As a "medical" show you have here a totally fantastic crew and set: the doctors are all good looking (chesty women and young men with good hair (and a nicely maintained Aussie accent)), relatively young people with all their hair on, and a hospital that seems like it was just recently visited by an interior decorator (lots of orange walls, glass, high ceilings), and is located somewhere that's always sunny (enormous amounts of natural light). There are no nurses, etc--instead our good doctors do everything themselves, including spending valuable time trying to take blood or finding a lost patient. Right. As others have pointed out the episodes are severely formulaic. There are two facets to each story: 1. Fixing mystery illness 2. Bickering with each other/ sexual tension/ House's addiction, lack of sentimentality, or the ironic contrast between his skill as a doctor and his lack of empathy. The plots all go this way: 1. Scene with patient becoming ill. 2. Opening theme 3. House and etc arguing rapidly about patient's conditions; House snaps witty remarks but they settle somewhat on a hypothesis. 4. Hypothetical diagnosis wrong, patient is worsening. 5. Another diagnosis with some more doctor/doctor bickering, and some revelation on part of House's character (he still has a heart, he has lots of pain, etc). 6. Diagnosis brings patient near to death, something must be done, but what?! 7. House gets some clue, and sends junior doctor to patient's home or interrogates family member. Family member cries and/or gets angry /something radical found at home. Risky diagnosis discovered by confident House, but could be win all/lose all 8. Patient is cured. End with showing some part of House's personality (addiction, lack of sentiment, inner anguish, etc).
The initial exposure to Dr. House's personality as a Sherlock Holmsey type of vicodin-addicted character is amusing. While Holmes was usually cold, House is sardonic, unsocial and bitter, and uses sarcastic humour. He also uses dark humour to deflect his interior character, which is supposed have some pain and some loneliness to give his character interest. However, after the umpteenth acrimonious but witty reply, and the umpteenth little scene showing that he isn't completely unpleasant just gets eyerollingly boring.
This is how the majority of episodes play out. Once in a while it's good if you've forgotten how the last episode played out, but I found that watching this show on a regular basis just feels like a huge waste of time.
The initial exposure to Dr. House's personality as a Sherlock Holmsey type of vicodin-addicted character is amusing. While Holmes was usually cold, House is sardonic, unsocial and bitter, and uses sarcastic humour. He also uses dark humour to deflect his interior character, which is supposed have some pain and some loneliness to give his character interest. However, after the umpteenth acrimonious but witty reply, and the umpteenth little scene showing that he isn't completely unpleasant just gets eyerollingly boring.
This is how the majority of episodes play out. Once in a while it's good if you've forgotten how the last episode played out, but I found that watching this show on a regular basis just feels like a huge waste of time.