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.
Monday, January 7, 2019
Season One, Episode 21, Three Stories
House's ex Stacy Warner asks him to treat her husband. House takes over a
diagnostics class for a day and presents the class with three case
studies of leg pain. As House tells his story and the class gradually
fills up with listeners, the class learns a lot about how to be better
doctors, and Chase, Foreman and Cameron learn some important details of
House's past.
House admires Carmen Electra's golfing attire
finally, the REAL payoff. I suspected something like this was coming but am glad I didn’t take shortcuts. Your highlights may have gotten me there by a faster route—say, Everest by helicopter—but would I have appreciated the view as much? That’s why JAWS doesn’t show up until the third reel.
And it gets better: the “ducklings-to-be” in exact same proportion in the half-empty lecture theater; the game w/Carmen Electra!; gobbles a handful of pills—“on average, drug addicts are stupid” and, after he becomes ID’d as his own: Asian girl: “The patient was stupid!” H: “On the average, they all are.”; and the piece d’ resistance--staring into the camera “Oh, yes, that patient won’t come in for another three months. Luckily, it has been well-established that Time is not a fixed construct…”—and then that eyebrow lift… HOUSE GOES META!
Then the backstory w/Stacy. Now we understand his view of the untrustworthiness of love.
He said: all or nothing.
She said: the middle way.
He gets: chronic pain and limp.
She gets: frozen out forever.
Both of them get: a Life.
Then the exterior, interior thing. Notice how the ducklings turn up, and the lecture hall starts to mysteriously fill up as word spreads like wildfire: “Psst! House is teaching a class!” then Wilson, then cuddy—this is a major event at the school! And so the answers: it would appear that cuddy felt guilty, no matter what else, when she hired him (unless he already was working there then--ambiguous). And even though Wilson is not present in any of the scenes, he knows about the death-time House spent on the astral plane. And after Wilson, Cameron and Foreman all ask their big ones what’s his summary? “I find it more comforting to believe that this is not simply…a test.”
OK. WAIT A MINUTE! Straight, declarative statement, but he says nothing about what IT IS. Did you get that? He gives you a negative but do we not automatically assume the false positive? This is a core value of philosophy, right? Ok. Carle’s Law 101: a Negative is NOT a False Positive; it merely SOUNDS LIKE IT while it states what something IS NOT. All he says is that the answers proposed are too simplistic. And that is what truly fine brinksmanship in writing sounds like. also Derrida, but that's another thing. THIS IS SOMETHING HOUSE THOUGHT ON, A LOT, BEFORE REACHING HIS SECULAR CONCLUSION.
Yeah. This I could like.
House admires Carmen Electra's golfing attire
finally, the REAL payoff. I suspected something like this was coming but am glad I didn’t take shortcuts. Your highlights may have gotten me there by a faster route—say, Everest by helicopter—but would I have appreciated the view as much? That’s why JAWS doesn’t show up until the third reel.
And it gets better: the “ducklings-to-be” in exact same proportion in the half-empty lecture theater; the game w/Carmen Electra!; gobbles a handful of pills—“on average, drug addicts are stupid” and, after he becomes ID’d as his own: Asian girl: “The patient was stupid!” H: “On the average, they all are.”; and the piece d’ resistance--staring into the camera “Oh, yes, that patient won’t come in for another three months. Luckily, it has been well-established that Time is not a fixed construct…”—and then that eyebrow lift… HOUSE GOES META!
Then the backstory w/Stacy. Now we understand his view of the untrustworthiness of love.
He said: all or nothing.
She said: the middle way.
He gets: chronic pain and limp.
She gets: frozen out forever.
Both of them get: a Life.
Then the exterior, interior thing. Notice how the ducklings turn up, and the lecture hall starts to mysteriously fill up as word spreads like wildfire: “Psst! House is teaching a class!” then Wilson, then cuddy—this is a major event at the school! And so the answers: it would appear that cuddy felt guilty, no matter what else, when she hired him (unless he already was working there then--ambiguous). And even though Wilson is not present in any of the scenes, he knows about the death-time House spent on the astral plane. And after Wilson, Cameron and Foreman all ask their big ones what’s his summary? “I find it more comforting to believe that this is not simply…a test.”
OK. WAIT A MINUTE! Straight, declarative statement, but he says nothing about what IT IS. Did you get that? He gives you a negative but do we not automatically assume the false positive? This is a core value of philosophy, right? Ok. Carle’s Law 101: a Negative is NOT a False Positive; it merely SOUNDS LIKE IT while it states what something IS NOT. All he says is that the answers proposed are too simplistic. And that is what truly fine brinksmanship in writing sounds like. also Derrida, but that's another thing. THIS IS SOMETHING HOUSE THOUGHT ON, A LOT, BEFORE REACHING HIS SECULAR CONCLUSION.
Yeah. This I could like.
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