MTV’s Catfish: The TV Show, And Why Reality TV Is Also Part of Television’s “Golden Age”
by Gregg Bothwell
Every episode of MTV’s Catfish: The TV Show begins with Nev and Max, the show’s hosts, goofing around in a hotel room. They’re just waking up, or they’re cracking jokes at the other’s expense, or maybe just doing a bit for the camera, but the show always opens with an intimate moment between the two. Eventually, they’ll sit down at the computer and—well, let’s be honest—pretend to find an email from a concerned person in an online relationship. The theatricality of the scene doesn’t matter; we know they’ve selected this person before this moment, but they want to make the audience feel more involved. By showing us this moment, the audience feels like they just met up with their old friends Nev and Max, and they’re discovering things alongside the two.
On television, character becomes the most important aspect of a show. This is especially true on sitcoms or episodic dramas, because the only continuity between episodes is the characters—they’re the link between each separate story. Even the highly serialized dramas of the last 15 years have put a particular emphasis on building characters: what people remember of The Sopranos is Tony Soprano, not what happened in a given season. When people talk about Breaking Bad, they talk about Walter White and the way his actions affect and define his character. I personally have gotten into a number of heated arguments about whether or not Walter is a bad guy (by the way, he is), but I rarely talk about what actually happens on the show. With the exception of soap operas, the events that happen on a television show are rarely as important as the way those events affect the characters. Even now, when network shows (those on CBS, NBC, FOX or ABC) try to cash in on the success of cable television (AMC, FX, TNT, Showtime, HBO, etc.), they seem to forget that the characters are what hook people, not the plot or atmosphere. They’ll focus on the dark edge, or the twists and turns of a plot, but forget to flesh out the characters, and the viewers get bored. An audience is only going to watch a TV show for as long as they care about the characters.
On Catfish, this means that the viewers have to care about Nev and Max, who are the only consistent characters from one episode to the next. The show does a good job of making the concerned person of the week (CPOTW?) sympathetic and interesting, but Nev and Max have to be likeable too. As soon as the audience dislikes the hosts, they’re going to stop watching the show, no matter how interesting it is. (Nev and Max: you have to get better about talking about trans* issues or else I will start to dislike you).
This is true of all reality television: the characters are meant to shine, not the plot. The reason producers choose such crazy (perhaps obnoxious) people to be on their shows is because they’re well-defined and interesting. Even a show like Jersey Shore has great characters. I’ve hate-watched that show enough times to know that Vinny and Pauly D are hilarious together, JWOWW is surprisingly smart and responsible, and Snooki isn’t as dumb as she pretends to be. But I also know that in a given episode, all that’s going to happen is that they’ll get sloppy drunk, Ron and Sammi will get into a fight, and then maybe they’ll work at the Shore Shack for five minutes the next day. What happens isn’t interesting—what matters is who’s doing it. MTV seems to “get” this concept with its reality programming, which has been very popular for the network (people often complain that MTV doesn’t show music videos anymore, and it’s because no one wants to watch hours of music videos they can find on YouTube). Perhaps their biggest franchise, outside of Jersey Shore, is 16 and Pregnant and the spin-off/sequel Teen Mom.
These shows—along with the rest of MTV’s reality catalogue—have the added benefit of being relevant to a lot of young people, but at their heart, they’re also about the characters. The show’s titles are self-explanatory, but if you’re unfamiliar: 16 and Pregnant is about teen couples who get pregnant, and must decide whether they want to keep the baby or give it up for adoption. Teen Mom is the continuation of that show, following the mothers from 16 and Pregnant as they attempt to raise their babies (very few actually give up their babies for adoption). Teen Momwas created as a way for viewers to keep up with the characters (real people) they cared about from 16 and Pregnant, and it’s been very successful. Teen Mom and its sequel, Teen Mom 2 (which follows the lives of mothers from season two of 16 and Pregnant) have each run for four seasons, where 16 and Pregnant has only had four seasons altogether. MTV’s strategy—and what the viewers want—is to follow a continuing story involving the characters they already know.
That is precisely what critics are talking about when they talk about the “Golden Age” of television, or the rise in quality TV since The Sopranos began in 1999. The television that people want to watch is becoming increasingly serialized, sure, but what it really comes down to is that people want good characters—ones with whom they empathize in some sense, even if the character makes bad decisions. (The huge presence of antiheroes and moral ambiguity on television will be the topic for another post.) Catfish may not be serialized, but when friends talk about the show, it’s usually to speculate about whether or not Nev and Max are totally gay for each other, because they’re the characters we’ve come to know and love. MTV knows what it’s doing when it comes to creating watchable reality television, and that shouldn’t be overlooked. Networks like AMC, FX, Showtime, HBO, and now Netflix have been working to change the way stories are told on television, and their shows have resonated with audiences and critics, but reality television is often overlooked. It has a reputation for being trashy, but while the people on reality TV might not be as beautiful or well-mannered as Raylan Givens or Don Draper, they’re still well-defined and interesting. Reality TV isn’t written by smart, innovative storytellers either, but it can still be poignant and timely.
For instance, Catfish is examining a very modern problem, one that’s less than twenty years old: what if the person you love is not who they say they are? Before the internet, that problem didn’t exist—barring perhaps a few instances of pen-pal fraud—but now it’s relatively common. And the concept raises all kinds of philosophical questions: what does this say about love and sexuality? Just how important are looks and gender boundaries? What causes someone to lie about their identity? With the possibility to become anyone else, who chooses to do so? And whom do they choose to become? These questions aren’t simply implied in the show, either—they’re directly addressed. Catfish doesn’t simply lead up to the reveal of who the unseen party in the relationship is. It brings us to that moment, and stays to see what happens next. We get to see how the fraudulent parties explain themselves; we get to understand their lives and their motivations; we get to see how they react to finally meeting the other person. And on the other side, we get to see how the defrauded party reacts: how much are they willing to forgive? Is the intimacy between the two parties nullified by the dishonesty, or is there still some connection there? It’s different in every episode: sometimes the relationship survives, sometimes they become friends, and sometimes they never speak again. But that’s what’s so fascinating about the show: it comments on modern ideas of love and sexuality while remaining immensely watchable.
It’s easy to write off reality television as an inexpensive way for a network to boost its ratings (which it often is), but it would be just as easy to write off scripted television based on shows like Two and a Half Men or NCIS: Los Angeles. Reality television might not always be the smartest TV, but it often has the best characters. People talk about Janelle from Teen Mom 2 in the same way they talked about Tony Soprano. MTV’s reality shows may not be immortalized in the same way The Sopranos has been, but they’re perhaps more relevant to the current cultural paradigm, and they certainly shouldn’t be overlooked.
