Web Video / Sex House

It's what America wants to see.

A parody of sex-obsessed "reality" shows by The Onion, and one of their video series along with Porkin' Across America. We follow the six contestants:

• Alex, an attention hungry young woman dabbling in the alternative.
• Derek, a black homosexual man and the sanest of the bunch.
• Erin, a shy virgin from a small town.
• Frank, a middle-aged married man, whose participation is the result of winning a contest.
• Jay, an enthusiastic fratboy.
• Tara, a bubbly airhead.

During the show they are going to live together in a isolated house which will hopefully results in lots of sex and drama and high ratings for the network. This being The Onion, things quickly take a turn for the worse. Watch it here.

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Sex House contains examples of:

• Accidental Murder: The housemates take the Sybian repairman hostage and chain him up in the mold room. When Derek later suggests they release him because he has nothing to do with keeping them imprisoned, they discover that the mold has killed him.
• Alcohol-Induced Idiocy: Frank apparently drinks enough that cheating on his wife with an eighteen year-old virgin seems like a good idea.
• Angst Coma: Erin goes into one after having drunk sex with Frank. She gets better.
• Attention Whore: Alex, though after getting thoroughly rejected and insulted by the Host, she gets better.

• Body Horror: What happens to the Sybian repairman in episode 8.
• Brainless Beauty: Tara and Jay, at least at first.
• Break the Cutie: Everyone, even Alex.
• Bury Your Gays: Derek, the only gay housemate and Only Sane Man, is the one who is dying of malnourishment in the series finale.
• Canon Welding: According to co-writer Michael Pielocik; Frank is a cousin of Kim from the Lake Dredge Appraisal show. They don't see each other very often.
• Captain Oblivious: Alex. She's the last of the housemates to realize that they are not in a good situation.
• Captain Obvious: Jay at one point: "We need food to live, because we're humans."
• Cat Fight: The Host tries to start one of these between Alex and Erin in episode 7 when both of them are under the influence of the "cloudy drink."

• Character Development: Surprising, considering one side of the show is a parody of Reality TV and the other is encroaching very quickly onto horror territory.
• Chekhov's Gun: The Sybian is used to lure in the repairman and is used as an escape drill. The white mold spreads to an entire room and ends up killing said repairman.
  • And ends up used as a cure for dengue fever in the Philippines.
• Chivalrous Pervert: Frank, despite not being able to keep it in his pants, at least tries to be a nice guy.
• Comedic Sociopathy: The series runs off this and Black Comedy.
• Confession Cam: Used frequently, as this is a reality show parody. Somehow, the contestants keep finding themselves in front of it even when they're going through hell.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: The network running the Sex House.
• Crapsack World
• Cure Your Gays: Derek alleges to have become straight in the reunion episode. However; His dialogue implies that he has a unrequited crush on Coolio.
• Deadpan Snarker: Derek, the only gay man on the show, can be one at times.
• Disaster Scavengers: The cast become these after they're abandoned by the network.
• Distant Finale: Episode 9 occurs twelve "Crysts" since the show was abandoned, after which Erin's baby has been born and the cast have started a tribal civilization within the house.
  • Subverted: it turns out that 9 is the penultimate episode, and the finale is a reunion episode. It isn't explained how the cast are now vapid reality stars on the outside.
• The Ditz: Tara parodies this archetype. She gets smarter as the situation becomes more dire.
• Downer Ending: The cast has gone tribal within the house after being abandoned by the producers. They don't try to escape once they can and have developed rituals as they live off the little nourishment they have left.
  • Bittersweet Ending: The final "reunion" episode shows that they've left the house and the white mold was used to save people's lives, but they've become shallow and vapid, and Derek is now repressing his homosexuality.
  • Gainax Ending: After Episode 9 shows the housemates succumbing to madness and choosing to stay inside the abandoned house, Episode 10 suddenly cuts to a reunion show where the cast members have lost all their Character Development and remember the events in the show with fondness. It's not revealed what happened between episodes, if the housemates have been brainwashed, drugged (again) or even if those are really the same people.
• Driven to Madness: All of the housemates, as well as the camera crew, to the point that when they're given a chance to escape, they choose to keep themselves confined.
• Everybody Has Lots of Sex: The premise and goal of the series. Turns out people aren't horny when kept prisoner, malnourished and poisoned, not to mention all totally incompatible with each other, Jay and Tara excluded.
• Fantastic Drug: The "cloudy drink" supplied to all the residents in episode 7.
• Festering Fungus: The room where they stash the moldy food cultivates this very quickly. In episode 8, the repairman the cast kidnaps dies in there because of it.
• Fetish Retardant: In-Universe. Everyone finds Alex's attempts to be seductive very unappealing.
• Foreshadowing: Plenty in the first episode. From Jay tapping on a faulty lightbulb in an almost empty back room, over Erin accidentally breaking off a handle on a cabinet, to Derek's comment on how there is more alcohol than food in the house.
• Genre Deconstruction: The series does this quite brutally to Immoral Reality Shows. Not only are the contestants much deeper and complex people than the shallow stereotypes the show desperately try to portray them as, the producers' "indicatives" to cut corners on the budget and ensure sex and drama in order to get the precious high ratings rolling in, soon starts to take a massive toll on their sanity and health.
• Genre Shift: Goes from a somewhat lighthearted parody of Reality Shows, to a full-on Genre Deconstruction with copious amounts of Black Comedy.
• Gory Discretion Shot: We don't see the results of Frank taking a hammer to his genitalia.
  • Aversion: We get to see a broken bone sticking out of the skin of one woman's leg.
• Groin Attack: Frank inflicts a serious one on himself.
• Hanlon's Razor: The horrible things that happens to the housemates aren't intentional, but rather the result of the producers and the staff on the show being either grossly incompetent, stupid, lazy, cheapskates, or some combination thereof.
  Derek: To call this place "evil" implies a clarity of purpose that I do not want to attribute to anyone involved.
• Hidden Depths: All over the place, despite the best efforts of the editors.
  • Tara seems like your typical airhead, but she's the only one who realizes the drugs are poisonous.
  • Tara and Jay, in a subversion of Reality Show Genre Blindness, realise that the reason they're so compatible is because casting agents realised they would be compatible, and choose not to have sex.
  • Jay looks like a typical Jerk Jock at first, but when the group go mad, he becomes a sweethearted farmer.
  • Frank looks like a rather pathetic figure in the first episodes, but ends up beating the crap out of the mysterious masked man and leads the group when they succumb to Stockholm Syndrome.
  • Alex seems to be the most grounded and rational of the group once she gets over her Attention Whore tendencies and realizes the situation they are in.
  • Erin is a naive country girl who comes out of an Angst Coma with Mama Bear tendencies.
• Hipster: Alex.
  Alex: Soren Damgaard is the hottest thing going now. I've heard of him.
• Ho Yay: Invoked and Exploited. Or at least attempted exploited. The Host tries to force the drugged Derek and Jay to have sex in episode 7, though all that ends up happening is that Derek very awkwardly lies on top of Jay while sucking on his own shirt.
  "You will appeal to a demographic of millions!"
• Incompatible Orientation: Derek is the only gay guy in the house, to his disbelief. The producers of the show appear to not understand Sexual Orientation, if not sex in general.
  • Alex tries to come on to the Host, but he's asexual.
• Interrupted Intimacy: What stops Jay and Tara having Sex altogether and realizing their circumstances are a bit fucked up. Before this, Erin's crying and the smell of a dead animal underneath the floor put them off.
  • The mold stops Frank and Alex "experiencing each other's bodies".
• In-Universe Camera: The cameramen actually appear in the shot at one point.
• Jerkass: Danny Vullmer, the comedian. Jay at times.
  • The entire cast in the reunion episode.
• Knockout Gas: The Mist.
• Laser-Guided Karma: The Host ends up permanently blinded by Tara after he attempts to force-feed her drugged water.
• Law of Inverse Fertility: Frank, a married man and father of two, gets the virginal Erin pregnant on her first time. He later has sex with the fake therapist and gets her pregnant as well.
• Kavorka Man: Frank, who is middle-aged and married with two kids, won a pizza contest to be on the show and claims that he's not going to have sex. He is the only one who has had sex in the house (besides those he had sex with, obviously). He cheats on his wife twice: first with Erin, a teenage virgin, and again with a fake therapist who was roleplaying as his wife. He got both of them pregnant.
• Let's Get Dangerous!: Frank hits himself in the testicles with a hammer to prove this point.
• Madness Mantra: "Cloudy drink kills frog. Cloudy drink kills frog."
• Masochist's Meal: The regurgitated bananas that Erin almost drinks in episode 6.
• Mate or Die: The producers eventually ends up denying the contestants fresh food and even drugs them in the hopes that it motivate them to have lots of sex.
• Mood Dissonance: The contestants are going through hell while the editing tries to impart the standard reality show cheeriness and sense of drama.
• Mushroom Samba: The unnamed "cloudy drink".
• Nature Lover: Tara sure does love those frogs.
• No Name Given: The Host, who refuses to divulge any information about himself.
• No Sex Allowed: The cast agrees to not have any sex and refuse to play along when they all realize they're in a very disturbing situation. Frank fails.
• Not Quite Dead: Frank in episode 8. We see his lower half from a ceiling camera as he gets mercilessly beaten by a man in a mask. When he enters the room where the rest of the cast is hiding, we get this exchange:
  Frank: I got him. I got the masked goon.
  Erin: How did you do it?
  Frank: I wasn't afraid of dying because I thought I'd already died.
• Not Used to Freedom: The cast manages to take down the board covering up the window in the Series Finale. They're in the middle of town. They put it back up, having gone mad inside the house.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Quite a few dramatic and even heart-warming events have vaguely to alluded both in-series and by the writers. Justified by the In-Universe producers rigorously editing the footage in post-production, and leaving a lot of things on the cutting room floor.
• Only Sane Man: Derek, although the other housemates eventually also come around to realize how screwed up things are.
• On the Next: In style of Arrested Development the "Next Time on Sex House" previews are in part used for small one-off gags that don't actually appear in the next episode.
  • However, there are also actual previews of the next episode as well, somewhat confusingly.
• Parlor Games: The gang play Truth or Dare. Awkwardness ensues.
• Pixellation: Used when appropriate. One does wonder if it might not defeat the purpose of the show.
• Pregnant Badass: Erin becomes one after pulling herself out of her Angst Coma and Taking a Level in Badass. A particularly intense moment for her was when she was fully willing to drink a bucket full of regurgitated bananas for the sake of her baby.
• Prisoner Exchange: Played with in that the housemates seem to be attempting this in order to trade their hostage for themselves. It doesn't end well. See Accidental Murder above.
  • Primarily they just needed his tools.
• Reality Show Genre Blindness: Played with. At least at first, only Derek understands the seriousness of the situation and treat it like a normal Reality Show.
• Remember the New Guy?: Parodied with the Host, who shows up for the first time in episode 4 and is bewildered that none of the housemates recognize him.
  Tara: Who is this guy? He's acting like he's been here all along.
• Running Gag: The Host keeps knocking over the Settlers of Catan board.
• Sanity Slippage: Thanks to the cramped, extremely unhygienic and outright harmful surroundings, everyone eventually succumbs to this.
• Sealed Room in the Middle of Nowhere Sealed House in the Middle of Nowhere: Subverted in the penultimate episode. The Sex House is in the middle of town; the cast can escape but decide against it.
• Self-Harm: Frank appears to mutilate or sever his genitals at the end of episode 8.
• Sliding Scale of Comedy and Horror: Begins at the comedy side, and rapidly accelerates to the horror side over the course of the series.
• Small, Secluded World: The Sex House is a fairly spacious apartment with no windows and locked doors. As time goes on, its inhabitants start to feel the isolation more and more.

• Stealth Parody: There are, as typical for The Onion, a number of people who believed the first episode was a legitimate reality show (and have never heard of The Onion). (To be fair, it was convincingly well acted and edited.) Later episodes have declining viewership (as typical for Youtube serials) but it's funny to wonder how long some people kept on believing...
• Straight Gay: Derek. The show, however, tries desperately to portray him as a Camp Gay.
• Suicide as Comedy: Tara casually remarks the frogs remind her of her "suicide brother".
• Surveillance as the Plot Demands: There's even a camera in the toilet. This is the final straw for Derek.
• Tears of Remorse: In episode 8, after the cast accidentally kills the Sybian repairman, Erin gets these while the others react in My God, What Have I Done? fashion.
• Thwarted Escape: Happens in episode 8 to the housemates by means of a masked psycho.
• There Are No Police: Nobody complains about the blatant immorality of the show. When the housemates start starving and their living conditions become dismal, there is no intervention by the authorities. It gets especially odd when taking into account that the show is being broadcast on TV, and yet none of the friends or family members of the cast ever appear.
• Took a Level in Badass: The entire cast eventually does, culminating in episode 8, where they attempt an escape.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: Again, the entire cast, by the reunion episode.
• Twofer Token Minority: Derek who doubles as the token black and the token gay participant. The joke is about how The Real World and similar shows will have a gay character who is rather awkwardly around when the housemates are at a bar flirting around.
• Unfortunate Implications: In-Universe. Derek points out this is the case with him being shackled up while being the only black housemate.
• The Voice: A deep voice will often give instructions through loudspeakers, much to the annoyance of the contestants. In the last episode, the deep voice is revealed to have been an audio technician who developed a crush on one of the contestants.
• Vomit Indiscretion Shot: After the cast are drugged.
  Tara: After I realised the bottles were poison we all induced vomiting until we felt better. (cue upbeat guitar music)
• Your Princess Is in Another Castle!: It's been announced there will be a 10th and final episode. The 9th episode had been presented as the last (the End Credits even ran), though the producers had teased another.
  • Said episode is a reunion episode, as typical for reality shows. It's not explained how it follows from the end of episode 9, but the cast have now become vapid reality stars: Derek is "Ex-Gay" and writing for Coolio, Erin gave her baby up for adoption to focus on her blogging career, Frank and Jay are writing movie scripts together and Alex is dating the announcer who stalked her. Oh and the mold is used in a vaccine to cure dengue fever.
• Wham Line: From Episode 9:
  Alex: We should put it back up.

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