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In a mere two months, Fox President of Alternative Entertainment and Apocalypse-Beckoning Nonscripted Programming Mike Darnell will proudly debut his latest reality-TV abomination, The Moment of Truth, in which contestants are hooked up to a polygraph, asked a number of revealing personal questions, and then watch as their lives quickly disintegrate when millions of viewers listen to them sheepishly admit that they're no longer sexually attracted to their aging spouses. In an interview with TV Week, a giddy, tumescent Darnell shares that his naughty places haven't tingled like this since he tricked a mansion full of gold-digging women into believing that a dimwitted, part-time banana-hammock model was a filthy rich heir looking for a soulmate to help him enjoy his family fortune:

"Last time I felt like this was before 'Joe Millionaire,'" said Mike Darnell, sitting in his office wearing his trademark cowboy boots.

"This is going to be the talk of the town and knocked out of the park. You're either going to love it, or think it's the end of Western civilization. And that's the stuff that works." [...]

Fox's version works like this: Before the show is taped, a contestant is given a polygraph test and asked 75 questions. Samples include: "Do you really care about the starving children in Africa?" "Are you sexually attracted to one of your wife's friends?" "Do fat people repulse you?" and "Do you think you'll still be with your husband five years from now?" Unlike the Colombian version, the show avoids asking about felony-level activities and sticks to revealing family secrets and unearthing private opinions. [...]

"Quite frankly, if you hear the question and say you're not going to answer it, everybody knows what the answer is anyway," Mr. Darnell said. "So you might as well answer."

Mr. Darnell screened a "Truth" preview for a small group of reporters and staff in his office, which is decorated with leather furniture and animal-skin rugs. The clips showed anxious contestants looking as if they're seconds away from cardiac arrest.

Should the series fail to be an immediate hit, Darnell has a surefire plan for creating watercooler moments that would surpass the ones generated by his beloved Joe Millionaire at its Nielsen-dominating peak: by simply pressing a button on his desk as he watches a taping on a monitor in his office, the envelope-pushing executive can actually induce the cardiac arrest seemingly moments away in those teasers, raising the contestant's stakes from mere nationwide humiliation to the kind of life-or-death struggle with the Truth that will make for Must See Snuff-TV.