Joined tables and dot walking to unmapped variables on a catalog item

[Susan31]

I have a customer who created a catalog item that is a record producer for HR (not using HRSD - long story).  The Catalog Item variables are not mapped to any table field and all answers to the variables are just combined in the Description field text when the case is created.  She then created a report, that joins two tables and is trying to dot walk to TASK > Questions > Catalog Item and add variable fields from the Catalog Item to her columns in the report.  She can drill down to view and add the variable fields as columns and move them to the right slushbucket but when she clicks OK nothing happens, we've tried saving, updating, running, inserting it as a new report and repeating all of that with admin rights and nothing works.  When she clicks "Choose Columns" in the Configure report tab again, you can briefly see the variable columns in the right slushbucket and they instantly disappear.  She can however add these same variable fields when she uses a regular singular table as opposed to the joined table database view.  The working theory we have is that it's a limitation of ServiceNow caused by a combination of the database view, drilling down to the task table, then to the question table, then to unmapped catalog item variables, i.e. just too many layers of complexity.  As a last ditch effort I'm posting here in case anyone knows I'm wrong and there is indeed a way to do this.