I’ve watched the first 12 episodes of season 1 so far.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s a fairly good premise and good show, not to mention Hugh is a very good actor…
…but damn, the show is repetitive. It’s like the same plot for all 12 shows, only with 1. A different patient and 2. A different disease.
Basically, it’s like: Introduction to patient and mysterious ailments. Everyone shoots out possible diagnosis’ and tries different things. Patient gets worse. Patient comes close to death. House usually suggests a solution that everyone disagrees with, but he usually stubbornly holds onto it. Sometimes he’s wrong and sometimes he’s right…but in the end, he figures it out and the patient is cured.
Aside from very slight changes (like, sometimes the patient dies)…does the show ever change? Does it get better or different from this repetitive Patient/Disease of the Week?
No, that’s pretty much it. There are some storylines that deal with the character’s personal lives, but the main story always is “patient had mysterious disease - medical team tries to figure it out - House solves the mystery in the final scenes”.
That’s the ‘A’ plot for virtually every single episode. Sometimes it’s interesting, sometimes dull. Sometimes it’s the main focus, sometimes not so much. Some people like that part more then the rest of the show, some people like paying more attention to the rest of the characters. (Kind of like ER)
Most people I’ve talked to tend to watch it for one or two seasons, get bored and stop watching, possibly picking it back up a few years later.
Also, the nice thing about a show like House is that you can start watching it pretty much anywhere in the series and within about 4 episodes you have a pretty good grasp of what’s going on and in the mean time you have the POTW to keep you occupied.
There’s a few interesting exceptions, a few weeks ago House was sent to the principal’s office at a school. But it’s mostly the same basic plot, different day.
As someone who has seen (and really loved) every episode of Buffy, in my opinion, you can’t compare the two. Buffy, at least, had a main storyline arc and a medium amount of continuity. House doesn’t seem to have any arcs (at least not yet–does it ever get any)?
I think it gets worse. Just before every commercial break now, the patient crashes and everyone looks alarmed. After each commercial break, the doctors are discussing what to do next now that the patient has been stabilized, but they never show how the patient was stabilized. That part is just skipped. It’s a running joke in our family. Lately they’ve had House doing blatantly illegal immoral things to other people, like drugging Cuddy’s annoying mother with knockout medicine, to show how cutely outside the box he is.
I got through the first 2 seasons of House before the repetition killed my interest. That and I didn’t care much for the new characters. I caught one episode this season. Amber Tamblyn ain’t helping.
I don’t think anyone had a problem with House drugging Cuddy’s mom (and Wilson). I think the problem was that Cuddy was OK with it. That’s not something her character would have been OK with.
They ended up using that scene to prove that Cuddy’s mom was an alcoholic, but the fact that Cuddy was okay with it made it seem like sloppy writing. Like they just wanted to shoe horn that scene into the show instead of Cuddy being Cuddy and dragging that out for the rest of the episode and possibly into the next one as well.
I’ve watched it and mostly enjoyed it throughout the run. A lot of the criticism above is valid - it is a very formulaic show that sometimes seems lazily written from a plot standpoint. But I like it mostly for the dialog and for watching the House antics. Hugh Laurie is a lot of fun to watch in the role. And every once in a while (not often enough) they get outside the format and when they do it can be quite an interesting show.
I don’t see the similarities, at all. Buffy had about as varied a series of plots as I’ve seen on any show, ever. Not to gloss over the more formulaic bits, but it wasn’t just the monster of the week; the emotional gamut ran from pathos to tragedy to light comedy to farce to redemption and everything in between. In House all the other characters revolve around the central star, and things generally reflect his emotions (on those rare occasions that he isn’t hiding them behind snark). At first I was a bit enthralled by the show (Laurie certainly does a great job with the role), but the endless formula got grating and eventually nuked my willing sense of disbelief to atoms (my fave arc tho was when he was in the booby hatch for 3 eps, but those are few and far between).
Take a look at the episode “Three Stories”. It is quite a bit different from the rest of the show, in that it looks at three case histories, looks at the thought process used in evaluating them, and then suddenly (and unexpectedly) reveals quite a bit of the back story of several characters.
It’s quite simply one of the best hours of broadcast TV I have ever seen.
No, you’ve pretty much seen it all. It just gets more outlandish and medically ridiculous from there on out. The basic plot elements are exactly the same (you can set your watch to them) and so the rest of the series is just gradual decline from repetition from there.
Ever since “Two Stories” was on a few weeks ago I’ve heard about this episode quite a few times. I’m to lazy to go and rent it, hopefully someday it’ll be on Netflix instant.
The plot never gets any better save for a few episodes. Since you’ve already watched 12 episodes you should at least watch “Three Stories” before you give up. It’s probably the best episode the show has ever done.
Personally, I keep watching because I love to watch House do anything. I don’t care for the plot. Give me House and Wilson peeling potatoes for an hour and I’d still tune in.
House, like a lot of the formulaic police dramas, really needs to be watched in the, one episode a week, major network style. Watching multiple episodes at a time off of a DVD or Netflix just reinforces the repetitiveness.