I was catching up on my tivo now that I’m home, and I watched two episodes of House back to back. Now, I like the show (I know it drives medical professionals crazy, but I don’t know any better so I can enjoy it.) I especially like the soap opera and the mind games people play with each other. It’s far more involving then an episode of 24 where it’s all about shooting, running, torturing someone, and breathless messages to the President.
That being said I really got annoyed today because nothing ever has any consequences. SPOILER ALERT.
So one of the doctors compromised a drug test he was running because he found out his sweetie was on the placebo and not the real drug. The sweetie is begging him not to tell the drug company so he won’t torch his career. Even House is saying it’s not worth losing his medical license. But he’s a stand up guy so he tells the drug company because the sweetie developed some really dangerous side effects. And they tell him they won’t ever let him work on a clinical trial again, but that’s it. So all this build up about how he’ll never be able to practice medicine again was just sound and fury that amounted to nothing.
This happened a few seasons back when House insulted a police detective who decided to go after House for drug abuse (he does abuse prescription drugs.) It went on for episodes, but House never got off drugs, and the cop was forced to back off, and we rewound back to square one.
Now maybe that’s what audiences want -- that the situation never changes, the characters don’t change, but it’s starting to bug me. It doesn’t feel like a journey I’m taking with these people. It just feel like mindless repetition (sort of like Republicans. Oh, whoops, earlier post bleed through.)
Anyway, I’d like to discuss this. Do we have to keep things the same? If things change to much will we lose viewers. Is this mindset bleeding over into books? Do we need to hit reset on every form of entertainment now?
That being said I really got annoyed today because nothing ever has any consequences. SPOILER ALERT.
So one of the doctors compromised a drug test he was running because he found out his sweetie was on the placebo and not the real drug. The sweetie is begging him not to tell the drug company so he won’t torch his career. Even House is saying it’s not worth losing his medical license. But he’s a stand up guy so he tells the drug company because the sweetie developed some really dangerous side effects. And they tell him they won’t ever let him work on a clinical trial again, but that’s it. So all this build up about how he’ll never be able to practice medicine again was just sound and fury that amounted to nothing.
This happened a few seasons back when House insulted a police detective who decided to go after House for drug abuse (he does abuse prescription drugs.) It went on for episodes, but House never got off drugs, and the cop was forced to back off, and we rewound back to square one.
Now maybe that’s what audiences want -- that the situation never changes, the characters don’t change, but it’s starting to bug me. It doesn’t feel like a journey I’m taking with these people. It just feel like mindless repetition (sort of like Republicans. Oh, whoops, earlier post bleed through.)
Anyway, I’d like to discuss this. Do we have to keep things the same? If things change to much will we lose viewers. Is this mindset bleeding over into books? Do we need to hit reset on every form of entertainment now?
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written by Laurie Mann, February 08, 2009
I hated last week's House episode, partially because of the screwing of the drug trial, but even more because of the screwing of the science/medicine. I don't think I've hated a House episode up until now. I also hate what they've done to Cuddy over the last few episodes. Yeah, Cuddy's had a huge life change, but I don't believe she would have become so wildly erratic.
I have a bad feeling it's jumped the shark.
I have a bad feeling it's jumped the shark.
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Of course, for every show that keeps resetting things, you've got a lot of very arc-heavy narratives these days -- Lost, Battlestar Galactica, Heroes -- that to lesser or greater degree don't reset things. Well ... Heroes has had real problems with this, so may not be the best example; especially as, to my recollection, Tim Kring was lamenting that viewers weren't "getting" longer arcs and so things had to become more self-contained. But this is the same Tim Kring who ran ratings ground-wards with his poor management and fumbling around, so take that with a big helping of salt.
In any case, no, I don't think everything needs to be reset. That said, there's definitely a lot of commercial pressure for TV shows to stick to the winning formula and not rock the boat too much. I don't think self-contained things like books or movies need this, though, since they don't really have a formula. I guess for a book series, maybe... One of those endless ones, like Laurell K. Hamilton's "urban fantasy" series, where there's a distinctive formula and not a great deal of change from one book to the next any longer.