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| The cast of House. From left: Omar Epps, Olivia Wilde, Robert Sean Leonard, Hugh Laurie, Lisa Edelstein, Jesse Spencer, Jennifer Morrison, Peter Jacobson. (Photo: Joe Viles/NBC.) |
I despise prestige television. Art relies on limitations, and narrative is an architecture. Thirteen hours of a single story deprives you of both, and “fleshing out” each character’s backstory is just exploring so many blind alleys. No, give me episodic television anytime.
The epitome of episodic television is David Shore’s House (2004–2012, aka House, M.D.), starring Hugh Laurie as an American medical Sherlock Holmes addicted to Vicodin due to the pain of a leg that should’ve been amputated. Yes, the characters have arcs (over eight seasons, how could they not?), but they’re always kept in the background of whatever case of the week they’re dealing with. Those glimpses of a coworker’s private life are a more realistic take on work relationships, and much more alluring than actually moving in with them, so to speak.
This lets the show make them archetypes, as reflected (pace executive producer Katie Jacobs) in the opening credits (designed by Digital Kitchen): House is the mind, administrator Cuddy (Lisa Edelstein) the nervous system, overambitious Foreman (Omar Epps, the worst recurring cast member) the lungs trying to call the shots, Cameron (Jennifer Morrison) the outside world and conventional ethics, work-wife Wilson (Robert Sean Leonard) the material brain to House’s intellect, and gung-ho Chase (Jesse Spencer) the spine.
But the metaphor at the end of my second paragraph also gestures toward the show’s catering to the male gaze. Of course the actresses are attractive; I appreciate Morrison’s wardrobe (costumes designed by Cathy Cramdall), and the show launched Olivia Wilde’s career (her character is one of the few allowed to laugh in mirth), but it seems a tad pointed that, by the end of the show’s run, all the pre–Season 8 recurring actresses have left, while the remaining men have been with House from the beginning. There are also a good many gratuitous T&A shots. And don’t even get me started on “Massage Therapy” (Season 7), where a scene on a motorcycle shop floor opens with a shot of House and Wilson talking in the background, while in the foreground an uncredited out-of-focus young lady in a tank top folds clothes(??). The main exception here is Season 8’s casting of Charlene Yi, one of my favorite comedians, perhaps in a belated nod to this very issue. Indeed, the show gets quite a bit of mileage out of the fact that she doesn’t fit the usual mold of House actresses (while the other female lead that season, played by Odette Annable, most certainly does).
That said, two late episodes understand masculine- and feminine-style dynamics well. In “The C-Word” (Season 8, directed by Laurie himself), Wilson opts to undergo an aggressive and risky chemotherapy regimen – to “nuke it with chemo,” as House puts it in “Not Cancer” (Season 5) – and the way House cares for him physically and mentally is pure bro code masculine humor. When Wilson decides to stop suffering and accept death in “Holding On” (Season 8), the way House finds his way to acceptance and being willing to accompany his only friend to the end instead of trying to solve the problem is very feminine-coded.
In addition to the recurring cast, the show knows how to get and use great actors. The one-off patients include Cynthia Nixon (“Deception,” Season 2), Jeremy Renner (“Games,” Season 4), James Earl Jones (“The Tyrant,” Season 6), Michael B. Jordan (“Love Is Blind,” Season 8), Skylar Astin (Season 8), and more. But the single greatest one-off performance is by Cody Saintgnue (“Selfish,” Season 7), who plays a wheelchair user being pressured to donate a lung to his sister. His climactic emotional catharsis made me cry instantaneously, and I’m pretty sure his scene partner’s tears were real, too.
Above all, the writing is excellent. In micro, the way House uses psychobabble to needle and provoke his team is very convincing (both the psychobabble and the manipulation), with the only fudge that any actual such workplace would be filled with profanities. In macro, the show generally has a firm grasp on how recurring characters have changed, and how that affects their dynamics with people old and new. Look at Season 6, where the original trio returns temporarily; House deploys his usual belittling sarcasm, but now they can tell which of his insinuations are worth paying attention to, and which are just him having fun. House himself is a work of wonder in that season; after sobering up at a rehab for two episodes, he returns vowing to maintain sobriety and do good (more than just medically). So how do you write a “reformed” House? Make him kind at heart, and let his manipulations be for good ends, as some of the characters start to deduce.
This is in direct contrast to the execrable Season 3, filled with idiot plots, people saying stupid things, the inability to actual engage in differential diagnosis, and a pervasive bitter cynicism. In “Instant Karma” (Season 6), House even alludes to the fact that the last time the trio constituted House’s team was three years ago—Season 3. Yet another mea culpa?
The other main instance when the show forgets itself is every time it ignores the fact that Foreman has run his own successful diagnostics team at New York Mercy (“97 Seconds,” Season 4), getting fired for making the right call over the administrator’s objections. I do think his firing is justified; House always gets Cuddy’s approval one way or another, beforehand or not. But in later episodes, when Foreman’s ambitions get the better of him, everyone acts like he couldn’t do what House does, when he’s already done it before.
So no writers’ room is perfect, but this one gets pretty close. They excel, too, at episode titles, which is why I’m including so many in this piece. The Season 4 two-part finale episodes are titled “House’s Head”– he has short-term amnesia after hitting his head in a major bus accident but recalls someone needing his help – and “Wilson’s Heart” – that person turns out to be Amber (Anne Dudek), former team member and now Wilson’s girlfriend, whom House can’t save. Or that classic final episode, in which House fakes his death to accompany Wilson as he faces his, titled “Everybody Dies,” a riff on House’s catchphrase when dealing with patients: “Everybody lies.”
The writers also love breaking the fourth wall. In “Epic Fail” (Season 6), Cuddy tells Foreman, “Departments of diagnostic medicine don’t exist,” meaning that House’s department was formed specifically for him, but it’s also a true statement about the real world. Soon after Olivia Wilde was named “Hottest Woman Alive” by Maxim magazine, House (talking to Foreman, her inexplicable love interest at the time) calls her character “the hottest woman in the world” (Season 6). House replies to one phone call where the speaker offers no solutions: “So this call is purely expositional” (Season 7; it is). And in “A Pox on Our House” (Season 7), which featured a disease contracted from a sealed jar recovered from a centuries-old shipwreck, House calls the CDC to confirm that his diagnosis is plausible – the same thing, one imagines, that a House screenwriter might do.
But perhaps the aspect for which House gets the least credit is its formal creativity. It pioneered the use of CGI on television to depict medical and physiological processes, and later leveraged that expertise into “The Tyrant” (Season 6), with significant sequences set in an immersive videogame whose creatures populate the patient’s real-world hallucinations, which hallucinations we also get to see from his perspective via CGI. (The episode is the subject of a season DVD documentary short.) “Locked In” (Season 5) is told mostly from the perspective of a patient with locked-in syndrome who can only move his eyes, switching to 3rd person only when he loses consciousness. And we get some fascinating glimpses into the respective lives of Wilson and Cuddy, who each gets their own episode: “Wilson” and “5 to 9” (both from Season 6). Not the least of these episodes’ pleasures is seeing House’s team rushing about in the background, tossing out insane medical case summaries on their way to a priority-commandeered operating room or whatnot. The show’s medical consultants (including Foster) made sure every case is medically possible, but I’m pretty sure these two episodes were the exceptions.
Finally, House has an uproarious comedic side, sometimes devolving/ascending into farce. My favorite episode for these purposes is “Last Temptation” (Season 7), where House and Wilson each bring a chicken to work and bet on who can keep his chicken safe the longest and not be caught by security. Naturally, this leads to various gambits to “sacrifice” the others chicken, the most elaborate of which is this one.
House is as close to episodic perfection as we’ll ever get.
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