Review: House 101 – 103
A late entry for Fox, with almost the same formula as NBC’s Medical Investigation. While I scrapped MI off my list weeks ago, I’m pretty sure I can scrap this show off right now, instead of waiting a few more weeks.
This show features a, what seems to be, brilliant MD (doctor House, played by Hugh Laurie) with some serious bedside manner problems (right, like we haven’t seen that before). Serving under him, is a self-chosen team of talented doctors. The formula is instantly visible. Opposed to MI, where they fly off to locations all over the country to stop supposed outbreaks, House will get special unsolved mystery cases coming to him. This is the first sign of monotony. With one location to film week in, week out, the stories must be pretty good, you’d think. But sadly, these are also heavily formulised, with the patient coming in, then the first diagnosis. Then it appears the diagnosis was wrong and everything seems worse. Without a diagnosis, the next step is to treat a theory, rather than wait for lab results. Repeat this step a few times, till almost the end they finally do solve it. After three weeks, it’s pretty tiresome, like you’ve been admitted in a hospital yourself for a few weeks.
It’s pretty strange why the usually sharp Bryan Singer (from the X-Men movies fame, executive producer of this series and director of a few episodes) didn’t have deja-vu feelings filming his second episode, as even the dialogue follows the same repetitive path the rest of the series does.
With no hope for any character development so far, I confidently declare this series DOA (dead-on-arrival).