• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, March 2, 2015

It wouldn’t be too surprising to learn that this new show called “Sex Box” had a title first, and then had a show built around it. 

I would bet that the idea for the title occurred to someone at some absent-minded moment when he or she was thinking idly about Xbox for no specific reason, and then through the process of free association came up with the phrase “sex box.” I’m guessing that at some point afterward, this person began wondering if “sex box” could be adopted as the title of a TV show with, literally, a “box” for sex as its centerpiece.

The results of this process (if that’s what it was) premiered this past Friday night at 10 Eastern on WeTV. The show, “Sex Box,” does indeed have a box in which couples go to have sex, after which they emerge wearing silk pajamas to answer questions about the quality of the sex from a panel of three sex therapists.

Yes, “Sex Box” is another first, which is how it qualifies as the topic of today’s TV Blog -- since it is the mission of this blog, at least in part, to identify new approaches, experiments and trends in TV programming.

Specifically, “Sex Box” is the first U.S. TV show in which couples have sex in a prefab enclosure and then emerge to talk about it.

The box, which looks to be no more than 10 feet by 10 feet, if that, sits on a platform on the show’s stage. The interior was not shown in the premiere episode (unless I blinked and missed it). The exterior was lit with soft bluish lighting, but after each couple stepped inside, the exterior became awash in red lighting the color of neon.

The titillation of the show stems from the fact that each couple’s intimate activities are neither shown nor heard. So, to some extent, a viewer at home is challenged to use his or her imagination. (Let the record show that I refrained from this temptation.)

When each couple was “finished,” the box’s exterior lighting reverted to soft blue, an applause sign was lit (out of sight of the cameras, of course) and the studio audience cheered wildly.

A digital display revealed the length of time each couple -- three of them in the series premiere -- spent in the box. The first couple spent about 17 minutes, the second couple just shy of 27 minutes and the third couple just over 31 minutes. 

The show itself is an hour, which means that anyone attending a taping of this show better be prepared to sit for long periods while these couples each spend approximately a half-hour in the sex box (although this time is greatly truncated to just a few minutes on TV). During their time in the box, the three sex therapists discuss the couples, each of whom have come on the show for “therapy” aimed at treating some sort of sexual deficiency in their relationship.

In Friday’s show, one couple suffered from a condition you might describe as “inequitable orgasmitis” (I just made that up): While having sex, he has orgasms and she does not.

“The big question: Did you both orgasm and who orgasmed first?” one of the therapists asked enthusiastically of this couple when they emerged from the sex box. The use of the word “orgasm” is one of the titillations of this show. In fact, the word was used so frequently in Friday’s show that if you devised a drinking game based on each time the word was heard, you would be extremely drunk (and unable to have sex, probably).

The couples were each asked about the quality of the sex. “He spent some time in the southerly region,” one evidently happy woman said of her husband.

At least she was being euphemistic. Later, the husband in another couple used a two-word phrase for oral sex that I don’t think I had ever heard before on commercial-supported television. 

Speaking of which, only one “Sex Box” advertiser in Friday’s show was sex-oriented -- the prescription drug Osphena, which is marketed as an aid for making sex more “comfortable” for post-menopausal women. It’s a product whose commercials are seen on all sorts of TV shows, not only shows about sex.

Other “Sex Box” advertisers included Intel, Truly Radiant toothpaste (from Arm & Hammer) and VSP, vision-care insurance providers.

The makers of silk pajamas might also consider advertising during “Sex Box” because after each session inside the sex box, the couples emerge not in the street clothes they went in with, but each wearing shimmering silk PJs provided for them inside the box.

They then sit there on a couch in these outfits talking about the sex they just had.

Sure, “Sex Box” is a new concept, but it begs an age-old question: Why would people agree to appear on a TV show in which they are required to reveal deficiencies in the most private part of their lives, then go and have sex in a “box,” and afterwards sit on a couch in silk pajamas to talk about it?

As usual, I have no answer to this burning question.

“Sex Box” airs Friday nights at 10 eastern on WeTV.