It was always going to straddle the fine line between experiment and exploitation but Seven's couple-in-crisis show Seven Year Switch finally crossed it this week.
With some of the guinea pigs at their lowest ebb after two weeks of "switch therapy" – a concept created purely for the show – the resident counsellors presented their clients with slim folders and the promise that the contents thereof would "really push the envelope on any trust issues you might have".
Inside were photos of their loved ones in intimate scenarios with the stranger with whom they had been paired, like the dirty-work evidence of a private eye hired by someone who thinks their partner has been cheating. And for some, it was too much.
Cassie, the previously married-and-divorced Gold Coast mother of two, was already on tenterhooks because of her fear that her husband, Ryan, might have been paired with her housemate Jason's wife. Michelle is an attractive young mother of two who is giving serious thought to bailing on her marriage to a man she admits she long ago fell out of love with.
As luck would have it, she also lives on the Gold Coast.
When psychologist Peter Charleston arrived at the house Jason and Cassie have been sharing, he told them he was going to present them with "a few tough challenges based on the issue of trust".
He told them Michelle and Ryan had indeed been paired up, then added: "There's more".
No steak knives, Cassie was guessing, just a nasty shock. "They've fallen in love with one another and they're not coming home," she said, with not a hint of irony.
Charleston looked and sounded genuinely surprised that Cassie, and perhaps Jason too, could have leapt so prodigiously to such a conclusion. No, they would simply be meeting their counterparts tomorrow.
Cassie wasn't keen. "I am thoroughly concerned about her and her intentions with my partner," she said. "I'm really worried…it's made me question my trust for Ryan." And of Michelle: "I think she could really challenge our relationship."
All of this was before Charleston had delivered the killer blow – the folder full of photos.
"What we'd like to do is show you something that will stir up some strong emotions for you," he said. "It will really push the envelope on any trust issues you might have."
And with that, Cassie fled upstairs to wallow in misery, doubt and tears, having refused to even look at the images.
She wasn't alone in being distraught by where she had been taken in the name of therapy. Personal trainer Jackie was furious at the revelation that her partner Tim appeared to have had himself tattooed alongside housemate Tallena. "If that tattoo is real, it's over," she said.
Tallena was gutted that Brad had taken Jackie dancing. "He's never, ever, ever taken me dancing." Brad was feeling OK, just so long as there had been no sessions in the spa bath; of course there have.
All of this makes for engaging drama as well as leaving the viewer with an uncomfortable sense that we're watching something we really shouldn't be.
But it also raises a fundamental question: is exploiting someone's misery – and worse than that, creating new situations in which that misery can flourish – really an acceptable form of entertainment?
I was willing to give the show the benefit of the doubt at the outset, though it always felt like a risky proposition. And even if it's true that one of the couples featured has come back from the brink and married since filming finished, a story Woman's Day is reportedly about to break, the excesses of the show remain undeniably problematic.
The psychologist-counsellors on Seven Year Switch, Charleston and Jo Lamble, no doubt believed going in that showing the nation how couple therapy works, and what it can do, was reason enough to participate. If it helped destigmatise the notion of "seeing someone", of getting help to save (or even to end) a broken relationship, mission accomplished.
But the look on Charleston's face when he saw how vulnerable Cassie had become spoke volumes. She was at breaking point, and he and the show had taken her there.
Sure, no one forced the couples to do this (incidentally, Lamble told me in March that she wouldn't put her own clients on the show), but you have to assume they only agreed out of desperation or ignorance (and, no doubt, a little bit of narcissism).
The program makers have taken advantage of that, and heightened the couples' pre-existing fears, doubts and tensions in the service of entertainment.
Whatever way you cut it, that's not therapy. That's exploitation.
