When Good Shows Go Bad: House M.D.

[TMC]

http://www.wewantinsanity.com/am2/pu...ad_House.shtml

The History:

David Shore ( Due South, NYPD Blue) pitched House to executives in 2004 alongside Paul Attanasio ( Quiz Show, Homicide: Life on the Street) and Katie Jacobs ( Gideon's Crossing, Century City). The show was originally untitled ( Chasing Zebras was one working title), and Fox ended up picking it up after stressing that the show should zig instead of zag. Pitched as a sort medical mystery series, an emphasis on downplaying white coats in hallways was brought up. Bryan Singer ( X-Men, The Usual Suspects) ended up directing the pilot and was a noted help in casting the lead roles. Eventually it was decided to have the title character be a sort of both subtle and not so subtle homage to Sherlock Holmes, and everything soon fell into place. Debuting in November of 2004, House ended up with thirteen million viewers on average its first season (this being back when then-popular CSI was getting about twenty million, so not bad but not a guaranteed hit). The show then quickly gained steam, seasons 2 through 4 finishing in the top 10 of highest-rated shows of the year and even breaking nineteen million viewers in season three. The last few seasons did see a drop, and the final episode aired in May of 2012, ending House after 8 seasons. While only winning a small handful of Emmy Awards House was nominated repeatedly and is widely regarded as help making the world ready to accept a more ******* Sherlock Holmes type character.

The Show:

At Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital in New Jersey, one man is king: Gregory House, M.D. (Hugh Laurie). Well, we say king, more like jerk with a heart of jerk everyone keeps around because he is literally the most intelligent (notice I didn't say competent) person around the place, and definitely not due to his drug problems. House is the Head of Diagnostic Medicine at PPTH (I feel bad for blanking if they ever called it that in show but that's what I called it aside from just 'the hospital) and thus frequently is called upon to try and solve the medical crisis of the week, usually with the patient's life at some point being at critical risk. House's main team (initially) is Dr. Eric Foreman (Omar Epps), Dr. Robert Chase (Jesse Chase) and Dr. Allison Cameron (Jennifer Morrison). Dr. James Wilson (Robert Sean Leonard) is the head of Oncology and his role can vary from actually helping out whatever case House and his team are working or simply being there as House's only real friend. Dr. Lisa Cuddy (Lisa Edelstein) acts as the Dean of Medicine at PPTH and thus is a person House and his team must often get to agree to whatever they want to do to ensure the patient is cured. Medical ethics are frequently called into question, as are how generally screwed up people can be while still saving lives. Also, sometimes other drama shows up, as do other cast members as the show continued on.

The Good:

Since you don't have a show without the lead, lets talk about Gregory House first. Hugh Laurie is a guy who, for a lot of years, ran into this weird rut British actors can encounter when coming to the US: ending up put in utter crap despite their superior talent, and said crap is usually for children (Yeah I'm inferring that Stuart Little was crap, I know, I'm a terrible person, though I'm also crapping on The Man in the Iron Mask). Laurie however proves fate was just being a cruel mistress as he's able to really imbue Dr. House with a great deal of energy and charm despite being an absolute douche. Something imitators may miss (I'm looking at you Backstrom) may miss the more nuanced angle at work, as it isn't just that the character is brilliant but an *******, it's how his snark and anger are directed. As much as House can rip into his would-be friends and such he tends to really direct his ire at those most deserving of it, and he can also sometimes be the guy who does something to help a person learn a lesson since he doesn't believe in just teaching it by telling (self-learning can be better to make the lessons stick after all). I may have made the jerk with a heart of jerk joke earlier but there is absolutely some gold in there, and I don't just mean because he enjoys defeating the disease of the week.

What kind of blows my mind a bit more is how well the show was able to make the medical threat of the week interesting, especially with the usual formula of: symptom, diagnosis, treatment doesn't work, new symptom, brainstorming, patient gets worse, new diagnosis, medical ethics discussion, convince Cuddy to allow something, patient cured. I am of course super simplifying things a bit but that's probably my best basic outline of how the show goes, aside from any personal drama. Besides offering up some tantalizing clues that due to tend to relate at least somewhat to real medical conditions (most reliable report I said claimed the show was about 30% more accurate than most medical shows). What helps is the new, unusual symptoms can usually pop up right around act breaks for commercials, giving you a solid cliffhanger than I'm sure will make executives happy since you're less-likely to risk leaving the room when that happens.

Finally, the show, at its best, did a good job offering up some admittedly family-unfriendly themes that didn't become too obnoxious. 'Everyone lies' is probably one of the most important phrases ever uttered, given how often we couldn't trust what we were told (or how people acted that matter, House especially). 'Nobody ever changes' is another harsh one, as of course people can change, but in general people can be sort of set in their ways and it is refreshing. Probably my favourite motif however is attempts to defy 'you can't get what you want', but not by actually getting what one wants. Bad stuff happens to all of our characters over the course of the show, but we see in spite of this they usually managed to get what they need to keep going, which is important. Indeed the series finale, without spoiling it, isn't about want, but the importance of ultimately meeting needs, which is something very important to remember whenever bad stuff shows up on your doorstep.

The Bad:

Before getting into the more obvious moments people are probably expecting me to touch on I should point out a few issues the first three seasons had. Season One had Edward Vogler (Chi McBride, whom I normally love), who existed apparently to only be a cartoon-like villain to hound House. I mean if not for the fact he was played by an African-American he'd be a stereotypical rich, white, fat blowhard meddling where he clearly didn't belong. Thankfully Vogler vanished. Unfortunately the first half of Season Three doubled-down with Michael Tritter (David Morse), a petty detective who made House and his team's lives a living hell. House naturally wasn't going to be the bigger man, so we had ourselves a stalemate until things finally were smoothed over. Lastly Cameron, while not necessarily a bad character per say, was the most conservative of the team, so she'd be against questionable ethical moves. This isn't a bad thing, but unfortunately in some episodes she could get really preachy.

Season Four is where things start to go slightly awry. House starts out doing a sort of reality TV show to recruit a new team after Chase, Cameron and Foreman are fired/leave. Foreman eventually returns and House does eventually get a solid group in the form of Thirteen (Olivia Wilde), Kutner (Kal Penn) and Taub (Peter Jacobson). The hiring portion of the season was a bit rough, but once that was done with the characters worked out okay, even if Thirteen's similarities to Cameron could make her insufferable at points (and I personally found Taub kind of bland at first). Season Five however is where things really go downhill, as House's addition problems become their most annoying (they'd already been more or less been played out by this point), annoying romance arcs took over (the Foreman/Thirteen one was really damn quick), a whole subplot about Thirteen having Huntington's Disease didn't really matter since we were only ever told she had it (Huntington's has some very visual stuff involved) and finally/most infamously, Kutner committed suicide. Now some good stuff was still mined from some of this material, such as some Chase/Cameron bits actually being enjoyable and the handling of Kutner's suicide being really solid. Kutner's suicide of course made no sense (which one could argue is the point, but again reality is suddenly ensuing in a work of fairly unrealistic fiction) however and is took a whole damn season to finally get to the point with House trying to kick is vicodin addition for real after having previously made it work with methadone.

Season Six is probably my favourite of the later seasons (Season Two being my all-time favourite by the way), and honestly while the last couple of seasons have their issues Season Five was probably my least favourite. Season Seven however is where the House and Cuddy relationship, one that had been slowly becoming more important starting in Season Five, really started to get annoying. Seasons Seven and Eight were also where the heart really didn't feel like it was still in it, Season Six arguably having been a good place to end it. Instead we got Masters (Amber Tamblyn) showing up because Thirteen did something off-screen (which once we learned more about actually lead to a good episode, shocking!), and then in Season Eight Adams (Odette Annable) and Park (Charlyne Yi) showed up with little to do but try and milk the show until it could limp to the series finale. Said finale I was ultimately okay with, though it was definitely goofy to an extent. Just a shame there was so much pointless drama reaching the point.

The Blame:

Executives and real life can probably be blamed the most. Vogler was specifically put in the show at the request of executives (possibly to keep Chi McBride with the network), and the idea of House having a nemesis did also lead to Tritter two seasons later. The show was, of course, paired with American Idol, so these nemesis plots ended up being unnecessary. Wanting to hold on to cast members was also a thing which is why some characters seemed to overstay their welcome, and then conversely the show seemed to struggle when real life required them to write actors out. Olivia Wilde notably left for a bit to film Tron: Legacy while Kal Penn left to work for the White House, thus why they vanished, ditto Jennifer Morrison with How I Met Your Mother and Once Upon a Time. The writers could have done better of course, making the relationship plots less obnoxious and maybe taking a break from the whole 'House needs drugs to be a good doctor' plot, not to mention finding better ways to handle the loss of cast members. Executives at Fox however really need to learn when a show should probably end, which is something I don't think they've ever really mastered.

So can I recommend it? Oh yeah. I do worry this is one show that will eventually become dated, and perhaps quicker than most, but at the moment I'd still consider it pretty watchable. Season Six isn't exactly a great place to stop even if its probably the best of the later seasons in my book so you might as well go for the whole thing if you're thinking about it, just be warned it could be rough.

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[Race's Girl]

I liked this show

[Edward216]

When it was on, I got into it for a while. I liked the medical mystery aspect and I thought the characters were interesting, and House was someone you loved to hate and I wanted to find out what made him tick. But eventually I couldn't stand it. He was so arrogant and hateful and insulting and when it became obvious the character wasn't going to have a "nicer" side or any redeemable qualities I quit watching. I just don't see the point. He was just such a hateful know-it-all jerk. I just wanted somebody to yell at and insult him and then punch his lights out. He wasn't even worth caring about. I'll never understand why Cuddy stayed "friends" with House.

Ed.