Live! Nude! … Rehab?

Dr. Drew of Celebrity Rehab is back this month, this time with Sex Rehab.

In a nutshell, Dr. Drew will guide eight patients suffering from sexual addiction using one-on-one and group therapy.

The eight patients, all of them attractive almost-famous people, will live together for the span of the 21 days and try really hard not to sleep together. And all this will be broadcast on national television.

It’s gross and exploitative and will possibly do more damage to our understanding of sexual addiction than good, but it has all the makings of a voyeuristic hit.

Some more critique from The Los Angeles Times:

Consider the demographics of the patients. The female-to-male ratio is 5 to 3, with almost all of the women being highly attractive, provocatively dressed adult performers. “What are they thinking, putting us here with these hot chicks?” asks James Lovett, a haggard pro surfer who quickly casts himself as the bad-boy truth teller of the group, and frankly, it’s a question that begs an answer.

As does the producers’ decision to shoot an opener explaining the disease while music throbs and clips from porn movies fly by. The whole point of sexual addiction is that it isn’t fun or sexy; it’s an obsession. And though Lovett and one or two of the other patients seem genuinely beset by demons, most of the others are too busy showing off their sex toys on their “audition” tapes to even consider what overcoming sexual addiction means.

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t watching. But we are vulture culture. We love this stuff. It’s a good thing other people’s drama has no caloric value because that would send our already-ailing nation into cardiac arrest territory in two seconds flat.

Image by AV Flox.