A Belated Happy Holidays To House (1/29/08 episode reviewed)

Is the daughter the one that makes the patient obvious or the writers?

Oh, you caught a typo. Fixed. Thanks. The hardest editing is editing your own stuff.
Now it's changed from

"But the daughter has long abandoned making the victim obvious, and such was the case here."

to

"But the show's writers have long abandoned making the victim obvious, and such was the case here."

UM. The Secret Santa is the one GIVING the present?

I'm not sure. I just changed the sentence from

"Only House would be wacky and deceptive enough to rig the holiday ritual so that everyone had House as their Secret Santa."

to
"Only House would be wacky and deceptive enough to rig the holiday ritual so that everyone has to buy him a present."

is that more clear?
My editing mantra:
When in doubt, rewrite the sentence.

For someone who is supposed to be the most brilliant of diagnosticians, he seems to make several wrong ones every episode. This one is no different.

That's true. Did you notice where I talked about him being an ends justify the means guy? What I mean is he may go down the wrong path and invade people's privacy and personal space but he usually ends up with the right answer.

This can lead to discussions about whether you'd want House as your doctor. His final results are good but along the way he can go way wrong.

I didn't know hogs could go blind but then I don't watch much animal planet.

Yes I've noticed too - that you act like he personally wronged you, Dr. Know.

I think your response is weighty and lengthy enough to be its own article. Maybe YOu should consider recapping the show too since you obviously have much interest in it. I'm reading this too late to do justice so for now let me say thank you for the compliment and the obvious thoughts you've put into this review and your response and this series.

I went back and forthy on whether to mention the athiesm article in the context of the "nails" comment - in a way that's almost a comment suggesting he's NOt an athiest because why would an athiest care about such things, but I wanted to throw it some recurring topics and issues with this series on this article so I can return to them later.

I did struggle with whether to go with doing the recap chronologically or skip around a bit as I did. I'm glad the structure appears to have made sense.

I'll respond to your other points tomorrow.

One thing I like about the show is that it DOES make you think. It'll be good to compare notes.

So am I to understand there are new episodes on both Sunday AND Tuesday? At one point - and I decided not to include this - I thought they were advertising "three new episodes of House" - and if that's so doesn't that mean they'd run out in like a week or two (math - especially algebra - not being my best subject)

Firsty - I'm honored my review prompted all of those great responses which I'm going to get into as soon as I finish writing about guilt.

Dr. Know - I echo Firsty's comments. It seems like you're judging how House might confuse the public's understanding of medicine versus whether it is good compelling television.

Vacelts - OK, thanks. I guess I'll be spending Monday writing a review of Sunday nite's show before the next episode airs Tuesday. Good thing Monday I don't start work until 3 pm.

OK, I'm going to attempt to respond to parts of this.

well, if thats not the understatement of the millennium, i dont know what is. :) i would agree, and i would say that house is the kind of person who as a rule, as an entire way of life, the ends justify the means, whatever they are. i think it's actually only the extremity of that POV which redeems him, because it makes its moral decisions entirely consistent and, well, pure.

Interesting. So how does his use of drugs- legal and illegal - fit into all of this? He rationalizes the drug use because they are justified by the ends?

this is a great review, scott. i'm not sure that i found in this last episode the flaws that you and polite dissent and the other blogs i read on the subject (nj alltv, the onion AV club) found, but that obviously puts me in the minority. i actually really enjoyed the show.

Do you have links to those reviews/recaps? I usually just read that of TWOP and Polite Dissent. We'll have to agree to disagree on this show. I think I was partly distracted by the West Wing actress in such a different role which, isn't her or the show's fault, but i note because reviews are subjective.

the strength of the program is not meant to be its diagnostic truth. as a huge fan of the program since the first season, i was surprised when i read in your interview with polite dissent's doctor that he feels that "house" is likely at the top of current medical dramas in terms of accuracy, and in the top quarter of medical shows of all time. my understanding of the program, which i watch with my partner who is not only a nurse but also a bookworm who keeps her advanced medical texts on hand wherever she goes, is that the diagnoses arrived at generally fit the symptoms, but there is a lack of accuracy when it comes to how the results of tests either come back so quickly, are more vague than they make it seem, or that they only lead to one conclusion.

Oh, is that what you were expressing surprise about at that interview? I think saying House is more accurate about medicine on the show is a bit like saying Entertainment Tonight is more like a news program of substance than Access Hollywood, in other words it's saying it's better than some but still far from great. There are some - perhaps including Dr. Know - who would like the show to be more like a documentary. Don't get me wrong - I love documentaries - but I think there's a time and place for fictional programs too.

Interesting about the House/Holmes connection.

and these questions are the weight of the show, and they are often, as you show, explored during the dialog between characters that usually isnt directly related to the patient at hand but rather during the asides. another great exchange was when foreman made a quick remark about taub's happiness, left unanswered by taub. and i think you were the one who brought it up in another thread, but it was another great scene when wilson told house he was only walking down the hall with him because he knew it was painful. their relationship is perhaps the most profound and layered relationship between male friends that we see in today's television.

I agree - it's a great relationship. I think there could be a great book just on how they are often testing each others limits and boundaries. Television Without Pity takes it all to an extreme in suggesting they are secretly having a sexual relationship so when the series had a plot line with them moving in together.. well, they had a field day with that. But it IS great writing and the actor who plays Wilson deserves acclaim for playing Wilson the way he does.

as far as house's religious views, i certainly dont see it as a character trait. it is more a very simple, predictable and believable opinion based on the character himself. he's not so much an atheist as he is a rationalist. if house witnessed undeniable proof of a higher power, he'd probably become a monk. as we know, towards the end of season 3 and into season 4, the program adapted a theme of house's spirituality, as he encountered both strong believers and strange medical outcomes. but in every case, house was able to talk through or think through the facts in such a way as to definitively explain things. lets face it — religious belief is based on faith, not facts. we can criticize someone all we want for not believing, but we're lying to ourselves if we think that it is a character flaw, up for absolute criticism, which makes a person incapable of having faith.

See my comment below about this. I'm not convinced that his thoughts about religion are not a character trait, though I guess that depends on how you decide what's a trait versus what is part of a person's interests.

but we're lying to ourselves if we think that it is a character flaw, up for absolute criticism, which makes a person incapable of having faith.

I hope you don't think I was saying that. I'm still making up my own mind about faith. I'm just saying you don't often see popular programs questioning faith.

we can see the parallels very quickly. and we can also see that, even though, as we agree, house is a person who believes the ends justify the means as an absolute, he takes great pleasure - he sees great value - in the exercise of conversation as a way to understand the ethical and moral questions involved. but these two approaches are not incompatible — having a deep understanding of the moral questions having to do with each case are what drives the understanding of the cases themselves.

I was with you on the socratic method thing until you got to here because House doesn't seem to have conversations well. He would do well to read my piece abotu the value of listening because he seems to interrupt others a lot which would not, in myopinion, be a good rendering of the socratic method..

and that is very important — why do doctors these days receive such poor reviews from their patients? why are so many people unhappy with the medical care they receive? because doctors dont listen and because they run tests and write scripts as their primary form of caregiving. does house listen? no. he doesnt even ask, not directly. but he has his doctors listen. and because everyone lies (and house did a good job in this episode of describing, to the patient's daughter, the various forms of lying, some more seemingly benign than others), the only way to truly understand what they are saying is through the filters of his doctors, which, as i said, he goes to great lengths to understand - and also to maintain as a control group, and this is done by using the socratic method with his doctors - the back and forth exchanges which seem to be discussing tangental obsessions but are actually serving to define the medical problems they face.

Well, another reason some complain about doctors is they seem to be lacking empathy and that's definitely a criticism of House. Unless a character interests him he's often quite rude to them with sometime disastarous results (i.e. the cop plotline)

That's what libaries and netflix are for, silly. My library has all of Buffy, House, Lost, etc.

Its how I stay sane at work, watching them after my clients go to bed.

I did not notice those things but I did nothing something Epi noted, which is that I didn't notice - nor did she - him popping pills this week.

Thanks for the compliment.

I'm watching carefully to see if he doesn't pop pills again tonite but i'm not sure what it would mean if he doesn't. Maybe they are just dropping it as a plotline?

Maybe they just decided enough was enough with scenes of him popping the pills.

Hmm, oh you mean there was something on tv before House this time?
:)
After Puppy Bowl I turned off the tv for a few hours.

I missed the ad since I skipped the game.

They should have Winhouse on House. That would be an interesting matching.

beehives get smushed in hospital beds. :)

I'm not going to ask how you know that.

I'm finishing up my next House review. It should be up within the hour.

I went back and forthy on whether to mention the athiesm article in the context of the "nails" comment - in a way that's almost a comment suggesting he's NOt an athiest because why would an athiest care about such things,
I would argue that he's really undecided about his faith or lack of it. I think he's still exploring and testing his theories about God.

Ah, well, that sounds more like what I and unitarians believe - that the voyage we make during life to decide what we believe is more important than the final conclusion or destination (provided you believe some basic principals, i.e ethical and moral behavior) - than athiesm.

That's a very concise summary of our faith.