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Tuesday, 19 June 2007 |
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By D. W. O'Dell
The TV series House M.D. ended the season with a bang, audience-wise. Its season finale (admittedly held by FOX until after the end of May sweeps) drew over 17 million viewers, more than 5 million more than the second highest rated show of the week. House, which began with feeble ratings but started drawing larger audiences once it followed American Idol, is certainly one of the colossuses of FOX's TV line-up.
But changes may be in the offing for next season, as the future status of all three "House-lets" (known on other sites as 'Cottages,' which is cute but not quite there) was called into question by the season finale. Both Dr. Eric Foreman (Omar Epps) and Dr. Allison Cameron (Jennifer Morrison) submitted their resignations, while House (Hugh Laurie) fired Dr. Robert Chase (Jesse Spencer). I'm not exactly a Hollywood insider but the word I've heard is that all three actors plan to be back next season, possibly with their characters in a different capacity.
Dr. House's firing of Chase is the easiest to understand. It happened after Chase finally stood up to House; okay, it was about House's relationship with Foreman, but backbone is backbone whether it's concerning a medical diagnosis or House's feelings. House immediately told Chase that Chase had learned all he needed to learn from him, and House was right. What House has been teaching his staff isn't medicine, it's a philosophy that once you determine the best course of action you jump all in, feet first. Be convinced of your own infallibility; take half-measures and you increase the likelihood that something will go wrong. Once Chase had enough backbone to challenge House, to believe (or be sure) that he was right and House was wrong, Chase was ready to be pushed from the nest.
On the flip side, House needs to believe in the fallibility of his staff's opinions, which may explain why House (seemingly) is okay with Foreman and Cameron leaving. House operates on Sherlock Holmes' precept that once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be true. House needs his minions to feed him all the wrong answers so he can  find the right one. Once he starts respecting their opinions, the system breaks down. In the season finale, Dr. Cuddy suggested that Foreman botched a procedure, hence the episode's title, "Human Error." House immediately rejected the suggestion, preferring instead to believe that the error was God's - a defect in the patient's circulatory system - and not Foreman's. Once House has that kind of faith in his staff, their usefulness to him is over.
This third season finale for House M.D. wasn't as gaudy as the first two. Season one's final episode, "Three Stories" (okay, there was an episode after "Three Stories," but like Rush Limbaugh I'm ignoring the facts to make a point) deservedly won the Emmy for best dramatic writing, won a Humanitas Award, featured time-trippy editing, received a Director's Guild Award nomination, and gave the audience insight into one of House's defining features, his limp. Season two ended with the episode "No Reason," another 'through the looking glass' story in which House is shot (by someone named Moriarty!), realizes through pure deductive reasoning that he's hallucinating, then realizes that he's hallucinated having the hallucination, and so on ad infinitem. That episode ended with the possibility that House might lose his limp...which is about as likely as all three of his minions leaving.
House M.D. has managed to maintain an air of freshness despite an incredibly formulaic approach. In every episode, someone has mysterious symptoms; House decides on a course of action, but the patient gets worse; House decides on a second course of action, and the patient almost dies; with five minutes left in the episode House realizes why he was wrong - usually because the patient followed House's credo, "Everybody lies" - and saves the patient's life. There are minor variations (patients have occasionally died) but the general theme is always the same.
The producers have tried to vary the show's format by giving House a worthy adversary - once it was obvious that he and Dr. Lisa Cuddy (Lisa Edelstein) had WAY too much chemistry to ever truly be adversaries - but it has proven difficult. In season one a billionaire named Vogler (Chi McBride) became head of the Board of Directors at House's hospital and tried to make House more of a conformist. Yeah, some uber-rich guy has nothing better to do than make a rogue doctor wear his lab coat at work. Season three introduced a fanatical police officer named Tritter (David Morse), who hounded House to the point where he was up on charges of stealing drugs. This plotline got so thin that it was summarily wrapped up with nary a look back.
Yet, House M.D. not only endures, it has triumphed. This is due in large part to Hugh Laurie's remarkable performance. If you had told me three years ago that the actor who played Bertie Wooster to perfection could play an irascible, misanthropic American doctor, I would have laughed at you. Laurie is willing to push his character far beyond the bounds of what other actors would be willing to do, whether it be frequent "Mandingo" jokes about Foreman or trying to fake having cancer to get in on an experimental pain medication trial.
It is satisfying that in a television culture where shows like American Idol and America's Funniest Home Videos can thrive, that a medical show featuring more polysyllabic words than a Dennis Miller monologue can be a ratings winner...although, deep down, I suspect the really gross medical symptoms help the show's popularity more than its vocabulary.
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