Catfish Season 7, Episode 5 Recap – “Mary & Adam”

If you’ve never watched an episode of Catfish on MTV before, you might not even be familiar with the word. A catfish is defined on the TV show as, A person who sets up a false personal profile on a social networking site for fraudulent or deceptive purposes. Catfish is currently airing season seven. They feature a different person each episode who has reason to believe they’re being catfished, and somehow, they manage to never tell the same story twice.

Last night’s episode was no exception. Like they have been since the beginning of season seven, the episode begins with Nev and Max at Catfish headquarters. Nev tells an adorable story about his daughter Cleo and we’re treated to a small clip of the two of them pretending to revive each other with a defibrillator after saying, “We’re losing her!” MTV giving us a glimpse into Nev and Laura’s life ( the couple married this past July) with little Cleo is something that just started in season seven, and I’m definitely down. There’s no denying Cleo is adorable and Nev lights up whenever he talks about her.

Nev and Max get down to work after that, and we’re shown the email that starts off the episode. The email came in from “Anonymous” which is suspicious right off the bat. As Max said, “We’ve never gotten an email from anonymous before.” So right away, we’re dealing with something just a little bit different. As they read us the email, we find out the email is from “Anonymous” because Nev and Max have caught this person catfishing somebody in the past, and “Anonymous” isn’t sure if they’ll will help them if they reveal their identity.

Max and Nev read through the email, and they quickly start taking guesses at the identity of the person based on the language used.

A blurb from the email reads, “Three years ago I met Adam on Facebook. He’s frickin’ hot, he’s really kind, and is incredibly sweet to me.”

Max was all over that. “Who says frickin’?”

Nev remembers Heather from Pensacola and we get a quick clip of her saying, “I think you’re cool as crap!” which definitely had me laughing.

“So we have a former Catfish who is no longer Catfishing, but now thinks they may be getting Catfished. So that’s interesting!” Nev recaps for us, and it really does put a different spin on this. The person in the email goes on to explain how they believed Adam was real at first, but now he’s started to do things that they themself used to do as a Catfish and it’s making them feel suspicious.

I’m pretty sure Max was all of us when he said somewhat bitterly, “Karma’s a bitch!”

After a little bit more discussion, they reply to the “Anonymous” email and ask if they can video chat. Not knowing who’s going to be on the other end of the screen was kind of fun as a viewer. When they made the reveal that the person potentially being catfished was Mary, I remembered her as soon as I saw her face.

She was in an episode last season. and was Catfishing a boy named Dylan. The worst part about her episode though, was that when they found her she seemed completely unashamed about the fact that she had lied to so many people. In fact, by the end of the episode, even with Nev and Max on her case, they still couldn’t get her to promise that she would stop catfishing moving forwards.

One of the very first things I thought when they showed Mary on screen in the present is how much I loved her hair! The color and cut was so flattering on her, and I could hardly believe how much it changed her look!

Nev and Max got right down to business, asking her if she was still catfishing people, which she denied. Mary also explained that after her episode aired she started going to therapy and is working through her issues. It isn’t easy to admit you’ve done wrong and it takes a lot of courage to ask for help. Max made sure to congratulate her for her efforts and I thought that was really cool of him. Having decided that Mary is now worthy of their help, they make plans to fly to meet up with her in Oklahoma. They show on a map where Adam is in Alabama compared to where Mary is in Oklahoma. I mentioned to my husband while we were watching last night how much I enjoy the little pins in the map to show how far apart these people are. As a Canadian, my American geography isn’t really all that great and it really puts the distance between each couple in perspective for me.

Once Max and Nev arrive in Oklahoma to meet up with Mary, they sit down and get some more information out of her. I always enjoy this part of the episode because I like to see how willing the people are to really discuss their relationship with the potential Catfish. It has to be hard to admit just how far gone you on somebody you know might not even be who they say they are, especially knowing everything’s going to be aired on television for people to see if it all goes badly. It’s such an awkward position to be in and my heart goes out to the person each episode. Mary was no exception, and it might have been even worse as a viewer because she wasn’t shy at all about talking about her feelings for Adam. In fact, she kept tearing up talking about how he made her feel good enough exactly the way she is.

One thing she said that really resonated with me personally was when she was talking about how Adam doesn’t care how much she weighs. She said he is proud of her whenever she loses weight, but tells her to do it for herself and not for him, and how that’s something she likes about him. “I want somebody who doesn’t care I’m bigger than other girls.” As a bigger girl myself, I could definitely relate to that, and I was not-so-secretly hoping that Adam would turn out to be as nice of a guy as he seemed to be.

Unfortunately, as Mary kept talking with Nev and Max it came out that Adam told Mary he has cancer. If you’ve ever watched Catfish before, you’ll know the “c word” as they call it, is almost always a dead giveaway that the Catfish is lying. A few of the other red flags are if the person says they’re a model, if there was a car accident, and if they won’t video chat. Nev and Max react accordingly to “the c word”, moaning and groaning loudly about how Mary has to know that cancer is a big red flag in Catfish.

“I trust him,” she insists, and Nev and Max can’t really argue with that.

Nev does seem suspicious, though it seems most of his suspicions center on Mary! In fact, throughout the entire episode, he hints that he doesn’t entirely trust Mary. Which, given their past, makes sense. But he seemed to be really pushing it, and asked her several times if there was anything that she isn’t telling them. He doesn’t buy that Mary is naive enough to believe what Adam’s selling about cancer. Mary insists she’s told them everything she knows, and so it’s time for them separate so Nev and Max can dig into Adam online.

Mary told them she had already tried to reverse image search the pictures Adam sent her, and that she looked up his phone number online and found nothing. Nev and Max do the same, and not surprisingly, also end up finding nothing. In fact, they turn up no useful information in their search at all until they turn to his Facebook page.

Almost immediately they see a couple of posts on Adam’s wall from somebody named Skyler who talks about how much she loves watching movies with Adam, and how she can’t wait until December 11th. Nev sends Skyler a message telling her that Adam is fake and that they need to talk. She video calls them, and that’s when they find out she’s Adam’s girlfriend. Nev and Max both look extremely upset at this information, and you can tell that their hearts are breaking for Mary. It turns out Skyler met Adam the same way as Mary did – on Facebook – and that while they have done one video chat together, it was really late at night and she couldn’t see his face, which only increases Nev and Max’s skepticism about Adam. They end the call with Skyler assuring her they’ll keep her in the loop when they find out more about Adam.

They meet back up with Mary to tell her what they found, which is basically nothing other than the fact that he’s doing the same thing he’s doing to her with at least one other girl. Naturally, she’s upset, but admits that she still loves him, feels like they can work past it, and wants to know who he is. Nev tells her the only way they’re going to find out who Adam is for real is if Adam agrees to meet with them. So they call him.

Right from the first time I heard Adam’s voice I thought he sounded like a girl. It was pretty clear based on the look on Nev’s face that he had the same thought. Hilariously, when they tell Adam they’re calling from Catfish his immediate response was, “No. I know Mary’s not a Catfish.” Everybody laughed at that until Nev explained Mary isn’t entirely sure he’s who he says he is. He seemed genuinely confused that Mary didn’t believe him based on the fact that they’re Facebook friends.

I’m sure everybody watching was eye rolling at that as hard as I was!

Adam tries to dodge the request for meeting up, telling Nev and Max that he’s a very busy guy with a lot of responsibilities, but they tell him they’ll bring Mary to him and all he has to do is carve out a little bit of time for them on the weekend. Adam agrees, but before they can leave the park they were sitting at, Nev’s wife Laura shows up.

I have to say I was totally giggling at the way Mary was more excited about meeting Laura than she was about Nev and Max. She seemed absolutely starstruck and I thought it was both so relatable and adorable!

After they say goodbye to Laura, Max, Nev, and Mary take off for Alabama. The little airplane montage also had me laughing this episode. They talk about how they’re flying first class – first time ever for Mary – and show Nev in what he calls slippers (but they looked like flip flops to me!) and Mary sleeping with a super cute unicorn neck pillow that I didn’t know I needed until I saw it.

Once they land in Alabama, Mary texts Adam and he blows them off, saying he’s too busy and doesn’t have time to see them tomorrow. She tries to nail down a time for the next day and he replies, “I’ll get back to you with that.”

Fast forward to the next day and Nev just cuts through the crap and calls him directly. The first time his call goes to voicemail, but the next time Adam picks up and agrees to meet up in a half hour.

I always get a little thrill when I see how dramatic they make the first face-to-face meeting. This time, they had Nev knock on the door, peek in the windows, and made it seem like Adam wasn’t going to answer the door at all. Then, of course, he does, and we see that Adam is actually the guy in the pictures he was showing them!

I was shocked, which I’m sure is what they were going for. Another thing that had me shocked was how young he looked! I was sure he was about to confess he was actually sixteen pretending to be twenty, but I was wrong! He is actually twenty years old. That’s when I realized I’m officially getting old.

After seeing that Adam is in fact Adam, Nev gets right down to it. If he is who he says he is, then why all the secrecy? Why did he bail on meeting Mary in the past? And why didn’t he ever video chat?
Adam starts his explanation with looking at Mary, asking, “You love me, right?”

To which Mary instantly replied with, “Yes.”

Adam is visibly relieved at her reply, and he goes on to explain that he’s a female to male transgender.

Mary’s first reaction was clearly one out of shock. She said, “Okay,” at first, but it didn’t actually come across like she was okay with it at all. Only a minute later though, she said she doesn’t care and understands how it feels to be ashamed of what you look like.

Adam responded saying it wasn’t so much shame as it’s just that he lives in Alabama, and can’t exactly be free and open with who is because of it. He says he is out to his family but that they aren’t exactly supportive.

Nev asks Adam if he actually has cancer, and he explains he does. Then Nev asks if he loves Mary and wants to be in a relationship with her, and that’s where everything starts going wrong. He seems to hedge a little bit at first, trying to explain that he doesn’t know how they could really be in a relationship when they live so far away from each other. Mary isn’t deterred by that at all. She explains that he said he wanted to move out of Alabama anyway and that she’d move to be closer to him in a heartbeat. He says he’s nowhere near ready for that and that he’s happy with the way things are between them, but would also like the chance to be with other people if he finds somebody he’s interested in, and that he’d be okay with it if Mary did the same.

That’s more than Mary can handle, and she takes off to wait in the car so she can deal with her emotions in private. They show a montage of romantic messages they’ve sent each other with sad music playing in the background and I could totally relate to Mary’s shock and heart break after seeing them again. Nev stays outside with Adam and explains to him that he needs to be more straightforward with Mary and if he doesn’t want to be with her then he owes it to her to come right out and tell her. Meanwhile, Mary is in the car with Max, saying how even though she’s hurt by what Adam said, she’d still kind of like to go on a date with him.

Nev comes to ask Mary if she wants to go inside and talk to Adam in private, and she agrees. The shot of Adam and Mary alone sitting inside Adam’s house pointedly not looking at each other felt painfully awkward. I had major second-hand embarrassment for both of them and was inwardly squirming when they started trying to talk.

Adam asks Mary how she feels about their relationship, and Mary says she feels like they’re boyfriend and girlfriend and that they’re together and solid. Adam says for him, he feels like what they have is more of a friendship. It didn’t seem like Mary was hearing what he said at all, because the next thing out of her mouth is, “I want to go on a date.”

You could see the confusion written all over Adam’s face (and I couldn’t even blame him) and to me, it looked like he was trying to find another way to explain how he feels without being too harsh. Ultimately he comes out with, “I can’t exactly be seen with you in public right now.” And though no matter how many times I went back to watch, I couldn’t catch the exact words he said, but I did hear, “is back in the picture,” and it turns out that’s enough to get the gist anyway.

That’s the last straw for Mary, and she’s up and out of her seat quickly, storming out of his house and straight to Max and Nev outside where she explains Adam’s already in another relationship.

Adam followed after her and redeemed himself at least somewhat to me when he came right out and said, “I screwed up trying to make this something that it wasn’t, and I’m sorry.”

Mary is a much better person than I am, and tells him she knows that’s hard to admit and that she understands.

Back in the car with Max and Nev, she complains about how she got shot down and couldn’t even get a single date out of the guy she’s been talking to for three years. Nev is absolutely adorable when he says, “Well, maybe he doesn’t want to take you on a date, but we do, and we can have our own little date.”

They show them eating ice cream and they’re interrupted by Laura calling. Nev explains they’re filming and she asks what happened, and Nev says, “You know what, I’ll put you on speaker.”

Mary made me laugh again when she’s the fangirl in all of us and says, “No! Facetime!” and Nev obliges her. Nev turns the screen towards her and Mary explains what happened. She says, “After all this time he was like – just joking!” Her sense of humor really showed in this episode, and I was really, really impressed with how well she handled herself. I’m positive I wouldn’t have been as understanding or as put together afterwards as she seemed to be.

The episode wraps up with a video call a month later with Nev and Max talking to Mary. She explains that Adam blocked her on everything and that she hasn’t spoken to him since they saw each other. She also says that his girlfriend added her to Facebook, and lo and behold, it’s Skyler! Once they end the call with Mary, they talk to Adam, and he explains he went to meet Skyler in North Carolina and they hit it off and they’re together now.

So, sadly, this episode ended with an unhappy ending for Mary, but a happy ending for the catfish, which I didn’t like at all! I was surprised to find how much I liked Mary in this episode compared to the last episode she was in, and I think because of that I found it so much more unsatisfying that she didn’t get her happy ending. She obviously put so much effort into being  a better person and I feel like she deserves to be happy after all of that. Nev and Max joked that Mary’s New Year’s resolution for 2018 should be not appearing in another episode of Catfish, but honestly, I found myself hoping that Mary finds her perfect guy and I definitely wouldn’t be upset if she ends up in an episode of season eight – but only if she gets a happy ending this time! I’ll definitely be keeping an eye out for her on the reunion shows.