I watched House after the ...

• Feb 11, 2008 03:00 AM ET
• by Matt Roush

Question: I watched House after the Super Bowl and was very pleasantly surprised. I love this show, but I watch it with gritted teeth, as Greg House reminds me of an ex. I was discussing it with my husband, and I hated to say the words out loud, but I had to: I asked him if he was getting tired of the same-old same-old every week, as surly House comes up with a last-minute disease and cure. It usually happens around the 47th minute. My husband's reply? "Who cares, he's such a (bleep), I never mind the show's sameness." How long can this possibly last? That's why I was somewhat relieved by Sunday night's episode. Mira Sorvino's character had House's number from the very beginning and gave him what for. Maybe the show was good just because of her, but I liked seeing House vulnerable. And Wilson is a hoot; when House wanted to follow him to his date and Wilson took off running, I laughed like a loon. Hopefully Sunday's show was not made specifically for the after-Super Bowl crowd, although I think it probably was. Seems like they pulled out all the stops for this one episode. What is your take on House these days?
Answer: The last two episodes of House were especially good, I thought: the terrific Super Bowl episode (which certainly felt like a sweeps stunt, although we've reported the original plan for Super Bowl night was for a different two-part episode) and then the Super Tuesday episode — the last new episode, as it turns out — involving the Hasidic bride (the metaphor likening religious conversion to the ability of people to change) and House's hilarious, "OMG, you're sleeping with me" revelation that Wilson's fling with Cutthroat Bitch/Amber is his way of dating a surrogate House. I sympathize with fans who aren't happy how marginalized Chase and Cameron have become to make way for House's newest acolytes — I don't think the show needed to make that drastic a change this early in its run — but the question you posed your husband is a good one. Especially as it came just as I opened this remark from Glenn H.: "Is it me, or is House becoming more than a little tiresome? Every episode has not only the same plot but the same rhythm and characterizations: Patient with mysterious illness appears. House guesses (and they are clearly guesses, not diagnoses) wrong about the patient three or four times. The patient starts bleeding from various orifices. Finally House guesses right. Meanwhile he's an a-hole. End of episode. I'm thinking I won't be watching it any more when it comes back after the strike."

To which I can only say: It took you this long (four seasons) to figure out the formula? Because that's what House is, like so many other shows on TV: a formula that most fans find satisfying, in this case an extreme medical mystery that's enlivened by a richly entertaining central character. We've joked in the office how awful it would be to be one of House's patients. Yes, we'd likely be cured, but look what we'd have to go through to get there: a gruesome setback at every commercial break. What keeps people watching House is the writing, the characters and, no doubt, the exotic twists. The fact that there's so much grumbling about the new faces tells me that most House fans were pretty happy with it the way that it was.