All about House

Now, before you read this post, I have to confess it wasn't written specifically for my blog.  It's something I wrote for Media Magazine in June 2011 but was never published.  It's a little bit dated - I believe series 8 has already been shown - but it might still prove useful for media students studying TV drama.  For everyone else, it might just be a good way to appreciate this fab show.  Incidentially, I still haven't watched series 7 or 8 - anyone want to lend me the box set???

Back in September, a student, after hearing my confession that I was a House fan, lent me the first six seasons on box set.  Now (the following June) I have almost finished watching the lot.  That’s 34 discs and 133 episodes.  Approximately 5320 minutes of my time or about 3.5 days.  It may not sound much to you ( I remember the days of watching box sets in bed when I was younger) but it’s hard to fit in such committed viewing along with a full time job!

House is a TV drama produced for Fox which is well worth the viewing time. Despite being accused of being too formulaic it has sold to over 60 countries and is hugely popular worldwide.  It has been on our screens since 2004 (with series 1-4 acquired by Channel 5 in 2006) and is currently at the end of the 7^th season with a much discussed 8^th being planned.  For those of you studying the OCR syllabus, House may have already cropped up in your studies for G322.  It is like many of the TV dramas that fill the schedules and is based on a central lead character.   The basic premise is that Dr Gregory House is a brilliant but grumpy and drug fuelled doctor who is able to figure out even the most mysterious illnesses.  He is accompanied by a team of other doctors who are also brilliant but not nearly as brilliant as him.  His poor team and friends only put up with him because they recognise his genius and believe that underneath his grumpiness, he is a good person at heart.  Hugh Laurie plays the part of House and is reported to be the highest paid actor on television earning £250,000 per episode making him one of the most powerful actors on TV.  Having gone from auditioning for what he thought was a supporting role to landing a role as director and executive producer for some episodes, Hugh Laurie has found himself in an incredibly powerful position where he is able to influence scripts, costumes, casting and overall production.  He says “Directing is the best job there is…it’s an amazing honour”

Viewers of my generation may remember Hugh Laurie from A bit of Fry and Laurie (BBC 1987-1995) or the series Jeeves and Wooster (still shown on ITV3), and it is sometimes difficult to escape images of Laurie’s previous characters.  However, House is far removed from the good natured, gormless Bertie Wooster and there has been high praise for the quality of the acting in the series.  It is rumoured that Executive Producer Bryan Singer believed Laurie to be an American actor when he saw the audition tape.  Laurie has received numerous awards including two Golden Globes for his performance. 

So, aside from learning that Hugh Laurie is a very powerful and talented man, what else have I learnt from watching a marathon amount of House?

Medical Drama, Crime Drama or Quality TV?

House is a medical drama set in Princeton Plainsboro Hospital in New Jersey.   Like all medical dramas it combines the diagnosis and treatment of illness with the relationships of those who work within the hospital.  It features the mise-en-scene of a hospital and we see operating theatres, heart monitors, white coats and other medical paraphernalia.   The programme appears to relish the chance to shock the audience too as we see graphic images of enormous needles, blood from every part of the body and operations which involve cutting open skulls and seeing the brain.   No wonder some seasons are rated 18.  Being an American drama, everything seems to be on a bigger scale and we don’t see the tightly framed, crowded shots that we might see in British TV drama such as Casualty and Holby City.  This is perhaps partly because we are not dealing with the NHS but also because House neatly fits into the quality TV category that has been written about in Media Magazine (Sept 2009 and December 2010).  Apart from attracting well known stars (Mos Def, Meat Loaf) and directors (Bryan Singer), House features a large ensemble cast who are often seen in tracking shots “walking and talking” about the ailments suffered by their patients.  All of these elements show the production values of the show and it is like many other American TV dramas with a cinematic quality that viewers have come to expect.

Quality TV places emphasis on the writing of a show and Hugh Laurie claims that this is one of the reasons why the series is so successful.  Dialogue is very important and House’s sharp, sarcastic and often rude comments have led to many “Houseisms” that appeal to fans.  Lots of time is spent developing House as a character – we see what motivates him, his skill, his love of music, his inability to make friendships or have relationships.  He subverts and sometimes reinforces racial and sexual stereotypes in order to mock his team and his comments are often close to the bone but there is also lots of genuine humour in the show, particularly in season six.  The dialogue also sounds realistic and uses the semantic field of medicine.  Many of the infections and diseases are rare with lots of talk about auto immunes, sarcoidosis and lupus.  When I was trying to get through several episodes a night I would often dream about lumber punctures and CT scans.  The importance of the writers is also highlighted in season four which was considered to be particularly confusing, perhaps because of the writer’s strike; however, it did allow some new characters to appear during a job interview for 40 applicants that lasted several weeks. 

Quality TV is also about breaking rules and pushing the boundaries of a genre and in the case of House we can argue that it is very different to other medical dramas and is perhaps more alike crime dramas such as CSI or NCIS – scenes are often cross-cut with computer generated images of inside the body where we are shown infections and diseases adhering themselves to the body in usual places.

In fact, perhaps House is more like a crime drama than a medical one with the illness as the criminal and a race against time to bring it to justice.  On the back of the series six DVD cover we are told we are in for a “full dose of medical mysteries”.  The Radio Times takes this a step further making links between House and Sherlock Holmes, perhaps the most obvious connections being their names and the fact that both characters are addicted to drugs.     Like all good detectives, House is grumpy and at times unpleasant but is also a genius who is able to solve puzzles easily.  He is surrounded by characters who support him and has a sidekick: Dr Wilson (rather than Dr Watson)  Certainly if we compare the drama with the new BBC show Sherlock we can see similarities with the slick, high quality production values and the use of special effects to show how cases are solved.

Extended narrative arcs keep people watching.

The narrative structure of each episode of House is fairly formulaic.  Each episode begins with a character or group of characters in their everyday lives.  This equilibrium is then disrupted by the onset of the illness and there is usually a fairly dramatic moment where the character collapses or has blood coming from their ears/eyes/bum/mouth.  For the spectator there is a pleasure in guessing which character will be the one who falls ill and often this audience expectation is manipulated when several characters appear to collapse but only one of them is seriously ill.  During the episode the team try lots of risky tests and treatments in order to restore equilibrium and usually by the end of the episode they are successful and the patient goes back to normal having learnt some underlying moral or message about their daily life.

However, despite each episode being fairly similar, the series has been long running and audiences continue to tune in.  This is because of the narrative arcs that run over several episodes and involve the main characters.  One long running storyline is to do with House’s relationship with drugs which he takes to stem the pain from his leg.  As the seasons progress we see his addiction deepening and season five is considered particularly dark as he suffers a series of hallucinations which lead to him checking into a psychiatric hospital.   House’s on-off relationship with Lisa Cuddy is also another reason for viewers to keep watching (especially when her engagement to another character almost pushes House back into addiction) as are the relationships between the other team members including Cameron and Chase and 13 and Foreman.

The representation of gender is stereotypical

What’s interesting about House is that although he has a huge amount of power within the hospital, he is not the boss.  He has his own team and has demonstrated the power to hire and fire his staff but within the hospital he does not hold the ultimate authority.  His power and attitude has been challenged throughout the seasons by various male characters, Eric Vogler (Season 1) and Michael Tritter (Season 3) but it is ultimately a female who perhaps has the most influence over him. 

Dr Lisa Cuddy is a successful hospital administrator and Dean of Medicine at Princeton Plainsboro and as such she is the only one who seems to have any power over House.  She forces him into doing clinic duty and refuses to let him do some of the more risky tests he wants to perform.  In season six we see an episode devoted to Cuddy showing the elements of her day, juggling her difficult job and her family life.  She risks her job to get the hospital a better insurance deal and just when we think she has lost everything the insurance company accepts her deal and she is the hero.  This is the only moment in six seasons where we really see an empowered female.  She takes on stereotypically masculine qualities in order to gamble with the hospital’s future.  However, in many episodes, Cuddy is portrayed as a stereotypical emotional female.  She feels guilt when patients die, she is not as quick thinking as House, is unable to take the risks that he does and often gets emotionally involved.  In addition, in season two we see Cuddy desperate to have a child and when she is unable to conceive naturally (partly because she does not have a partner and undertakes IVF) we see her in emotional turmoil as she tries, and eventually succeeds, in adopting a child.  Cuddy is also the focus of House’s sexual fantasy in an episode at the end of season four where we see Cuddy pole dancing in a tiny skirt and bra.  In fact, although Cuddy appears to be powerful, most of the time she lacks power.  She is often worn down by House or he does what he wants anyway without facing the consequences.  She occasionally exerts her power through childish tricks and she very rarely actually stands up to him in an argument.  Throughout the seasons “Huddy” experience an on-off relationship and much of Cuddy’s power takes the form of flirtation. 

Box sets are great!

As mentioned in previous articles in Media Magazine, box sets bring a new, wider audience to the drama and add a repeatability factor by allowing narratives to be more complex.  This is certainly something I have found.  I would never have caught up with all those episodes of House without the box set (although at times the amount of disks was rather daunting) and I have become a more dedicated viewer by watching them.  It has also allowed me to view each episode in a concentrated way without being distracted by other household tasks and perhaps the main bonus of a box set is the lack of irritating adverts and the desire to fast forward through the breaks.

So having just about got through my six seasons of House (only 8 episodes to go!) I have to say thanks to Ed for lending them to me.  Watching TV without adverts is great and I have already started to look around for what to watch next…time to catch up with The Wire I think!

References:

Articles

It’s TV but not as we know it

Carly Sandy

MM December 2010

State of Play

Nick Lacey
MM September 2009

DVD

A Different POV:  Hugh Laurie Directs
Season Six DVD

Websites:

http://www.radiotimes.com/content/show-features/house/house-and-holmes-parallels/

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1385459/Hugh-Laurie-hints-House-end-eighth-season.html