I’m sure I should be embarrassed to admit this, but when it comes to 21st century staple TV genres, my hands-down favorite is what I like to call “The Evil Psychology Experiment” sub-genre of reality TV.
I was just thinking back through my list of favorites, and was going to claim that “The Joe Schmo Show” is the earliest example that I can think of. Unfortunately, I thought of a show that certainly came before it, and even more unfortunately, it’s “Fear Factor”. I don’t know much about Fear Factor, other than that it’s famous for the gross-out eating challenge. I’m not at all interested in that sort of thing or anything else about that show, so we’ll pretend that Fear Factor doesn’t exist, or at least that there’s such a thing as “highbrow evil psychology experiments”.
Another exceptional example is called “Solitary“. Maybe someday I’ll spend some time talking about it. For now, let’s just say that my favorite episode involves thousands of those bouncy balls that you can get out of grocery store vending machines.
But what inspired me to post this in the first place is a truly ridiculous show that started airing just last month on FOX called “The Moment of Truth“. I’ve heard a little about it, and decided to catch the first episode or two on hulu.com, so I’m sitting here right now watching it. It’s not the kind of show that I’m going to manage to stick with for more than a couple of episodes, but the premise is very interesting. Once a person is cast for the show, they’re asked around 50 compromising personal questions on a polygraph, and the producers choose 21 of them. From that point, all they have to do is answer a series of progressively more personal questions truthfully on national television with 3 of their closest friends and relatives in the front row.
Here’s episode 1 on hulu for you to enjoy for yourself: