Mark Walberg, the Wink Martindale of reality TV, has his moment hosting Fox’s Moment. / FOX
Fox has not sent out advance screeners of The Moment of Truth. This has not stopped critics from panning it in advance on the basis of its premise: contestants are hooked up to a lie detector and asked 21 intensely personal and embarrassing questions. (“Is there a part of your husband’s body that repulses you?” “Do you really care about the starving children in Africa?”) If they answer them all without lying, they win $500,000.
The case against the show goes, and I’m paraphrasing: blah blah degrading something lowest common denominator something something exploitative blah blah Fall of the Roman Empire boring boring. Something like that; I can’t recall more details because I heard “lie detector” and “embarrassing questions” and ran to program my TiVo.
Mind you, this isn’t an endorsement, just rubbernecking curiosity, since I haven’t yet seen the show. Given that lie detectors are notoriously fallible, “Truth” could be a misnomer; and given that they’re padding out an hour with this show, “Moment” could be as well. The show could be an interesting look at the white lies people tell and whether anyone would want to live in a world of total honesty. It could be a tawdry, or worse, dull hour of cheapo lowbrow TV. It may well be both, or neither.
Either way, I’m there for tonight. I cannot tell a lie.