the "truth seeker" to tell his or her story, Nev and his co-host go off to search publicly available information. (Or, whatever -- so we're given to understand, at least.) But because Suspect is about people who know each other in real life and who are keeping secrets that can't be solved with online sleuthing except by someone who could hack the target's phones or medical records or whatever the fuck, what happens next here is that Allen takes Nev and iO to meet Jonathan's boyfriend Joseph and basically just ask him what's up. And after that awkward and not especially productive encounter, what ends up happening is that OBVIOUSLY Joseph tells Jonathan that Allen called MTV on him, and Jonathan calls Nev himself to ask what's up. And yet if you think this is where the show gets interesting -- with a target getting confrontational about having his business put out in the street, of course he doesn't actually get that mad about it because if he did, we would not be watching it. Jonathan agrees to meet, reveals his secret (I won't spoil it in case you actually want to watch), and generally gives the viewer the impression that if Allen had just forced the issue away from any cameras, he probably would have told him what was going on.

The hour's second story is a similar kind of thing except with way worse styling.

Kristen's stepbrother Thomas came out to the family as gay and then abruptly moved from their hometown of Fort Wayne to Indianapolis, since which time he's been kind of unresponsive. She's only been able to keep tabs on him via his social media posts -- primarily Instagram, from the looks of it -- and is worried that some of them seem morose, and others show him with cocktails. But when Nev and iO (ugh) arrange a meeting with Thomas's roommate Lauren, she notes that you're going to get photographed with drinks when you date a bartender...which is when Nev and iO (I mean) notice how many of Thomas's IG posts are tagged with the same bar and go there...and talk to the boyfriend, Clayton, who's there working......and then Thomas himself wanders in to meet Clayton for their lunch date. He blows off Kristen's attempts to connect at first, but then they meet in a park (where nothing good ever happens, usually) and tells them his two very good reasons for ignoring Kristen's texts the last while. (Again, without spoiling, I will say that both Jonathan's and Thomas's reveals are big enough that they make me think this show may be built like Catfish, in that despite the way the stories are framed for TV, it's actually the people who are hiding shit who've contacted the show because they're sick of keeping their secrets.) Through all of this, iO (nO) is taking notes in a little flip pad like a detective and complains to Nev on Day 2 that they don't have any "leads," as if to try to distract us from the fact that this show is basically just 5/6 establishing backstory and 1/6 the target making an announcement -- and with very little prodding. This is not an investigation: it's regular nosiness, kind of on behalf of people who aren't sufficiently assertive with their supposed friends, but also not really?

And at least if this were both Catfish hosts, we'd have Max to roll his eyes at Nev or the show participants. But Nev and iO (iಠ_ಠ) have no chemistry. Plus have I noted that he's chosen a really affected and annoying way of spelling his name? BECAUSE HE HAS.

...So?

I say this as someone who's watched every episode of Catfish, and CLOSELY: Suspect is an irredeemable waste of time.