Catfish Recap Michael and Chanelle: This Ending Was Depressing

Michael is a 21 year-old single dad from Philly who has an online girlfriend named Chanelle.  Chanelle seems like your run of he mill catfish who refuses to video chat. Michael has been talking to her for 8 months.  His brother made him contact Catfish (at least that is the storyline) because he doesn’t think Chanelle is who she claims to be. About a month ago, Chanelle stopped talking his calls out of the blue with no warning. Michael is worried about her.

I remember once a long time ago my older sister was reading one of those self help books and there was a chapter called something like, “He is NOT dead in a ditch.”  My sister was about 16 years older than me, and we were both single and dating and would occasionally have a guy stop calling for a few hours, or days or week that would result in one of us calling the other to decide whether we should break our “let them call you” philosophy.” At various points, one of us would try to justify calling by telling the other that for all we know he is dead and a ditch and we didn’t even bother to call and find out where the funeral was!  Because, crazy is genetic.  So at some point after my sister read the self help book we had sort of an agreement that under no circumstances would we call a guy who disappeared. One day my sister called a few months after her last “boyfriend” had stopped calling and she was a bit agitated. As it turns out, the reason he had stopped calling was because he was in a very bad motorcycle accident.  He had eventually called her and she felt bad for not contacting him for awhile. Until she figured out that he didn’t call as soon as he was conscious because his girlfriend was living in the hospital room with him. I share this story because, NOTHING GOOD WILL COME FROM THIS MICHAEL.  She either got caught by her boyfriend, she is in jail, or court ordered rehab, or she is in fact dead in a ditch. If she wanted to talk to you she would call. Move on to the next.

But no one every learns any valuable lessons from my life story, so let’s see what happens when the boys track down “Chanelle.”  Chanelle looks old and possibly trans in some pictures and young and pretty in others. I think dude may be talking to Chanelle’s mother.

The boys go to Philly and meet Michael and his brother Sid.  Chanelle is from North Carolina but is supposedly attending Temple which is in Philly.  Why yes I do keep typing Philly, mostly because I don’t want to spell out Philadelphia  a bunch of times. Anyway Chanelle was supposed to come back for school in September but she said she needed to stay in NC with her family. Then in December she just stop communication completely.

The boys check into the mysterious waters of the Internet. They find a match for one of the photos and it comes up as a model, Ashley Trent. When they search her phone, they find it listed to a girl named Kym.  Kym is an older woman who works at the hospital at Temple. She has a daughter named Stacey. I think he is probably talking to the mom, who is Kym.  Stacey is also much older than Micheal and she is married with kids. All the people in the catfish family are white, but the photo was of a black model. Michael is also black. So the catfish is probably an old white lady pretending to be a young black model. There is also a young pretty black female nurse named larrya, who likes all of the photos on Chanelle’s Instagram. She is a nurse at Temple. So whatever is going on, there seem to be a few people at Temple Hospital who know the deal.

The boys try to explain what they found out. And I still don’t really get the game. Really all we know is that the Instagram profile is a fake.

It’s time for Nev to stand outside and make a phone call.  Nev leaves a message. So they decide to DM Stacey and Larrya. Later that night, they get a text from Chanelle’s phone.  It says, “This is not Chanelle’s phone. I don’t want nothin to do with this mess. Don’t call or text me.”

Hmmmmm…the plot thickens. The next day the boys head over to Michael’s place. On the way over, they get a text from Larrya who wants to know what is up. The boys say they will call her in a bit. Larrya is in class and can DM but not talk on the phone. Larrya asks what is up and they tell her Chanelle hasn’t talked to her friend Michael in a month and he is worried. She says she if fine she just talked to her last night. So they try to confirm her phone number and Larry says that is NOT Chanelle’s phone number but she doesn’t feel comfortable giving her number out. The ask to meet Larrya and she agrees to meet. At a park near a large body of water. Because they always meet at a park near a large body of water.

Larrya shows up. The pictures we have seen of Larrya have been full of different hairstyles. Today she is sporting super long red hair. She’s the cute nurse (actually nursing assistant I think).  She is good friends with Chanelle. Chanelle does have feelings for Michael. Larrya is very nervous and doesn’t say much. And then she says, oh by the way, Chanelle is in the car.

Chanelle is not Chanelle but Christina. Michael is NOT happy to see “that bitch.”  Christina just goes on with her story. They met in high school and dated for two months and then broke up and went their separate ways. They both went off to college and lost touch. Michael is pissed for some reason. I mean I get the reason, but he seems to be over reacting. Michael says he has never ignored her so he doesn’t get why she went through with such an elaborate lie. She could have just called him.

Okay this is a really dumb episode. I can’t even see the angle.  Oh this is priceless. The phone was not her phone but I guess the white lady’s  phone. The one with all the kids. So when he would text late at night, the lady would text back to him. Michael is pissed that some random lady know all of the personal information that he shared with “Chanelle.” By the way if you are going to call yourself Chanel, spell it correctly! Stacey and Christina are no longer friends because of the phone thing. But what college student doesn’t have their own phone? I guess she had to use a different phone since he might have recognized the number.

Michael is pissed off and ready to dip on out of there. He calls Christina a fucking psycho.

The next day, Michael refuses to do the traditional part two of the talk with the catfish. Nev and Max go talk to her alone. I think she is going to have his baby.  Oh she had post partum depression. This is going to be Michael’s baby.  Christina wants to reach out to Michael and the boys are like, “Stop bothering the man, you psycho bitch!”

I guess that is it for her. She did NOT say that the kid was his.  I still think that is the only thing that makes sense.

They download the 411 to Michael one last time, and the show abruptly ends. There is no follow up video from either of them. They have a text conclusion that says Michael is being more careful who he trusts online and Christina has started a blog about postpartum depression.