Part 6
The consent math is different in every case, and you should draw your own line. Catfish subjects usually know they're being filmed by the time the cameras show up — they just don't know what they're about to find out. Nathan for You participants signed releases, but the joke is often on them in ways they didn't anticipate. The Rehearsal is the most honest about the unease, because Fielder films the discomfort itself. Jury Duty is the most generous — Gladden is in on the joke by the end, and the show treats him like a hero. Cheaters is the least generous. The other woman in that parking lot did not sign up for this. She was just there, kissing a man, and now she's footage.
Two films anticipated the tone before any of these shows existed. The Truman Show, 1998, Peter Weir directing Jim Carrey — a man who is the last person to know he's inside a production. Borat, 2006, Sacha Baron Cohen — same thing, different register, with real people who are absolutely the last to know. Neither is a documentary. Say that out loud. Cheaters isn't a documentary either. It's a genre. It's a format. It's a machine with a host and a theme song and a legal disclaimer, and the people inside it are raw material.
Who Consented to This?
So let's answer the questions you're already forming. Did the other woman agree to be filmed? Almost certainly not in any meaningful way. She's in a parking lot. She's kissing someone. A camera crew is rolling. What does a camera crew owe a stranger in a parking lot? The show supplies its own answer on the card, and it's a doozy: "exercise your right to be informed," followed by "investigative charges may apply." Read that again. The show is telling you, in plain English, that being informed is a right you have to exercise — and that investigating might cost you something. It's a disclaimer that admits the whole game. The camera is not neutral. The camera is the plot.
And take the sponsor seriously: "brought to you by Cheaters Detective Agency's Private Eyes on Cheaters." The advertiser, the producer, and the plot are the same entity. The business model and the narrative are one object. That's not a conspiracy theory. That's a logo. The show is selling the service it's using to make the show. You want to hire a private eye? Great. You're also watching an ad for one, inside a show about one, produced by one. It's the most honest thing on television, and it's also the most cynical.
But here's what I keep coming back to, and it's not the tape. It's the age gap. Rhemonda says it herself: he's older, she's younger, she thought it evened out. "Older guys do go out to look at the younger women and he has all that at home." She's trying to logic her way out of a feeling. She asks to be included — "I can get a babysitter, take me with you" — and he says no, it's guys' night. She asks him to change the friends who cheat on their wives. He doesn't. She buys circus tickets for the kids. He never shows. Halfway through the circus, she calls him, and there's noise in the background. That's the real horror of this episode. Not the kiss. The noise in the background while his family waits at the circus.
And while all this was happening, she enrolled in school. She's trying to build something. He's driving to a liquor store to meet someone else. That's the whole marriage in two sentences. I'm not sneering at these people. The show sneers enough for both of us. I'm just saying: a surveillance tape is evidence, not a verdict. The kiss is a data point. The thing that will outlive this episode isn't the kiss. It's the circus ticket she bought for a man who didn't show up.
The confrontation is coming. The host, the folder, the footage, the face. That's the next part, and I'll be here for it. But don't let the ambush make you forget what got us here: a woman who asked to be included, a man who kept shutting her out, and a camera that was always going to catch him. The tape is just the receipt.
Next time: the knock on the door, the tape played back, and the moment Rhemonda Hammer finally gets to say it to his face.
You already know how it ends. You just want to watch it happen.
