Critical Response
David Bianculli of the Daily News called Mad Mad House a "bad bad show" (a bon mot that other reviewers would also make). Comparing the series to previous ones produced by Smith and Weed, including Paradise Hotel and Forever Eden, Bianculli pronounced Mad Mad House to be "their worst work yet". He mocked the contestants and berated the alts as "losers". Virginia Heffernan of The New York Times found the series "unsettling" and "ghoulish" but wondered if it might lead middle America to examine the casualness of their religious beliefs. The premiere episode drew a rating of 1.57 million viewers.
In February 2004, the National African Religion Congress sued the producers of Mad Mad House saying that it falsely represented Ta'Shia Asanti as a voodoo priestess. The group claimed that her dress identified her as a priestess of Yemoja of the Ifá tradition of the Yoruba people. The suit sought a court order requiring that the program not identify Asanti as a voodoo priestess. The group dropped the suit two months later after the network agreed to add a disclaimer to its website.
Read more about this topic: Mad Mad House
Famous quotes containing the words critical and/or response:
“A third variety of drama ... begins as tragedy with scraps of fun in it ... and ends in comedy without mirth in it, the place of mirth being taken by a more or less bitter and critical irony.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“It’s given new meaning to me of the scientific term black hole.”
—Don Logan, U.S. businessman, president and chief executive of Time Inc. His response when asked how much his company had spent in the last year to develop Pathfinder, Time Inc.’S site on the World Wide Web. Quoted in New York Times, p. D7 (November 13, 1995)