The Marriage Is in Trouble, So They Take It Onto Television

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During each episode of “Decision House,” a reality series that starts tonight on MyNetworkTV, a judge, Lynn Toler, monitors a couple on the verge of dissolution as they spend three days locked in a bungalow that looks as if it were a set piece in a West Elm catalog.

The effect is disconcerting: The couples are trying to work out messy and even insurmountable problems in a trendy-looking, cheerful space. They are people like Rob and Sally, who, though in their 40s and seemingly old enough to know better, married impetuously only five weeks after they met.

To say that Sally has had a rough go of it is like calling the Great Flood of 1927 the result of a nasty storm. “You were in fact dating another woman while you were with Sally,” Judge Toler points out to Rob. Judge Toler is the host of “Divorce Court,” and the couples here are culled from the same demographic.

“You have lied,” she continues. “You called her a slut. You don’t allow her to have friends. You were only married for nine months, but you have physically abused her over a number of hours on more than one occasion.”

Photographs of a bruised Sally appear. We learn that Rob pulled out his wife’s hair, hit her and held his hands so firmly around her neck that Sally thought she was going to die. Rob, an admitted drug user, denies none of these accusations, responding simply, “I took it too far.”

We have apparently come a long, regressive way from the era of “The Burning Bed,” when television became the culture’s primary instruction in the horrors of domestic violence. On “Decision House” abuse is viewed not as a problem to escape, but as an issue — like poor communication or forgetting anniversary presents — to be overcome.

The couples who choose to exploit themselves by appearing on the show are given 72 hours and some counseling sessions to decide whether to stay together or divorce, but it seems that only a very sick production team would offer someone like Sally a shot at trying to figure out how to make her marriage rosy again.

“Decision House” is irredeemable on both moral and dramatic grounds. It is grotesque. Like so much on television, it perceives the difficulties of marriage largely through the lens of its own classism. As the new HBO series “Tell Me You Love Me” tries to lend further credence to the idea that problems like sexlessness and infertility are the province of upper-middle-class marriages, “Decision House” imagines that it is the less well off and unsophisticated who beat their wives and describe their children as lame or pathetic. This is a series that ought to be missed. No, it ought to be canceled.

DECISION HOUSE

MyNetworkTV, tonight at 9, Eastern and Pacific times; 8, Central time.

Created by Jay McGraw; Mr. McGraw, Kathy Giaconia and Dan Jbara, executive producers; Rich de Michele, executive in charge of production. A Stage 29 production.