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Sex House
Sex House is an American reality television parody web series produced by Onion Digital Studios. Its ten episodes were released on YouTube from July 12 to September 13, 2012. A parody of reality television series such as MTV's The Real World, Sex House follows three men and three women who move into a large house called the "Sex House" together for three months to have sex with each other. They soon realize that they are trapped within the house, which is quickly deteriorating as their health declines, and they have to fight against the show's producers and host to survive. It was lauded by critics, who praised it for its dark satire, its editing, tone, and camerawork being accurate to an actual reality television series, and its cast. PlotSex House follows a fictional cast of three men—Jay, Derek, and Frank—and three women—Tara, Erin, and Alex—and their time in the eponymous house, where they are slated to spend three months together having as much sex as possible. The characters are initially depicted as reality show stereotypes, with Jay as a bro and a jock, Erin as a virginal girl next door, Derek as a token gay man, and Tara as a party girl, with Frank, a middle-aged man who won a pizza contest to be on the show, included as an outlier.[2][3][4] After Frank has sex with Erin and gets her pregnant, the tone of the show becomes darker as the housemates, particularly Derek, soon realize they are completely trapped in the house, with no food other than moldy pumpernickel, and are being coerced into having sex by the producers and the nameless host in order to survive. The host takes various unsuccessful measures to push the cast into having sex with each other before they eventually revolt against production and form their own society within the house.[5] Episodes
CastMain
Guest
ProductionSex House was the first production by The Onion's digital, non-news sector, Onion Digital Studios, which partnered with YouTube's premium content program to fund its series and launched simultaneously with the release of Sex House's first episode, "Meet the Nymphos", on YouTube on July 12, 2012.[6][7] It was one of four series by Onion Digital Studios to run that summer, the others being Troublehacking with Drew Cleary, Horrifying Planet, and Helcomb County Municipal Lake Dredge Appraisal.[8] Sex House spanned ten six- to ten-minute-long episodes[9] uploaded to The Onion's YouTube channel throughout 2012, with its finale premiering on September 13, 2012.[1][10][11] Its writers were Sam Kemmis, Geoff Haggerty, Matt Klinman, Chris Sartinsky, Sam West, and Michael Pielocik. Mark Niedelson, its director of photography, had previously worked on a season of the MTV reality television series The Real World—The Real World: Paris—of which Sex House is a parody, among other MTV reality television series like Jersey Shore and Road Rules and the CBS reality television series Big Brother.[2][3][4] In late 2012, the first episode of Sex House had more than three and a half million views while its last episode had almost 300 thousand.[5] By 2021, the series's first episode had gained over 33 million views on YouTube. Sex House also played in its entirety at the found footage-themed Unnamed Footage Festival in 2023.[1] Critical receptionAlison Willmore of IndieWire wrote that the first episode of Sex House "manages to land some solid punches" despite it having become "so easy" to mock reality television by 2012 that "it ha[d] perversely become almost impossible", praising the character of Frank as "a genius addition" to the show.[12] Also for IndieWire, Alison Abrams wrote that the show had a "dark edge" and became "a Sartre-esque nightmare".[13] Adam Frucci, for Vulture, also wrote that its first episode was "amazing" and "as pitch-perfect a parody of MTV reality shows as the Onion News Network is of cable news". Mediaite's Jon Bershad lauded Sex House's first episode as "dead on, dark, and damn funny" and wrote that it "hilariously strips away all that 'start being real' nonsense" from The Real World.[3] Jezebel's Madeleine Davies wrote after its first episode that Sex House was "the perfect fake reality show" which "captur[ed] the ridiculousness of The Real World, Jersey Shore and The Bachelor combined".[14] Drew Grant, for Observer, called its first episode "stellar" and wrote that its second episode, whose "dark" twist "leaves you feeling a little sick inside", "manage[d] to keep itself on track" with its satire and avoidance of "absurdest [sic] slapstick" despite "never quite liv[ing] up to the 'Tombstone pizza contest' line" in the first episode.[4] After its finale, Max Read of Gawker called Sex House "the best show of the summer" of 2012, whose satire succeeded due to "its fluency in the language of reality entertainment" and "the clear affection the show's creators have for The Real World and its descendents", which, he wrote, made it "so much more effective than reality-television allegories like Hunger Games". Read gave particular praise to the show's cast, editing, camerawork, and musical cues and described its tone as "dark" and "J.G. Ballard-rewrites-No Exit".[11] Jacobin's Gavin Mueller wrote that Sex House took a "less conventional", "more radical" approach to satirizing reality television by "tak[ing] the side of the workers, the reality show contestants themselves, in their battle against their oppressive working conditions", that it "correctly represent[s] the class struggle as one between cast and producers", and that it "argues that free contracts are a myth". He also called its reunion show its "darkest moment" for being "an exercise in revisionism".[5] In an interview with former Onion staff writer Jen Spyra in 2021, Vulture's Ian Goldstein wrote that the look, tone, and casting of Sex House was so accurate "that if it weren't from the Onion, it might seem like a network-created reality show", with its "quick cuts with random, unnecessary zoom-ins, unnecessary conflicts, and distinct personae for each housemate", and that it was "a must-watch for any comedy (or horror) fan". Spyra called it "one of the funniest things [she had] ever seen" and "an emotionally honest story that stands on its own" with "sharp, specific comedy writing" and "characters that ... you end up caring about". She also stated that it "works so well" as satire because it targeted "the exploitative nature of reality-TV producers and the bottomless, amoral appetite of American TV-watchers" instead of attacking "the sweet, dopey housemates".[2] References
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