Archive for March, 2010

To like or not to like: House, MD

Saturday, March 27th, 2010

My brother has been diligently following House, MD. As I was visiting him, I watched a few episodes too. Now I find myself on the fence. Is it good? Is it not?

The pro’s:

  • The main character is an anti-hero (basically an asshole)
  • The infights from the main character to the others are fun
  • The medico-babble made me understand why people take exception to the technobabble in the various Star Treks

The con’s:

  • Every episode is the same
    • Seriously, just about every episode I’ve seen (but one) starts with a situation, where someone in a normal situation suddenly gets sick, maybe coughs up some blood or so, and falls over. WTF??? Does House only treat patients who were perfectly normal till they suddenly fell over??
    • House is a world-class diagnostician… who is always wrong the first five or so times. Really, whenever he proposes a procedure that needs an okay from higher-up, they can just shoot it down out of hand. Why? The first request isn’t the cause anyway. For a guy who’s supposed to be smart, I still can’t believe he’s going with the first, second, third or even fourth guesses of his team. Take a hint, check your records: they are wrong. (Would really be refreshing to see a situation where they are actually right).
  • The medico-babble is boring.
    I don’t speak medico-babble. Throw in a few “pulmonary”‘s, and a few “thorax/cardiac”‘s, combine with “virulent, strain, infection, auto-immune”, shake, tadaaa: medico-babble. Sure, real doctors (the MD type, that is) speak like that. To me, it sounds as if they find the same diagnostics every single time they investigate a patient. It’s like a script: A? no? then B. No? Then C. Every time it sounds like exactly the same script.
  • The characters didn’t grow on me.
    I know, my fault, I started following it in season 4 or 5. Still, I so don’t care about the soap opera aspects.

All in all, enough to complain, no? Well, I’m Dutch and I like complaining.
Perhaps that explains why I am still watching… ;-)