Suffering from a full ‘House’
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Dr. Gregory House (Hugh Laurie) never hedges his bets. It’s part of his charm, and now we see why. Because if you hedge your bets, if you try to keep several possibilities in active play, you wind up with a television show that has what are essentially two separate casts, neither of which has enough to do.
For seven full days there was hope that last week’s episode of ‘House,’ the first since the writers strike maimed the TV season, was terrible because everyone was a little rusty, a little out of sync. And last night’s episode was better, but not much. At least not enough ‘much.’
The problem, it would seem, is systemic -- neurological rather than viral, in the show’s parlance (I think.) The brilliance of last season’s decision to do away with the old consulting team in favor of a reality show-like competition for a new team left us with a numerical challenge. The old team came back, albeit not as diagnosticians, which means we have Cameron (Jennifer Morrison), Chase (Jesse Spencer) and Foreman (Omar Epps) jockeying for screen time with the new team -- Kutner (Kal Penn), Thirteen (Olivia Wilde) and Taub (Peter Jacobson). (None of whom have bios on the show’s website; make of this what you will.) Add to that standing costars -- Cuddy (Lisa Edelstein) and Wilson (Robert Sean Leonard), oh and Wilson’s new girlfriend Amber (Anne Dudek) -- and you have way too many people for a show that insists its main character be the center of each story line, delivering most of the best lines in almost every scene.
All of which may explain why last night’s episode, which should have been a jim-dandy -- House kidnaps the star of his favorite medical soap because he has noticed ‘symptoms’ in the actor’s delivery of his lines while Cuddy is in the middle of an unexpected accreditation review -- fell completely flat. And not because we know that, even by soap opera standards, Princeton Plainsboro should have lost its accreditation years ago, while House and his team languished in a low-risk security facility somewhere.
No, it fell flat because there was no narrative tension -- no matter how many times poor old Lisa Edelstein was forced to say ‘my job is on the line,’ we knew the hospital would not close and House would not be fired. There was also no personal tension because none of the characters has had time to create traction with the audience. Because there are too many characters! This is not ‘ER,’ people, this is not ‘Grey’s Anatomy,’ this is not a serial drama with criss-crossing narratives in which every character gets his or her moment in the sun. This is ‘House,’ a procedural in which, thus far, the only character allowed any sort of development is House.
Which has worked just fine, awards all around, the No. 1 scripted drama (for a while anyway), magazine covers galore. But those shows only work when you have a small cohesive core surrounding the star; cast-wise, ‘House’ is now an ensemble. With every one standing around watching Hugh Laurie do his thing (which can’t be all that fun for Laurie, even with the cane-twirling thing.) Even the possibly interesting side plot about Wilson and Amber is being derailed into vaudeville by House’s (read: the writers’) insistence that he is at the root of it (that and the fact that without the tempering characteristic of doctorhood, Amber is, face it, just mean.)
So last night was just a panoply of weird tests and accidental successes, with the answer coming to House, as it always does, when he’s just happens to notice that gum on the floor or the kid’s stuffed bear or whatever. There was no snappy dialogue, no rich personal interplay, no attempt to use House’s various quirks to reveal anything much. Because, apparently, the writers were too busy making sure everyone on the payroll had at least two lines.
It’s not easy being ‘House,’ but then no one ever said it would be. Decisions must be made -- is this an ensemble drama or a lead-driven procedural. Make your choice. Begin writing accordingly. Because I for one miss my favorite show. And it’s almost summer as it is.
--Mary McNamara
