Family rivalry encouraged in new show

Take five families, a remote island in Fiji, a Polynesian dream house and you get UPN’s new reality T.V. show, “Under One Roof.””Under One Roof” can be described as a cross between family feud and survivor.The object of the game is to win the deed to a luxury Polynesian beach home. The Skofields, McRaes, Paganis, Hatmakers and the Distel’s were picked from thousands of applicants, flown to the island, and each given a different obstacle course to take to get to their prize; the house. But the game doesn’t end there. As the families arrive they must declare their territory within the house by marking the rooms they want with their family flag. The first family to arrive may choose any number of rooms.The house has four bedrooms, a bathroom, a kitchen, a living area, and a walkway. The first family to arrive was the Distels, from California, who wanted to spend some quality time with their children before they left the nest.They picked two rooms and the oldest son decided to claim the refrigerator, as a bonus (this will later cause some conflict on the show).The second family to arrive was the Skofields, deemed “new age hippies” on the UPN website. They took the remaining two luxury rooms, which left nothing for the other families. The remaining three families finally arrive to find they had no beds and had to improvise with mats, under mosquito netting.The “selfishness” of the first two families struck a chord of anger in some families. However, it was not the match that lit the first bomb.The refrigerator incident, as mentioned earlier, was the one thing that set the McRae’s on fire. In retaliation the McRae’s took over the bathroom, kitchen appliances and parts of the living area, by marking them with their family flag.This was only the beginning of a rivalry that could possibly last through out the show. The next task was a boat race, for which the families had to construct boats made of bamboo and the race on them.The prize for this race was a ribbon. The family with the most ribbons will eventually earn the beach house deed. The show goes on with more competition and more tension.This was just the first episode and there’s so much more to come.The objective of the show is to give families a chance that learning to get along would improve family life.Not only is the show set up to teach teams to get along with the other teams, after all they will be living together for next several months “under one roof.”For more information on the families visit www.upn.com.