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.
Sunday, May 25, 2014
Season One, Episode Nine: "DNR" - A Quickie
A legendary jazz musician named John Henry Giles (Harry J. Lennix) collapses during a recording session. House and his team are told to only treat him for his pneumonia, and not his partial paralysis. John Henry files a Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) order, and chokes during a routine exam. House ignores the DNR order and ends up in court. All the doctors, including John Henry's own doctor, except for House believe that he has ALS. Cameron notices a blood clot, which is removed with surgery. John Henry recovers, and an MRI shows that he had suffered from Arteriovenous malformation, and a subsequent corrective surgery restores his ability to walk. Meanwhile, Foreman receives a lucrative job offer from John Henry's doctor.
this is your first reveal of house caring about something other than medicine: he has a TURNTABLE IN HIS OFFICE! i take exception to this: vinyl-o-philiacs are very specific disease group, and one not in keeping with his pill-centered priorities. the accumulation and cataloging and filing and cleaning and hunting down of items takes too much time, and, i think you may agree that, in general, we advanced cases don't like to mix our addictions.
HOWEVER, i will grant that IT CAN BE a holdover from his previous life where he had more rounded interests. (may have been into lacrosse or skiing for all i know now.)
what knocks it out of the ball park for me--or, rather, gives the series as a whole a badly-needed application of verisimilitude glue--is the courtroom scene: 2 great NBC taste treats in one! can't crossover into Law & Order, but at least gives a whiff of the complexities of having house around the shop. which makes his ruse about "facing his accuser" even groovier; this reveals that he knows his precedent well enough to be able to skirt most issues on a daily basis that might arise out of his cavalier attitude towards patients and treatment regimens. in this one snippet, i can extrapolate a lot of scenarios in which Princeton Plainboro attorneys get him out on technicalities; and that adds much to my previous qualms about cred.
the miles davis stand-in even nails him with his own observational skill: "how do i know this is all you got? that cane, the empty ring finger and you being here right now... people like us, we have one thing that drives us on. the house, the kids, the woman at home with dinner waiting--that's not for us." house: "that's why god invented microwave ovens." [I USE THIS LINE ALL THE TIME!]
So this is where omar and the two ducks get to say, out loud!, what they think about their master. 2 for, omar against, and why?--lack of HUMILITY! he objects to arrogance? yes. "you were wrong every time." right. wrong is when you kill the patient, i thought, or cause grievous, irreversible injury. that hasn't happened in ANY case so far. pretty fucking late now to be worrying about "humility", ain't it?
fave line: "this is how medicine evolved. sometimes patients get better all on their own. then, if you don't give them an explanation, they don't pay you. has anybody noticed there's a full moon? i think we can rule out the lunar god and go on from there." ARF-ARF-ARF!
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House is a music buff/expert, and he loves vinyl. "Vinyl-o-philiacs" hee hee. That's great. BTW, the apartment you see in Season 1 changes completely in S2; I guess they thought the first layout was too bright and shiny. They've kept the S2 layout since then. Does House have a guitar collection by now? He does later.
What did you think of the music studio scenes? I thought they were cool, esp. when the miles davis stand-in screwed up. The only thing I was unclear on was whether or not he'd be able to play again. I assume so, or they would have made a big deal about it.
this is your first reveal of house caring about something other than medicine: he has a TURNTABLE IN HIS OFFICE! i take exception to this: vinyl-o-philiacs are very specific disease group, and one not in keeping with his pill-centered priorities. the accumulation and cataloging and filing and cleaning and hunting down of items takes too much time, and, i think you may agree that, in general, we advanced cases don't like to mix our addictions.
HOWEVER, i will grant that IT CAN BE a holdover from his previous life where he had more rounded interests. (may have been into lacrosse or skiing for all i know now.)
what knocks it out of the ball park for me--or, rather, gives the series as a whole a badly-needed application of verisimilitude glue--is the courtroom scene: 2 great NBC taste treats in one! can't crossover into Law & Order, but at least gives a whiff of the complexities of having house around the shop. which makes his ruse about "facing his accuser" even groovier; this reveals that he knows his precedent well enough to be able to skirt most issues on a daily basis that might arise out of his cavalier attitude towards patients and treatment regimens. in this one snippet, i can extrapolate a lot of scenarios in which Princeton Plainboro attorneys get him out on technicalities; and that adds much to my previous qualms about cred.
the miles davis stand-in even nails him with his own observational skill: "how do i know this is all you got? that cane, the empty ring finger and you being here right now... people like us, we have one thing that drives us on. the house, the kids, the woman at home with dinner waiting--that's not for us." house: "that's why god invented microwave ovens." [I USE THIS LINE ALL THE TIME!]
So this is where omar and the two ducks get to say, out loud!, what they think about their master. 2 for, omar against, and why?--lack of HUMILITY! he objects to arrogance? yes. "you were wrong every time." right. wrong is when you kill the patient, i thought, or cause grievous, irreversible injury. that hasn't happened in ANY case so far. pretty fucking late now to be worrying about "humility", ain't it?
fave line: "this is how medicine evolved. sometimes patients get better all on their own. then, if you don't give them an explanation, they don't pay you. has anybody noticed there's a full moon? i think we can rule out the lunar god and go on from there." ARF-ARF-ARF!
#################################################
House is a music buff/expert, and he loves vinyl. "Vinyl-o-philiacs" hee hee. That's great. BTW, the apartment you see in Season 1 changes completely in S2; I guess they thought the first layout was too bright and shiny. They've kept the S2 layout since then. Does House have a guitar collection by now? He does later.
What did you think of the music studio scenes? I thought they were cool, esp. when the miles davis stand-in screwed up. The only thing I was unclear on was whether or not he'd be able to play again. I assume so, or they would have made a big deal about it.
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