I like the show, but I think it would be improved by toning down the “medical” stuff by several notches. Spending half of your time covering wrong guesses, each of which I as a viewer have no idea what are, to end up at a solution that is equally mysterious to any non-doctor but still obviously having little to do with real medicine, is just a waste. In Star Trek, all the technical garbage still eventually equated to something that seemed reasonable. Borgs can block certain blaster frequencies? Make the frequencies randomise! Etc. And even there, we weren’t spending half our time listening to mumbo jumbo; most of everything was focussed on the character interactions.
I really only continued watching the show past the first season because it was a cheap and easy download from iTunes and I was bored, and it’s still entertaining enough to keep on. But it could be improved by a good percent, quite easily.
I like the Jurassic Park movies. Not because I expect a science lesson, but because I like watching the people run away screaming from the dinosaurs. I also like House, for the same reason. Well, not exactly the same reason since no one has yet been eaten on the show, but close enough. The interchange between the characters is appealing enough to overlook the silly medical stuff and the formulaic nature of the episodes.
I watch the show because the acting is phenominal, especially for a TV show. And because Hugh Laurie is wonderful eye candy, and he is also as talented as House in his own fields (sports, acting, writing, singing, dancing, playing musical instruments–is there anything he can’t do?) He is also rumoured to be quite a humble guy.
In real life,House would be in prison or an institution a la Hannibal Lechter. In fact, I would love to see Laurie play that other doctor.
In the first couple seasons ,the logical plot premises are used up. To keep fans ,they get more exotic and weirder conditions. It is not a House problem but a TV problem. All shows have to fight to survive when the plots thin out.
House has good acting, hot women and is well written. What else do you need .a fancy new disease of the week. They do run out after a while. To survive they have to have more character conflict. Thats ok too.
I find it hilarious how they almost kill a patient each time with progressively absurd treatments until they hit some solution to the problem near the end. Oh and having Hugh Laurie onscreen doesn’t hurt either.
Agree with almost all the above. It’s not realistic. It’s not a medical lesson. It’s not a lesson in hospital administration. It’s none of these things, never was, never will be and isn’t meant to be.
It’s an entertainment show where a maverick but charismatic figure does his Brilliant Flawed Hero thing each week (or most weeks). We watch because he offers us a neat, well-made fix of the escapist riff that there is still room in this world for an offbeat genius. It’s classic storytelling: while the rest of may have to live our mundane lives constrained by The Rules and The System, He alone can ‘rise above’ and see what Others cannot.
It’s hokum, pure and simple. But it’s good hokum.
Have mentioned this before but worth again: Laurie fans may not be aware that he wrote a good novel called The Gun Seller. Well worth reading. A serious crime thriller but also laugh out loud funny in many places.
But only if he’s a huge ass. That way we know he is not Mr. Perfect, which means we can appreciate him even more.
House’s assitude comes from his singleminded obsession, which is another thing we can respect about him. His dedication to saving lives is made more complete because he doesn’t really care about the lives he’s saving–only saving them. People are an abstraction to him and life a joke. Only death is real, and he fights it with everything he’s got.
Being cutting and arrogant helps House come off as frank and dedicated. It also gives him latitude to be hilariously funny that a more sympathetic character wouldn’t have.
My feeling on House – though I’m by no means a regular watcher – is that it’s basically a medical fantasy. What heroics would doctors do if they weren’t tied down by regulations, check lists, insurance policies and the like? Comparing ER and House is like comparing Star Trek and Star Wars.
Sorry, she WAS hot, back around the time she appeared on “The West Wing.” Mmmmmm. Curvylicious.
Now she’s just a bag of bones topped off with a huge head.
And I can only bear to watch “House” when they break out of their usual format. The episode “Three Stories” about the patients with leg injuries was great.
Agreed. I don’t watch the show so I can point out all the errors in the diagnostic medicine. I watch it for the acting and especially for the multi-talented H.L.
AHunter3, that was absolutely brilliant. I’m madly stifling my giggles over here.
I don’t mind the fantasy, but there has to be some sort of realistic basis, I think. There was a rerun on USA where two siblings were entering early puberty (at ages 6 and 8) because their widowed father was trying to keep up with his young girlfriend by using a topical cream on his—ahem. And House said the extra testosterone was seeping out through his skin, and every time he hugged his kids or held their hands to cross the street, they got a dose. :dubious:
I just think, with such a talented actor as Hugh Laurie (my daughter says Dr. Cox on Scrubs wants to be House when he grows up) they can come up with more realistic head-scratchers. Hell, I watch Mystery Diagnosis on Discovery Channel…they’re out there.
Isn’t is also a running joke on the show that one of the possible diagnoses always has to be lupus?
I love this show. House is someone you either love or hate (or love to hate). I love him. I’ve known a few docs with his attitude (not quite as caustic, but I’ve known a few cowboys in my time).
Things one must discount if one is to enjoy the show:
despite having a very geeky doctor as a show consultant, they almost never get shit right. I don’t know from diagnoses, but in RL, endotracheal tubes are not kept in place with Scotch tape; there should be no reason to do a chest Xray to check for X 4 hours post intubation–a CXR should have been done to confirm tube placement. Also, I’ve never seen a Foley catheter spasm OUT of a penis before, but what the hell, it added to the drama… The actual care of the POTW (patient of the week) is so different from anything depicted. Not one pt ever has a naso-gastric tube, for one example. Their monitor alarms go off for within normal limits readings for another. :rolleyes:
2.Labwork can takes hours, if not days to get back, same with diagnostic results.
Most of what is done by House’s team is done by nurses and techs. Ok, the surgeries and scopes I’ll give you, but the lab draws, the whirlpools, the showers, the IV starts etc --all nurses or techs or respiratory therapists etc. Nary a nurse to be found. But unlike ER (which I cannot stand to watch and gave up on early in the 4th season), at least the few nurses who do show up look like nurses and act like nurses.
None of these patients are ever turned, ambulated, fed etc. The team gives the pills (which makes me laugh and laugh–in 20+ years, I’ve YET to see a doc give a pt a pill) and the shots (ditto). I especially liked the morgue care 4 hours post time of death. No Board of Health in Jersey, apparently…
None of this matters because the characters are so good. I like the dynamics between each and every one of them. I haven’t seen a lot of season 4 so far, but the first 3 seasons were very good.
Who cares about his Vicodin habit? I worry more about the sheer quantity of Tylenol the guy is ingesting. And addiction rates among health care workers (including docs) is higher than the general population (or so it was when I was in nursing school. I doubt it’s changed much).
I like hearing about (I can’t say learning) funky, odd diseases. I also like puzzles. I do find it odd that for all his brilliance, House is always wrong twice before he gets it right, but it’s a TV show. No tension, no show. I’d like to see Stacy come back for a bit; and I’d like to learn more about Wilson’s brother. But mostly, I am fascinated by House–a troubled person to be sure, but a flawed, vulnerable and essentially decent person in the end. (if he were truly evil, he would not have flirted with the 82 year old woman who had “Cupid’s disease” aka syphilis. He also wouldn’t have told Stacy to stay with Mark etc).
Bottom line (for me): funny, intelligent show; make allowances for the TV interpretation of medicine.
I love the show. I didn’t think it had a chance at first, because I thought the medicine would be too technobabbly for the general public but not realistic enough for those of us in the game. As it turns out, the medicine is just a framework for great writing and interesting character interaction.
And yes, I often want to say the sort of things House gets away with.
Some of my favorite moments come in the clinic–and yes, people are indeed THAT stupid, daily. There is a constant influx of stupid followed by a backwash of hostile in most hospitals. If I wanted to take the high road, I’d say that it’s because people are feeling vulnerable and scared, so therefore angry and acting out, but mostly it’s just stupidity facing its own consequences. My favorite clinic patient is either the girl with the “jelly” or the man who slaps his own face, repeatedly. I am absolutely sure that neither of those is made up: it sounds about right.
They do like to defibrillate people on this show–I don’t really have a problem with this, except that most of the time the monitor shows either sinus tachycardia or even sinus rhythm. Sometimes, they’ll show what might be a superventricular tach, but that’s not shocked; that’s cardioverted (if the pt is unstable). Oddly enough, they tend to get the pacemaker stuff right (although there was one show that depicted a big dramatic moment over taking the pacer wire out–somehow this was supposed to do something to or for the auto-immune problem the pt had. Or maybe he had cancer; can’t remember. Anyway, it was ridiculous). You’d think they’d push some adenosine; it’s such a cool drug and it’s very dramatic (it causes essentially a cardiac pause. Think of it as rebooting the heart. It stops the too fast rate and converts it to sinus rhythm).
They also like to trach pts. I notice they use Betadine for that (must be more dramatic looking than chlorohexadene). And I thought the incision for trach was horizontal, not vertical, but what the hell…
Clarification: Vicodin is a combo drug: tylenol and hydrocodone. I meant in my above post that I wasn’t concerned about his hydrocodone intake, but his tylenol intake was worrisome…
I love House, but for the character stuff: the House/Wilson/Cuddy dynamic is just hilarious. I LOVE Wilson.
For a medical take on each episode, you cannot miss the House medical reviews here written by a doctor who clearly likes the show, but not much of the medicine. It’s a very interesting, and usually amusing, read.
:dubious: