Just finished watching Season One of House MD this weekend.

I like House. It has one of the most interesting (read: complex) main characters on tv (albeit, I don't watch that much tv). A good supporting cast, and interesting plots.

But I think it's the plots that make the show interesting.

I don't mean the doctoring stuff. Actually, as far as that goes, it's a pretty predictable show. The basic patient-plot goes like this: patient gets struck by an ailment, and no other doctor can figure out what's wrong. It's then referred to House, who half the time doesn't want to do it until he learns the disease is really weird, a quarter of the time he does it because a friend asks him, and the other times because he's ordered to by either his boss or the court. The patient comes in, and the team starts treatment. The patient gets better. Then the patient almost dies because of a complication (usually because they withheld information or lied to the team.) While that patient is being taken care of, House is with other patients in the hospital's clinic. One of the patients will say something, or perhaps House does, that leads House to discover what's wrong with the "main" patient and thus cures him. That, in that proverbial nutshell, is the basic plot of a standard episode of House.

What's more interesting is the relationships between House and everybody else. We know he had a 5 year relationship with Staci, who he holds responsible for his leg (he had some sort of muscle damage and, even though he would have rather died than lose the leg, Staci made the decision to have the dead parts removed, which permanently damaged the leg.) Now they work in the same hospital. To add insult to injury, he saved Staci's new husband's life. So how does he work with someone he loves, but can't have?

Dr. Cameron, the pretty doctor on the series, loves House, but it's not reciprocated. Yet, she stays. (Sounds self-destructive.) Dr. Chase, the hunk doctor, ratted out House to the Chairman of the Board. He admitted this to House, but still works there? How can House deal with someone he can't trust? And just what kind of relationship did House have with Cutty?

So there's a lot going on with the character dynamics.

It's always interesting to see how series start out. One way is to start everything from the beginning, or start the series with a character who is new to the situation so that viewers can identify with someone. But not on House. The pilot, for all extents and purposes, could have been an episode in the middle of the season. Viewers are introduced to this group of doctors who seem to have been working together for a while as they take on another case. Dr. Cameron, it seems, was the newest addition, but we never found out a timeline. (We just learn that Dr. Forman had a two-year contract.) This approach is a much more "mature" way to introduce things. No hand-holding; the viewer has to pay attention.

This show also doesn't dumb down things. When they say big words and medical jargon, they don't explain it. They're doctors (at least they play them on tv...) and that's just a normal way for them to talk. Although, I do have to say it surprises me how often they use the jargon with patients and their families.

I do wonder if the appeal of House is that people want to be like Gregory House. Sometimes, I would love to say what I was thinking, to tell people what I really feel. But, social mores say not to. House doesn't have that problem. I do.

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This article was written by david and published on
December 5, 2005 at 6:54am.
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