Viewers will be shocked or tickled by the tackiness of it all. And as sure as there are hard bodies and bikinis on Temptation Island, somebody somewhere will be moaning that the show is the lowest moment in TV history. Of course, it's not really the lowest.
Television has a long history of assaulting our common agreements on good taste.
The history of the medium is filled with examples of embarrassing and outrageous antics. Winning meant getting a tacky cloak, a tiara and prizes of cash and goods. In the 1950s, the first quiz-show craze swept American television. The charade of Van Doren's erudition started to crumble when a participant on another show found a notebook given to a contestant that listed the questions to be asked on the air, and the answers. A formal investigation followed, with Van Doren denying, under oath, that he had been coached.