In 2011, my beloved miniature pinscher Bucky died very suddenly. He had been my soul mate and my psychiatric service dog. Because of my grief, I was unable to leave the house.
Another writer, my friend Carle, decided to help me through this process. I was obsessed with the television show starring Hugh Laurie, "House M.D," about a misanthropic, brilliant, crippled doctor. Carle downloaded the first 5 seasons. Within a few episodes, he was as obsessed as I was. This blog is the correspondence we conducted, episode by episode. With a few digressions.
Carle's entries are in black; my contributions are in blue.
Thursday, May 29, 2014
Season One, Episode 12, "Sports Medicine" Monster Trucks In 3 Parts
(This exchange took place on February 2, 2011)
Part One
this one is pretty shabby--as in threadbare; like all the stitching's showing through. [pretty good metaphor, eh? "tailored to fit" someone for whom such things are meat-&-starch...]
this stuff about the intimate lives is so contrived. the pharma rep x-ing foreman esp., but no less than the phony curiosity built up about house's big deal. so here, you have faux jealousy in the "Hilson ship" [did i use the shorthand correctly?] over Wilson going out w/someone else instead of to the monster truck show w/House. this is so OOC [MY shorthand for Out-Of-Character] you know the writer just stuck it in to give him blue-collar creds. i don't mind being catered to, and manipulated (as said somewhere else previous in this dizzy chainmail) but i resent it being done badly.
what bothers me most (and prob. nobody else in the House house) is that, when the pitcher tries to off himself w/coach's digitalis, our boy explains: "next time take the whole bottle. people remember how many they have; date's on the bottle, number of pills. a regular person can do the math. NOW A JUNKIE DOESN'T HAVE TO. HE KNOWS HOW MANY HE HAS LEFT. IT'S ALL HE THINKS ABOUT." the all-caps is my emphasis to point out JUST WHAT I SAID ABOUT "DETOX"!
[this puts me to mind of discussions i have had with other writers. editors and proofreaders, how skimping on the proof is one of the things that really brings down the quality of communications these days. but this is waay too digressive.] the only thing that gives it verisimilitude, for moi, is the couple of "hate yankees" asides.
it fits for house to be THAT blue-collar, as i, myself, will participate in the discussion of local team affairs with my co-workers, if only to show that i am not unaware of events outside of my peculiar interests. but the monster truck thing? i want to punch somebody...
####################################################################
Wow. You'd better get used to it, House and Wilson love monster trucks. Funny, I've never had a problem with that, but maybe a guy can see the inherent contradiction therein. Yes, the Foreman/drug rep story was lame, lame, lame. I guess you could call the drug rep. story one of those "world-famous doctor" moments that pop up from time to time. Doesn't make it any less lame. The dinner with the lawyer is what is known as "foreshadowing," although I won't say why. Later you'll see why that isn't lame.
Definitely one of the lesser episodes. Oh, and after "Cursed" (which I can't remember at all except an amazing close-up of Chase looking down out of a window that practically killed me) is the episode that starts the "Vogler" arc, which is amazing in its own way. I look forward to ranting to follow.
What I meant about Chase looking out for Chase is, that by kissing House's ass, Chase thinks that's how he can keep his job. More will be revealed. Curiosity: why is a game boy less blue collar than monster trucks?
because monster trucks are an offshoot of NASCAR-type events--those held at raceways and suburban arenas. as well, as you could see from the parking lot/carny/tailgate party atmosphere (remember house wearing a gimme cap and eating cotton candy?), this much more associated with festival arenas/cow palaces.
a gameboy is something you can play on the subway, making it NOT EXCLUSIVELY an urban/geek thing but approximately one. the urban analog would be an interest in WWF (or whatever wresting soaps are called after the world wildlife fund lawsuit). this is what the boys trade insults and exemplars upon: the knowledge of the trivia (such as the meaning of the dates tattooed on the flesh of stone cold steve austin) is equivalent to baseball stat fiends. (ask your husband about that.)
Part Two
To continue the discussion, Jeff is an urbanite and he likes...NASCAR. It's a recent thing and he knows better than to even broach the subject of attending one of those things. And he has to watch it when I'm not around, or I start shrieking with outrage. I freak out over the trailer trashness of it all. And House does like wrestling, although it's only come up in an episode or two.
I suspect the writers are trying to make him know everything about pop culture everything, if you know what I mean. And Jeff's a soft-spoken intellectual type therapist. I can understand his obsession with baseball and to a lesser extent, his interest in football (not hockey, thank God), but NASCAR? I don't get it. Maybe that's why the monster trucks thing doesn't bother me.
it's like I said. male identification with sub-groups of these genres gives us the cachet of participating in the brotherhood of good-ole-boy nation w/o having to suffer the attendant miseries OF being trailer-park trash, or rickets, or working crushingly-dull double-shifts to pay off the loan on our pickup with the Easy-Rider Rifle Rack in the back window, or breeding through two or three divorces, or having an engorged liver, or believing that the South was right and slaves were soldiers in the confederacy, or that heroes are best made from grass-roots and not in board offices...
yes, I know a predominance of the examples may make it sound exclusively antediluvian, post-colonial but I'm sure you understand that the spread of the Klan to skokie, IL was not a random phenom. it all comes down to this: IF YOU HAVE THE T-SHIRT/GIMME CAP AND TALK THE LINGO you will never be accused of being a member of the communist party OR effete core of impudent snobs OR a fag. It's a pseudo-macho thang.
Part Three (for which this is a section missing, sorry)
<our boy explains: "next time take the whole bottle. people remember how many they have; date's on the bottle, number of pills. a regular person can do the math. NOW A JUNKIE DOESN'T HAVE TO. HE KNOWS HOW MANY HE HAS LEFT. IT'S ALL HE THINKS ABOUT." the all-caps is my emphasis to point out JUST WHAT I SAID ABOUT "DETOX"! >
I'm not sure I get your meaning. House is talking about himself; he always knows how many pills he has and how many bottles. Explain.
no. he doesn't. read my remarks on the detox ep.
Put the question to a fellow (sane) fan, and her response was this: House is a mass of contradictions. It depends on who wrote the episode in question and which season it is and how much crack the producers had been smoking at the time.
It almost goes without saying that this person, like me, is a long-time fan who's having a hard time with the show as it stands. The crack pipe is going 24/7 these days. Also, if you can avoid framing things through the prism of the House/Wilson relationship, the show as a whole makes more sense. I might have written you this before, but House/Wilson was originally Holmes/Watson, HOWEVER it became evident early on that the "Watson" in question was really the team, not Wilson.
Robert Sean Leonard, who plays Wilson, has said repeatedly that he enjoys being a background character who says things like, "There's no egg salad" and then splits.
Part One
this one is pretty shabby--as in threadbare; like all the stitching's showing through. [pretty good metaphor, eh? "tailored to fit" someone for whom such things are meat-&-starch...]
this stuff about the intimate lives is so contrived. the pharma rep x-ing foreman esp., but no less than the phony curiosity built up about house's big deal. so here, you have faux jealousy in the "Hilson ship" [did i use the shorthand correctly?] over Wilson going out w/someone else instead of to the monster truck show w/House. this is so OOC [MY shorthand for Out-Of-Character] you know the writer just stuck it in to give him blue-collar creds. i don't mind being catered to, and manipulated (as said somewhere else previous in this dizzy chainmail) but i resent it being done badly.
what bothers me most (and prob. nobody else in the House house) is that, when the pitcher tries to off himself w/coach's digitalis, our boy explains: "next time take the whole bottle. people remember how many they have; date's on the bottle, number of pills. a regular person can do the math. NOW A JUNKIE DOESN'T HAVE TO. HE KNOWS HOW MANY HE HAS LEFT. IT'S ALL HE THINKS ABOUT." the all-caps is my emphasis to point out JUST WHAT I SAID ABOUT "DETOX"!
[this puts me to mind of discussions i have had with other writers. editors and proofreaders, how skimping on the proof is one of the things that really brings down the quality of communications these days. but this is waay too digressive.] the only thing that gives it verisimilitude, for moi, is the couple of "hate yankees" asides.
it fits for house to be THAT blue-collar, as i, myself, will participate in the discussion of local team affairs with my co-workers, if only to show that i am not unaware of events outside of my peculiar interests. but the monster truck thing? i want to punch somebody...
####################################################################
Wow. You'd better get used to it, House and Wilson love monster trucks. Funny, I've never had a problem with that, but maybe a guy can see the inherent contradiction therein. Yes, the Foreman/drug rep story was lame, lame, lame. I guess you could call the drug rep. story one of those "world-famous doctor" moments that pop up from time to time. Doesn't make it any less lame. The dinner with the lawyer is what is known as "foreshadowing," although I won't say why. Later you'll see why that isn't lame.
Definitely one of the lesser episodes. Oh, and after "Cursed" (which I can't remember at all except an amazing close-up of Chase looking down out of a window that practically killed me) is the episode that starts the "Vogler" arc, which is amazing in its own way. I look forward to ranting to follow.
 |
| Chase in "Cursed"...what were we talking about, again? |
What I meant about Chase looking out for Chase is, that by kissing House's ass, Chase thinks that's how he can keep his job. More will be revealed. Curiosity: why is a game boy less blue collar than monster trucks?
because monster trucks are an offshoot of NASCAR-type events--those held at raceways and suburban arenas. as well, as you could see from the parking lot/carny/tailgate party atmosphere (remember house wearing a gimme cap and eating cotton candy?), this much more associated with festival arenas/cow palaces.
a gameboy is something you can play on the subway, making it NOT EXCLUSIVELY an urban/geek thing but approximately one. the urban analog would be an interest in WWF (or whatever wresting soaps are called after the world wildlife fund lawsuit). this is what the boys trade insults and exemplars upon: the knowledge of the trivia (such as the meaning of the dates tattooed on the flesh of stone cold steve austin) is equivalent to baseball stat fiends. (ask your husband about that.)
Part Two
To continue the discussion, Jeff is an urbanite and he likes...NASCAR. It's a recent thing and he knows better than to even broach the subject of attending one of those things. And he has to watch it when I'm not around, or I start shrieking with outrage. I freak out over the trailer trashness of it all. And House does like wrestling, although it's only come up in an episode or two.
I suspect the writers are trying to make him know everything about pop culture everything, if you know what I mean. And Jeff's a soft-spoken intellectual type therapist. I can understand his obsession with baseball and to a lesser extent, his interest in football (not hockey, thank God), but NASCAR? I don't get it. Maybe that's why the monster trucks thing doesn't bother me.
it's like I said. male identification with sub-groups of these genres gives us the cachet of participating in the brotherhood of good-ole-boy nation w/o having to suffer the attendant miseries OF being trailer-park trash, or rickets, or working crushingly-dull double-shifts to pay off the loan on our pickup with the Easy-Rider Rifle Rack in the back window, or breeding through two or three divorces, or having an engorged liver, or believing that the South was right and slaves were soldiers in the confederacy, or that heroes are best made from grass-roots and not in board offices...
yes, I know a predominance of the examples may make it sound exclusively antediluvian, post-colonial but I'm sure you understand that the spread of the Klan to skokie, IL was not a random phenom. it all comes down to this: IF YOU HAVE THE T-SHIRT/GIMME CAP AND TALK THE LINGO you will never be accused of being a member of the communist party OR effete core of impudent snobs OR a fag. It's a pseudo-macho thang.
Part Three (for which this is a section missing, sorry)
<our boy explains: "next time take the whole bottle. people remember how many they have; date's on the bottle, number of pills. a regular person can do the math. NOW A JUNKIE DOESN'T HAVE TO. HE KNOWS HOW MANY HE HAS LEFT. IT'S ALL HE THINKS ABOUT." the all-caps is my emphasis to point out JUST WHAT I SAID ABOUT "DETOX"! >
I'm not sure I get your meaning. House is talking about himself; he always knows how many pills he has and how many bottles. Explain.
no. he doesn't. read my remarks on the detox ep.
Put the question to a fellow (sane) fan, and her response was this: House is a mass of contradictions. It depends on who wrote the episode in question and which season it is and how much crack the producers had been smoking at the time.
It almost goes without saying that this person, like me, is a long-time fan who's having a hard time with the show as it stands. The crack pipe is going 24/7 these days. Also, if you can avoid framing things through the prism of the House/Wilson relationship, the show as a whole makes more sense. I might have written you this before, but House/Wilson was originally Holmes/Watson, HOWEVER it became evident early on that the "Watson" in question was really the team, not Wilson.
Robert Sean Leonard, who plays Wilson, has said repeatedly that he enjoys being a background character who says things like, "There's no egg salad" and then splits.
 | ||
| "There's no egg salad. Can I leave now?" |
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