HOUSE, M.D.: 27. "Daddy's Boy"
Micky DuPree
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At first I wondered if Princeton was on a quarter system since they
seemed to have graduation ceremonies in the fall. Later, however, there
was this line:
HOUSE: Spring break was over a month ago.
??? This entire season so far is supposed to have taken place before
June 2005? But the time stamp on the phone last episode was in
September. They've done some screwy things with the time line of the
backstory before, but this was the screwiest thing I could remember them
doing with the onscreen time line.
I went back and checked. The radioactive plumb was hanging from
Carnell's backpack in the opening scene. I realize that at least a week
passed between the time he first felt shocks and when the Diagnostics
Dept. got hold of him, but I would have thought that milder symptoms
would have crept up on him before that, things that he might have
shrugged off as a cold or the flu.
Of course my first suspicion while watching the prologue was that the
episode was going to be about binge drinking.
Evidently Wilson isn't such a bad diagnostician after all. Did he get
involved in the case at the point where they wanted to rule out cancer
and then just kept his claws in it so he could hand it off to House?
Patch on the front of House's jacket:
KTAI
SPORTS
FOREMAN: ANA is negative for lupus -- again.
CHASE: House wants more information, not the same information
done over again.
Actually, House often wants tests repeated, going all the way back to
the pilot.
FOREMAN: "Find what's missing." For all we know, the kid is
dying, and he's giving us riddles?
I didn't have any problem with this. At some point, the fellows are
going to have to fly on their own. I took House's instruction to mean,
"Go be me for a while. I'll come back later and check your work."
CAMERON: It was graduation weekend. He barely drank in the
weeks before that and he didn't drink at all during his
wrestling season.
FOREMAN: If you believe him.
CAMERON: I did a tox screen --
CHASE: It doesn't matter if she believes him or not. It's
already in the chart. We're supposed to find out
what's missing.
What, "Everybody lies" except for college students (and House's dad and
Cameron)? Exposing a lie has often been the very thing that was missing
in these stories. All of a sudden, all the characters have forgotten
that.
On the side of House's bike:
HRC ?
HONDA ?
CBR ?
REPSOL
The patch on the front of House's jacket changed to "RTAI SPORTS" out in
the parking lot.
It was probably supposed be cool and it's probably seen as cool by
everyone but me, but the whole motorcycle-and-leather-jacket motif at
work looked embarrassingly like a midlife crisis to me. Not that
there's any harm in it, but it was a bit of an eyeroll.
WILSON: Yesterday, when I loaned you five thousand dollars to
buy a new car.
Did the Corvette quietly slip through the cracks in the retconning? And
speaking of retcons, House had a designated spot in a covered parking
garage last we saw. Now we're supposed to believe that he embraces
being seen as a cripple in a handicapped spot and parks out in the
elements?
By the time the amount had gotten to $5000, in Wilson's shoes I would
have said yes, but I also would have asked point blank what I was
enabling, because the need for someone with a six-figure income and no
dependents to borrow four figures for a car usually indicates a lie and
bad trouble. Lending $5000 to someone who's turned to the street for
stronger drugs or has gotten into gambling is no favor.
Since House doesn't seem to spend his money very often or have any
dependents, nor do his parents seem to need any, nor does he have any
siblings and therefore any nieces or nephews, I'm going to guess he
gives a lot of his money to charity. It would be funny if one day Cuddy
found out that House was an anonymous donor to the hospital; even
funnier if it turned out he was the source of one of his department's
own directed donations.
If House left the Diagnostics Office right after finding out he had a
new patient but before Cameron got the info about Carnell's mother dying
in a car accident, then how did House know to look up the police report
on the accident 15 years ago? Is he just supposed to be nearly
omniscient now?
HOUSE: You'd rather have dinner with your wife?
WILSON: Yes, I would ... if she were speaking to me.
A very brief note to let us know that things may be deteriorating.
lol. Someone redid Wilson's illegible whiteboard notes.
HOUSE: They lie to us because they love us. Who's getting teary?
Filled with sarcasm, and yet House would later get upset about not being
lied to?
One token Vicodin this episode.
Since they've stripped House down to just a t-shirt at work, I expect
they'll get that shirt off of him sometime during this sweeps or the
next (and not because he's going into cardiac arrest this time).
On House's t-shirt:
RED DRAGON
??? 19??
TATTOO
HELL YEAH IT HURTS
I have trouble believing that the ordinarily extremely private House
would share his parents' travel plans with his subordinates, except as
an excuse to allow the writers to get Cameron scheming.
CAMERON: You really think that was his mom on the phone?
CHASE: Probably. Don't know why he'd lie about that.
FOREMAN: Who cares?
CAMERON: You're not the least bit curious what his parents are
like?
FOREMAN: I'm sure his mom's a piece of work. Only a mother
could do that much damage.
CHASE: My bet's he was born the way he is. Probably tormented
his parents, not the other way around.
FOREMAN: Yeah, he was either a fast runner or one hell of a
fighter.
My favorite parts of the episode were the fellows speculating on what
House's parents were like.
Left shoulder patch on House's jacket:
Molyna ?
I have to admit I really liked Wilson's comeback when he found out House
had been experimenting on their friendship. In Wilson's shoes, I'd also
ask point blank if I had given him cause to doubt me, or if he was just
feeling insecure. The answer may well have been simple scientific
curiosity, but they've known each other for at least five years. Why
had the experiment manifested during the time frame in which it did?
(Hey, if House gets to run scientific experiments on the friendship,
Wilson is entitled to ask scientific questions about the parameters.)
Why did Carnell's case come to Cuddy's attention in the first place?
Other than the writers wanting an excuse to put her on the screen, I
mean. The father wasn't a donor and the patient wasn't famous. Unless
one of the fellows told her they were treating Carnell for pesticide
poisoning without proof, there'd be no reason for her to familiarize
herself with the particulars or anticipate a lawsuit, but there was no
indication that anyone squealed. We saw her broach the subject to
Foreman, not the other way around. The writing used to be so much more
clever about the pretexts it employed to involve this or that character
in this or that scene. (Well, except for Wilson, who sometimes seemed
to have no caseload of his own, so he hung out in House's office for the
company. It was easy to forgive, though. "Paging Doctor Greek Chorus.
Report to the Department of Diagnostic Medicine to dispense some common
wisdom, stat.")
So the treatment for the pesticides that weren't there nevertheless gave
temporary relief from radiation sickness, which was part of what threw
the team off? I'm unclear on this point, and they uncharacteristically
didn't give exposition to connect those dots.
CAMERON: You guys gonna join us for dinner Thursday?
CHASE: Mmm, gotta do my laundry.
A busy single guy with money does his own laundry? :)
CAMERON: You're not curious?
CHASE: I'm curious about crocs, but I don't stick my head in
their mouths.
FOREMAN: I'm out too. [Off Cameron's look.] Look, House is a
freak. There's no virus that causes that, no DNA
mutation. You're gonna have one dinner with two
people, sixty minutes, most of it spent chewing,
talking about the weather. Unless they say something
like, "Do you prefer the Chardonnay or the Merlot? And
oh, we kept Greg locked in a closet for seventeen
years," you're not gonna learn anything.
Good point and funny.
HOUSE: I don't hate her. I hate him.
Well, we were told. But we weren't shown.
Unless you want to get caught, you always lock the door before you drop
your pants. Anyone fresh out of college would remember that rule. But
then maybe Taddy didn't mind getting caught.
They took out the main floor stairwell to make room for the cafeteria
entrance.
CAMERON: So, it's O.K. to lie to House, but not to a patient?
CUDDY: Yep.
In terms of legal liability, that was a no-brainer.
Once upon a time I would have checked to see if they recycled the CGI
oozing intestine shot from "Acceptance," but my level of obsession has
eased up an iota.
PPTH can finally afford a modest emergency room entrance set.
HOUSE: If you wanted to be a doctor, maybe you should have
buckled down a little more in high school.
EMT: Bite me.
Cool!
They've moved the pathology lab. Hell, they've moved almost everything.
Around the 40-minute mark it occurred to me that we weren't going to get
to see a real dinner with Wilson, etc. There wasn't enough time to do
both it and the medical case justice.
Why do they use a piece of radioactive metal to test wells? House and
Foreman obviously knew, but they uncharacteristically didn't explain it
for the benefit of the folks at home.
Why didn't any of the previous MRIs detect the tumor?
Greg's mom didn't look much older than Greg. Then again, Laurie looks
52 instead of 46 and Diane Baker (Blythe House) looks about 59 rather
than the 67 listed for her in the IMDb. (She was in a lot of episodic
TV when I was a kid.) R. Lee Ermey (John House) is listed as being 61,
but looks older.
I've tried to be open-minded about Cameron, but she's just flat out
tiresome. As someone on the official Fox _House_ board once said, who
died and made her the feelings sheriff of PPTH? About her only saving
grace this episode was declining Mrs. House's invitation. Just because
House diagnosed her last season ("You live under the delusion that you
can fix everything that isn't perfect") doesn't mean she's cured, but
the other characters seem to have stopped calling her on it just because
the writers find it convenient to make her the one to move the plot
along (that or they find her a lot more irresistible than I do).
It was more interesting seeing others' reactions to the imminent arrival
of House's parents than seeing the parents themselves. Greg and his
mother actually get along well. O.K., that's sweet. Greg wasn't
hatched from an egg after all. But the father was anticlimactic,
contradictory, and what I suspect was an unintended open question. I
didn't see why we were supposed to view the father as worthy of hatred.
Nor, on the other hand, did I see where we were supposed to view Greg as
being unreasonable in his hatred. The father was a bit annoying and
judgmental. Fine. So had this been going on for 46 years and Greg just
finally got sick of it? I could buy that, but I didn't actually see it.
A lot of people don't get along with one or both parents, but 'hate' is
a really big four-letter word.
Did Nintendo stop paying for product placement?
HOUSE: Thank you ... for not eating.
CAMERON: It was none of my business.
HOUSE: They seem perfectly pleasant, don't they? They are.
He was a Marine pilot. She was a housewife. Married
forty-seven years. They had one child. My mom was
just like everyone else. She's nice enough, no(?)
great sense of humor, hates confrontation. My dad's
just like you. Not the caring-till-your-eyes-pop-out
part. Just the insane moral compass that won't let you
lie to anybody about anything.
Huh??? Practically the first words out of House Sr.'s mouth in this
episode were a lie to Cameron about how Greg had told them all about
her. This characterization-by-fiat business is running wild. They
can't keep consistent even within the same episode.
Bullshit on both counts, in fact. Cameron's entirely capable of deceit
and dissembling when it comes to giving patients really bad news. And
she lied to House in this episode about not making dinner plans with
anyone.
You know, I wasn't having such a bad time with this episode until this
myopically revisionist revelation.
HOUSE: It's a great quality for boy scouts and police witnesses.
Crappy quality for a dad.
There's a difference between never lying about facts when asked and
volunteering unwanted opinions all the time, but I think we're meant to
believe that no distinction was being made with respect to House Sr.
I didn't buy that the man whose personal motto is a scornful, cynical,
"Everybody lies," was somehow traumatized by his father's unwillingness
to lie. The big thematic payoff to the episode turned out to be a huge,
"Huh?" So are we supposed to think that House has at least partly
turned into his father in spite of himself, in that he often tells
unpleasant truths (or shares unwanted opinions) as well? But that seems
all too self-consciously House. This point, like so much of this
season, seems like a hopelessly, badly thought-out muddle to me.
I REALLY didn't buy House spilling his guts unbidden to Cameron. If it
had been Wilson, yes. Maybe even Stacy out of old habit. Cuddy in a
pinch. But not any of his subordinates. The thank-you I bought. It
was heartfelt. But everything else that came tumbling out afterwards,
that just didn't sound like House (and the clunky expository part
shouldn't have had to come from House at all), especially not since he
had withheld any reaction whatsoever in response to Cameron's presumed
custodianship of his emotional well-being near the end of "Honeymoon."
Anyway, unless Greg was born out of wedlock, then it's canonical that
he's 47 years old at most.
They dropped the issue of the bone marrow transplant completely.
Another "huh?" moment. They didn't even bother testing Carnell's father
to see if he was a match or have the father ask about it. Usually they
explain such decisions for the audience.
Carnell wasn't in the clean room? They were expecting an infection to
take him down and yet Dad wasn't wearing a mask or gloves? This was a
severely underexplained episode in terms of both the A plot and the B
plot.
House was morally disgusted by Carnell's father for lying but hated his
own father for telling the truth? I could have understood it if House
had bothered to make some kind of subtle distinction between types of
lies, but none was forthcoming. And none of the other characters have
felt the least bit moved to comment on the self-contradiction coming off
of House in waves this season.
The shot of House's reflection as he watched Carnell and his father was
visually reminiscent of last season, but whether House was supposed to
be disapproving of that family's lying, which would be consistent with
last season, or approving, which would be partially consistent and
partly inconsistent with this episode, was unclear to me.
CAMERON: Why does he hate seeing his parents? So his dad tells
the truth. He can't handle that?
WILSON: He hates being a disappointment.
CAMERON: He's a doctor. World famous. How disappointed can
they be?
WILSON: You know what I figure is worse than watching your son
become crippled? Watching him be miserable.
So are we supposed to infer that House Sr. has been disappointed only
since the leg infarction, or that House Jr. has been miserable all his
life?
I also didn't buy Wilson dishing about House to Cameron. She's not
House's girlfriend. She's not even House's friend. She's his employee.
Nothing entitles her to personal information about her boss like that.
Part of the problem (part of one of many problems) is that they are
really not selling House's misery to me. Last season I could easily
believe at innumerable points that House was in physical and psychic
pain. This season Wilson has been telling him and us that House is oh-
so-miserable, but most of the time House actually seems to be energized
and engaged with his life to me. He's not cruising along in happiness
mode, but he's wide awake, aware, alive, and frequently satisfied with
his own actions even if he doesn't like the actions of others or the
outcome that life gives him, which is more than a lot of people manage.
If that's not what the writers want to depict, they need to catch a clue
that they've created a powerful dissonance between what they're saying
and what they're showing. Maybe the attempt to sex up the character and
the series is working against their desired character arc. It would
take a lot of guts to really show a main character spiraling down into
depression, because he wouldn't look sexy or dynamic in the process.
So the moral of the story is tell a lie in a good cause today because
your motives are good. I'm underwhelmed, both with the message itself
and with its inconsistency with other episodes. It was bad when Cameron
lied to her patient about her terminal illness, but it was O.K. for a
father to tell his adult son the same lie? Andie the nine-year-old was
allowed to face her last days with her eyes wide open, but Carnell the
21-year-old wasn't? Seeing as how Carnell was legally an adult, the
doctors were obligated to tell him his prognosis, not rely on his father
to lie to him.
A strange artifact in the editing: some of the apparently hard cuts
actually overlap slightly for about three to six frames. It was there
sometimes last week too. Is this relatively new or have I only just
started noticing it?
Geoff Warren
$1...@pcls4.std.com:
> Why do they use a piece of radioactive metal to test wells? House and
> Foreman obviously knew, but they uncharacteristically didn't explain it
> for the benefit of the folks at home.
>
That one, I can answer. The process is caled nuclear well logging. A
radiation source is sent down an oil well, and the reflections of the
radiation are used to characterize the oil well, including density and
moisture content of the material surrounding the source.
--Geoff
Arthur Bang
was that maybe these episodes were originally set to debut in January, or
after the World Series at least. The fact that they debuted in ....
August? .. might have changed the timeline a bit. But who knows.
Lee@DVDDebate
MDu...@theworld.com.snip.to.reply (Micky DuPree) wrote:
>Spoilers for "Daddy's Boy," 11/8/05.
>
A very interesting critique, but do you ever think that if all your
moaning points were fixed House might just turn in to an extremely
dull, lifeless and anally retentive show?
Lee.
--
lee at w2designs dot co dot uk
If I have one flaw, it's that I'm a perfectoinist.
afiggatt
What bothers me about this plot is that the sick kid and his father
must be extremely stupid or ignorant for him to get this sick. If the
plumb is giving off enough radiation to give the kid severe radiation
poisoning over a short period of time, it should be quite warm, if not
hot to the touch. Ok, when you first pick it up, one may not notice how
warm it is because maybe it was in the sun or whatever. But after
handling it for a while, shouldn't the kid have noticed that it was
always warm? If his father runs a scrap yard, surely the father and his
kid would have picked up basic safety info about not handling metal
items that stay warm or hot??
Alan F
David Johnston
MDu...@theworld.com.snip.to.reply (Micky DuPree) wrote:
>Spoilers for "Daddy's Boy," 11/8/05.
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> HOUSE: I don't hate her. I hate him.
>
>Well, we were told. But we weren't shown.
I was shown that House feels a great deal of animosity toward his
father at the moment when his father decided to tell him what his
problem was.
> HOUSE: Thank you ... for not eating.
> CAMERON: It was none of my business.
> HOUSE: They seem perfectly pleasant, don't they? They are.
> He was a Marine pilot. She was a housewife. Married
> forty-seven years. They had one child. My mom was
> just like everyone else. She's nice enough, no(?)
> great sense of humor, hates confrontation. My dad's
> just like you. Not the caring-till-your-eyes-pop-out
> part. Just the insane moral compass that won't let you
> lie to anybody about anything.
>
>Huh??? Practically the first words out of House Sr.'s mouth in this
>episode were a lie to Cameron about how Greg had told them all about
>her.
No, that was a joke, not a lie. The moment Cameron looked like she
was taking his statement seriously he looked surprised and then
corrected his misimpression.
>
>I didn't buy that the man whose personal motto is a scornful, cynical,
>"Everybody lies," was somehow traumatized by his father's unwillingness
>to lie.
Good point.
D Gent
David Johnston <rgo...@block.net> blurted:
Yeah, I had a pretty strong response to that.
To some extent, this tells us why G.H. is so comfortable with telling
anyone more than they ever need to know about their own failings. He's
an asshole, just like his father.
>> HOUSE: Thank you ... for not eating.
>> CAMERON: It was none of my business.
>> HOUSE: They seem perfectly pleasant, don't they? They are.
>> He was a Marine pilot. She was a housewife. Married
>> forty-seven years. They had one child. My mom was
>> just like everyone else. She's nice enough, no(?)
>> great sense of humor, hates confrontation. My dad's
>> just like you. Not the caring-till-your-eyes-pop-out
>> part. Just the insane moral compass that won't let you
>> lie to anybody about anything.
>>
>>Huh??? Practically the first words out of House Sr.'s mouth in this
>>episode were a lie to Cameron about how Greg had told them all about
>>her.
>
>No, that was a joke, not a lie. The moment Cameron looked like she
>was taking his statement seriously he looked surprised and then
>corrected his misimpression.
>
>>
>>I didn't buy that the man whose personal motto is a scornful, cynical,
>>"Everybody lies," was somehow traumatized by his father's unwillingness
>>to lie.
>
>Good point.
Yeah, although I don't think that G.H. is opposed to all lies-- only the
ones that get in the way of diagnoses. And it's not the fact that his
father is unwilling to lie that's the problem, but unbidden, scornful
truth delivered with zero tact.
1) Telling someone that their haircut sucks isn't a lie, but
it sure is nasty.
2) If someone asks you how their horrible haircut looks, well, you could
tell the truth (ugly), a half-truth ("it's you!"), deflect
("last time I got a hair cut"), lie (beautiful)...
House and his dad do too much of 1); I think House only gets
self-righteous about 2) during diagnosing. He certainly has no problems
avoiding the truth when it comes to clinic duty etc.
--dg
--
gent, david
moc.laimg _ta_ retstneg
Erin Woodbridge's Bestest Friend, Ian J. Ball
D Gent <urg...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
> House... certainly has no problems
> avoiding the truth when it comes to clinic duty etc.
Ah, that's it. That's what this season is missing - House in the clinic.
They've almost totally forgotten about it, and it gave us some of season
#1's best bits.
They need to go back to that...
--
"I did *NOT* have sex with Gil Kurvers!" - Erin Woodbridge
(on numerous occasions), "Edgemont"
Micky DuPree
: MDu...@theworld.com.snip.to.reply (Micky DuPree) wrote in
: news:dl1t1m$aq5$1...@pcls4.std.com:
:: Why do they use a piece of radioactive metal to test wells?
: That one, I can answer. The process is caled nuclear well logging. A
: radiation source is sent down an oil well, and the reflections of the
: radiation are used to characterize the oil well, including density and
: moisture content of the material surrounding the source.
Oh, *oil* wells. Thanks. I kept thinking they meant water wells. Not
that I had any idea it was done on oil wells either, but that makes more
intuitive sense. They used to explain these things on the show for the
benefit of the audience. Last week, not so much.
-Micky
Micky DuPree
: I noticed the spring break line right away too... The only thing I
: thought was that maybe these episodes were originally set to debut in
: January, or after the World Series at least. The fact that they
: debuted in .... August? ...
September 13, although I believe the debut was originally scheduled for
August 30 and then moved back.
: ... might have changed the timeline a bit. But who knows.
It would at least explain things better if that were the case; if
"Daddy's Boy" was originally conceived as occurring earlier in the
season and the thinking was that story time in season two would pick up
in June. Still they've had plenty of time to revise since then, and
it's not like that one line was the only thing that would have had to be
overlooked. The fact that Carnell was just now graduating and about to
"get that sheepskin" was prominent in the story as well.
-Micky
Micky DuPree
<l...@nospamw2designs.co.uk> writes:
: A very interesting critique, but do you ever think that if all your
: moaning points were fixed House might just turn in to an extremely
: dull, lifeless and anally retentive show?
The first season is shining proof that it wouldn't have to be. You act
like I'm complaining about the strengths in the show rather than about
the current weaknesses that didn't used to be there. If they could do
such good work before, I can't help but be baffled and disappointed that
they suddenly couldn't do it anymore when they went into preproduction
for the second season. It wasn't even a gradual decline, as if the
grind of production wore them down or they ran out of fresh ideas. It
was as if someone just flipped off a light switch between the seasons.
-Micky
Micky DuPree
: What bothers me about this plot is that the sick kid and his father
: must be extremely stupid or ignorant for him to get this sick. If the
: plumb is giving off enough radiation to give the kid severe radiation
: poisoning over a short period of time, it should be quite warm, if not
: hot to the touch. Ok, when you first pick it up, one may not notice
: how warm it is because maybe it was in the sun or whatever. But after
: handling it for a while, shouldn't the kid have noticed that it was
: always warm?
A fair question, but I personally don't know the answer. Carnell had
evidently been carrying around that backpack for "over a month." Is
that a short enough time to require the plumb to be warm to the touch in
order to do that much damage? Taddy had the backpack on his lap for
just a few hours, and yet he ended up with one affected patch that he
didn't get looked at for over a month and vomiting that mysteriously
didn't manifest until after he had been separated from the pack for over
a month. I don't know. Maybe these symptoms are consistent; maybe they
aren't. And how much bare-skin handling of the plumb did one have to do
in order to A) make a keychain out of it and B) attach the keychain to
the back of your backpack? I personally couldn't say, but those do
strike me as suspicious questions.
: If his father runs a scrap yard, surely the father and his kid would
: have picked up basic safety info about not handling metal items that
: stay warm or hot??
Dunno. I wouldn't expect that one has to have special training to open
up a scrap yard, but maybe one has to have a license? It's probably
fair to speculate that Carnell didn't major in nuclear science.
-Micky
Lee@DVDDebate
MDu...@theworld.com.snip.to.reply (Micky DuPree) wrote:
>: A very interesting critique, but do you ever think that if all your
>: moaning points were fixed House might just turn in to an extremely
>: dull, lifeless and anally retentive show?
>
>The first season is shining proof that it wouldn't have to be. You act
>like I'm complaining about the strengths in the show rather than about
>the current weaknesses that didn't used to be there. If they could do
>such good work before, I can't help but be baffled and disappointed that
>they suddenly couldn't do it anymore when they went into preproduction
>for the second season. It wasn't even a gradual decline, as if the
>grind of production wore them down or they ran out of fresh ideas. It
>was as if someone just flipped off a light switch between the seasons.
>
Surely these things were never apparent before because there was less
canon for people to pick apart? Personally I don't notice any
difference between the two seasons, I just kick back, laugh at the
jokes and enjoy watching Hugh chew the scenery.
record...@gmail.com
I feel the same way. I haven't noticed any change at all. I don't know
what people are kvetching about.
Lee@DVDDebate
I have no idea what it means, but I feel the same way about the
'kvetching'.
Daniel Joseph Min
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
I think there's been significant reduction in the 2nd-season
"seriousness" of the Dr. House character in contrast with his
more serious role in the 1st season of 'House'. While the 1st-
season "flippancy" of the doctor is certainly still there, the
caliber and cleverness of jokes seems to have declined, and I'd
say more than subtly, IMHO. Jokes seem to work better when we
viewers are more convinced that the patients are real people
who are actually suffering horribly and close to death 24/7.
Let's see Dr. House misbehaving in VERY bad taste at a really
heart-wrenching, "lump-in-the-throat" funeral for God's sake!
Maybe an H5N1 Avian bird flu pandemic would be a good subject
of some future episode--especially because the flu pandemic is
actually real and actually *kills* between *50% to 70%* of its
hapless victims--and it's often a very painful death typically
associated with respiratory failure--PERFECT fodder for House!
More gore, more blood, more pain, more anguish, more ugliness,
more intensity, more mercurial intellect, and more downright-
intentionally hurtful jokes from mean Dr. House would improve
the show ergo subsequently their millions of devoted viewers'
continued devotion to this otherwise generally excellent and
entertaining program. Things need to be more dangerous, maybe?
While others say "show me the money", I say "show me the pain"!
That's what helped to make 'Sopranos', 'Rome', 'Deadwood', '24'
et al top-notch series work so well. Ugly rudeness, convincing
human suffering, warfare, torture, murder, wholesale destruction
etc. contribute immensely to the overall formula for television
success, I believe. That's what keeps me watching. And that's
what keeps me watching 'House' instead of that ridiculous show
about Geena (Hillary) Davis (Clinton) running the show from the
White House--talk about 100% pure, unadulterated and impossible
fantasy! The DNC would've gained more traction with 'Commander
In Chief' if they'd have cast Barney the big fat stupid purple
Dinosaur as president (but I still do love actress Geena Davis)! :-D
Enjoy!
Daniel Joseph Min
http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x2B1CCFE7
*Download Min's Banned (Freeware) Books:
http://www.2hot2cool.com/11/danieljosephmin/
*Min's Google-Archived Home Page On The WWW:
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=XJBDEJF13826...@anonymous.poster
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`
Alan Pollock
> -Micky
Yes. Exactly. It went from sharp and edgy, to schlock in season 2.
I hope for the network's sake the ratings increased by a hefty margin. If
you're going to sell your soul to the devil you'd better make sure you get
your reward. Way I see it, they sacrificed long-term viewership for short-term
ratings increase. Nex
Micky DuPree
: In article <437485b4...@news.telusplanet.net>, David Johnston
: <rgo...@block.net> blurted:
:: On Fri, 11 Nov 2005 10:50:31 +0000 (UTC),
:: MDu...@theworld.com.snip.to.reply (Micky DuPree) wrote:
::: HOUSE: I don't hate her. I hate him.
:::
::: Well, we were told. But we weren't shown.
::
:: I was shown that House feels a great deal of animosity toward his
:: father at the moment when his father decided to tell him what his
:: problem was.
:
: Yeah, I had a pretty strong response to that.
A lot of people resent a parent, even feel anger towards them when poked
with a stick, and that can even happen a lot. But 'hate' is a powerful
word to use in an unqualified fashion, especially for someone whom House
characterized as "pleasant" (from which I'm extrapolating that House Sr.
didn't abuse either Greg or Greg's mother) apart from that one deeply
resented quirk of supposedly never lying.
Neither were we shown why Greg would escalate his ill will to a level he
would describe as hate. His father was annoying and judgmental. I
don't like being treated like that either. But 'hate' is just too
strong a reaction for the behavior we were shown. We had to be told in
abstract exposition that there's this "insane moral compass" in Greg's
father that drives Greg to hatred. I can even believe that it's not the
magnitude of the father's actions that drove Greg to hatred, but the
incessant repetition like a water torture that finally pushed Greg too
far one day, but that's pure speculation on my part. In the end, the
whole encounter was a lot like Foreman described: you don't learn
anything from adult children's dinner conversation with their parents.
(But in a good writer's hands, you do.)
: To some extent, this tells us why G.H. is so comfortable with telling
: anyone more than they ever need to know about their own failings.
No, it doesn't. Greg explicitly *faulted* his father for that failing.
It may or may not tell us why Greg is so socially unpleasant most of the
time, but it doesn't tell us why he's comfortable doing it.
: He's an asshole, just like his father.
Even if that's what the writers meant for us to take away from this
(that Greg doesn't realize how much he's like his father), at most it
can be only partly true within the parameters they've claimed. House
*does* lie, and frequently. He has his own reasons for lying, but
within the stated parameters, he's not a hypocrite, since he *faults*
his father for never lying.
The socially conventional might leap to the conclusion that House turned
out like House Sr. because all they see is that both are said to be
unpleasantly frank, which is what social convention would be most
concerned with. (Certainly that's what a lot of TV critics focus on.)
But we saw House lie to protect the feelings (and maternal relationship)
of Luke, the young caretaker son of Lucy the pseudo-schizophrenic in
"The Socratic Method." He lied to protect the marriage of the straying
clinic patient who needed a paternity test in "Maternity." For all we
know, he could be in the middle of conducting an elaborate deception
right now to drive Stacy more firmly into the arms of her husband.
(Still not sure about that one, though.) As you said later:
: Yeah, although I don't think that G.H. is opposed to all lies-- only
: the ones that get in the way of diagnoses.
House has approved of lying far more often than that. House has taken a
utilitarian approach to lying. In the past, he has sometimes told the
truth when he thought it would do the most good and he has sometimes
lied when he thought that would do the most good. House has reasons for
his actions (or used to). He consciously did not turn into a carbon
copy of his father on the issue that he raised, which is the issue I'm
discussing.
However, House did not do as you did immediately above and make the
distinction in this episode between which types of lie he thought were
good and which types he thought were bad. The problem is that it's an
important distinction to make when he's lambasting some people
indiscriminately for lying (Carnell and his father) and some people
indiscriminately for not lying (House Sr. and Cameron). Even Cameron
should have been bright enough to point out his inconsistency to him (at
which point he could have explained the distinction).
What the writers needed to do to keep from looking like morons, but more
importantly, to keep their supposedly genius protagonist from looking
like a moron, was to set up the thematic dichotomy as being between
"Good Lies vs. Bad Lies," not as "Lying vs. Telling the Truth." That
way they wouldn't have this supposedly brilliant man prattling on about
how neither his father nor his protegee can ever lie for any reason when
he knows full well that they both lied right in front of him in this
very episode. It would make House's stance towards the lies told by
Carnell and his father look nuanced rather than confused. The only way
to do justice to the issue is by asking where and why people draw the
line between the lies they're willing to tell and the lies they're not
willing to tell. Having House say that it's about lying vs. telling the
truth makes him seem like the one who's naive, unobservant, and inclined
to look at the world in simple black and white, when we know that the
story, in its own clumsy fashion, would prefer to paint Cameron and
House Sr. that way.
The underlying issues in the episode are a mess, really. House
characterized both of his parents as "pleasant," but people who truly
never lie are social aberrations and end up marginalized. They don't
come off as pleasant or normal at all.
::: HOUSE: My dad's just like you. Not the caring-till-your-
::: eyes-pop-out part. Just the insane moral compass that
::: won't let you lie to anybody about anything.
::
:: Huh??? Practically the first words out of House Sr.'s mouth in this
:: episode were a lie to Cameron about how Greg had told them all about
:: her.
::
:: No, that was a joke, not a lie. The moment Cameron looked like she
:: was taking his statement seriously he looked surprised and then
:: corrected his misimpression.
Of course it was a lie (as well as a joke). It was intended to
temporarily deceive Cameron at Greg's expense. A lie doesn't cease to
be a lie just because it's intended to stand only for a short time
before being revealed. It doesn't cease to be a lie even though its
instrumental purpose is to make fun of person A rather than to keep
person B from ever uncovering the truth. It doesn't cease to be a lie
even if most of the people in the room know that it's not true. It
doesn't cease to be a lie even if no instrumental harm can be proven to
arise from it.
"Is a lie a lie if everybody knows it's a lie?" mused House in
"Fidelity," revealing that the issue of the types of lying was of
interest to him (though not so much to Wilson, who told him to stop
making a philosophical treatise out of silicone breast implants). Yes,
a deliberately detectable lie is still a lie, though it's employed
differently from one that's meant to stay uncovered. Otherwise, you may
as well drop the pretense. House used to be keenly interested in these
distinctions. Now he seems unaware of them if they're inconvenient (or
more to the point, he's unaware of them when the writers are unaware of
the distinctions).
So House Sr. made a small, off-white, temporary lie. Big deal? It was
when House made a sweeping, absolute statement about how his father and
Cameron never lied at all for any reason because it's a huge point of
morality for them. It simply wasn't true of either character, and House
used to be the type who spoke articulately, clearly, and precisely when
he was trying to get his point across.
The real kicker, though, is that my intuition was that we were supposed
to see House as being envious of the final lie that Carnell's father
told Carnell to "protect" him (something that we can easily infer House
Sr. would never do for Greg), despite the fact that this runs directly
counter to House's own attitude towards dealing with terminal cases
earlier in this very same season. If that wasn't the impression the
writers wanted to give, it was nevertheless the impression that I found
the easiest to take away. (And surely I'm not the only one to have
gotten that impression.)
: And it's not the fact that his father is unwilling to lie that's the
: problem, but unbidden, scornful truth delivered with zero tact.
Which is different from what House said. Besides, from the sound of
their conversation in the cafeteria, the trait in House Sr. that
aggravates House is the sharing not only of unpleasant truths, but also
of unpleasant opinions, not necessarily the telling of truth at all.
Most people don't know the difference, but House would. There are
differences between:
1) Never lying when asked for the facts.
2) Sharing facts without being asked.
3) Never lying about your opinion when asked for your opinion.
4) Sharing opinions without being asked.
But House acted like all four categories were identical. An opinion is
neither truth nor untruth. Sharing unwanted opinions (as House Sr. did
in the cafeteria) does indeed just make you an asshole. There's nothing
particularly "moral" about it.
: 1) Telling someone that their haircut sucks isn't a lie, but it sure
: is nasty.
But neither is it the truth. There is no absolute universal truth about
a matter of personal taste. If someone *asks*, "What do you think of my
haircut?" then saying it sucks is the truth as long as that is genuinely
your opinion. But there's no Absolute Truth about Haircuts that's a law
of God or Nature. (Geez, I went through this whole thing with people re
Cordelia on _Buffy_/_Angel_, but they were so smitten with her that they
really didn't care.)
: 2) If someone asks you how their horrible haircut looks, well, you
: could tell the truth (ugly), a half-truth ("it's you!"), deflect
: ("last time I got a hair cut"), lie (beautiful)...
You just gave the issue far more nuance than the writers of "Daddy's
Boy" bothered to. But if you pay attention to what the Houses actually
said, at NO point did Greg ask his father for his opinion (or for
anything else, for that matter). Everything that House Sr. said was
unbidden.
My intuition is that they were trying to say that House wishes his
father could have found it in him to tell him white lies, pleasant
untruths, and supportive but unheld opinions as a token of his love.
Leaving aside the fact that this *really* doesn't sound like House
(especially not someone who, in the very same episode, put scorn in his
voice when he said that parents lie to protect us), House never made
that clear, nor did he ever make the distinction between the lies he
approved of and the lies he didn't. We know that he recognizes this
difference, since he himself lies in the service of what he sees as a
greater purpose, but he also scornfully disapproves of many lies as
well. But the distinction was not forthcoming in this episode, apart
from a dressing down to Cameron for being unwilling to lie to Taddy.
Given that House seems to see the distinction as constituting the
difference between right and wrong, it's not a trivial one.
I don't see the problem between House Sr. and House as centering on
lying and truth-telling at all. It's a problem of unsolicited negative
advice, criticism, and opinions masquerading as honesty about facts.
Yes, House Sr. is frank and forthcoming, but opinions and advice aren't
facts. It's a common mistake to see unsolicited opinion-giving as an
unwillingness to lie, because it resembles uncensored but *solicited*
opinion-giving. "What do you think of my new dress?" "It's hideous."
Well, that's the truth, because the truth is that you think it's
hideous. But to *volunteer* your unpleasant opinion about someone
else's personal life without being asked is not the same as being
unwilling to lie. That's just being unwilling to mind your own damn
business. Even sharing some unsolicited facts can be beside the point.
House Sr.'s remark to his son, "You just don't know how lucky you are,"
is probably true with respect to Greg, but it's also true of most people
in the developed nations, so there was an implicit agenda of unsolicited
critical opinion that House Sr. directed only at Greg lurking behind the
surface statement of fact that could have been truthfully said to most
people in America.
House used to be sharp enough to see these differences, but he's not
written by people sharp enough to see the differences anymore. The
dialogue in the final cut of "Daddy's Boy" was indistinguishable from
the dialogue that people who were confused about what they were trying
to say would have written.
"Clarification: it's a beautiful thing."
-- House, "Poison"
: House and his dad do too much of 1); I think House only gets
: self-righteous about 2) during diagnosing.
I can't remember House bothering himself much about (1) insulting
morally or medically neutral personal appearance or habits, unless he
was annoyed for some other reason and therefore lashing out with
unpleasantries, or else he was deliberately provoking someone to see if
they'd take the bait or stay focused on the job (sexual harassment of
Cuddy, Cameron, Chase). He doesn't fancy himself as the fashion or
grooming police.
*If* asked for his opinion, then yes, I think House would be perfectly
willing to just pop out with it (and perhaps even slant it for the
maximum negative impact, depending on his mood), but this should have
the effect of operantly training people not to ask him in the future for
his opinion about their personal appearance. Since being a fashion or
grooming critic shouldn't be part of his job, I'm actually very
sympathetic to that.
: He certainly has no problems avoiding the truth when it comes to
: clinic duty etc.
House has told lies to try to avoid clinic duty (three that I can think
of this season). E.g., from "Autopsy":
HOUSE: Whoa, look at the time. I should have been out of here
twenty minutes ago.
NURSE: You've only been here twenty minutes.
HOUSE: Can't slip anything by you, can I?
Last season he was more inclined to dodge and hide the truth than he was
to out-and-out lie, but making the finer distinctions between degrees of
deception should be a topic for another day.
-Micky
Micky DuPree
: On Tue, 15 Nov 2005 23:57:13 +0000 (UTC),
: MDu...@theworld.com.snip.to.reply (Micky DuPree) wrote:
:: "Lee@DVDDebate" <l...@nospamw2designs.co.uk> writes:
::: A very interesting critique, but do you ever think that if all your
::: moaning points were fixed House might just turn in to an extremely
::: dull, lifeless and anally retentive show?
::
:: The first season is shining proof that it wouldn't have to be.
:: [....] It wasn't even a gradual decline, as if the grind of
:: production wore them down or they ran out of fresh ideas. It was as
:: if someone just flipped off a light switch between the seasons.
:
: Surely these things were never apparent before because there was less
: canon for people to pick apart?
Nope. If that were the case, the dissatisfaction would have gradually
increased. If anything, I thought that the latter half of the first
season was even better than the first half. Episode 21, "Three
Stories," was simply brilliant, and I have almost no bone to pick with
episode 22, "Honeymoon," an excellent episode at the tail end of the
first season. But the characters were suddenly less intelligent in
episode 23, "Acceptance," at the very beginning of the second season.
It was just that sudden and inexplicable.
: Personally I don't notice any difference between the two seasons, I
: just kick back, laugh at the jokes and enjoy watching Hugh chew the
: scenery.
That's a pleasant way to do it. Am I stopping you?
-Micky
Micky DuPree
: [_House_] went from sharp and edgy, to schlock in season 2.
:
: I hope for the network's sake the ratings increased by a hefty margin.
My sense is that the series is doing well commercially, particularly by
Fox standards. The only thing strange about it is that it's not really
a Fox-style show, although they seem to be trying to remake it in that
image this season: pick up the pace, spice up the interpersonal
relationships, and if they give you money, they're going to want to see
it on the screen. (I wonder how long it's going to take before they do
split screens a la _24_.)
: If you're going to sell your soul to the devil you'd better make sure
: you get your reward. Way I see it, they sacrificed long-term
: viewership for short-term ratings increase.
They'll probably get their five seasons at this rate. These things tend
to pick up momentum based more on character familiarity than anything
else, and the general public is always responding to last year's buzz.
-Micky
Lee@DVDDebate
Far from it. I merely point it out as a suggestion for you to try.
Seems you might enjoy things a little more if you just stopped
thinking about them so much.
Micky DuPree
: On Sun, 27 Nov 2005 13:51:11 +0000 (UTC),
: MDu...@theworld.com.snip.to.reply (Micky DuPree) wrote:
::: Personally I don't notice any difference between the two seasons, I
::: just kick back, laugh at the jokes and enjoy watching Hugh chew the
::: scenery.
::
:: That's a pleasant way to do it. Am I stopping you?
:
: Far from it. I merely point it out as a suggestion for you to try.
: Seems you might enjoy things a little more if you just stopped
: thinking about them so much.
Doesn't work that way. For me, half the fun is in thinking about it.
-Micky
bval...@aol.com
Steveo
Mason Barge
I liked Serenity and think it's going to make tons of money on DVD
sales.
Mason Barge
"If this is coffee, please bring me some tea. If this is tea, please bring me some coffee."
-- Abraham Lincoln
bval...@aol.com
>>>>It looks like the rec.arts.tv, alt.tv.twenty-four, alt.tv.hbo,
alt.tv.deadwood site. >>>
Except that it's labled "alt.tv.twenty-four".
David Johnston
wrote:
Do you understand the concept of cross-posting?
>
George W Harris
wrote:
:On 16 Dec 2005 08:01:03 -0800, "bval...@aol.com" <bval...@aol.com>
He doesn't even understand that usenet isn't a website.
:
:>
--
"If you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce, they taste more like
prunes than rhubarb does" -Groucho Marx
George W. Harris For actual email address, replace each 'u' with an 'i'
Steveo
(FU set)