HOLLYWOOD — "My Big Fat Obnoxious Fiance" (8 p.m., Ch. 13) carries Fox's mean-spirited "reality show" genre to the next level. No longer is it just about what someone will do to win a million dollars, it's now about what someone will do to her family to win a million dollars.

I didn't say it was the next level up.

Essential, "Fiance" is a big, cruel joke that's played for laughs. Ha, ha.

The producers of those oh-so-classy shows "Joe Millionaire" and "Temptation Island" have cooked up the cruel joke by lying to lots of people. First-grade teacher Randi Coy (who, of course, is gorgeous) is told that she's being recruited for a dating show. But then she's offered a million bucks if she will try to convince her family she's going to marry the guy she just met on that dating show and get them to agree to attend the wedding.

She's told that the producers have chosen another contestant as her fake fiance. And he turns out to be big, fat and obnoxious.

But the producers are lying to Coy, too. He's Steven Bailey, an actor hired to be as unbearable as possible. And his relatives are actors, too.

Coy said she has "some resentment" over having been tricked, but don't feel real sorry for her. She has no guilt over playing this incredibly cruel joke on her family in order to get herself on TV and win a million bucks.

"I thought, 'This is going to be fun.' It was an ultimate practical joke. And it gets tricky, but they're a resilient family," Coy said.

Good thing, because clips from episodes toward the end of the show's six-week run show Coy's family clearly upset — even traumatized — by the belief that their loved one was about to ruin her life.

"Yeah, well, we put them through a lot," Bailey said.

And yet Coy insisted, "I don't know if it's mean. . . . I don't think it was necessarily cruel. It was going to end, and that was my thing. It was two weeks."

When it was pointed out that it was two weeks of heartache for her parents and siblings, Coy empathetically agreed. "Right," she said.

But executive producer Chris Cowan assured critics, "It wasn't necessarily all heartache.

"Oh, I think it's traumatic, absolutely," said Cowan, who called it "hyper-drama" and refused to admit it was sort of a crummy thing to do to these people.

"No, I don't think it's crummy at all," Cowan said.

Coy couldn't quite answer when asked if she had any ethical qualms about participating in a huge, cruel lie when she's supposed to be a role model for her students.

"Yes and no," she said. "Once again, it was supposed to be fun. . . . I didn't look at it as harming my family."