Article published January 22, 2008
The painful 'Truth' Contestants willing to tell all in quest for cash
By MIKE KELLY
SPECIAL TO THE BLADE
"Do you think you are smarter than your parents?"
"Have you ever tried to sabotage a rival at work?"
"Is there a part of your husband's body that repulses you?"
"Are you really stupid enough to go on national television and answer questions like these, with spouse, friends, and family sitting right in front of you - and with a polygraph machine on hand to make sure you're not lying through your teeth?"
It won't be long before contestants on Fox TV's newest game show, The Moment of Truth, will get the opportunity to get up on a brightly lit stage and publicly answer questions just like these - well, except for that last one. I made that question up. And I already know the answer to it, too.
It turns out that plenty of people are willing to submit themselves to an embarrassing public probe like that, with their unsuspecting spouses, friends, and co-workers sitting just 10 feet away from them. Their motive? The deep personal satisfaction that only the truth can provide.Nah, just kidding. You know what the motive is. Big bucks.
On The Moment of Truth, which premieres Wednesday night at 9 right after American Idol, participants must honestly answer 21 questions, which become increasingly personal as the game goes on. If they manage to get through all of them without a single fib, they win $500,000. It's as simple as that.
What's more, each contestant will know ahead of time what the questions are going to be. As Fox executive Mike Darnell so grandly puts it in a news release, "It's the only game show in the history of the world where [contestants] know all the questions and all the answers." (Poor Mike must not have heard about the TV quiz show scandals of the 1950s, when contestants were secretly fed questions and answers before their appearances. The schemes blew up when losing contestants blew the whistle.)
There's nothing so underhanded about The Moment of Truth. Before their appearances on the show, potential contestants are interviewed, as are their families, co-workers, and friends. Then a list of 50 to 75 personalized questions is compiled and each contestant is given a private polygraph test by a certified examiner.
The show's producers choose 21 of those questions to ask again on the air, starting with fairly innocuous ones, like "Have you ever parked in a handicapped spot?" and moving along to increasingly touchy ones, such as "Have you ever thought your parents would be better off if they were divorced?" Remember, unsuspecting family members are sitting just a few feet away from the contestants during the questioning.
The more questions a contestant answers truthfully, the more money he or she can win, with intermediate levels of $10,000, $25,000, $100,000, $200,000, and $350,000 on the way to the half million-dollar grand prize. Contestants are free to change the answers they gave during the original polygraph test, and they can stop at any time, keeping the money they've won for whatever level they've reached. But if they're caught in a lie, they lose everything they've won up to that point.
The Moment of Truth isn't the first edition of this show to make it into production. An international version of the program, called Nothing But the Truth, was a big hit with viewers in Colombia until last fall, when a female contestant admitted on the air that she had once hired a hit man to kill her husband. Facing a flood of negative public reaction and the threat of legal action, the show was quickly pulled off the air.
But not before the woman who made the admission walked off with $25,000 in prize money. (By the way, in case you were wondering, the hit man tipped off the lady's husband, who ran off before the contract could be fulfilled.)
Executive producer Howard Schultz says he doesn't foresee that type of situation occurring in the American version of the show, though just about any subject will be fair game. In the U.S., only two types of questions will be off limits: sexually explicit inquiries that the FCC wouldn't allow on television anyway, and anything relating to harming a minor.
Most of the questions are asked by host Mark L. Walberg (not to be confused with Mark Wahlberg, a respected actor and producer), but on occasion someone else will be brought up on stage to play inquisitor. In a preview reel sent to reviewers, Walberg was replaced at one point by a morbidly obese woman who asked a contestant, "Do fat people repulse you?"
EW.com, a Web site affiliated with Entertainment Weekly magazine, has referred to The Moment of Truth as "one of those 'is-it-genius-or-is-it-the-end-of-Western-Civilization?' masterpieces." I tend to lean toward the latter, yet despite the bare-faced greed and sad desperation of some of its contestants, the show will probably attract its share of voyeuristic viewers.
What I'd really like to see, though, is a celebrity version of the game. Wouldn't you love to watch a lineup of, oh, let's see … Roger Clemens, O.J. Simpson, maybe a few presidential candidates?
Now that's a show that could grab some monster ratings.
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