Sober House, on VH1, is another celebrity reality show, but it’s got a very different feel.
The premise is that a half-dozen or so C and D list celebrities who have apparently recently completed detox for various addictions are in a sort of halfway house for sober living. I don’t know much about real-life sobriety and detox programs, but this feels fairly real.
On one early show, Steven Adler (ex-drummer of Guns and Roses), on his second night in the house, is apparently high on heroin that he had smuggled in somehow. Again, I wasn’t previously very familiar with the effects of heroin, but the scenes captured on camera are quite intense. I was almost tempted to have my 9 year old daughter watch that part with me - it would probably be more effective than some standard DARE program.
With reality shows in general, and these minor-celebrity reality shows in particular, there’s a weird vibe where it feels like many of the partys are trying to use each other. The producers want rating. The participants want to win cash and celebrity (or revive their flailing careers if they are already minor celebrities). That dynamic is probably at play here a bit too, but something about this show punctures through a lot of the standard reality show cliches. One additional element going on here is that we see a few of the folks surrounding these celebrities - who should be their ‘supporters’. Some do seem genuinely supportive, and some seem to be using the celebrities with the celebrities barely aware of it.