I Pulled Up to a House About Seven or Eight
I'm not normally a big fan of medical dramas.
Even when I can get past the implausibility of a single group of doctors having to deal with so many medical conditions which are both rare and simultaneously misleading, the medical issues themselves don't hold my interest enough to provide such series with any sort of rewatchability, leaving only the surrounding character dynamics to keep me as a viewer. (I've often said that ER could've been a decent series, if they could just get rid of those silly hospital scenes...)
As such, I figured that House, M.D. would fall into the same category and hadn't been watching it, but the number of people I knew who were watching, combined with my general fondness for Hugh Laurie and the fact that Showcase has conveniently been showing reruns of the series on weeknights, convinced me to give it a try anyway.
Keeping in mind that I haven't watched any episodes from the current season, a number of things have occurred to me as I caught up.
For one thing, the show is very formulaic. I'm sure this isn't news to any of you regular viewers, but watching an episode a day really highlights this--it isn't even worth listening to the differential diagnosis in the first half of an episode, since the patient(s) will inevitably get dramatically worse and House will have some sort of epiphany in the last act.
Some of the medical decisions themselves (particularly in the third season) are also rather questionable--most egregiously in "Words and Deeds," as the team removes a patient's entire experiential memory through electroshock therapy when ten seconds of fact-checking would've revealed that his problematic memories were false to begin with. Even House can't entirely be absolved of inconsistency here, as he argues against adversity for adversity's sake, making a point of saying "being normal sucks" and distinguishing between chosen and inherent freakishness in "Merry Little Christmas;" but then recommends a hemispherectomy just a few episodes later in "Half-Wit," taking away that person's special musical talents for the sake of (eventually, maybe) fitting in, even though it wasn't medically required and his father had already expressed a willingness to compensate for his son's other shortfalls.
Much more fundamentally, though, I've come to this conclusion:
The more I watch the series, the less respect I have for the people around House.
They constantly rely on who he is, and his unorthodox approach, to save lives (How useless would that department be without him? How many people would've died by now?), then berate and chastise him for being that person. Cuddy and Wilson, in particular, engage in a series of deceptive and manipulative practices, including (but not limited to) causing House intense pain by withholding necessary medication from him, rather than simply letting him continue being extremely good at his job in the manner which best suits him. When push comes to shove, and it actually seems like they'll lose the benefit of his medical insights--because of Vogler in "Babies & Bathwater," because of Vicodin withdrawal in "Merry Little Christmas" and other episodes, because of Tritter in "Words and Deeds"--they'll still go against their own stated principles and protect House, so it's unclear what the point is in not doing that in the first place.
(They also lie to him about where Chase and Cameron are working early in the fourth season, for no discernible reason whatsoever. Did they really think he would never find out they were back at the same hospital? And what would be the benefit of his not knowing that?)
Tritter's vendetta against House was similarly pointless, but at least one can say that his motives were his own and he doesn't know House--unlike his colleagues, who should know better, especially since (whether they work for him or not) they can't seem to stay away from or get rid of him. (House himself shows an awareness of this in "Mirror Mirror," stating that Cuddy will "never" fire him when she tries to prove she is dominant by saying she can have him fired on a whim.) Foreman originally quits because he doesn't want to "become like House," but becoming like House causes him to save people, and he ends up back at Princeton-Plainsboro anyway--even Cuddy tells him there are worse things to turn into.
Despite this, Cuddy lies to House (as does Wilson, and largely at his urging) after using House's correct diagnosis to treat a patient in "Meaning," giving him unjustified doubts about his medical abilities in "Cane and Able;" then they play around with his access to Vicodin at various points in the third season, because of...what? Some arbitrary attempt to change him? Numerous people, including those two, repeatedly concede throughout the series that his "Houseness" is what makes him a brilliant doctor, so I don't understand what their goal is, or how they would define success in such a scheme.
Given that House is (as Wilson says) "statistically speaking...a positive force in the universe," I have to echo the question Cameron asked Cuddy in "Cane and Able," which Cuddy never answered:
Why does House need to be like everybody else?
Even when I can get past the implausibility of a single group of doctors having to deal with so many medical conditions which are both rare and simultaneously misleading, the medical issues themselves don't hold my interest enough to provide such series with any sort of rewatchability, leaving only the surrounding character dynamics to keep me as a viewer. (I've often said that ER could've been a decent series, if they could just get rid of those silly hospital scenes...)
As such, I figured that House, M.D. would fall into the same category and hadn't been watching it, but the number of people I knew who were watching, combined with my general fondness for Hugh Laurie and the fact that Showcase has conveniently been showing reruns of the series on weeknights, convinced me to give it a try anyway.
Keeping in mind that I haven't watched any episodes from the current season, a number of things have occurred to me as I caught up.
For one thing, the show is very formulaic. I'm sure this isn't news to any of you regular viewers, but watching an episode a day really highlights this--it isn't even worth listening to the differential diagnosis in the first half of an episode, since the patient(s) will inevitably get dramatically worse and House will have some sort of epiphany in the last act.
Some of the medical decisions themselves (particularly in the third season) are also rather questionable--most egregiously in "Words and Deeds," as the team removes a patient's entire experiential memory through electroshock therapy when ten seconds of fact-checking would've revealed that his problematic memories were false to begin with. Even House can't entirely be absolved of inconsistency here, as he argues against adversity for adversity's sake, making a point of saying "being normal sucks" and distinguishing between chosen and inherent freakishness in "Merry Little Christmas;" but then recommends a hemispherectomy just a few episodes later in "Half-Wit," taking away that person's special musical talents for the sake of (eventually, maybe) fitting in, even though it wasn't medically required and his father had already expressed a willingness to compensate for his son's other shortfalls.
Much more fundamentally, though, I've come to this conclusion:
The more I watch the series, the less respect I have for the people around House.
They constantly rely on who he is, and his unorthodox approach, to save lives (How useless would that department be without him? How many people would've died by now?), then berate and chastise him for being that person. Cuddy and Wilson, in particular, engage in a series of deceptive and manipulative practices, including (but not limited to) causing House intense pain by withholding necessary medication from him, rather than simply letting him continue being extremely good at his job in the manner which best suits him. When push comes to shove, and it actually seems like they'll lose the benefit of his medical insights--because of Vogler in "Babies & Bathwater," because of Vicodin withdrawal in "Merry Little Christmas" and other episodes, because of Tritter in "Words and Deeds"--they'll still go against their own stated principles and protect House, so it's unclear what the point is in not doing that in the first place.
(They also lie to him about where Chase and Cameron are working early in the fourth season, for no discernible reason whatsoever. Did they really think he would never find out they were back at the same hospital? And what would be the benefit of his not knowing that?)
Tritter's vendetta against House was similarly pointless, but at least one can say that his motives were his own and he doesn't know House--unlike his colleagues, who should know better, especially since (whether they work for him or not) they can't seem to stay away from or get rid of him. (House himself shows an awareness of this in "Mirror Mirror," stating that Cuddy will "never" fire him when she tries to prove she is dominant by saying she can have him fired on a whim.) Foreman originally quits because he doesn't want to "become like House," but becoming like House causes him to save people, and he ends up back at Princeton-Plainsboro anyway--even Cuddy tells him there are worse things to turn into.
Despite this, Cuddy lies to House (as does Wilson, and largely at his urging) after using House's correct diagnosis to treat a patient in "Meaning," giving him unjustified doubts about his medical abilities in "Cane and Able;" then they play around with his access to Vicodin at various points in the third season, because of...what? Some arbitrary attempt to change him? Numerous people, including those two, repeatedly concede throughout the series that his "Houseness" is what makes him a brilliant doctor, so I don't understand what their goal is, or how they would define success in such a scheme.
Given that House is (as Wilson says) "statistically speaking...a positive force in the universe," I have to echo the question Cameron asked Cuddy in "Cane and Able," which Cuddy never answered:
Why does House need to be like everybody else?