I wish I could do a remake of Dr. Zhivago with Hugh Laurie in the title role and David Morse as attorney Victor Komanovsky.
Hmmmm… something in that sentence kinda failed… Hmmmmm
You know, I know I’m in the minority when I say this, but I liked the Vogler arc. It rang true to me, I guess. And the ways that Vogler attempted to make House’s life difficult, again, worked within the rules of the show’s universe. I’ve certainly never had a problem with Cameron lurving House - I know many do, but it seems plausible to me - or with the various interpersonal conflicts among the Housettes. I don’t want to watch a show where there are two shows going on - one that is interesting and plays real, even if it isn’t, and another that I have to ignore to enjoy the first one. I want to watch an integrated story, where all the various lines have unpredictable but realistic impact on one another.
And I just thought of another problem with the execution of the Tritter arc (I’m really not as crabby about this as I probably sound in this thread, by the way). Tritter has been brought in presumably as a worthy adversary to House, right? Someone whose cleverness and resourcefulness matches that of our hero. But here’s the thing: because they’ve suspended all the rules for Tritter, and given him near infinite power, he doesn’t need to be either clever or resourceful. Tritter has no obstacles. He knows everything. He is bound by no rules. People react to him in exactly the way he predicts they will. He is, I guess, sort of a diabolous ex machina, if that makes sense. It’s the Fallacy of the Omniscient/Omnipotent Antagonist, currently seen driving me batshit crazy over on Lost.
Because here’s the thing: if your villain is all-seeing, all-powerful, there’s no story. There’s no battle of wits or will, no true conflict, because the all-seeing, all-powerful villain will always hold the trump card in the end. And that’s boring. Worst of all, it’s predictable. Tritter will always be a step ahead of House, because he’s supernaturally powerful and subject to no rules, just as Ben will always magically predict the exact behavior of every character in the opening credits of Lost. It just seems like stupid storytelling; there are ways to make characters seem dangerous and scary without making them gods, as other TV storytellers have proven pretty effectively. When the villains strengths and flaws collide with the hero’s strengths and flaws, that’s when you have a good story that can surprise you.
C’mon folks, this show isn’t Law and Order, it’s a comic book! A very entertaining one, too. It is a typical story arc: our hero has seemingly lost the source of his power (girl, superpower, or, in this case, pills). He has been beaten down by the bad guy (Tritter) to the lowest point in his career. He has lost the respect of his cadre of friends and they have even begun fighting amongst themselves. The bad guy reigns triumphant! Now he must work his way back up, overcoming many obstacles to achieve a brilliant reversal of fortune.
The fact that so many people are talking about this show and this particular story arc only proves that the producers and writers knew what they were doing.
I thought the Vogler story arc was worse than this one. In that one we had to pretend that the doctors, a group of highly respected professionals, were so desperate to keep their current job that they would allow themselves to be treated with utter contempt by an administrator. This made the reactions of the main characters seem unnatural to me.
For the current story arc, we only have to pretend that Tritter could legally and professionally get away with his focused persecution of House. If you accept that, the reactions of the other characters are not too illogical.
Anyone else bothered by the scene where Wilson comes in, sees House lying in a pool of vomit surrounded by an empty pill and whisky bottles, and just leaves in disgust? Granted, he could see that House was at least semi-conscious, but I can’t imagine a doctor coming on that scene and not thinking either “overdose” or “suicide attempt”. In either case, House should have been in an emergency room getting his stomach pumped and being monitored for respiratory distress. At the very least, I would think a doctor would have done some minimal checking for vital signs. To me, Wilson leaving said, “OK, I don’t care if you die.” Which is pretty much at odds with Wilson’s care bear attitude, even when House is being at his most jerkish.
Jacob Sullum, at Reason Magazine, is also disturbed by this story arc.
I agree with everyone here, the Tritter arc has lost its fun and is now painful. And I’ll second that there is a correlation to the show sucking and my susceptibility to plot holes. (I think I said that right)
The Tritter thing started out as cool, we have a new foil for our hero. That’s cool. But if you’re going to challenge the hero for any length of time, it has to be center focus and due to the formula for this show - medicine takes the cake. So we’re left with this nag and like all nagging, it sucks.
I believe that had they made the Tritter thing just go to trial right off and morphed the show for a few (and I mean 2 or maybe 3) episodes into a courtroom drama with House defending himself and his actions, then we would have much more love for this arc. As it stands though, the current one just muddles shit up.
House does have to lose every once in a while. We all know that. If he won everything, the show would lose it’s charm. But his losses have to be relatively quick, we don’t like watching people drown, we don’t like watching the Tritter arc.
I do find it amazing how high they’ve raised Tritter’s douche factor though. He’s doing this on his off time. He’s badgering the lackeys and co-workers, he traps Chase into an unwinnable situation, eventually Wilson folds with a Jesus reference, and then when House finally gives in - Tritter pulls the fucking carpet out from under him.
Here is how I would have done it:
- Tritter would be a hot shot lawyer, not a detective
- Tritter would sue House
- Show would morph as described above
- House would lose and go into rehab, season finale would be him checking in
- Next season would open with 1 episode of his life in rehab. Montage the detox and then spin through his witty smart ass comments in group chat.
- Would he be cured? I don’t know - this is as far as my plan goes.
– IG
All we’ve established is that he’s addicted to Vicodin, and performs better as a doctor while taking the drug compared to when he’s detoxing. Was he performing particularly bad when his leg wasn’t hurting and he wasn’t popping pills?
Let’s also note that while he is an excellent diagnostician, he assaulted a patient for not being duly deferential to him (the rectal thermometer bit). He’s stolen prescription pads, forged prescriptions, encouraged all manner of illegal and unethcial activity amongst his staff. When his drugs were taken away, he tried multiple times to get them illegally.
I like the Tritter arc. I like watching House swinging in the wind. Maybe he gets to do more than we expect cops to get away with, but House gets away with way more than we expect doctors to get away with. Tritter found drugs, observed addictive drug use, and got a warrant for the home. Once he found hundreds of pills, it’s not a huge stretch to get additional warrants and powers to stop the “drug ring”. Remember, this is a country where the cops can take your car and money just because you’re driving down the wrong road with a lot of cash, all part of the War on Drugs.
I’m one of the people who sees Tritter as a parallel to House. Like Hous, he’s arrogant, like House, he breaks rules to acheive his goals and like House he does it because of his absolutely certainty that he’s “right.”
I think that the trial will probably end up with neither of them winning or losing completely and both of them being taken down a peg.
Better yet they have a mutually deadly confrontation by a waterfall.
Just saying is all…
The only way out of the hole this story arc has taken is an opening scene of House in a shower, clean shaven, singing ala Bertie. It was all a dream folks. He’s not a doctor, not a gimp, not a crab, just a spoiled well-meaning doofusy rich guy.
How else can this turn out when we have:
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A cop with no rules or supervisors? IANAPO or L but have been constantly going WTF??? during these episodes.
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The good guys turning bad: Wilson leaving an od’ing friend on the floor sucking up his own vomit on Christmas Eve. Talk about grinchy not to mention totaly unprofessional.
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The star of the show sucking up his own vomit, there aren’t enough yuchhhh’s.
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And the final Neener, neener…“The deal is off”
I used to really like this show. I think it just jumped the shark.
Oh wait, maybe House will wake up on the floor Christmas morning, decide he’s had it with the leg pain, and then proceed to gnaw his leg off at the hip. Yeah, I’m liking it, makes as much sense as the last couple of episodes.
House didn’t do the thermometer bit until after Tritter kicked his cane and nearly tripped him.
I agree. I have hated the character of Tritter and I’ve hated the vendetta. It distracts from the normal flow of the show and the situations, as many have already outlined, become less and less believable as time passes. It’s been an irritating battle of wills with important supporting characters falling by the wayside. House doesn’t have just a run-of-the-mill addiction; he’s got serious pain that needs to be relieved in order for him to function. And the hospital needs him; Cuddy called him their best doctor in this episode. And that’s why they call the program HOUSE.
Having HOUSE in detox or wherever they want to send him is beside the point; he’s got to have his pain managed somehow. Seems to me like it’s either continuing the narcotics (and he seems to function at a really high level while taking the narcotics) or have an amputation. And that’s not going to happen!
I came into this thread to post the same thing (except I was going to use this link). If that sort of “justice” is going on in the real world, what’s going on in House doesn’t seem nearly that far-fetched.
I’m just waiting for the scene where, in front of a packed courthouse, House tells everyone that the real reason Tritter hates him is because he left him in an exam room with a thermometer up his bum. If nothing else, House’ll go for the laugh and embarassment it’ll cause and maybe cast some shadow on the cop’s motive.
They did show, in the trailer for the next ep in January, House taking work calls during the trial. I’ve been trying to find a link to the trailer, but can’t.
They are usually referring to the machine or equipment they are using to do the analysis. Instead of “I used the digglybob SGP-2000 to analyze the skin…” “The what-now?” “It’s a machine that uses understandable phenomenon to map the pattern on the skin”
they could just say
“I used the digglybob SGP-2000 to analyze the skin and the results were <something understandable>”
rather than have the fellow expert look like they have no idea about their own field.
Yeah, it’s the same thing that bugs me about CRIMINAL MINDS. These guys are all in the Behavioral Unit. . . they all ought to know about personality quirks and the like, but Nooooooo, we’ve got to have the long-winded explanations.
Yeah, and none of them are able to form even the most general conclusions about data without sending it all to Garcia as if they can’t handle anything beyond psych conjecture.