Spoilers for the Jan. 24 episode. This week's episode of Catfish was a roller coaster of emotion that went very south very quickly. After things were looking up for the would-be couple in question, a monster of a twist came to light, quickly dashing the hopes of everyone rooting for them. So, what's up with Catfish's Lawrence and Cierra now that filming has wrapped?
It didn't look good for the two of them, at least as a couple, when the show left them at the two-month post-show check-in, with Cierra firmly telling Nev and Max that she was not interested in being friends with Lawrence or having any kind of relationship with him. Lawrence, interviewed separately, also noted that Cierra was extremely angry with him. A search for their social media returned basically nothing for Lawrence — Nev, Max, I always welcome your sleuthing expertise if you ever want to help me out — but I was able to find what seems to be Cierra's Facebook page. Most of the information there is private, but she does display her "single" relationship status in the info she does reveal. Things obviously didn't end well for Lawrence and Cierra, even after cameras stopped rolling, and this is wholly unsurprising given the way the episode played out.
Lawrence approached Nev and Max himself for help figuring out what the deal was with Cierra, who he'd been speaking with via text and phone for a few years now. Both of our Catfish heroes (but mostly Max, as usual) were skeptical of Cierra at first — she was evasive. But they soldiered on. They checked out her social media, which seemed legit, but there was another problem. Lawrence apparently had more than one phone number attached to Cierra — yet another giant red flag. One of those numbers was attached to Clifton, who claimed he was a friend of Cierra's but was decidedly unenthusiastic about talking to Nev and Max when they called him. He "didn't want any drama." Understandable, but also suspicious in the moment.
At this point, all of viewers, and Max most of all, were convinced that Clifton is somehow who Lawrence has been talking to. This theory was only enforced after they spoke to another friend of his who claimed that not only did he like to "stir things up" with drama every once in a while, but he also has a history of creating fake profiles and altering his voice to sound like a woman. OK. We've seen this story before, and we know how it ends — at least we thought.
Eventually, a meeting was coordinated, and everyone was essentially expecting Clifton to show up. Well, surprise, surprise — Cierra is Cierra, exactly as she said she was. She's the girl from the pictures, and Lawrence was never talking to Clifton after all. She also didn't have a secret husband or some other deep dark secret that would drastically throw off a potential relationship. She hasn't lied about anything, which would be great news for Lawrence, right? One would think.
They soon embarked on a painfully awkward lunch with Nev and Max in which they tried to facilitate small talk while Lawrence played on his phone and left to take a call. What is with you, man? Poor Cierra kept giving Nev the side-eye, probably mentally screaming "Why did this guy travel several hours to ignore me?" Nev noticed, and pulls him aside to ask what his problem is — and that's when the big bomb dropped. Lawrence is engaged. Yes, you read that correctly. The man who sought out the help of a national television show to find a woman he has been dying to meet, is also the same man who, months before, asked someone else to marry him. And, he conveniently neglected to mention this to Nev and Max from the get-go.
Lawrence fessed up to Cierra, claiming he needed to meet her in person to really solidify if what he feels for his fiancee is real. Now that he's there, he says, he's not feeling it. I mean... that's pretty insulting. He was basically saying he needed to check out if he liked her more than he liked his girl back home, and now that he'd spent some time with Cierra, he was going to peace out. No wonder she was angry. They parted ways in a not-so-friendly fashion, and Max told Lawrence in the car that he's definitely not ready to get married if he's pulling stunts like this, and Lawrence, thankfully, seems to agree.
At the two-month check-in, Lawrence said his engagement had been broken off, which probably is for the best. I can't imagine his fiancee was extremely excited to see him on TV basically chasing another woman. He did claim, though, that the experience has taught him a lot about himself and about relationships, so hopefully his mistakes resonated with him. He was only 19, and he's got plenty of life to live as he moves past these mistakes. He'll just have to do it sans Cierra, who is hopefully living her best life without him.
