Has anyone but me seen Moment of Truth? I stumbled upon it the other day while channel-surfing with Sarcasm Girl, and…my God. Maybe these are the End Times, because it sure looks like one of the Four Horsemen to me.

THE MOMENT OF TRUTH will put participants to the test — the lie detector test — to reveal whether or not they are telling the truth for a chance to win half a million dollars.On THE MOMENT OF TRUTH, the challenge is simple — answer 21 increasingly personal questions honestly, as determined by a polygraph, and win up to $500,000. This is the only game show where participants know both the questions and the answers before they begin to play. Prior to playing, participants are strapped to a lie detector and asked a series of questions by a polygraph expert, who records their answers. At any time, between the polygraph and the televised game, participants can change their answers or walk away from the competition.To win $500,000 participants have to tell the truth. Of course, the questions are easier when the stakes are low – but as the prize amount increases, they will be challenged to fess up to matters they might normally lie about. The touchier questions could be especially revealing because participants reveal their answers in front of spouses, relatives and friends, hanging on every word. What deep dark secret will someone divulge for hundreds of thousands of dollars?

And what secrets they are! We came in mid-way through, so we missed the softball questions and went straight to the When-Did-You-Stop-Beating-Your- Wife stuff. “Have you gambled away your kids’ college funds?” “Have you ever fantasized about a man?” “Ever had an extramarital affair?” All this while the participants’ friends and family are sitting twenty feet away, in full view of the camera. The real peach was when they brought in a woman’s former boyfriend in as a “guest interrogator” (husband and woman’s best friend sitting nearby–husband looking unworried, best friend completely horrified because she fears what’s coming, which means we, the audience, also have a sense of what’s coming) to ask questions about their erstwhile relationship. “Did you marry the wrong guy? If I were still interested, would you leave your husband? Do you love your husband? The answers the woman gave were Yes, Yes, and (after she looked over at her spouse, now slumped over, head in hands, humiliated before millions of his countrymen) No. The lie detector announces that the last answer was False, and the woman loses all the money she’d gained. So at the end this woman has probably lost her husband, the whole world knows what’s up with her personal life, her former boyfriend has probably gone off somewhere whistling, and she doesn’t even have the $200K she’d racked up before she got caught in that lie. (And she knew all these questions going in. Did her husband? He’s the one I feel sorry for.)

This is beyond Bread and Circuses. It’s like watching a multi-vehicle collision with a studio audience. I couldn’t decide if I was watching a dramatization from a late-career Robert Heinlein novel, or the end of life as we know it.