House

When it comes to music, TV, books, and pretty much all forms of popular entertainment except movies and concerts, I tend to be about two years behind the curve. There are a few exceptions, but mostly I'm the dorky kid running to keep up with the cool crowd. Thankfully, I have do have friends who take pity on me and try to show me the ways of the in crowd, even if it does take me a while to fully grasp the coolness of what they're trying to get through my thick skull.

House is one of those things.

My friend Rachel introduced me to this TV show about two or three years ago. Being the ultra-hip chick that she is, she already knew the genius of the writing, the brilliance of the characters, and the je ne sais quoi of Hugh Laurie in his role as moody Dr. Gregory House. She tried to share it with me, but being squeamish, I turned it away. To be fair, I am, shall we say, of a very weak constitution. I was never desensitized to gore and yuckiness, and I have a severe phobia of needles (the therapist rated it a 7-8 on the phobia scale!). So when the first episode of House that I ever saw revolved around a patient whose body parts were EXPLODING, I was more than a little freaked out and turned off. I mean, I'm delicate! I can't watch a man's eye explode out of his head, even if it's just special effects. I just can't do it. So I added House to my list of too-scary-to-watch TV shows (a distinction that currently belongs to Fringe and Dexter) and didn't think too much about it.

Then the USA network picked up House and it was on all the time. A few weeks ago I was bored and there was nothing good on TV, so I settled on House, keeping my hands safely near my face should I need to sheild them from the scary stuff. But there was no scary stuff! And it was good! All this smarty-pants stuff about auto-immune diseases and toxins and people's lies that were ruining the diagnoses! So intriguing! I was hooked. As addicted as Dr. House is to his precious, precious vicodin. Luckily, House was on all the time, and I was getting two- to three-hour fixes a night. The episodes were out of order so I had to kind of piece them together like a puzzle, but that just added to the awesomeness of it.

Now is probably a good time to tell you (if you don't already know) that House is about a brilliant but asocial diagnostician who gets all the impossible-to-solve cases. He had surgery on his leg that left him in constant pain (that explains the vicodin) and unbelievably ornery and rude. He heads up a team of bright and impossibly good looking doctors, who, along with Laurie's handsome features, make the show all the more fun for everyone. (Here's where I insert a special shout out to Dr. Robert Chase [played by Jesse Spencer], the unbelievably good-looking blond Aussi. Holla!)

House is a bit formulaic--the patient is sick; duh, it's this simple illness; oh wait, something crazy just happened so it can't be that; run tests; it's this; wait, something else happened, no, it's not; more tests; it's this; oh wait, look what we found, it was this after all--but that's not really what makes the show good. The interaction and incredibly slow-moving plot between the main characters is what's really interesting. All of them are complex and extremely interesting, especially Dr. House. Which is why it's still hard for me to believe that this:


Is the same guy as this:


Ah, how I loved Black Adder... But I've blathered on enough. Watch House. Love House. Start from season 1 and get caught up so you can watch House on FOX, Tuesdays at 7:00 (MST), or sporadically on USA. It's addictively good.