Would you reveal your deepest, darkest secrets for $500,000? That's the premise behind FOX's latest reality game show, and summer filler program, The Moment of Truth.
NBC pretty much broke the mold for what people would do for a cash prize in Fear Factor, the show most famous for what contestants had to eat (like rancid cow testicles) and endure (being put into a tank with various insects crawling over the contestant's body) to win a cash prize. On that show, the top prize was $50,000. FOX has upped the ante by offering a top prize of $500,000 if contestants can answer a series of embarrassing, humiliating questions.
Hosted by the charisma-challenged Mark Walberg, the premise is pretty simple: can a contestant answer a series of questions truthfully? Prior to taping, contestants are strapped into a polygraph machine and asked over 50 questions. Twenty-one of the most potentially embarrassing questions are then used in the show.
Inexplicably, guests join the contestant; family, spouses, and significant others are on hand to watch the train wreck and cheer the contestant along. Although how you're supposed to cheer your daughter on when she answers "yes", that she has had sexual experiences that her mother would find offensive, is something of a mystery.
The guests have access to a button that they can press one time if a question comes up that they don't want to hear. Yet the family and friends of the contestant seem hesitant to use the button (such as when a paramedic contestant was asked if he had ever falsified official reports in the course of his duties; I wouldn't want to know the truthful answer to that particular question).
A cash prize is awarded for answering a certain number of questions truthfully, from $10,000 up to $500,000, and one false response ends the game.
Walberg, best known perhaps as host of another FOX masterpiece of television, Temptation Island, will often preface each question by asking the contestant if they think they are a good person or treat others well, for instance, and then ask the contestant if they had ever fled the scene of an accident. He attempts to inject humor into the proceedings, but frankly I don't think anyone is watching for one of his quips. He's supposed to be sincere and earnest, although I suspect a more sarcastic host might be more entertaining. You listening, FOX executives?
.jpg?t=20120527181101)
Article comments