‘House’: Seeing too much of this ‘House’
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Hugh Laurie is a fine and versatile actor and there are many things I would like to see him do — Shakespeare, say, or Alan Ayckbourn. Dance with the Stars. What I really truly don’t want to see him do is sit on the can and give himself a catheter. And yet that is an image that, thanks to last night’s ‘House,’ I and several million other Americans now share.
Oh, to have been a fly on the wall during that writer’s meeting. Or when the pages first went out to the cast. The state of House’s health, or addiction, or psychosis, is generally the secondary plot of most episodes, so the fact that he was in a terrible shape because he could not relieve himself seemed, at first, to be just one more subtle warning against Vicodin abuse: Kids, don’t try this at home or you won’t be able to pee.
Meanwhile, the classic medical case of a soldier with a bunch of inexplicable symptoms, whom House swears he knows from a dream, with some hot action between Drs. Chase and Cameron thrown in, kept me distracted enough that I didn’t see where we were going with the urination thing until it was too late. I never take the mature theme warning at the beginning of the show too seriously — it’s for all those guts and tapeworms, right? This time they really should have had a special heads-up.
Scenes that begin with a star pants-down on the john are never a good sign, but I figured they’d never really go through with it. Not even when House begins lubing up the tube (gross enough) and gulping his pills. We get the message — desperate junkie requires desperate measures. Surely the camera is going to cut away now ... now.... now ... holy mother of ... these people are crazy.
I’m a woman and even my knees drew reflexively to my chest. And if it didn’t get worse (how could it get worse?!?), it didn’t get any better. There was the urine circling through the tube into the bag, then bursting on the floor in the odd revelatory dream, drenching the sheets upon House’s awakening. With three kids and two dogs, I have a pretty high urine tolerance but even I was wondering who we could blame — HBO? Reality TV — for this shock-jock mentality. Apparently the tapeworm and brain removals from previous episodes were not enough.
Laurie has expressed bewilderment over the perceived sex appeal of character. He can take comfort then in the knowledge that this should cool things right down for a while. He and Cuddy had a little sexy riff at the end of the show, when it was revealed that they had indeed hooked up once. This is what we’ve all be waiting for since Sela Ward vamoosed, but it was hard to get worked up after hearing that the cause of House’s problem was a muscle spasm (tell me less) and all that pee.
Of course he solved the case, the answer to both what was wrong with the soldier and how he knew him coming to him in that, ahem, wet dream. And buoyed by success and his regained regularity, he busted Cameron and Chase who were stripping down in a closet like interns on ‘Grey’s Anatomy.’
Still, I don’t think the use of the ‘Superfly’ theme at the end of an episode was the best choice. I mean, given the recent tragic events.
--Mary McNamara
