One of the disadvantages of watching House from the beginning of Season 1, as I have been doing with friends all winter, is that you start to recognize when the storylines are being recycled. In “Here Kitty,” Kutner approaches Taub, who is ill-humored, and says that Taub should confide in him because they are friends. This is a page out of the scene from “Sleeping Dogs” in Season 2 when Cameron tells Foreman that in order to preserve their friendship, they should both apologize and move on (after he stole a medical article from her). Taub, like Foreman, responds by saying that they are colleagues, but they are not friends.
Wilson expresses outrage that House is performing an autopsy on a coma patient who has died after a “magic cat” with powers of diagnosis lies next to it. However, House trying to solve puzzles is the undercurrent of every episode. Sometimes? The moral outrage is a little old. Even when you know the formula and appreciate what the show can do anyway. And what House is doing to this patient is certainly no worse than shooting a body in the morgue in order to see what will happen if a patient with gunshots has an MRI (it will break the machine for two weeks, by the way), as House did in Season 2, “Euphoria, Part 1.”
Even the pranks are being recycled: During Season 2 when Wilson lives with House for awhile, House puts Wilson’s hand in warm water while he sleeps. Wilson pees on House’s couch; House sits in it. In “Here Kitty,” House vomits blood on Kutner, which is actually only cranberry juice. Kutner retaliates by peeing on a chair in House’s office and blaming it on a cat. Of course, House sits in it.
Even the case itself revisits elements that have gone before, very similarly. In Season 2, “House vs. God,” a 15-year-old boy with herpes causes a woman’s cancer to go into remission. House asks Chase, “Don’t you think I get a point for that?” and Chase answers that the chances of the boy having the right illness, of the woman having the right cancer, and the boy trying to heal her — all of these factors converging at the same time — could be a miracle. In “Here Kitty,” the patient says to House that the cat jumping up onto his computer at the exact right time and House stopping an unnecessary surgery at the last minute are not coincidences, because she wants to believe that her illness (and her life) have meaning.
These are valid philosophical questions for the show to explore; however, nothing has changed. They are being recycled, rather than added to or expanded upon. House is never convinced; the patients always are. Even the team was ultimately unaffected by the outcome of this case.
Hugh Laurie deserves better. I’m just sayin’.
Revisiting the first two seasons reinforces also that the greatness of the show and its writing and acting centered around interesting medicine and legitimate medical puzzles. Commenters have pointed out in the past that and endless parade of weird medical cases gets just as old as the recycled storylines among House’s underlings. I don’t want to suggest that maybe House has exhausted its welcome in my living room; far from it. I just want it to get back to the sharp writing that heralded the first few seasons and made the show one of the must-see shows on television.
Clacked by Jen Creer
on Mar 17, 2009 @ 11:00 EST5EDT
Well, they’ve been recycling most of the themes for a long time, but the writing (I think) is more about the character development on top of the recycled plot bits.
Of course, how long can a show go on the same way…5 seasons? 10 seasons? :)
This is really the only show I watch. :)
I thought Taub was going to leave for real. Would help freshen the show a bit, for example they could show that House really did need him but was unable to solve a mystery due to Taub not being around. Leave that unresolved for once. That would shake up the formula a bit and leave House with something to think about.
Then throw him into a funk until someone breaks him out of it. Ok that part they’ve done before, but I would stand for seeing it again… and then do a full refresh of the interns again… I’d like to see some of the ousted “tribe” come back esp the old non-doctor dude.
Funny. Yesterday whily biking I thought if I would be asked to chose one and only one show to take on a deserted Island, it would most likely be “House M.D.” for me, even before “Lost”. And I thought that Cameron and Chase are practically not on the show anymore.
I don’t know I think the show is great and even though it repeats itself I didn’t notice. To be honest I enjoy it too much to even criticize it. Don’t know why. I currently watch “Bones” and don’t care about the bogus science they use there either. Something must be wrong with me…