KC lawyer offers deals with the devil on TV’s ‘A Wicked Offer’

As a lawyer, Matthew J. O’Connor has to be responsible. But sometimes he likes being …

Wicked.

Especially in his second job as the host of “A Wicked Offer,” a one-hour reality show that finished its eight-episode run on the CW this fall and is now available for streaming online. The Kansas City lawyer plays a legal devil of sorts, a sable-suited tempter who offers a series of Faustian bargains.

Couples can win up to $50,000 for deceiving unsuspecting friends, relatives or colleagues — at least for 24 hours, at which time they can fess up that it has all been a ruse.

In one show a man named Joshua has to persuade his devout parents — on Mother’s Day — that he cheated on his pregnant wife, Karris, and fathered a baby out of wedlock with another woman.

“I honestly feel this is blood money,” Karris says. “Like … I am receiving $50,000 because I lie and hurt people.”

Her husband is quick to rationalize their dishonesty: “A dollar for every one of my mother’s tears.”

In another show, a couple stage a wedding ceremony — only to turn around at the reception and tell crushed family members it was fake.

O’Connor is optimistic the CW will renew the series, though network officials have not returned The Star’s requests for comment.

“It’s more than just a TV show,” O’Connor said. “It has real-life consequences. People have lost jobs, lost friends and lost the trust of their family.”

Some dismiss the show as trash TV. O’Connor said it prompts important discussion about judgment and ethics. He calls it uncomfortable, thought-provoking — and thoroughly addictive.

“In the first episode (the couple) had to get their bridesmaids and groomsmen to pose naked for a wedding portrait,” he said. “That’s just silliness and fun. They got all of them but one of the bridesmaids. Then there’s the episode where they had to convince her family that her husband was having an affair. She got furious with me because I deducted $5,000 because her father didn’t believe it. She threw me out of the house — which is great television.”

To create the pilot for the show, producers advertised nationwide for couples to submit tapes introducing themselves. They chose a Kansas City couple, intending to use their episode only to sell the show to the network. They needed a lawyer in town to play temporary host and plucked the 48-year-old O’Connor, a defense attorney.

O’Connor is not only tall, dark and slender but has experience in front of a camera. He has served as a legal analyst for Fox News, discussing topics such as the Duke lacrosse team’s rape scandal and the continuing saga of Lindsay Lohan. When the CW picked up “A Wicked Offer,” producers considered bringing in an actor to play host but decided to stay with O’Connor.

“Everybody is so happy with him,” said producer Robert Sizemore. “He did a phenomenal job.”

After the pilot, which will not air, the show filmed in Texas, Illinois and Ohio. (Producers give each couple a little lie to help explain the presence of film crews.)

Carrying a contract and a fountain pen, O’Connor visits the contestants to explain what they must do for the money. He does not smile. He does not make small talk. He wears a black suit with a blood-red tie and seriously slicked-back hair.

“That thing is bulletproof, man,” he said. “I tell people in the event of a nuclear attack, stand behind my hair.”

In real life, O’Connor says he is nothing like the cold-hearted character he plays.

“ ‘I’m a goofball,” the divorced father of two said from his dark-wood office near the River Market. “More of an absent-minded professor or clumsy Dick Van Dyke.”

And he most definitely has a heart. Look no further than the community service award he won for helping organize an effort to take relief supplies to the survivors of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. He went three times. But on the show it’s not his job to be nice, or warn people that they might get hurt.

Only one couple, from Dayton, Ohio, ever turned down an offer. It required them to persuade their families they were having a baby girl, then moving out of state. The man’s father said he was proud the couple didn’t put their families through emotional upheaval just for money.

“When they turned down the money I had a little bit of a smile,” O’Connor said. “Like, ‘I’m proud of you.’ ”

All other couples went for the cash. In interviews after the show, most said it was painful, but worth it.

John F. Morris, a philosophy professor at Rockhurst University who specializes in ethics, doesn’t like what the show is modeling.

“The basic ethics angle is ‘the end justifies the means’,” he said. “I say the means do matter. The fact is you are doing bad actions, and those actions form our character. … You’ll get to the point where you will justify anything.”

Even making such a show.

“Ethics is a difficult and powerful part of our lives,” Morris said. “It shouldn’t be reduced to entertainment. (That’s) just exploitative.”

Mark Meister, chairman of the department of communications at North Dakota State University in Fargo, sees it differently.

“If the program is challenging and gives critical insight into the means for making ethical choices, then perhaps it’s not trash TV,” he said.

Meister, who co-authored the book “Communication Ethics, Media and Popular Culture,” plans to use the show in his ethics class to make lessons more relevant.

O’Connor’s stepmother, retired Brookside psychologist Sharon Barb O’Connor, also thinks the show could be useful in an ethics class.

But it’s not for her.

“When the show was over I felt like a voyeur, like I shouldn’t be a witness to this,” she said.

She understands why her stepson likes it, though. He’s always been a provocateur who enjoys making people think, she said.

But if she had her way?

“It is his decision,” she said. “But I think I’d have him quit the show.”

Matthew O’Connor hopes he gets a chance to do more.

“I like the concept of the show,” he said. “And I liked what I could do with the character. Your impression of him can vacillate between ‘this guy is hard-core evil,’ or ‘he’s a poker-faced teacher who wants people to do the right thing.’ ”

Some lessons were more painful than others.

In one show, Sean, a volunteer firefighter, had to say he suspected someone of selling drugs out of the firehouse, then use a drug-sniffing dog to find planted pills.

He and his wife, Desiree, needed the money for a fertility specialist. They got it, but paid a hefty price. Sean cried after losing his best friend and his treasured position at the firehouse.

“That was easily the hardest episode,” O’Connor said. “I walked out the front door and just bawled.”

Afterward he broke character to talk to them.

“I just wanted them to hear from me, as a human being, that I saw what they went through. And more important, that what they did would hopefully have value because maybe someone would learn from it. … If it starts a discussion then that’s a positive thing, as opposed to pie-in-the-face television.”

This story was originally published November 9, 2015 at 3:26 PM with the headline "KC lawyer offers deals with the devil on TV’s ‘A Wicked Offer’."