Thanks to the writer’s strike, the quality of television and films has begun to show the strain with shows like “The Moment of Truth.”
The premise of the game is to sit in the “hot chair” and be asked questions designed to embarrass and make the contestant look guilty even when they are completely innocent.
Before the taping the show, the contestant is asked a series of personal questions while connected to a polygraph machine aka a lie detector. Then during the taping of the show, the host, Mark Walberg, asks the contestant 21 of the questions in front of three people from their life.
The Jan. 23 debut episode featured first a personal trainer, Ty. His wife, Catia, and two mutual friends who looked on as he answered the revealing questions.
The show began as many do – with the introduction of the contestant and their peanut gallery – and explained the show to those viewing at home. This was the fastest part of the show. Seriously, this was one of the slowest progressing shows I have ever seen.
The questions ranged from the seriousness of whether or not he thought he was the best looking of his friends to whether or not he was withholding having children because he thought that it may not work out between he and his wife. The problem is that the “suspense time” made the show painful to watch and slow in nature.
After the contestant was asked the oh-so-personal question, there was a long pause to allow the person to decide whether or not he or she wanted to answer. This also was where the show’s producers must have coached the player to make gut-wrenching faces. After the answer, the voice in the background responds, “That answer is…(insert painfully long pause joined with ‘suspenseful music’ here)…true or false.”
In the center of the group of people brought by the participant is a button that may be pushed if the answer would be too painful or truthful to hear. And if you thought the faces the player made were bad, the expressions from these people were just ridiculous.
The show’s commercials make it out to be a suspenseful thriller that will leave you on the edge of your seat, but to be completely honest, it left me on the edge of falling asleep. You may blame the writer’s strike for this kind of rubbish being on your television sets.
Bottom line: it was entirely too drawn out and boring.