The big problem with having a television show centered around, and you'll forgive me for using the word, a prick, is that after a while you begin to wonder why people can stand him. For dramatic effect he has to occasionally face situations where his world view is challenged, but when these situations crop up if he changes people will get sick of it (they watch the programme because he's a prick), and if he doesn't you wonder how people put up with him. After three years of watching Cameron, Chase and Foreman bitch and moan about House it was almost blessed relief when they all left him, and certainly believable. I would have kicked the television in if they had returned - although the return of Foreman was handled quite well, so that was fine.
As you can see I was a little over Cameron, Chase and Foreman and so when this season started by giving us forty new interns I was quite intrigued to see where the series was going to go. By the time they had narrowed it down to the three we ultimately got - Kutner, Taub and "Thirteen", I was just a little disappointed that we weren't also going to get Amber as well, but given she has returned to date Wilson (and seemingly now works at the hospital) I was happy enough.
I like the three new characters. I like them a lot. I've read reviews about people who try to pigeonhole them as carbon copies of the originals, but the fact is they are not. Kutner is not Chase. Kutner is more submissive than the other two, that's true, but he also has a slightly suspicious quality to him. Chase was a jerk, but Kutner seems to hiding something. Taub and Foreman may both be cynical, but Taub isn't bullied around by House in the way that Foreman was, and I doubt that he would allow it to happen. And for those who think Cameron and "Thirteen" are clones...are we actually watching the same programme? Is it because they are both women? Cameron spent her days moping over patients, or moping over House. "Thirteen" gives the impression that she doesn't really care if House is in the same room as her. She is teflon - everything House throws at her just goes right off. And the one time that it didn't - House's investigation into her medical history - had more effect because of that. We know virtually nothing about "Thirteen" - hell, we don't even know her name.
To back up what I say, note this week House calls her 31 saying he thought she didn't care which way it went - a reference to her apparent bisexuality. Thirteen doesn't even give a disgusted look. His comments just wash off him and she keeps everything to herself.
That said I read a review which suggested that if they were going to get rid of the three new ones they should, or they should get rid of the characters no longer necessary. I do agree with that statement - Chase and Cameron no longer have anything to contribute to the series, so it wouldn't be a bad idea to move them on. After all, the show really only needs Hugh Laurie...
This week's episode is the first of the episodes filmed after the writers' strike and funnily enough it kicks off with a nurses' strike in which someone rams their moving trolley into one of the nurses on strike (a sly dig at the person who ran his car into the Law & Order's executive producer Rene Balcer?).
Although the credited star of the show, Hugh Laurie does actually earn his position as he steals every scene he is in, making the already witty dialogue sparkle. It's amazing to me that when I see House I don't think of Blackadder's Prince George informing us that he is as thick as a whale omelette. House's arbitrary decision to treat a patient based purely on the fact that he is too nice is great, but, of course, the real thing that makes the episode (and is surely the thing that must annoy Foreman the most) is that House is write. The niceness is indeed a sympton of what he has, though impressively, this week House isn't the one that has the realisation of what is genuinely making the man ill.
Yes it's Kutner who, thanks to a trick pulled by House, manages to work out what is wrong the patient, though he still stands by the fact that the patient may be nice just because he is a nice person. However as we watch the final scene we discover, of course that it is House who is right and the guy is not so great after all.
Meanwhile, as Foreman, Kutner, Taub and "Thirteen" set to work to discover what is wrong with the patient, and inadvertantly fall into House's trap by testing his blood and discovering he has syphallis (sorry TEN, that wasn't the actual plot line for this week), we get to look a little further into the bizarre Amber-Wilson-House triangle that has developed, this week seeing House and Amber organising times they can spend with Wilson, and ultimately having to have Cuddy make a ruling because Wilson refuses to. The relationship between House and Wilson is curiously close, and House does seem almost jealous of Amber, though Amber's reactions to House also always seem ever so slightly flirtatious. It will be interesting to see in what direction this storyline goes.
Nice to have him back on tv though.
"A-"
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