TV Guidance

Jaime Weinman writes about all kinds of television and other kinds of popular culture. He does not write Gossip Girl episode reviews. Follow Jaime on Twitter: @weinmanj

Categories: TV Guidance

Is It Really All Part of HOUSE's Master Plan?

by Jaime Weinman on Tuesday, May 12, 2009 6:55pm - 5 Comments

cracked-article I’ve seen this idea thrown around a few times, but rarely as explicitly as in this comment on a House season finale review. In response to the reviewer’s criticism of the fact that House never changes (and the writers always pull back and go “psych!” every time they make it look like he’s going to), even though the show keeps throwing stuff at him that would require any normal person to change, the commenter responds that — and I’ve put in capitalization n’ stuff, since the commenter is apparently e.e. cummings: “The series told you years after years people don’t change. People, grown up people don’t change. They REACT to change.The show tells that years after years. And you still discover that ?” In other words, it’s pointless to complain that nobody ever changes, because that’s the whole point of the show.

As I said, this is not an uncommon or illegitimate take on House. I don’t really buy it, but it does indicate why House has been so successful: it combines the up-to-date features of hip TV storytelling — ongoing storylines, speculation about what the characters will do next — with the traditions of comfort-food television, the most important tradition being that every episode should be pretty much the same. David Shore may not have planned it all out like this, but he hit upon a way to have his cake and eat it too, to create the comfort of familiarity without being written off as TV for the uncool. And he did it by creating a premise that turns the biggest tradition of old-school episodic television — that people stay the same no matter what happens — into a big over-arching worldview.

Like I said, I don’t exactly buy this, or I might have been more likely to buy it back when the show was at its peak. The past season has been uneven enough that I’m not prepared to accept the repetition as part of some statement about human nature. But it is part of the genius of House that, at its best, it made formula storytelling into something cool by transforming the formula into a worldview. (Another show that has managed to turn strict unchanging formula TV into something hip and modern is Curb Your Enthusiasm. That’s one of the most formulaic comedies on television, but the idea that Larry never learns anything is just part of the way Larry David, the real one, sees the world — or at least he gives us the impression that it is.)

Tags: change, House

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http://www.tv-eh.com Diane

What’s odd about fans completely buying into the “people don’t change” thing is that I don’t think it’s an idea the show itself has proven all that well, but it’s something the writers and actors have said repeatedly in interviews (because they constantly get asked how a reasonable person could be unchanging in the face of what House has faced.) I think we’re being brainwashed :) Some of the secondary characters at least have changed fairly considerably.

I also don’t completely buy the idea that House hasn’t changed at least somewhat, though it’s easy enough to argue that he’s just started to acknowledge what we’ve known all along: he’s miserable, is afraid of change even though he wants it on some level, doesn’t hate Cuddy, blah blah blah. But that acknowledgment, unthinkable in earlier seasons, is a degree of change.

And in case this sounds like a defense of the show, I think the idea of whether or not House the character changes is less important than the idea that House the show has changed by moving away from its strengths and towards its weaknesses in the last couple of seasons. But that’s a whole other post.

Jaime Weinman

What’s odd about fans completely buying into the “people don’t change” thing is that I don’t think it’s an idea the show itself has proven all that well, but it’s something the writers and actors have said repeatedly in interviews (because they constantly get asked how a reasonable person could be unchanging in the face of what House has faced.) I think we’re being brainwashed :) Some of the secondary characters at least have changed fairly considerably.

Right; compared to any formula show of past decades (and I’m using the term “formula” as a descriptive term, not an insult), the characters and world of House have changed quite a bit. No show, even with self-contained episodes, can get away with having the events of every episode wiped out in the next. But the “people don’t change” theme (which is built into the show, not so much the recurring characters as the cases) allows them to justify the formula, even though it’s less formulaic than a similar show would have been even ten years ago.

And as you say, the issue of whether the show has had a tough season is different from the issue of whether the characters have changed. There have been lots of shows where the characters didn’t change but the show did, just by declining in quality. (Cf., to be topical, season 3 of Star Trek.)

http://www.savedarfur.org Sophia Geffros

See, I enjoyed the last few episodes of this season (as opposed to the rest, which kinda sucked, mostly because of so much Hadley) because House was finally changing, as a character, if not as a formulaic television program.

http://www.tv-eh.com Diane

I think the difference is that some of us aren’t buying it just yet, because House has seemed to finally change several times in the past, only for the show to hit the reset button again. That said, I enjoyed the last few episodes before the finale for the same reason, seeing a very different House (and I didn’t like the finale for different reasons). Watching a man who values rationality and control above all wrestle with the loss of that was pretty compelling. I still have hope that they’ll do something interesting with the story going forward, but I’m also braced for a possible reset after a few episodes, and I won’t cut them slack with the “people don’t change” excuse if it does happen.

http://memles.wordpress.com/ Myles

I wasn’t entirely surprised to see that comment show up on my post, but it struck me as quite vivid, if not logical, in its rationale as well.

The problem with House is that its worldview, if there is one, is absent in a good three quarters of the episodes: these “special events” pop up once or twice a season, and then there’s a bit of fallout, but then it’s as if it never happened.

They worked well when the show was still explaining how House came to be who he is, or the first time that House first came to grips with his injury and his addiction. But they’ve gone back to it so many times that, perhaps not surprisingly, it’s the simple fact of diminishing returns.

It’s not that it’s a fundamentally bad idea to describe ONE of these storylines, or perhaps House in general, but when it keeps getting tested largely for the sake of Sweeps drama, one can’t help but feel that the show has nothing else to prove, and only remains on the air to provide weekly Hugh Laurie (which is totally justifiable, but forgive me for not singing the praises of its creative genius outside of his performance).