February 11th, 2010

Season 6, Episode 13

Earlier in the season there was a Wilson-centric episode of House. In this day in the life of Wilson we saw how the even-tempered oncologist’s acute compassion makes him a better doctor. But we also got to see House working from the outside. And it was funny. As always the crippled misanthrope’s life-saving techniques ranged from the counter-intuitive to the ridiculous but it was the self-absorbed arrogance and urgency of the team in which the comedy lay. The rest of the hospital didn’t care all that much and it suggested that House’s unpopularity might not be because he’s a miserable manipulative arsehole, but because he and his team run around like self-important bigheads.

It was a good episode and not just because we saw House from a new angle or because Wilson is an effortlessly likable character, it was good because the formulaic storytelling was suspended for a week. One of House’s biggest flaws has always been its narrow narrative framework. Right from the beginning a formula was established and it has rarely deviated from it…

Cold open: Some people are doing something. One person is slightly exerted, another seemingly healthy person goes to help. The healthy person’s ears suddenly flash in rainbow colours while the soundtrack shrieks louder and louder until the credits. The credits: A beautiful mix of artistic anatomical drawings and, er, a rowing boat? The rest of the episode: Team House brainstorm possible illnesses while the crippled genius dishes out invasive personal insults in between dismissing and belittling his staff’s suggestions. The scene ends when a suggestion cannot be easily refuted. They run tests, they try some medicine, it makes the patient’s belly button fart pink bubbles and the soundtrack starts shrieking again (repeat two to five times). More whiteboard, more insults. Cuddy says no to something. Wilson offers up some modest insight into House’s personality. At minute 38 of 42, House looks momentarily earnest, mumbles something cryptic, cures the patient and ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want’ by The Rolling Stones, cue end credits.

Boring. It always has been. The character of House alone makes the show work. Without exception, the apprentices are one-dimensional and often tedious, and Wilson and Cuddy don’t usually have enough screen time per episode to matter very much. But tonight Cuddy had her own episode and it was Exhibit C in the case for changing House’s format.

Exhibit A was the season 6 opener: a two-hour episode set entirely outside Princeton-Plainsboro and, with the exception of House, an entire new cast of characters. (See, I told you House carries the show.) The eponymous doc was a patient in a mental hospital no less. Without his ability to heal he had to adapt, we saw a new House. Exhibit B was Wilson’s episode and to a lesser degree we also got a new take on House. Exhibit C, brought very little new, even with regard to Cuddy. The cold open was a montage of Cuddy getting up at 5am to do exercise before sorting her baby out before work. It was meant to be a brutally effective depiction of what modern women must do to maintain career and family simultaneously but it was a piss-poor cliché of a doctor who thinks it’s appropriate to practice medicine with her boobies bursting out. But there was one element that had value in relation to the series as a whole; we got to understand why Cuddy enables House. Cuddy was renegotiating the hospital’s contract with a greedy insurance firm and in the battle we saw her righteous self-belief, her moral imperative to do good rather than compromise in resigned pragmatism. Cuddy is more like House than we realised.

What One Flew Over the Cripple’s Nest, Wilson’s World and Cuddyvision demonstrate is that House needs a new format and that it can survive and even thrive on such changes if the writing is good enough. If it remains the same the show will merely be a lame doc session.

Posted on February 11th, 2010 by Truphtooph
Filed under: Television