BY DC CUEVA
Last night before this week's episode of Are You The One?, it was the season finale of Catfish: The TV Show. It was also a bittersweet one, as it also marked the final curtain call for the man who's been Nev Schulman's sidekick during its six years - starting when it was the first MTV series to gain the ever-coveted spot of following the Teen Mom franchise in winter 2012, and opened everyone's eyes to the always fascinating world of online dating and intrigue... garnering plenty of interest ever since.
Max Joseph has been Nev's colleague and conscience on most of the online mysteries that they've encountered across America, and in the few times he's not been by his side the man with the grey hair has been a film director. In 2015, he took some time off from Catfish to focus on his feature film directorial debut, We Are Your Friends, which documented an L.A. DJ played by Zac Efron as he tried to make it in the music industry and see what life would be like with his friends. And with things starting to pull in the right direction for the ladder, Max felt it was the right time to step aside to pursue his lifelong passion of being behind the camera than being in front of it.
Unlike what we've seen on The Challenge of late, those who watch Catfish know that there's a pattern that's followed in EVERY episode: Nev & Max get to meet those who sent an email to them to discuss more about those always puzzling stories they tell them, then they go to work to figure everything out on the stories that baffle them and everyone watching, from searching online profiles and photos to getting in contact with those who have a connection to these twisted stories.
Of course, the big moment of every episode is always the reveal of the person at the heart of the matter: most of the time, it's someone who flat out played their subject and decided to use someone else's identity as their own... other times it is exact person that they got to see all along. It's most especially the case with the former that Nev & Max get to talk to those who made a phony profile that they've been able to get right down to business and together with the subject that they shred the one that their subjects wasted years and months of for nothing.
On the finale of a summer season that was delayed by false sexual harassment charges brought to the lead figure of the film that inspired the TV series, the last investigation for MTV's ultimate bromance (outside Pauly & Vinny) saw them encounter uncover the online romance of Nick & Jasmine. There, they looked into figuring out if the man he kissed on a mysterious rendezvous while being blindfolded was the girl he's been seeing online, or if it was someone who was totally different. And while they were on the prowl to look for Jasmine, Nev & Max found someone who those who follow what this site calls the Trifecta is familiar with from two MTV seasons of a few years ago.
