House, M.D.

I’m not usually too interested in medical dramas (or medical comedies, for that matter). You can only watch so many emergency tracheotomies before it becomes painfully clear that the writers are running out of ideas. They always have to resort to putting the doctors in dangerous situations and romantic relationships, and often both. It seems like some damn doctor’s always getting shot or stabbed or AIDS.

Anyway, it seemed at first like House was going to be different. A modern incarnation of Sherlock Holmes, right down to the drug addiction and affinity for playing music, the character of House (I’m not sure if that’s a real name or a nickname or what, but I’ll bet his name is like John Housingstein IV). Instead of Watson, we have three medical students or something, essentially three straight men to counterpoint Hugh Laurie’s endless assault of Groucho-esque one-liners.

The only problem is, after a few dozen seemingly unsolvable medical mysteries, the idea starts to wear thin, just like the medical genre itself. We get it, House is kind of an asshole, he likes drugs and he’s gimpy, but he’s really smart and in the end he’s always like “I’ve got it! It’s the African Ass Plague!” But is this really so different from any of those other medical shows? And, also, he never seems to get laid. I really hope he turns out to be gay, but I think he was married or something. He could be bi.

Anyway, there was just this crazy twist that’s going to be resolved in the coming season, where he gets this dose of Ketamine (the stuff that you take at raves) during an operation so that he’ll go into a magical coma that makes his pain better, and I think he stops limping too. But the catch is, it makes him INSANE! He starts to stab people during operations and stuff.

So I have high hopes that the makers of House will start to lay off the mystery-disease-of-the-week plotlines and move on to longer plot threads. I just hope House gets laid soon.