House - Love it, but is the premise at all valid?

Cafe Society
1

I love House. It had to grow on me for a long time to become a “must watch” and now it is.

Lots of things require suspension of disbelief, obviously, and I’m sure there’s been plenty of conversation about various details.

But here’s what I choke on all the time: the central premise, which is not so much that there’s this wildly brilliant diagnostician that’s so damn great he can get away with utterly insane behavior that puts the hospital at huge risk virtually daily, because that’s just fun.

No, what I find nearly impossible to swallow is the idea that this diagnostician is SO fucking fantastic and SO damn valuable that he is his own department, and that his department requires a support staff of 3-4 extremely talented doctors in ADDITION to Dr. Amazing, and that they are devoted 100% of the time to his special cases that are so unusual. (And of course, I find it ridiculous that the cases they take on seemingly happen in the neighborhood somewhere and accidentally land in his hospital, vs. the cases being SENT there BECAUSE of House. He always gets to PICK from the latest bizarro admissions? And has anyone else noticed, if you watch consistently, how often they come up with the same guesses? I have no idea what the diseases and conditions are off the top of my head, but I know when I’m watching that I’ve heard them suggest a particular possibility about every other episode. Its like a chinese menu each week. How much special skill does that take? And of course, i’m sure there’s been endless bitching about the fact that every single treatment they try creates some kind of trackable reaction within hours at most, and while I’m certainly no medical professional, I’ve seen and known sick people and been a sick person myself, and this bears no resemblence to any experience of illness and treatment that i’ve ever seen, with extremely rare exceptions.)

Even in teaching hospitals, is there such a thing as a Department of Diagnosis? If there is or would be… would four doctors be working full time on the ONE case that department gets? Why is House the only one who ever has to do clinic hours? Shouldn’t his staff be doing clinic hours as well?

And frankly, as much as I enjoy the show and love the character and just go along for the ride, I don’t think they really do that good a job of SELLING the premise. I don’t really understand how they can’t do it without him and he can’t do it without them. Maybe I’m not paying close enough attention, but it seems like they just keep guessing wrong, all of them, and then House has some completely unrelated flash of insight based on the snarky remark Wilson made after House grabbed his lunch.

Which, again, on a pure entertainment level, I can roll with. But my mind won’t stop elbowing me and saying: “Really? C’mon! What the fuck?”

2

I agree completely. I can’t imagine how much it costs to keep that department going for the one person they help every two weeks. Presumably they write up the cases (Foreman stole Cameron’s paper that time) and spread the knowledge? But still.

And unless the patient is one he has plucked from the ER there, hasn’t the patient been through all kinds of crap before they get to him? Crap that should have already killed him?

And to echo your point about him needing a team so badly. They tried to show that back when he was without the initial three and yet now it’s back to the stare and soundtrack of Realization Dawning and eight minutes left. At least they had Wilson make fun of the pattern that one time.

It’s one of my few must-sees as well, but I do have to suspend disbelief.

3

Agree with the basic premise, but it is clear, at least some of the time, that the patients have been sent from other hospitals specifically to see House (and then became various shades of enraged when they’re treated by the Houselings instead).

4

What gets me is how often (at least in the few episodes I’ve seen) the drama depends on the patient having three or four incredibly rare conditions simultaneously, and having each one manifest itself in a bizarrely unusual way.

Also seeing the doctors doing lab work, but that’s more of a personal experience thing.

5

I think they actually average about a week per patient; we only see 22 rather than 50 a year because of the TV schedule. And they all do clinic hours. Admittedly, House does as few as he can get away with, but I’m sure the junior docs do a good deal more. I can easily imagine Cameron doing more than she actually had to when she was a junior doc.

That said, don’t analyze House for plausibility. Doing so leads only to tears.

ETA: The multiple conditions don’t bother me. They fit into the basic premise of House & his team only getting insanely hard cases in the first place. Complaining about that is like complaining that the Justice League only deals with alien invasions, evil gods, and volcanoes rather than muggers.

6

And as long as we’re in dissection mode, I also have a hard time with the way the writers commingle House’s extraordinarily high IQ with an equally extraordinary EQ, or rather, that they think the two are the same. Having an amazing analytical gift does not lead to an amazing ability to read people and understand their psychological and emotional motivations. And given his, well, outright hostility towards the social contracts that just about everyone else agrees to on some level, it seems really hard to believe that he’d be that tuned in to people.

But again…fun.

7

They’ve made fun of this at least once.

“Lupus?”
“Nah, it’s never lupus.”

8

If you want 100% credible reality, go to an actual hospital and watch them diagnose patients. But bring some entertainment, cause you’ll be bored out of your mind. If you want entertainment, watch House.

9

Cuddy has commented on that several times. One aspect of the arrangement is that she can get away with paying House considerably less than an equally brilliant but more socially tolerable physician would demand, and he can hope to find work practically nowhere else. Another is that she has a certain amount of money set aside annually to deal with House-related lawsuits, and so far the hospital is coming out ahead of the game.

10

I liked the show when it first came on. I’m also a big fan of Hugh Laurie, and it’s fun to hear him do the American accent. However, the show is extremely repetitive. Doesn’t that get to you after awhile? It did for me.

11

For me, that’s not he show. It’s the backdrop for House’s interactions with the rest of the human world.

12

I don’t think they conflate the two. He just has both. And of course you can understand people without being a people person. In the reality of a show that seems like an advantage actually, since everybody lies.

13

I can’t believe House isn’t sue all the time. For instance, in the finale-- an improper treatment caused the girl’s skin to fall off. He actually apologized to her for it. Then, he wanted to cut her hands and feet off, which ooops, turns out wasn’t necessary after all. Wouldn’t a doctor who did stuff like that on a weekly basis be sued out of existence, and have his medical license revoked? He’s just too quick to do crazy shit to people, often screwing up and hurting them, if not permanently, certainly scaring the crap out of them. The problem is, if anyone says no to him, he turns out to be right.

So yes, the show is medically infuriating. I watch for Hugh Laurie, period.

14

Analyzing house is good for giggles …

And multiple conditions are actually rather common - the average person has a lot of tenants [you know how many viruses and bacteria normally live in the human body?] then you add a genetic twist, then a reaction to some medication …

I have all the little internal guests, then I have the diabetes, I have the genetic twist to predispose me to CPPD, and my parathyroid randomly went frisky on me. It all combined to make me need a lot of medical care in a fairly short time, and resulted in me getting CPPD and losing some height thanks to the calcium metabolism issue. I am glad that I didnt end up with any sort of infection but I ascribe that to taking a z pack to clear up a touch of bronchitis just before surgery and getting prophylactic antibiotics after surgery.

15

Nitpick:
That wasn’t House though. That was the other Doctors’ ideas since House wasn’t there.
House apologized for his mistake and then that was it with the skin problems.

16

There are some damn fine American accents being done in the movies and TV, but Hugh Laurie is genuinely flawless. I have a really good ear (and I’m completely immodest about the fact that I do great accents myself. I can say that because everyone else does…I’ve fooled a pretty good number of Brits in my day.) and I can hear the tiny imperfections, and I swear he doesn’t have any. Absolutely perfect.

17

How would a patient win a law suit if it turned out that House made the correct medical decision?

I can see the girl with the skin falling off having a case, but House saved her life didn’t he? It would be a stretch if she tried to cash in on that mistake anyway.

So every time House pissed off a patient he was making the right medical move. And every time he broke the law, he ended up saving the patient’s life. So far he hasn’t pissed off a patient and then killed them.

18

House does get sued a lot; Cuddy told Stacy that a ridiculous percentage of their lawsuits involved him.

But I imagine he wins more cases than you’d think, because his patients (or their families) often bring the problems on themselves by lying. I’m thinking specifically of the couple who had an “ideal” marriage which House and Cameron were betting on; the wife nearly died because she wouldn’t admit she had once been unfaithful. Likewise, the who didn’t want to admit to having cheated on her husband. Likewise the father who had accidentally communicated leprosy to his son; he didn’t want to admit having been foolish in his youth.

Part of the reason House is a great diagnostician in the show’s universe is that he can read people’s emotional states but doesn’t care in general about their emotions. Cameron could be as good as he, I think, if it weren’t for those pesky feelings.

ETA: that’s not to say he couldn’t lose a case. I’m sure a savvy plaintiff’s attorney would simply refuse to settle and try to force him to take the stand. A jury might well react with pure hatred toward himand decide to penalize him for being an asshole whether he was right or not.

19

My recollection is that’s a consequence of the show having gone on for so many seasons. The first season, it was just one (admittedly rare or bizarre) disease each week. After that, they probably ran out of interesting diseases, and so started this bit about having trichinosis AND tonsilitis at the same time.

20

OK, then what about the little girl who was going to have her arm cut off, but it was stopped on the operating table?

I guess, since he turns out to be right in the end, the law suits might be more difficult, but it seems like frequently, a good portion of the patient’s medical problems turn out to be complications from an incorrect treatment. He does a lot of things like drilling into people’s brains and other invasive procedures that might be approached with more caution, and often to no avail.