Season 1, Episode 13, "Cursed": Hugh Laurie's Audition video

A Ouija board tells a young boy he will die, and he soon comes down with a serious illness. As his father is a major donor to the hospital, he insists on the best they have and Cuddy presses House to take the case. As they work through the possible solutions, House wonders why the father is so familiar with certain rare diseases. Meanwhile, a visitor to the hospital allows House to put Chase under the microscope.It's a very mobile nose. <"made a phone call" is in the pilot. I think Foreman says it. Speaking of obsessed, there is a community of people who--wait for it--TRANSCRIBE every episode! Do NOT get into an argument with one of these people.

what i like is how, for at least one ep, is has (d)evolved into General Hospital! kindly dr. greg actually takes an interest in the world around him! there is no mention here of the "phone call" that Chase Sr. did to get Chase Jr on the team, that you mentioned earlier. but it IS weird how Chase Sr. is drawn in by House to, apparently, rub Chase Jr's nose in it...(which you say is already up house's butt, so then approximately where is his nose in this ep???)  well, yes, transparent and obvious that the whole bonding thing Chase does with the kid is supposed to be a reflection of the two dads as well...and, well, like i said up top: General Hospital.

big yock: Wilson: "even I don't like you" [exit] House: [shouting after] "hey! words can hurt!"

So, now Wilson is supposed to be a skirt-chaser? you did say something about him seeking to "ship" with moist earth. though. i dunno, tho'. thing about rakes are that they are incredibly self-centered, right? the whole ego + conqueror thang? i mean, sure, there are guys who are just seeking to get their rocks off, granted. but to become a head of oncology? don't you have to have more of an alpha male aspect than Wilson has exhibited? of course, i can gather that is forthcoming.

P.S. Took me a while to figure out how to get to the page but found Polite Dissent extremely fine. so far i think i have seen at least two anaphylactic seizures and missed the cues!

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I don't much care for this episode, except for House tormenting Chase about his dad and the father/son rivalry. As for where Chase's nose is...it's a very mobile nose.

"made a phone call" is in the pilot. I think Foreman says it. Speaking of obsessed, there is a community of people who--wait for it--TRANSCRIBE every episode! Do NOT get into an argument with one of these people.

"Shipping" is not horniness...it is True Love and Real Romance.

Wilson is SO not alpha! I was baffled for a long time by Wilson being the head of oncology. Honestly, I don't know how to answer these questions. It's outside my area of expertise.

BTW, when Hugh Laurie got the script, he thought the part of House was the sidekick; he couldn't imagine a show built around this character. He figured the "boyishly handsome oncologist" would be the lead.

The reason his character looks the way he does is because HL was filming "Flight of the Phoenix" in Africa. He did his audition in a hotel bathroom in Namibia. For the film his hair [s uncut and he is scruffy since his character was marooned in the desert. So the powers that be went for that look. They had been casting for ages for an actor. Apparently one of the creators of the show said, when he saw the tape, "At last! An American actor!"



Hugh Laurie apologizes for his appearance at the beginning, then you hear the recording beep and off they go.

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... 

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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?"

Season 1, Episode 5, "Damned If You Do"

Description:

It's Christmas time in the clinic, but there's no occasion for joy when Sister Mary Augustine is brought, apparently suffering from stigmata. Figuring that it is nothing more than an allergy, House treats the nun accordingly--and as a result she nearly suffocates. As the other nuns set up a prayer vigil (much to House's annoyance), the clues to solving this medical mystery are painstakingly pieced together, leading unexpectedly to an incident in the Sister's distant past.  She was once a free spirit, and has had a copper IUD inside of her for decades, causing a copper allergy. Ho ho ho!

i bet you like this one if only for the fact that it is his 1st confrontation with organized religion, which i do not equate with "god". what i don't get is how the cute M dr. could say under his breath, "i hate nuns" and then become her best buddy. flies in the face of his blanket statement. i hate nuns, but i have a very good reason. he went to seminary school. ok. so what part about seminary school has ANY contact with a sisterhood order? the answer is: NONE. so unless he has grade school experience, which would make him as bitter and resentful as i, then he has no business not being even more arch than house.

this is the third allergy and 2nd to use copper as a villain. [actually, i probably remember "star trek" much too well. but copper was also the basis of spock's blood, in case you'd forgotten, didn't know, or didn't care. now, as for me? i'm basing an entire novella/novel ungothic vampire story on the use of tungsten in the place of molybdenum... figure that one out! heh-heh...] i bet that a lot of this stuff was very good for big pharma to get more people ordering prescripts from their docs after these shows and astro-zenca-zyrtec-zipcar-type commercials that end with 10 second speed-readings of hazardous side-effects.

 
how many times have you said to yourself: IF ONLY I COULD OUTLINE ALL MY PROBLEMS IN DRI-ERASE MAGIC MARKER ON AN EASEL-MOUNTED WHITEBOARD, I COULD BE HAPPY!

now, i think it's time to say something about the deep tissue eye-massages we get from the sf/x people. [bet you didn't know i was a big fan of isaac asimov when a tad. i remember reading "fantastic voyage" in the boy's life scouting magazine and was smitten by its passages through the circulatory system.] does that site of yours, the one where doctors discuss the shows, ever say anything about the representation of the organs, and the way they inflame, or contract or pulsate like gushy icky bags of mucus-covered goo-traps? it is cheesy and surrealistic at the same time, sure, but is it more than shock value...and a chance to ramp up the dramatic music? [by the by: soundtrack by massive attack. that's verrry hipulatic.]

Chase bonds with nun

The admin bazoomer--after something like this, any rational person would have said 'i owe you a big one' but all she says is thanks. and that he let's her get away with it...you know, human beings, in general, behave pretty much, as heretofore mentioned, like wild monkeys. they don't really vary their habits [like diet, say] unless forced to. house must have some ulterior motive for not tearing her a new one, like he would with anyone else. i'm not saying "vindictive"; i'm just saying that his "triumph" over her, well, it could have used a little more "mounting", if you catch my drift, unless he was saving it up for later use. but that seems improbable too, as these things happen all the time at the shop; how come he's never called in favors before? or is that yet to come?

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I have no idea how accurate the representations are, and the special effects people have admitted they are WAY too much in love with the stuff. Most of it is to give the viewer a sense of what's happening in the body while the doctor is rattling out the medical jargon. One regular commentator calls the effects the Magic Schoolbus Cam!


The doctor site, which you SHOULD check out, is politedissent.com It doesn't cover just House, but many other aspects of media. Oh, yeah, they love allergies, and they adore heavy metal toxicity.

As for Chase's feelings about religion, I have no idea about that part of his life, other than he went to seminary school and he's the only one of the three ducklings (or Cottages as some call them) with any religious feelings of substance. Cameron's more or less an atheist and Foreman is a lapsed Baptist or something like that.

[bytheby: soundtrack by massive attack. that's verrry hipulatic.]

 Hugh Laurie chose that. He's hip-tastic. 

This is a sucky episode, and the wig the nun is wearing...well, I'd rather watch the squishy goo. Are you trying to extrapolate deep literary thinking and depth of character from a television show? Beyond a certain point, ain't gonna happen. If at some point you feel yourself screaming "I can't take any more of this shit!" I'll resend you my favorite episodes.

the admin bazoomer

On the Tropes site, this character is called Ms Fanservice (any character obviously there to gratify the viewers' sexual fantasies). 

Male characters are called The Estrogen Brigade. You really should check it out. Last night's episode truly blew goats. (Season 7, ep. 10, Carrot or Stick) 

housearbeit? 

German for homework. [actually s.b.= hausarbeit] 

"I can't take any more of this shit!" > I'll resend you my favorite episodes. 

no need. still in my system. all this blather is by way of saying: 'so, you must have considered this at some point or other, or read it in the blogs, and how did they answer/approach dismiss/dispense it?' i figger if you spent so much time with this, you probably hit the same notes. or am i really not getting it at all? 

i mean, we're used to comic strips existing outside of time and space, but i'm sort of wondering if there is any bit of all the trauma that has gone down previously coming to a head. if house's back story is what gives him his brooding depth, you assume there is some sort of accumulation in experience that leads to a richer one to come? 

like the admin-bazoomer thang here. in any real world this would amount to a blank check, a maker to be called in w/no questions asked. but here it is just another dissociated day at the orifice?