@amc49
So I drove around for about 8 miles - cleared the codes first and watched the OBD reader. First, the P0420 went away from the saved codes but keeps lingering in pending, so replacing the MAF alleviated but doesn't appear to have eliminated the issue. Prior to replacing the MAF the P0420 came on right away, stayed on, and kept going.
The car has ~180k miles but prior to my friend buying it it's been fairly well maintained. The MAF has been replaced a few times according to CarFax but that's about it. My ODBII is an Ancel AD310 and it seems pretty reliable.
Based on what you've described my upstream sensor is labelled as on the tool as O2B1S2 and runs between ~.3v to ~.9v (observed via the tool). My downstream sensor is labelled as O2B1S1 and ran from 1.9v up to 4.4v. My cat got up to ~1140 degrees F, but did not cross that.
It seems like the downstream sensor is off-base on the readings - to ME that reads like a bad sensor... I would really appreciate any feedback there on my assumption.