Moment of Truth: All False Notes
The Moment of Truth by Kelsey McNeal/Fox
I cannot tell a lie. I adored
The Moment of Truth. Wait! What's that I hear? "THAT ANSWER IS FALSE!" Of course it is. Who with a brain or a soul could do anything but despise Fox's new bottom-of-the-reality-barrel time-waster, which turned out to be as dull as it was degrading. Welcome to the latest blood-curdling and soul-numbing example of how eager Fox's reality division is to debase people for fun and profit.
The very idea of this revolting lie-detector show sickened me. Watching the shoddy, cheesy premiere episode on Wednesday (which followed a singularly forgettable round of
American Idol auditions) merely depressed and bored me. Thankfully, this show isn't the end of civilization. It isn't that memorable. It's just another piece of cheap, stupid trash from Fox reality guru Mike Darnell, this century's answer to P.T. Barnum- though he's a pathetic sort of huckster, really, sadly lacking the flair to make his freak shows actually entertaining for the suckers who bite.
Truth be told, the announcer wasn't lying when he called this "the simplest game on television" (in fact, it makes NBC's harmlessly insipid and inexplicably popular
Deal or No Deal look like a college "brain bowl" by comparison). Contestants squirm in a chair as smarmy host Mark L. Walberg, a cherubic little character assassin, asks them embarrassing personal questions they've already answered earlier in private while attached to a polygraph machine. As they answer again on camera, with presumed loved ones observing and egging them on while feigning shock and/or dismay amid a sea of braying jackals, a disembodied voice reveals if the public response matches the polygraph result. Dollar values increase as the questions become more invasive. ("But at what cost?" Walberg kept wondering aloud. A pretty good existential question for this entire enterprise, if you ask me.) If the polygraph judges that the contestant is lying, he or she loses everything. Dignity not included, because such a thing clearly has no place on a show like this.
Sample moment from the first round, involving a self-impressed personal trainer named Ty: "Have you ever had sex with someone the same day you met them?" (At this point, families that stayed tuned after
Idol were no doubt very proud of their decision.) As the audience went, "Ooooooh!," Ty eventually and sheepishly admitted, "Yes." One of his friends, sitting in the observation deck next to his wife, muttered in mock disgust, "I think we're supposed to clap for that." No, really. Don't.
Ty was bounced when he denied ever touching a female client more than was required of him. The polygraph says he did, and there's apparently no arguing with the machine. He walked away with nothing except his 15-plus minutes of infamy, which was probably the whole point, anyway. Maybe he and his wife, who learned along the way that he may have delayed having children because he's not convinced they're partners for life, can do an encore on
The Jerry Springer Show.
The second contestant, a gregarious guy named George, seemed awfully pleased at first to be in the spotlight, merrily saying yes to questions about having sexual fantasies during Mass, being a member of the Hair Club for Men and padding his underwear to appear more generously endowed. "How embarrassing," he remarked after the underwear question, which apparently rattled him more than the one about whether he thinks he's addicted to gambling. (Another "yes.")
A teaser for next week's episode showed a young man (I'm guessing George's son) confronting him with a question about whether he ever gambled away the college fund of one of his children. (But did he roll the dice with a sock stuffed down his pants, that's what I'd like to know.)
I guess I'll never learn George's answer, because here's my ultimate Moment of Truth: Nothing could compel me to ever watch another episode of this abhorrent, asinine show. I defy any polygraph to tell me otherwise.
For another take on Moment of Truth
, see Bruce Fretts' Cheers & Jeers.
