My House rant on a Bones LJ community
In a "Bones" LJ community, a writer whose fanfic (" Luckiest Man Alive") I commented upon asked xxxx. This was my answer:
"House TPTB destroyed the show. I'm not even watching this season anymore. Their ratings are sinking like a stone. Basically, some of the suits from NBCU, Fox and/or TPTB demanded Lisa Edelstein ("Lisa Cuddy") to take what amounted to about a 50% pay cut for her new contract, that's besides some other rumored crap (LE is too classy to sling mud). So she called their bluff and quit.
But even before this happened way late in the 7th season (weird how such a worldwide hit show was allowed to hang in the lurch so long contract-wise), they first got House together with Cuddy, the love of his life, the only woman able and willing to put up with him. They then proceeded to mostly reduce this intriguing, interesting relationship to a level of pettiness and shallowness that made no sense considering their shared 20-year history. Mid season, they produced a gimmicky episode with lots of fancy production values but an improbable plot leading to Cuddy dumping House. Next, they had House turn into a vindictive, mean character w/o anything redeeming left: he marries a mail-order Russian bride in front of Cuddy and in the season finale he drove his car into Cuddy's house, only narrowly missing killing her and 3 guests. Then he fled to Fiji, episode ending with him sipping a cocktail on the beach. Lame TPTB excuse upon the enormous backlash: he had checked that Cuddy & co. stepped out of the living room and knew her little daughter wasn't home, really, so he wasn't trying to kill her! The facts of the episode did not support this.
This season, they just dropped a line about Cuddy having taken another job and that was it. A pivotal character implausibly shoved aside like trash, the last impression of Cuddy being that she, the victim of domestic abuse & murder attempt, ran away like a coward or like a woman should? (Show has bad track record of mistreating female characters) TPTB hadn't even thought about how the abuser, House, was going to be able to return: insignificant detail? If LE had stayed, she would've had to welcome her abuser with open arms back into the hospital, I suppose? Ludicrous. Insulting. Misogynist. TPTB scrambled and at least put House in jail in season 8, only to get out quickly and being back at the same hospital whose dean he tried to kill. Disgusting. TPTB darling Olivia Wilde ("Thirteen"), who was barely around in season 7 already, was allowed to leave for "her brilliant movie career," was only in 1 episode. So TPTB quickly hired 2 new actresses who are at best not very experienced (critics call them amateurs). One is a poor retread of Cameron/Thirteen/Cuddy, the other looks like Velma from Scooby-Doo and is underwhelming as a monotonous, weird overgrown teenager.
So yes, screw-up is too kind a word. Fiasco. Clusterfuck."
"House TPTB destroyed the show. I'm not even watching this season anymore. Their ratings are sinking like a stone. Basically, some of the suits from NBCU, Fox and/or TPTB demanded Lisa Edelstein ("Lisa Cuddy") to take what amounted to about a 50% pay cut for her new contract, that's besides some other rumored crap (LE is too classy to sling mud). So she called their bluff and quit.
But even before this happened way late in the 7th season (weird how such a worldwide hit show was allowed to hang in the lurch so long contract-wise), they first got House together with Cuddy, the love of his life, the only woman able and willing to put up with him. They then proceeded to mostly reduce this intriguing, interesting relationship to a level of pettiness and shallowness that made no sense considering their shared 20-year history. Mid season, they produced a gimmicky episode with lots of fancy production values but an improbable plot leading to Cuddy dumping House. Next, they had House turn into a vindictive, mean character w/o anything redeeming left: he marries a mail-order Russian bride in front of Cuddy and in the season finale he drove his car into Cuddy's house, only narrowly missing killing her and 3 guests. Then he fled to Fiji, episode ending with him sipping a cocktail on the beach. Lame TPTB excuse upon the enormous backlash: he had checked that Cuddy & co. stepped out of the living room and knew her little daughter wasn't home, really, so he wasn't trying to kill her! The facts of the episode did not support this.
This season, they just dropped a line about Cuddy having taken another job and that was it. A pivotal character implausibly shoved aside like trash, the last impression of Cuddy being that she, the victim of domestic abuse & murder attempt, ran away like a coward or like a woman should? (Show has bad track record of mistreating female characters) TPTB hadn't even thought about how the abuser, House, was going to be able to return: insignificant detail? If LE had stayed, she would've had to welcome her abuser with open arms back into the hospital, I suppose? Ludicrous. Insulting. Misogynist. TPTB scrambled and at least put House in jail in season 8, only to get out quickly and being back at the same hospital whose dean he tried to kill. Disgusting. TPTB darling Olivia Wilde ("Thirteen"), who was barely around in season 7 already, was allowed to leave for "her brilliant movie career," was only in 1 episode. So TPTB quickly hired 2 new actresses who are at best not very experienced (critics call them amateurs). One is a poor retread of Cameron/Thirteen/Cuddy, the other looks like Velma from Scooby-Doo and is underwhelming as a monotonous, weird overgrown teenager.
So yes, screw-up is too kind a word. Fiasco. Clusterfuck."