I’ve only watched one or two episodes, but am I the only one who feels like the medical drama *House * is extremely repetitive? Sure, every episode there’s a different story line, but it’s basically the same sequence of events: There’s a problem, people either can’t figure it out or are going to do something wrong, and Dr. House comes and figures out the most farfetched story to save the patient.
(I must say though I really like Dr. House as a character. So angsty. )
If I’m wrong, correct me, please, because I was really looking forward to watching the series. Whenever I see previews and/or read the information on the guide it just seems like the same old thing, though.
My husband and I are hooked on this show. It is repetitive and predictable, but aren’t most TV series repetitive and predictable?
Hugh Laurie has been one of my favorite actors for years, and I am overjoyed to see him in such a plum role. I would watch Hugh Laurie even if he just stood still and read the phone book.
After watching last night’s episode, I was thinking the same thing. I really enjoy Hugh Laurie as the character House, M.D, but they need to change the format of the show every once in a while. Thanks to my DVR, I’ve seen about 8 of the episodes and they all have followed the same basic format as you stated above.
I did like the fact that they showed that House was addicted to Vicodin and then after admitting his addiction, he continued to use it. That move was very “un” network like. I hope his Vicodin addiction continues!
Though I think House is better acted, I have the same problem with it that I do with the tedious CSI incarnations. It fetishizes obscure disciplines while annointing them as the end-all in providing solutions to the problem, whether it’s “What does he have?” or “Who and what killed him?”
I like Hugh Laurie a lot, and having that character in a medical drama might be interesting, but there’s very little drama, just procedure and repartee. That’s simply not enough to engage me.
Something that bugs me about all TV medical shows is that they often show a single patient getting a huge amount of attention from physicians and nurses. This is very rare in an actual hospital, even for patients with interesting diseases. Doctors and nurses don’t just hover around constantly, fretting over your condition. That’s why you need a call button. Even patients in the ICU don’t have staff standing around their beds like guardian angels 24 hours a day.
My wife and I have been watching it because it comes on after AI. I like Hugh Laurie and I think the character has some promise but I agree that the story lines are reptetitive and often ridiculous.
There was an episode a couple of weeks ago about a baseball player who developed some sort of bone condition. After a lot of red herrings about steroids, Bertie finally figured out that the guy had cadmium poisoning…amd of course, there’s only one way he could possibly get cadmium poisoning and House got him to make the shocking admission that he had been smoking pot grown in soil with a lot of cadmium in it.
If they could hire some new writers, and make it a little more realistic and really focus on developing House as an abrasive, pill popping anti-hero they could really have something. Right now they are just a little too high on the eyerolling factor.
For me, it’s all about the clinic sequences. The line in the pilot about building little tiny coffins for babies, the man who had sued a whole bunch of his previous doctors, and the thing from last week about going for a ‘personal best’ all had me laughing out loud.
Yeah, it’s repetative, and eventually I’ll get bored if they don’t change, but a sarcastic Hugh Laurie goes a long way with me.
It ain’t just you. We watch it on TiVo, and I’ll hit the play button to see how far we are into the show - 30 minutes means the current diagnosis is wrong and the treatment will worsen the condition, and that the next diagnosis will also be wrong, before they figure out the obscure pathogen that’s been lurking in the patient, be it trichinosis cyst, measles, or termite poison.
But I still watch it religiously because Hugh Laurie is brilliant and I love how dreadful House is. (Though I do keep expecting him to shout out, “P. S. Woof woof!”)
They also have some neat fillips, like Shirley Knight getting all twitterpated, and two actors from Election playing father and son.
It’s an entertaining enough show, but definitely formulaic and repetetive. Hugh Laurie rocks though, so I’ll keep watching it for now. I am finding it a bit difficult to get used to hearing him speak with an American accent, but at least he’s doing a decent job of it.
Incidentally, my father decided to check out an episode of House, but turned it on a bit late and missed the opening credits. He said that as a result he spent the entire hour wondering where he’s seen the actor playing House before, and why he was expecting him to say something extraordinarily stupid at any moment.
I’ve tried to watch it, but I can’t get past all the medical inaccuracies. Let alone the incredibly improbable diseases. The episode that did if for me was the girl who had a rare form to TB AND rabies. And they identified her by removing pins from her arm for the serial numbers(which pins don’t have). As if they kept track of them like rabies tags on dogs.
A person with rabies has an unrelenting downward course (except for one person who recovered with appropriate treatment) - they don’t go running all over Central Park between being unconscience.
ER is the only doctor show I’ve seen that sorta kinda tries to have realistic medical problems. (At least it used to, I stopped watching it about 5 years ago).
Though repetitive, it’s just done so well and House is the best television character I’ve seen in a while. I think it would go a long way if the show would throw us a curve ball and just let a patient die every once in a while.
So far one patient who has been the focus of an episode has died. That was the episode where Leslie Hope played a homeless one. She had rabies. There was another episode where two babies came to the hospital with similar mysterious diseases and they tried a different treatment on each one knowing that one would work and the other would fail, but they wouldn’t know it until they tried.
They have started to show a bit of the character’s personal lives. They are unfolding slowly. There are supposed to be some cast changes and one character is going to be fired.
In some respects the plot progression is similar to that of “Cold Case”.
I enjoy the show, but I was surprised that the doctors all said “leprosy” in the episode, when I was under the impression that “Hansen’s Disease” was almost mandatory. And I don’t think you have to go to Louisiana to get Thalidomide. My sister-in-law’s father was prescribed thalidomide before he died and they picked it up at the hospital pharmacy in Western Michigan.
I thought the show was going to throw us a curveball a couple of weeks ago by having Dr. Foreman accept that job offer from his friend in California.
If I were a betting man, I would say that Dr. Chase – the Australian one – is going to get the ax. He’s really boring. Of course, Dr. Wilson is also boring, but Robert Sean Leonard is more of a name actor, so they’d probably rather get rid of a nobody.
Looks like ex-Boston Public star Chi McBride is going to be coming aboard as an administrator. He could definitely provide House with a suitable foil.
Oh, if I hadn’t done some Googling before I posted, I would have been forced to type “Omar Epps’ character” and “Robert Sean Leonard’s character” and such.
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