User Blog:
House: A Confession of an Addict

Love, love is a verb
Love is a doing word
Fearless on my breath
Gentle impulsion
Shakes me makes me lighter

Teardrop – Massive Attack

It’s enough to send a shiver up my spine. I mean it’s a great song anyway, but as a late inductee into the cult of House it has me almost audibly squawking with glee as the Emmy Award winning title sequence starts.

House has become something of an unhealthy obsession for me, perhaps not as unhealthy as a Vidocin addition, but certainly a craving. I just can’t get enough. So, it is my delight that Season 7 (aired this week in the USA) will be shown – soon – on Sky1 in the UK.

For the uninitiated, House is a drama about a misanthropic doctor at a fictional hospital in New Jersey. He’s sarcastic, can’t stand seeing patients (often making deals to get out of clinic duty) and is, in the words of every character, a ‘jerk.’

However, he’s a genius at diagnosis – the main dramatic device employed in the series. Person gets ill – House finds it interesting – his team race against the clock to cure the patient. House is like CSI in a hospital, or more accurately, Sherlock Holmes in a hospital.

Often incredibly cruel to his patients, House uses deductive reasoning that is certainly Holmes-esq. He also has a Holmes-Watson like relationship with Dr. Wilson (played by Robert Sean Leonard), perhaps his only friend. The link is so close that at times I think the recent Steven Moffet/Mark Gatiss imagining of Holmes (BBC’s Sherlock) is 3/5 parts House. Add in a little Percival Cox (Scrubs) and a Film Noir anti-hero detective and he’s a wonderfully ‘full’ character.

Hugh Laurie is masterful as Dr. Gregory House but I would certainly be selling the Most Popular TV Drama in the World short by saying it is a one-man show. Actually it relies heavily on the supporting cast – House’s Diagnostic Team - to add the emotion, depth and humor. Ironically, it’s the clinical edge to CSI’s investigations that put it below House in my opinion; where CSI oft misses the emotional mark, House drives the point home. If that wasn’t a good enough reason, the reluctant hero’s story develops along with the seasons; drug addiction, crippling agony, ex-wives, love, hate and the general politics that occur when he breaks the rules – and House does that a lot.

I managed to ignore all this hype when House was first aired in 2004. I ignored the episodes, the blanket advertising, and the reruns on cable. I’m sad in that I avoid most TV that isn’t sci-fi, or comedy, but I honestly wish I hadn’t. House is up there with the best TV shows of the last decade.

I can’t wait. Give it a go.