House

Is it just me, or is House running the risk of becoming too formulaic?  That was my thinking as I watched last night’s episode, enjoying it less than I would have were I not seeing the pattern.

Mystery ailment strikes.  Patient admitted to the “we solve mystery ailments” department headed by House, with the possibility of foot-dragging or not.  During the show one of the junior doctors gets especially picked on or focused on, though we might learn more about others as well.  House makes accurate, seemingly snap judgments about his staff or others.  Parents or other family of the mystery ailment victim are assumed to be misguided or in the way, and usually are.  A series of good yet wrong guesses are made based on increasingly focused research, usually including entering the patient’s home and rifling through the contents, and always including amazingly detailed yet fast lab work performed primarily by the junior doctors.  The solution has some “twist.” The mystery ailment patient goes from being all but dead and having major damage to this and that organ, to being perfectly healthy and living happily ever after.  There may or may not be one or more additional patients with the same mystery ailment, providing data points and narrowing toward the correct diagnosis.  As needed, someone will know someone with an experimental treatment, which can be at the facility in no time.

While all this is going on, House sees one or more clinic patients, one of whom provides the comic relief subplot.  There are jabs back and forth between that other doctor who seems to be amused by House, and jabs or discussions about legal issues or patient/relative complaints with the female boss who not only knows House is the best doctor there, but also seems to lurve him even though nothing will come of that tension until the final season, if ever.  We see House watching a soap opera sometime during the episode.  We see House finally meet the mystery ailment patient and/or relative sometime during the episode, when things are dire or the other docs can’t get through anymore.

Something like that.  It’s not very structured, but it would probably be possible to write a generic script template or two that could be used by most anyone who wants to try their hand at writing an episode.

All of which doesn’t make it less enjoyable, but I think they risk getting in exactly that kind of rut.

1. Well, that and the fact (I was told this, didn’t see it or verify it) that the only difference between this and a recent episode of MI was the “side story” was syphilis.  Not to mention that the absorption of poisons from clothes is so old it’s an urban legend (the one about the prom dress and the embalming fluid)

   Posted by caltechgirl  on  01/26  at  01:00 PM

2. It was the same as MI, but I remember a few years back an almost idnetical storyline on L&O & CSI. I guess there’s only so many original ideas. As to it being a formula [shrug] most TV shows are, so I don’t expect House to be any different in that regard.

   Posted by Ith  on  01/26  at  01:07 PM

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