I watched season one episodes after reading this, and then watched the most recent one, and the second sentence of this review is spot on. A good way of characterizing the shift in the show is that it started off with the case being the centerpiece, with the characters' private lives being sideshows. Well, there's a sliding scale, and with each season, the characters' often boring and contrived private lives - I blame this on Taub and Foreman being dreary, uninteresting douchebags - take center stage at the expense of the patient of the day. I'd also like to point out that having every character act like just as much of a dysfunctional douchebag as House is unnecessary and it hurts the show.
"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."
I agree with this review. I, personally, didn't give much thought to it when I stopped watching House, mainly because it wasn't a conscious decision, one week I just couldn't bring myself to go and watch it anymore. I thought I'm not in the mood but it never changed and I haven't watched it since. It was somewhere around the middle of the Cuddy romance plot. Or I assume it was the middle because I still don't know how long it lasted, and I don't care. I probably watched it as long as I did for the comedy, not because the characters or the story was interesting, untill it just wasn't funny enough to warrant over 40 min of my time for a few jokes.
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Not much to add, really
With a show that peaks in its early seasons, I ordinarily start with the good and then stretch my opinion out from there. In this case, the show hasn't resembled Season One in a long while, so this is for all intents and purposes is the show: boring melodrama, rote shipping, entire seasons of filler that could be easily skipped, etc.
Gerkuman's review is on-target, to my chagrin, since that leaves me little to say (also, I'm not as succinct in my rants!). But what needs to be hammered home is how Hugh Laurie is the only worthwhile character. For some people, that's enough. Even by network drama standards, the cast of House is useless. The writers, trying valiantly to give them dimension, pair the men off with Thirteen (snore), or reveal some dark moment their past, later forgotten. Which is too bad, because they're all great actors.
ER sometimes stretched the limits to which we could sympathize with the hand-wringings of a Lexus-driving Dr. Clooney, but they usually overcame that. House has a character (Taub) who is defined by his libido. First, we already have a Taub: Wilson. Second, how does this balding short guy attract all this jailbait? Third, who cares? He's not even interesting to watch. One episode ended with Taub driving up to a billboard of himself, then flinging paint at it in disgust. Boo hoo. I guess that's supposed to endear him to us. The people sitting on sofas who aren't on billboards.
This is the real problem with House; the dreary, dull lives of his underlings. With the exception of Thirteen (once the most hated sidekick, now the only tolerable sidekick - go figure), these people are all whiny, self-flagellating, self-absorbed pricks. House barely interacts with patients anymore (they've been pushed back as an afterthought), so we lack evidence of his dazzling medical genius which supposedly overrules the fact he's a psycho.
With no characterization to latch onto, House ends up trying to top itself each year with House doing zanier and zanier things. He's Easily Forgiven the next season, and then it's onto the next thing.