Mad Mad House

Started watching a new series on the SCI FI Channel last Thursday called Mad Mad House. This is how SCI FI describes their show:

SCI FI invites you to experience life around the edges, in the colliding worlds of its newest alternative-reality series, Mad Mad House.

Five practitioners of "alternative lifestyles" a Wiccan, a Naturist, a Modern Primitive, a Voodoo Priestess and a real-life Vampire (known collectively as the Alts) rule the roost. Meanwhile, 10 ordinary folks move into the House as the Alts' Guests and compete against one another for the $100,000 jackpot.

Our Guests will live out a Survivor meets The Real World meets The Osbournes lifestyle and try to get along living under one roof together. The eclectic and unpredictable Alts will challenge them, judge them and eliminate them one by one ultimately deciding which Guest is most fit for life in the Mad Mad House.

Don't know about that The Osbournes connection unless they are insinuating that the Osbournes are freaks and if you like freaks you'll love this show. Anyway, I've seen one episode and found it interesting enough to come back next week.

The ten guests range in age from 22 to 50 with seven out of the ten still in their twenties. It's too early to really know any of them at this point but two of them stood out for me; Kelly who admitted she was a virgin, Catholic, and "a good girl" and Brent who was a Christian with a capital C and admitted he read the bible every day. The reason they stood out for me is because the Alts had said that one of the criteria for deciding who they would vote out each week was based on how open the guests were to new experiences. In the first episode the guests were invited to join in a voodoo ritual and some of them opted out.

At the beginning I was put off by Don the Vampire's too formal manner but by the end of the show I warmed up to him. Underneath that stiff deportment I could see glimpses of humor and warmth. He may end up being my favorite person.