In January, we settled in to watch four couples -- Shannon and Andy; Ytossie and Taheed; Valerie and Kaya; and Billy and Mandy -- spend two weeks on a Caribbean island. They were kept apart and told to test their commitment to one another while surrounded by a swarm of predatory "fantasy singles" of the opposite sex.

Reality TV has quickly become a punch line, in no little part because of conceptions like "Temptation Island." But on Fox over the last few months, something interesting happened on the way to the gutter. While the show engaged us with well-filled bikinis and overdeveloped pecs, we also got to watch some well-deserving people get put through the wringer. We saw the fault lines of what lyricist Lorenz Hart once ineffably called "the fine miss-mating of a him and her."

The couples were made for each other like oil and water, and yet, in the disappointing final episode, they decided to stay together forever. "Temptation Island" demonstrated, perhaps unwittingly, that a certain degree of willful ignorance and denial may be crucial to maintaining a relationship intact.

The couples -- who received no advance copies of the show -- have only just emerged from a gauntlet of transparent honesty and cruel sincerity that few relationships could survive. While on the island, they were only marginally aware of what their mates were doing, thinking and feeling. As of last Wednesday, the hapless eight know much more than they probably ever wanted to know about each other. The eight stars haven't just returned from "Temptation Island" -- they've only just got there. And when the experience tears them apart, the viewers at home will not be given the satisfaction of seeing it televised.

The producers of the show were under wraps as it went through its broadcast life over the past eight Wednesdays. A few days after the last show, I spoke with the show's head story producer, Dave Rupel, about the story behind "Temptation Island."

While realistic about the industry he's in -- "L.A. is not a town that's built on sincerity," he says dryly -- Rupel had some surprising revelations to make about how the show worked and why the producers chose the stars they did.

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Were you one of the people who came up with the idea?

Yeah, they called me fairly early on. The executive producer Chris Cowan had gotten the contract with Fox. It was a pretty bare-bones concept they sold. They knew there were going to be couples and singles and they would go on dates and not much more than that.

I'd done a lot of reality and soap operas. So it was my job and my team's job to flesh it out in terms of what the events would be, how each date would differ, coming up with the bonfire and what would happen at the bonfire. And a lot of it was collaborative with the Fox executives. It was actually Mike Darnell's idea to come up with the blocks -- the bracelets. We had like six weeks to come up with what we thought the two weeks of shooting would be, and getting it approved by Fox.

Was it your background in soaps or in reality TV that made them interested in you?

I think they liked the unique mix. They first said this is going to be a reality soap opera. They wanted me to build in the cliffhangers and stuff like that.

How many couples applied?

Probably a couple hundred.

And how did the casting work?

There was a casting department in charge of open calls. We had open calls in four or five cities. Then we also had people go out and scout. A couple of casting assistants would go out to the Third Street Promenade [in Santa Monica, Calif.], and if they saw an attractive couple, they would approach them. Andy and Shannon, I believe, came in because they were friends of friends of one of the casting assistants.

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