TV Review: House, MD, Season 1

This was one of those shows that I heard about for a long time but managed to never quite catch.  On the one hand, it’s a medical drama (a genre I have a weakness for) and stars Hugh Laurie (in a dramatic role); on the other hand, we’re talking network TV and Fox to boot.

I started watching the series toward the end of last season (its third), and got hooked.  This year we’ve been watching it regularly (thanks, DVR), and I purchased the Season 1 DVD set to start playing catch-up.

For starters, even more than most medical shows, House,  MD, is formulaic to the extreme in its basic plot structure.  The teaser has some ordinary joe going through their life, then suddenly collapsing due to some unexpected illness (this is sometimes interesting to watch, if only for when the writers fool you as to which person is going to keel over).

Over the course of the rest of the show, the patient is admitted to the series hospital, where s/he is taken care of by the Diagnostic Services team led by Dr. Gregory House.  “Taken care of” usually means diagnosed with something odd (if the symptoms led to an obvious cure, the rest of the hospital would deal with it), treated, diagnosed with something different when the treatment either fails to make things better or actually makes things worse, treated anew, lather, rinse, repeat, until (usually) the secret disease is determined (usually by House) and the patient cured (usually).

Similarities between this endless cycle of “what’s wrong / we think it’s this, so let’s try that / hmm, that’s not it, so maybe it’s this instead” and any real-life medical dramas of late are purely coincidental, no doubt..

Like most medical dramas these days, it’s not about the disease and diagnostics, but about the personalities, and here House has them in abundance.  Chief, of course, is House himself — a thoroughly unpleasant man, bitter and sarcastic and pain-drug-addicted and abusive and mistrusting and nasty, and that’s just to his friends and his patients.  Yet he’s also downright brilliant and dedicated, not to making people feel better, but to defeating the malady, and to ordering the world about him his own way.  He’s also, at odd moments, sadly vulnerable, whenever you see past the nastiness and into what he really believes in. 

And that’s part of the reason why House is such a fascinating character (and it really is a one-character show, with the various supporting players all interesting mostly in terms of how they play off House).  First, he’s someone you admire for “telling it like it is” (or like you’d sometimes love to be able to tell it), even as he’s someone you can feel superior to for being so much more emotionally functional.  But second, he’s someone that even as you abhor the way he goes about things, you see enough of to realize that he actually has a strong ethical code, just one that’s a bit askew of most people, and that he’s willing to go to the wall for it.  In short, he’s someone you agree with even while you disapprove of his actions, while he’s also someone you can disagree with even while you admire his integrity.

As to rest of the show, the supporting cast — the other three interns/docs on the Diagnostic team, the hospital administrator, House’s good-natured friend on staff, and some others on shorter arcs — are all well and competently played.  The dialog’s delightful, and for all that the medical drama mine has been exhausted over the years, the iconoclastic nature of the title character makes the Passions and Ethical Heartbreak of the Big Hospital somehow fresh, or at least interesting to watch.

The DVD set has a few extras on the last disc — a tour of the sets, the story behind the show’s creation (featuring a lot of bits with Hugh Laurie with his accent), Laurie’s screen test, a couple of other things — but not much.  That’s a shame, but also okay, because the series is what carries it all.

I definitely recommend the show, and the DVD set (I have the next one on my Wish List, hint-hint).  A good investment of money and/or time.