It’s one thing for Fox to post misleading headlines on its website and for Fox hosts to slander an international philanthropist but now its game show ethics have crashed and burned. An ethicist can only stand so much, dammit!

In the very first episode of the latest Fox effort to attract a prime time audience without adding anything of value to the culture or American thought—a combination quiz and gambling show called “Million Dollar Drop”—a couple bet $800,000 that they knew whether Post-It notes or the Sony Walkman  was “sold in stores” first. As the audience held its collective,breath, rooting for Gabe Okoye and his girlfriend, Brittany Mayti  to win big money in advance of their approaching wedding, game show host Kevin Pollack revealed that they were—awwwww!— wrong. The Walkman hit the stores first. Shortly thereafter, the couple lost the rest of their money (the show “gives” its constestants a million dollars that they have to risk on a series of questions) and went home poorer and dumber. Why dumber? Because the show’s researchers had arrived at the wrong answer, not Okoye and Mayti. Post-Its were sold first, though only regionally.

After imitially standing by its botched answer, the show’s producers were finally convinced that the show took away the couple’s $800,000 unjustly. Their response? But of course: bring Okoye and Mayti back! Brilliant! The ratings! The intrigue! It’s perfect!

It is perfect for Fox, anyway, but the solution is spectacularly unethical: irresponsible, unfair and nauseatingly unjust.  The network has no legal obligation to do more, for game show contestant releases cover these kinds of things thoroughly. Because the couple still had questions to answer that could have cost them all their money, it is impossible to say with sufficient legal certainty that the show’s jaw-dropping and disgraceful ineptitude cost them anything but an opportunity.  I’m not interested in what Fox has to do legally. What should it do to make things right, or as right as possible after the show’s incompetence?

I don’t think there is grounds for a legitimate argument: Fox should give the couple a significant amount and give them the chance to make the full million. The stolen $800,000? Half a million? $200,000? We can argue over what is a fair amount, certainly, but Okoye and Mayti must be paid something, and not a pittance, either. They were unquestionably the blameless victims of the Fox show’s rank quiz show malpractice, and Fox is ethically indebted to them. There is no excuse for ever making such an error, not with so much in winnings at stake, not with the kinds of profit these low-production cost quiz shows make for networks, not with the impact six or seven figures worth of cash can have on contestants’ futures, and absolutely not in the very first episode. Large amounts of money can change lives, even generations of lives; perhaps save lives. Shows like “Million Dollar Drop” play games with the fates of real human beings and profit from it: they must do it competently, carefully, and right.”Million Dollar Drop” didn’t. It should not be able to just shrug off accountability and rake in bigger ratings because of its blunder.

The couple told the New York Times they had not decided whether to accept the invitation to play again. “To go through that again — maybe to lose again — that’s a lot of stress,”  Okoye said. Good; that’s a terrific bargaining stance. He and his fiance should refuse to give Fox its ratings bonanza until the network forks over some of that $800,000, and the wave of indignant audience members who browbeat the show into admitting it cheated the couple needs to keep the pressure on. Fox was the wrongdoer here. Okoye, Mayti (does anyone else think that “Okoye-Mayti” sounds like a nautical greeting?) and TV audiences trusted the show and had that trust betrayed.

Fox needs to be accountable, and do the right thing: pay up.