Saturday, May 05, 2007

Has "House" already "jumped the shark?"

I am disappointed in this season's episodes of "House." In the beginning, although "House" was never that believable (who ever heard of doctors snooping around people's homes to see what might have made them sick? And what doctors perform all of their own diagnostics?), at least the diseases were. Obscure, yes. Impossible, no. As for Dr. House's actions, they were always a bit beyond the pale, but this season the whole team is out of control. If these doctors were real, they'd all be in jail for malpractice.

The episode the week before last, where Dr. Foreman gives a patient full body radiation - and then they find out it wiped out her immune system and she dies from a rampaging infection that she had all along that could have been cured - was bad enough.

But this past week's episode where the kid had leukemia and his brother had some infection but in the end Foreman jabs the needle into the kid and takes his bone marrow for the brother even though the kid is screaming in pain...the whole episode was completely unbelievable. For one thing, if the kid still had the infection, there is no way the bone marrow would help the brother - it would kill him.

I don't like to see these developments because it means "House" is moving away from being a show that is all about medicine and diagnosis, and becoming yet another soap opera medical show. I am certainly interested in the personalities and the interactions between the characters, but one of the most compelling things for me about the show was always the Disease Du Jour. If they are going to start having hokey medical situations, the show will lose much of its appeal for me, and, I suspect, other loyal viewers.

3 comments:

Women on the Verge said...

Uh oh... I missed this week's episode. I hope it's not going in that direction. Sounds like one of those episodes where I'd throw the remote at the tv. And I like House... mostly for his crankiness though ;-)


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Mauigirl said...

I love House himself too - definitely for his crankiness (and of course, underneath he is lovable in his own way). Maybe we should send them a letter telling them to be a tad more realistic in their disease plots!

Liz Hinds said...

I haven't seen House. Husband bought me season 1 of Grey's Anatomy for Christmas and I'm getting into that - although I have to look away when they're man-handling lungs.