Reviews Series / House

Re-review

I wrote a review for the show, but it was moved. I'll start over with the benefit of hindsight.

My biggest disappointment regarding House was the shift in tone. In the beginning, House had his own weird sense of integrity, like Gomez Addams practicing medicine, and puzzling together the patients' symptoms was interesting. As the show grinds on, House inevitably becomes more and more odd, until, finally, he is mad. Consider him a social experiment in how much viewers will tolerate from a TV character, like Eric Cartman. Pretty much anything (including murder), as it turned out. The series shifted away from the patients and onto the individual doctors, in the ER tradition. Unfortunately, I don't think soapy melodrama is this show's wheelhouse. The doctors were quite bland in their personal lives, never evolving past their early obstacles. Taub and Wilson are always horny, for instance. House himself is insanely rich, and after awhile, his wrist-cutting emo shtick becomes tiresome, like a monopolar Tony Stark. I never much cared for George Clooney staring ruefully into the sunset with his Porche idling behind him; it seems like whenever medical shows focus on the mid-life ennui of Doctors, it comes across as first-world problems. And it hit House badly to a degree.

There were some high points, like Anne Dudek as Dr. Amber Volakis, who probably ought to have joined the cast (very bizarre how Kal Penn got cast instead), but instead came back as some kind of evil spirit(!), which is a nice trade-off. House checked himself into a sanitarium, and later prison, which was a nice change of scenery if a bit inconsequential (since he always got out and resumed his life of crime). There was some interesting stuff with Cuddy, though House's sexism toward his comely boss got tiresome quickly.

But if we're being honest, House went from being an extraordinary show to something merely ordinary, which is not a bad thing. This is common with network TV; the ideas run dry in the third season.