Next, on Maury..

“Everyone please welcome Cheyenne onto our show!”

Before the sentence is even fully out of his mouth, the audience is screaming their approval. Cheyenne is sitting slumped in a plain chair, trying to pout but smiling with her eyes. There’s an audience of nearly a hundred already tentatively on her side, and with cameras rolling for posterity’s sake, there’s a spark of confidence inside her that this is going to be a definitive ‘Win’ in the argument that brought her here today, and a win that will never be forgotten.

“Now Cheyenne’s here because her husband, Donald, has been acting suspicious, is that right, Cheyenne?”

Cheyenne straightens up in her chair, transfixed by Maury’s truth-seeking eyes.

“That’s right, Maury, he’s been acting real suspicious!” she offers excitedly.

“How so?” her host asks, curtly.

“Well Maury, I found panties in his car-“

The audience interrupts, roaring a prolonged “Ohhh!”

I don’t know why I can’t stop watching this show. It baffles me that anybody would rather take a personal disagreement on international television instead of just discussing it like rational adults. I say something to that effect, and my fiancé waves a hand at me and says quiet down, that they’re probably just actors anyway.

“You found panties in his car?” Maury is only mildly blown away by this revelation, “And what was his excuse for that?”

“He said, Maury, he said that they were mine!”

The audience offers a long and angry boo.

“He said they were mine and I must have forgot them there.”

This stokes the audience into a louder, angrier boo.

“I must have forgot them there, but do these look like my size, Maury?” With that, she stands up, and pulls a pair of women’s underwear out of her pocket. Unfurling them at her waist, it is immediately evident that this pair of underwear is several sizes too big to be hers.

Open and shut case, I tell my fiancé, they should have just broken up immediately. I mean isn’t it obvious like right away that he cheated, and then also obvious right away that he’s lying about it? I can’t wait to hear his side.

When the audience has settled down after the underwear revelation, their attention defaults back to Maury.

“Well we spoke to Donald earlier and he had this to say, take a look.”

The screen cuts to an angry man in what looks like a parking garage, with a harsh light on his face casting the entire background in shadow. There are cuts to him looking seriously at the camera in black and white, and grainy footage of him exasperatedly shaking his head and looking at the ceiling.

“Cheyenne been accusing me of cheating in our entire relationship! Every time she wants to start a fight, she just says I been cheating and everything is my fault, but that’s a lie!”

The audience, unseen now, gives this another loud boo.

“I told Cheyenne she must have left her own underwear in my car, I don’t know how else that could have got there!”

The audience evidently doubts this explanation.

“If Cheyenne don’t pass the lie detector test, and stop accusing me of cheating, then this relationship, is gonna be over!” Donald declares adamantly, and the screen fades to black.

Maybe they are actors, I think out loud, but I’ve never seen anyone in anything and been like, oh I know them from the Maury show! It seems like it would be an easy foot-in-the-door situation for an aspiring actor, but on the other hand actual people would probably cost less, and is it really that hard to believe someone could want attention this badly?

“Everyone please welcome Donald!” Maury declares as he comes back into view. Donald walks out of a previously unseen hallway to a wave of loud rejection from his audience. He is yelling something back at them, but the microphones are drowned out by the angry fans. He walks across the stage and shakes Maury’s hand, going in for a hug and not quite getting there. As the audience grows quieter again, we realize Cheyenne and Donald are already arguing on stage.

“What? So you don’t recognize your own underwear?”

“You cheated, you know you cheated! That’s fine, we’ll see!”

Maury raises a hand, and they both immediately fall silent.

“Now Donald, is it true that she found women’s underwear in your car?”

“I don’t think so Maury-“ the audience rejects this instantly “I think she either forgot them there or planted them there to cause a fight.”

“Wow, Donald!” Cheyenne screams, suddenly much louder than she had been before, “Wow, you think I would do that? You know that’s crazy, right?”

“You did do that!” he yells back, matching her tone

“You know that’s crazy, right!” she repeats herself, louder and higher pitched.

The audience joins in the fray, yelling a combination of cheers, boos, and a steady undercurrent of Maury, emphasizing each syllable:

“Mau-Ry! Mau-Ry! Mau-Ry!”

“Well, I’ll tell you what,” says Maury, rising above the mob, “We had both of you run a lie detector test, and we’ve got the results right now.”

If the audience had been excited before, they go absolutely ballistic now. You might have thought Maury just agreed to pay off all their debts or buy them all new cars for how crazily they reacted to a stagehand quickly shuffling over and placing a sturdy brown envelope in Maury’s waiting hands. Cheyenne straightens back in her chair and adjusts her hair nervously. Donald sits down uncomfortably, leaning so far forward that he seems to barely be sitting at all. He looks like a marathon runner, waiting for the starter pistol. The audience begins to grow quiet as Maury opens the envelope.

Do any of these people know that lie detectors are no longer considered all that accurate, and that the transcripts couldn’t be used in court? If they do, it doesn’t seem to bother them at all.

“Donald,” Maury beings, with the air of a judge sentencing community service to a petty criminal, “We asked you did Cheyenne find women’s underwear in your car because you had been cheating with another woman, you said no, the lie detector determined…”

This little pause is what makes Maury a master of his craft. The audience knows that the next words he will say will either be ‘that was a lie’ or ‘you’re telling the truth’ – never anything else. Everyone watching has made up their mind already, most of them confident that Donald is a scumbag and ready to jeer him off stage in a heartbeat.

“You’re telling the truth!” Maury says, mocking surprise. The audience gives a ‘wha-’ sound that immediately resolves to clapping and cheering. They love faithfulness to your spouse, no matter who you or your spouse are.

“We asked if you had ever cheated on Cheyenne during your relationship, you said no, the lie detector determined,”

A little pause again – just enough time for the audience to change their mind about whether he had lied.

“You’re telling the truth!” Maury gives a huge grin and a ‘How about that, folks?’ look to the camera. Donald has jumped up and is strutting at the edge of the stage. The audience lavishes him with praise and adoration for his purity and his honesty. They have, in a matter of seconds, gone from wanting to see this man hung, to wanting to throw him a parade.

Cheyenne is looking deeply unhappy. I guess it right away, I tell my fiancé, oh she’s the cheater! She wanted him to be guilty to justify her own guilt! Maybe she really did plant the underwear just to get on TV! My fiancé raises her eyebrows, either to subtley tell me I’m a genius, or that my time wasting activity is now beginning to waste her time as well, and that I should just let her get back to work instead of updating her on Cheyenne and Donald’s relationship.

“Now Cheyenne, at Donald’s request, we had you do the lie detector test as well – you didn’t want to at first, why is that? Maury asks with the intonation of a gentle parent asking their toddler why they didn’t put away their toys.

The audience is quick to vilify her, Maury has given them all the evidence they need, and they know what’s coming next, now. Cheyenne’s eyes dart around as she responds, belying the innocence she had initially held so high.

“I didn’t think I should have to, Maury, he’s the one been cheating!”

Not good enough for the audience, they loudly let her know.

“Well, we’ll just see about that” says Maury, carefully donning reading glasses which seem to have magically appeared beside him. “We asked you, Cheyenne, did you find underwear in Donald’s car because you had planted it there to start a fight? You said no, the lie detector determined,”

The pause, never too long that you actually have time to guess one way or another, and never too short that you don’t notice it’s a pause.

“That was a lie!”

“Ooooooh!” the audience is louder than ever. The camera pans over their amazed faces, their jaws hanging open, their eyes bulging, some with hands on their head, some gripping the seat in front of them, others grabbing at each other or just waving their arms crazily in the air. Donald throws up his arms in triumph, and the audience gives him a cheer.

“We asked you, have you ever cheated on Donald during your relationship with him? You said no, the lie detector determined,”

Pause. The camera cuts to Cheyenne, who looks devastated, then to Donald, who had never considered this possibility.

“That was a lie!”

Donald’s face goes slack. His arms drop to his sides, he doesn’t seem to hear the new uproar directly in front of him. He’s looking at Cheyenne’s face now, but she doesn’t return his gaze.

“We asked you, Cheyenne,”

“Please, no!” she whimpers, covering her eyes with her hands.

“If the child you share with Donald,”

The screens behind Maury light up with an adorable baby looking concerned at the camera. The audience gives a brief aw out of respect for the baby, then hushes to let Maury continue,

“is really his own child.”

“No! No! No!” Cheyenne is crying now, holding her own body like she’s afraid that she’s about to be torn to pieces.

“You said yes,” and Maury’s voice is dry and serious, now “The lie detector determined,”

The camera cuts to Donald, who looks lost, then Cheyenne, who looks like she just wants to die. I eat a potato chip.

“That was a lie.” Maury croaks gravely.

The audience doesn’t know what to do. So unified in their cheers and jeers before, there’s only a confused murmur of disapproval among them now. Cheyenne can bear no more and runs off stage. This guides the audience to their reaction, a loud and angry boo for their Cheyenne, who once sat high on a pedestal in their eye. Her betrayal was theirs as much as it was Donald’s, but only briefly. Donald’s eyes are glassy, and it’s like he’s using every ounce of his being just to keep from crying. His relationship has ended, he doesn’t know how to feel about his child anymore, and there he stands. On millions of screens, in the eyes of the world, a man betrayed and abandoned, brought out for our entertainment.

Maury is shown consoling both members of the couple separately and advising them that taking care of that baby is what really matters now. They both seem to agree, although half-heartedly at best. If they’re actors, I think they should have no trouble finding their next gig. But the pain in Donald’s eyes felt too real to be a scripted reaction. You really see and feel his heart break as his loved one leaves him alone on the stage, with an oversized photo of not-his-child staring back at him from behind Maury’s emotionless rest.

Maybe it’s part of our tribal nature to all take interest and pick sides in a private dispute such as this. We want to see who’s right, and who’s right about who’s right. We need to know, when there’s a loud disagreement near us, who is the reasonable one, and who is the unreasonable one. We just have got to hear the end of the story where someone is definitely lying, but nobody knows for sure who’s a liar. We all want to see vindication; we want the truth to prevail and for the liar to be shamed.

Most importantly, perhaps, we want to be able to pass judgment on those who have obviously done wrong. Being able to jeer Cheyenne off stage makes us all feel that we are much better than Cheyenne. The circumstances of her infidelity are inconsequential – she came on Maury to expose a cheater, and she succeeded. Maybe a guilty conscience pushed her to reveal herself, and maybe her need for attention pushed her to reveal herself in such a grand, public fashion.

I can’t help but feel bad for Donald. He’s not conventionally attractive, the audience hated him from the start, and when his entire world falls apart around him, the audience is ready to move on to the next act. Nobody will praise his faithfulness after the show or remember this day as the day Donald won. The way he slumps at the end and shuffles away from Maury’s attempts to offer kind words, you really feel the weight of his sorrow. He loved Cheyenne, and he loved that baby, and it was all taken away from him in front of the entire world. She got the attention she wanted, and he was proven innocent in the court of public opinion, but they both leave that day losing much more than they gained.

Maybe I’m naïve for thinking that everyone should just resolve their personal issues privately, and that we as a society shouldn’t take so much interest in our neighbors airing their dirty laundry. But then again, when we see someone like Cheyenne airing an entire filthy car, it has a funny way of making our own laundry seem a little cleaner.