It’s no secret that I like medical shows. I missed the ER boat, or, more accurately, watched as that ship sailed on by. I didn’t like it.
But that was before I started working in a hospital.
I love Scrubs. I get down with Grey’s Anatomy.
But I loathe House. That is not to say I don’t watch it, because it is, well, sorta neat. But I still loathe it.
Now, with Scrubs, I expect a bit of suspension of disbelief when it comes to doctors doing certain things. Like doing their own ultrasounds. Or moving patients. Or surgery interns lounging about, singing quaint showtunes to their medical intern buddies, or making out in patients’ rooms.
I mean, it’s sort of the premise of the show: suspension of disbelief.
Grey’s Anatomy is sort of the same way. They have doctors doing ultrasounds, one half of the original medical interns from the first few shows just disappear, and, funnily enough, all the friends have time to touch base with each other, kill patients, and inherit millions of dollars while pulling 30 hour shifts. In Grey’s Anatomy, the hospital provides the backdrop for the drama. Which isn’t really why I watch it, but it does make things interesting. Except for Grey herself. She’s just annoying.
But House. House is a different animal all together.
First of all, he’s an ass. Why are we, the television viewing public, so attached to our damaged, scary asses? Is it because under all that scar tissue, a genuinely kind, caring individual sleeps latent, waiting for the spring sunshine to make him sprout?
I find it incredibly hard to suspend my disbelief to the point where I can see Gregory House as still having a license to practice.
I won’t even mention the Vicodin addiction other than to say this: Doctors with drugs (or alcohol problems) tend to be a lot more discreet.
But having people break into people’s house to look at the ham in the refrigerator? Come on.
One of the first rules of admissions I learned when I first started working at the hospital was this: R/O is *not* a valid diagnosis. R/O means Rule Out. Personally, I think it’s stupid. Possible pneumonia isn’t valid. Suspected or probable pneumonia isn’t valid either. I’d imagine that it’d make diagnostic medicine pretty damn difficult.
They talk about insurance on the show: “So and so has insurance,” in such a way that it’d make the viewer actually think it makes a difference. It doesn’t. Now, because it’s good TV to make House brilliant, saving lives, the majority of his gambles pay off. But in reality, a lot of the people would actually die. In fact, there is no telling how many people die each year due to misdiagnoses. Or mortal drug interactions, both on the doctor’s part and on the part of the patient for drugs the patient swears he didn’t take.
Which leads me to my good point. One of his catch phrases is “Patients lie.” It’s true. They’ll swear that they didn’t have anything to drink, or any drugs, and their tox screens will come back off the charts. They’ll swear they didn’t have any suicidal thoughts, and they’ll be released only come back in a day or two later for a failed attempt. They’ll lie about their weight, which affects drug dosing; they’ll lie about how much they smoke, which affects lung treatment. They’ll lie on how they got a really big foreign body up their ass. No, George, you didn’t “just sit on it.”
Which makes me incredibly grateful that I don’t want to be a doctor. As a doctor, I’d be responsible for all of my own screw ups, but trying to predict and take care of the patients’ as well.
Giving you a Zero because your dog ate your homework is one thing.
Killing you because you wanted to hide the fact that you did something you weren’t supposed to is another.
I honestly loved House before I had to live it.
Now my husband watches, but I just can’t, after living it, with our daughter, it just brings back too much emotion that I need to get over.
gregory house is an ass, true.
and we root for him.
because he often does what most of us would truly WANT to do in a given situation. we never WOULD do it, but we would want to.
that is the allure of house.
he is the brat prince.
he ALWAYS acts and reacts as if he has nothing to lose.
he does this until that penultimate moment when you are just flat out sick of the f*cker. and then he does something human. and we all like him again.
and we willing wade through another tidal wave of balls and bluster to get a peek behind the next chink in his armor.
(if you can’t tell, i am a huge fan).
i could be house. sometimes i am. i have his charisma, his rage, i even have a bum knee from time to time.
what i DON’T have is a fleet of writers and a forgiving audience.
what i DON’T have is a team of sidekicks paid to put up with my sh*t every day.
and y’know what else i don’t have? the hots for Cutty. because i remember her when she was the transgendered shemale on ally mcBubble.
we don’t like house because he is honorable and good or even sane and realistic. we like him because as unbearable as he is, we hold out hope that underneath he is human.
he is probablly actually 100% the intollerable arse that he pretends to be, but every now and then the show lets us think we’ve seen something more. and so we keep watching, waiting for another bit to be *revealed* and unravelled.
@ Skywindows:
I can’t imagine how tough it could be to watch something like House after what you guys have been through. I didn’t watch ER, but it was for a much less serious reason.
As far as “needing to get over it,” it sounds like maybe you need more to get “through” it. There are some events in life that we can’t simply “get over.” We “get through” and assimilate, hopefully in a positive way.
But some things are simply too deep to just “get over.”
@ brahnamin:
You’re right. That is absolutely part of the attraction. We *do* hope he’s human.
But on the other hand, in the back of our minds, I think we kind of hope he’s God, too.
Without getting into my opinions on Clinton’s presidency, I’ll relate this:
When the whole bj-in-the-White House thing came out, my father asked me if I thought he should be impeached because of it. My answer was “absolutely not.” And my reasoning was this: his ability to lead a nation and his ability to lie about getting some on the side to a nation who had no right to know about it are two wholly separate issues.
I asked my dad this: If you were going to have brain surgery, for example, and you found the absolute best of the best, but found he had cheated on his wife, would that make you choose the second-rate surgeon? I would certainly hope not.
I want people to be good, moral, upstanding people. I really, really do, and think the world would be a better place for it. ::However:: if the best of the best comes with problems (i.e., House) or moral issues (i.e., the surgeon, or Clinton) then that’s how it is.
Because, in my experience, most doctors are uncaring assholes. They’re just not as in-your-face about it as House is.
And, truth, be told, had I had my own Gregory House 15 years ago, asshole or not, I’d be in a lot better place than I am now.
And I think that’s his redeeming quality : He is ::that:: good. And we all need someone ::that good:: for us, even if it’s in a different capacity.
we hope he is god too.
i like that.
nice
I hate House and I also work in a hospital. First of all, this kind of doctor simply doesn’t exist because there is no one that knows everything and spots all diagnosis right while others in the team act like complete fools. Second, he is rude and that violates doctor-patient relationship. Third, all doctors perform all procedures, from colonoscopy to neurology and pathology. BTW, they don’t know you need to freeze the sample of tissue or at least to put into a kind of wax block and cut it into some dozens of tiny slices with a microtome and after that you have to use proper staining substances to make what you want to see visible, you have to analize each of these dozens of pieces to give a right supposition of diagnosis. I could tell other ridiculous flaws in the show, but there is no space. Fourth, the worst thing in doctors and people is to think you have to be like god, you have to know everything. The most insecure people think like that; true wise people know how much less they know each day. The more you accomplish, the less you feel you need this godly stuff. I don’t think humiliating others is something nice. House does that all the time.
We that truly work with health and caring for the life of true human beings in suffering know that there is one thing of being HUMAN. That means, not being rude and arrogant by not asking for the help of others to solve a case, because there is no doctor that doesn’t need others. People don’t understand that health profession is like a team, a collective work, not one individual battle of egos. The most important is the patient, not ourselves.
I hate House. He is all a doctor should not be. Fortunately, he doesn’t exist.
Well….
I agree with most of what you said. But, here, anyway, we *do* have doctors with House-sized egos. They do get away with a *lot* that they definitely shouldn’t — such as tearing up staff, etc. They’re tolerated because they’re brilliant doctors.
Now, for his actual medical practice, I can’t say that I’d see that being tolerated. He breaks laws. Repeatedly. He practices medicine in a way that no insurance company (and let’s face it, the insurance companies rule the medical profession) would pay for.
But, in the end, I’d put up with an ass of a doctor — even House — if it meant that he could save my life.
Because while, ideally, you’ll find a brilliant doctor who also has an amazing bed side manner, from my experience, it usually doesn’t happen that way.
And if I’d have to choose, I’d go with brilliancy over social niceties any day.
Thanks for stopping by! I thought I was the only one who didn’t like House.
erm? we are all remembering that house is a fictional character, neh? and an outrageous fictional character @ that.
the show hinges on him being outrageous and unbelievable.
i get that the more you know about a subject the harder it is to give in to suspension of disbelief, but i’ve often found, if the material is good enough, that it is well worth the effort.
i am currently a newfound laurell k. hamilton junkie. her books can get downright goofy with what they want you to take in (even for vampire books) but i find myself moving relentlessly through each book and coming to a satisfying conclusion @ the end despite the hokiness of it all.
as for house being *nice* or a *team player* ugh. as for his bedside manner – erm – double ugh. this guy isn’t in it to save people or make friends. he just loves the challenge of the problem. gil grissom with a mean streak.
just a thought.
i mean, we can dissect this thing over and over again and still come face to face with the fact that the writers/producers of house have created this show as it is presented to us on purpose and with full intent.
and imho it’s turned out brilliantly
of course i am a fan of all things @ssholian (especially fictional @ssholes that i don’t actually have to deal with)
like LF says, *if i had to choose, i’d go with brilliance over social niceties any day*.
Hmm, everybody seems to like or dislike Greg House. The things I don’t like about the show are the obvious inaccuracies. Every month I go in for a CT Scan, an MRI or an ultrasound (they rotate). I have yet to see anybody with leads attached to their chests in the MRI. Leads obviously conduct pulses of electricity, so they’re metal, and any metal isn’t allowed in an MRI, whether it’s magnetic or not, because the electric pulses will throw the MRI off. Several other inaccuracies come to mind. However, for the lay person who still believes his doctor is the closest thing to God, it’s a good show