My reaction to reading that House is coming to an end was.."Whew finally!"
They've really stretched it as far as it can go, and beyond, with eight seasons of the (almost) same thing happening every episode. For me, the repeated narrative got old pretty fast. Some seeming unsolvable medical case, wrong diagnosis, near death for the patient, then in a random moment of brilliance, House the grouch saves the patient.
It really reminds me of what we learned with Eco about Superman - that the narratives have to be cyclical in nature because any progression in life is a step toward Superman's death. In the same way, if House progresses in the sense pf personal improvement, then he also moves toward death because as soon as House becomes nice, the show's over. As this writer aptly stated, "After all, a happy House was always the least appealing House." That also creates a cyclical problem because the same thing happens almost every episode and at the end of the day, House is still a grouch with little personal improvement. So as they avoid death by keeping him unhappy, they also achieve death by being repetitive.
I also think it's possible that the repetitive nature of episodes, which is a huge factor in the show's decline, is caused by the constraints of the TV format. As Altman said, "American TV programmers are interested first in length, and only secondarily in content." In other words, time is more important in TV than content. The effect of this on House is that viewers come to expect this medical genre to resolve a medical case within the 45 minutes of program time, every time.
I'm not familiar with any other tv shows in the medical genre, but I wonder if they face the same issues.
2 comments:
I know exactly what you are talking about. On the first episode I ever saw, I could see the ending coming from a mile away. The funny thing is, when the show first came out, I thought it looked so cutting-edge! At least the theme song is still cool, though.
So...two of my favorite shows ever at Scrubs and Grey's Anatomy. With Grey's it is very much in the same rut as House (and in it's 8th season now). I'm hoping it gets cancelled because I don't know how much further they're going to be able to go! I'm not as familiar with House, but what are the relationships between the characters like? The thing that Grey's has going for it is the vast number of doctors that have come and left the show over the years. This allows for alternate story lines that are [intended to be] as compelling as the medical story lines of each episode. On Grey's the doctors actually lose patients a fair amount; I'm not sure if the same could be said about House. I believe that Grey's is meant to embody (mostly) realistic hospital situations, but they've crossed the line too many times of having main characters affected by disease and trauma (two hospital shootings, appendicitis, a car wreck causing 24 week premature birth, impaled by a falling icicle, wife with Alzheimer's, ex-mistress with Alzheimer's, mother with Alzheimer's, hit by a bus, stage 4 metastatic melanoma, and the list goes on). It's like WHAT catastrophe will happen to these people next? But the one thing that is always true of Grey's, Meredith and McDreamy will ALWAYS be together no matter what...and now they're just looking for reasons to stick in some marital turmoil.
Scrubs, on the other hand, is unlike any show I've ever seen. It's almost like a really long sketch comedy bit at times. While the writing is great, the characters are believable to their core. They have these comedic personalities, but every so often there is a lost case that really gets you. Because Scrubs is a sitcom, it's formula is typically one that results in a happy ending for most individual shows. This is what makes it so effective when the writers throw an unexpected case at you.
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