Monday, December 28, 2020

Inside MTV Reality: A Big Brother Gets Catfished?

BY DC CUEVA                        
■ @DC408DXTR  @ IG/YT/SC/TB/TK

Two years ago if you're lucky enough to follow the whole palette of what MTV has to offer, you may recall what happened during Final Reckoning when a guy who knows a couple Agents of this season got a surprise phone call from a surprise person on another MTV show. We're talking about the moment on Catfish in 2018 when Jay G. -- who was a roomie of Cory and Ashley's on his Real World season and who you remember for what happened on Exes 2 -- got a phone call from Max Joseph during his last investigation. It aired during the week of the ladder invading South Africa as a mercenary en route to becoming a millionaire and during that breakout year for the former as he got used to daddy life.
   This year marks the tenth anniversary of the original Catfish documentary film that inspired the TV series of the same name which, of course, centers around what happened to show host Nev Schulman. He has had quite a bit more attention of late thanks to having being one of those lucky handful chosen for this year's installment of Dancing with the Stars and narrowing missing winning the coveted Crystal Ball. Usually, he would crisscross America to meet those who've fallen in online love and has been witness to his fair share of memorable moments ever since. But as it has been doing this year of a pandemic, Nev & Max's replacement, Miss Teen USA 2010 Kamie Crawford, have been doing all their investigations at home and being connected to each other and their subjects through video-chat... same goes for their Ghosted counterparts Rachel Lindsay and Travis Mills.
   A year ago this month saw Viacom and CBS complete their re-merger and as it was during their first corporate marriage, there's been plenty of cross promotion in the expanded company with plenty of familiar names to Challenge Nation making appearances on shows across the entire company -- and that includes what goes down in daytime today on the Eye, which we will cover later this week. Also, there's Nickelodeon producing a kid-friendly simulcast of one of the Eye's upcoming slate of NFL playoff games in the run-up to the network airing Super Bowl LV.

And of course - and even before company big wigs got together in that Big Apple meeting room, Big Brother has had a huge impact on MTV since The Challenge Vendettas, which has seen it be part of each succeeding season since along with the first three seasons of Ex On The Beach USA. And that leads us to this: last week's episode of Catfish brought Nev & Kamie in touch with someone who's been out of the eye for over a decade since he took up residency in season 6 of that summer TV tradition.
   "Cowboy" Michael Ellis was an Oklahoma security guard who came to the 2004 season of Big Brother as it was adjusting to ultimately becoming the reality powerhouse it is. Cowboy was part of a bloodlines-related twist when he was competing alongside his half-sister Jennifer (one of eight pairs of siblings to enter the BB house which also includes Paulie, Morgan and the Nolan Twins), and he went on to the final stage of the game in finishing runner-up to alliance ally Drew Daniel from Columbus. And Michael was chosen twice to enter later seasons for a second chance, but the cards didn't go his way.
   Things have been rocky for the Cowboy as of late, as in February 2019 he was cuffed by police in his hometown of Durant, OK just north of the Texas state border when an argument involving him turned violent. Ellis got into a fight with his teenage son where he threw the youngster to the ground and choked him, chipping three of his teeth in what the dad claimed was self defense. But the father was put under arrest that night and hurting the chances he had at being elected on the town's local city council.

As he just turned 40 this month, Michael would be back on our screens as last week's Catfish subject in being attracted to his new girlfriend Julia. But the couple didn't contact them directly: that was the role of Russell Hantz, one of Survivor's most successful castaways and who we featured meeting Cody Dunlap from 2017's Stranded with a Million Dollars. Russell wrote to Nev & Kamie that Julia tried to reach out to him but that flirtation did not go past first base... and it was only when Cowboy started seeing her did it ring up the former castaway as he did not want the houseguest to get played.
   When the duo got to talk to Michael, he confessed to being serious about the 28-year-old Julia to the point where he would move in with her in Myrtle Beach, SC as she sought to start a family and he was going through both a divorce with his ex-wife and mourning the loss of his late mom prior to the COVID pandemic. But of course, his & Julia's relationship is online-only -- and aside from a long phone call they haven't met in person or even seen each other through video chat.
Twitter @JuCrewss
   When Nev & Kamie went on to investigate Julia, photo matches showed her playing college hoops at a local community college, and then found two Facebook profiles with matching pics. It was doing deep dives of her profiles that she had two other mutual friends from the Big Brother family: James Zinkand from Season 9 in 2008, and James Huling from both Season 17 & 18 -- and who competed with Paulie, Da'Vonne, Natalie, Jozea, Corey and the twins. Only the ladder James responded back to the Catfish duo, and in a Zoom call he told them that he had more than an online relationship with Julia: she even sent him explicit photos.
   Nev & Kamie then got a hold of Julia's sister Christin, where her Facebook profile was linked to a phone number given to Cowboy by her sister... and it was after their chat and a follow-up call that they suspected that something was up that maybe it is Christin who's been playing this prank. And when they got back with Cowboy with the findings of their investigation, he would be left in tears. But when it finally came time for the big reveal, it was really Julia, not Christin, who's been seeing him all along... and she felt hesitant to reveal herself in person given her past about a sexual assault she was involved in and having started to date women but was afraid of the consequences it would bring, along with the photos she sent James H., but it was only because of her reality TV fandom.

Below, two clips of the Big Brother runner-up getting Catfished, plus Russell getting to discuss his guest appearance on the show on his podcast.





And after this episode aired last Tuesday night, Julia posted this picture on Twitter as he flew to the East Coast to meet up with her & her family for the holidays as she wrote, "I'm so excited for our first Christmas and you get to meet my mom! You'll be talking each other's ears off! Thanks @NevSchulman @KamieCrawford @CatfishMTV and @Christinnnnn for pushing me to meet him 💕I don't regret meeting this sweet soul at all 🥰." For this night, at least there is something that doesn't happen that much in the world of Catfish: a happy ending.





- I AM DC
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