House

My friend and I love House and we'll always dive into a House marathon whenever USA is playing one. My friend, like me, prefers the original team of Cameron, the blond guy and the black guy. Those were the good old days.

A little backstory: I think the show started in 2004. Anyway, I never heard of it until my grandmother's 80th birthday in December of 2004. My Uncle Joe, who usually only watches History and Discovery, mentioned a new show he liked- it was about a cranky doctor who pops pills the whole time, but he wasn't sure what the name was. Nobody at the party had seen it or heard of it. "I think it's called House or something like that," he said. "Is it Doogie Houser, MD?" everyone kept asking. That's the first thing I thought of too. He had no idea what Doogie was so when people explained that show he said that wasn't it. Everytime someone new walked into the room and joined the conversation they made the same guess and it was funny to see him get more and more pissed.

Anyway, since he said it was a good show I gave it a chance. I had just gotten onto a new work schedule after years of second shift so I was able to watch prime-time TV again. And I really liked it. Turns out it's Vicodin that he's popping and I'm very in favor of that.

Now when me and my friend watch it we like to catch the way each episode falls into the formula:

*Before the opening credits, the patient will be about the give a speech at work or school or they're playing some sport or giving a performance. They collapse and/or start spazzing and that sets the scene.

*Someone will mention the case to House who will be disinterested till some odd aspect is mentioned. Then he's all over it, writing on his white board and bouncing ideas of his team. He'll say that the patient is lying about something, then he'll send one or two of his doctors to break into the patient's house looking for clues.

*Cameron and blondie will put the patient in MRI machine or some sort of test situation and while they bicker about their relationship or about House the patient will start freaking out for one reason or another and the mystery grows.

*Other times the team will have a diagnosis and while they're explaining it to the patient, the patient will start bleeding from their eyes or ears or bellybutton and it's back to square one.

*They'll come to another conclusion but the course of action always comes to the same scene: "We're going to start him on ____; either he gets better, or it will kill him".

*The treatment will work but there will be more complications till they end up, again, without a diagnosis. Finally comes the "ah-ha moment"- Wilson will be lecturing House on his attitude or drug use, or House will be treating a clinic patient and the solution will come to him in an instant. Problem solved.

And I'm not complaining. I don't care if every episode is the same and they just change a couple basic details each time. It's a fun show.

One thing I really like is when they shake things up during the first segment. They make you think one person is going to be the patient but it turns out it's someone else. One time, there was a guy at some kind of wind farm on the North Pole. One of the blades came loose and sliced a guy's leg open but it turns outb that the responding medic was the focus of the episode.

In another one, a teacher appeared to go into labor but while on the ground she noticed one of her students had blood running down his leg.