izzyhoey2: On 'Catfish,' Kya Gets Her Happy Ending

Tuesday, December 18, 2012

On 'Catfish,' Kya Gets Her Happy Ending

But not the way you might expect — Nev Schulman and Max Joseph take MTV News behind latest episode.
By Katie Atkinson

Nev Schulman and Max Joseph
Photo: MTV News

We finally got our first "Catfish" happy ending! And, in true "Catfish" fashion, we were surprised at every turn.

(Spoilers ahead if you haven't seen the latest episode!)

"Catfish" masterminds Nev Schulman and Max Joseph learned early on in Monday's episode that Alyx hadn't been upfront with Kya when they met on VampireFreaks.com. What they couldn't have expected, however, is that Alyx was actually Dani, who was born a woman but identifies as a man.

The show clearly wanted to treat the revelation with as much sensitivity as possible, so Schulman and Joseph eschewed the typical formula of surprising Kya with the news at her meeting with Dani, and instead told her upfront exactly what they had learned.

"When we first sort of discovered that Alyx was Dani and that Dani was transgender, we brought it up with Kya," Schulman recalled, "at which point she said, right away, without any hesitation, 'That's OK. I've been attracted to women before. ... It doesn't matter. I love this person, and that's all that I care about.'

"And when we heard that, that took a big weight off of our shoulders," he continued. "Because obviously, if she'd been furious and really upset, it would have made their meeting uncomfortable. But for her to know going into it and for her to be so open-minded and incredible about it made that a really exciting, wonderful moment."

Nev and Max take us behind last week's episode, featuring hard-working single dad Jarrod. Did everything turn out like he thought?

After five episodes of deception, embarrassment and disappointment, Kya and Dani embraced one another and basically never let go when they were brought together for the first time — which made it all the more heartbreaking when Kya had to return to Missouri and leave Dani and California behind.

"Unlike the end of any other episode, the end of this episode was really hard and difficult, because they were together. They'd finally overcome geography and lies and everything to be in the same place, and they were only in the same place for 48 hours," Joseph said. "And they didn't want to leave each other. Kya didn't want to get on a plane and go back to Missouri. And it was really sad. They were crying, and they just didn't want to let go of each other, and that was the first time we had seen that on the show. It was hard. We kind of wanted to let Kya stay as long as she wanted there. But there were actual obstacles to their being together aside from lying and social networking. I mean, there's just distance. And now that's just another thing they have to overcome."

"Catfish" airs every Monday at 11 p.m. ET on MTV. For more, check out MTV's Remote Control blog.

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