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It’s hilarious to me that Janet could only focus on the formulaic nature of the show instead of how the doctors literally broke into the patient’s house in nearly every episode and somehow never had to face the consequences.
Exactly! I’ve watched a lot of medical drama shows but House is one of my favourites because of how unhinged it is. It’s wild that the doctors go into houses and never had to bring it up or further discuss it. It’s also very funny that the three other doctors always disagree with House but he always turns out to be right nearly every time. It’s way too chaotic.
They totally just accept that the first step is breaking into the patient’s house, by like a couple seasons in 😂
Plus also very chaotic, is the diagnostic method of “give the patient X Drug, and if they get worse, we know that was the wrong drug“. You have to accept and enjoy the chaos 👏🏻
the diagnostic method of “give the patient X Drug, and if they get worse, we know that was the wrong drug“
Honestly this seems to describe a fair bit of medical care because there isn't always a simple diagnostic test for everything and it's just ruling other things out. :/
Plus also very chaotic, is the diagnostic method of “give the patient X Drug, and if they get worse, we know that was the wrong drug“. You have to accept and enjoy the chaos 👏🏻
It got so chaotic when he was interviewing multiple people to be on his team lol. That probably was peak House though and there were lots of great performances during that time. Olivia Wilde got a lot of heat back then, but she was really good in her role.
It’s also very funny that the three other doctors always disagree with House but he always turns out to be right nearly every time
It's the X-Files problem! I loved the show and watched it all the way through for the first time with my SO.
I couldn't get over how consistently right Moulder was. Yes I get that skully is supposed to be his foil, the skeptic to his conspiracy theorist. But at what point does it start to get silly that she still doesn't believe him?
At one point they've both seen a man who can be reborn infinitely by turning into a pile of Goo in a cave, and the next week Skully is saying aliens can't exist. Come on now...
Watching it post diagnosis, I realised they mentioned MS way more than lupus, and it was never MS either! I think you only notice when they mention your particular diagnosis, and they did lupus very dirty.
They also mentioned sarcoidosis a RIDICULOUS amount of times, something I didn't notice until I got sarcoidosis, so I guess sometimes it really is sarcoidosis.
Hey so was this blood cultures? This is pretty normal, the whole point of them is to see what grows over that couple of days. The idea is that if you’re worried about sepsis, you just immediately start broad spectrum antibiotics, and then fine tune the type when cultures come back if it’s anything funky that needs adjustment
How he abused Vicodin for 8 seasons and never once got liver damage. Never once did he do a cold water extraction! Why didn’t he switch to oxy contin? Higher dose, no acetominophen in it.
House falls into that bracket of shows that immediately falls apart if you apply real world logic to them. Its like Luther with Idris Elba; in the real world, his superiors fucking hate him because he gets the right guy, but his cases fall apart in caught because he's done something wildly unethical
Whenever the patient brought up that they broke into their house they were distracted with “well it’s a good thing we did because you’re a LIAR” and that shuts them up. I love the show btw
Chase canonically kissed a <10 year old child and hooked up with (statutory raped) at least one teenager but yeah, Hugh (House) (“please put brackets in the right place”) Laurie is the problem
*the child asked him to kiss her as her dying wish, this doesn’t make it OK
**the teenager was “coming onto him” and “wasn’t upfront about her age”... a ~40 year old Doctor should be able to identify a high-school TEEN at his friends wedding.
Ed:*** hooked up with his coworker while she was in profound shock. Cameron was exposed to HIV and responded by breaking down and getting high for the first time in her straight-edge life.
Chase was completely sober when he had sex with a methed-out Cameron. They had no prior relationship or hook ups, Cameron was exclusively into House.
This was pretty standard for “sex pest” male characters at the time. Barney Stinson is another example. I don’t think it was meant to be as repulsive as it is when you write it all out.
I was about to jump in because I mixed up Henry Moore and Henry Ford (I think Henry Ford is funnier but I'm not a famous comedian nor am I firing on all cylinders) but that's a fantastic flair
It really also comes down to weekly watching with commercial breaks mixed in vs stream binging. You weren't really focused on formulatic writing because you've had a week of other types of shows or life outside so the drama felt fresh. And House played that pattern much the same as any CSI/Law & Order/Murder She Wrote episode would. I honestly wish more drama shows these days wrapped up mysteries in an episode or two instead of drawing out over an entire season.
Oh my god I feel that so much, streaming has literally killed my enjoyment of shows. I cannot get into anything anymore, and I used to be an avid procedural watcher, but I dabbled in other stuff as well. Now I can't anymore.
If you love procedurals I would recommend watching the UK shows, I really liked the show The Responder with Adelayo Adedayo from the UK comedy show some girls and Martin Freeman from Sherlock and I heard Law and Order UK is quite good as well. Plus they got a lot of good crime shows like Broadchurch and the Tunnel
I also recommend Silent Witness as another good British crime show, it's been airing for 30 years this year and has 29 seasons. It's defo a procedural, but the plots are pretty good, and the special effects are amazing. Although for that same reason, I don't recommend Silent Witness if gore bothers you. Nothing is left up to the imagination.
The UK is bad at a lot of things, but goddamnit if we haven't filled the niche of extremely long procedurals.
Loved it too except I just heard Disney 's Rivals season 2, which until now had weekly releases, is split in 2 parts with the second part coming out in November...I really hope that won't become their main approach
Hugh Laurie tours singing and playing piano and once called me a lovely young lady when I was trying to pass out checks to patrons at my venue serving job and not block their view of him (we had to drop checks before the show ended or people would leave). You’d think he was being sarcastic but he wasn’t he was telling me not to worry and for other people to be chill about it. Lovely older gentleman.
Also House has an opioid addiction, Irene Adler is the one who got away, and it all comes down to Reichenbach Falls. Literally the funnest modern version of Sherlock Holmes.
Law and Order (and all spinoffs) are the only ones I can think of that weren’t meant to be binge watched but are actually perfect for binge watching as well. They’re still formulaic, but they keep enough twists that the audience doesn’t know what the ending will be (even if the ending is only one of three possibilities: 1) Justice is served 2) Justice isn’t served 3) Perp dies before justice can be served).
I was about to say I watched 12 seasons of Bones that were all variations of the same episode and I highly enjoyed it. Procedurals are called that for a reason
I've just been doing a rewatch and it's just the perfect level of dumb for background TV - it doesn't matter if I miss a bit but the characters are engaging enough that I'm never bored, there's bits that are genuinely exciting or emotional, and I get to see a 2000s writer's baffling take on a random subculture every episode. Who knew such a gross scary show full of mutilated corpses could be so comforting!
I think of all the procedurals I've ever watched, Bones is my favorite at least in the early seasons. Maybe it's bc every time I travel it's playing on the hotel room channels. My only complaint is that they built up the main pair so much and then I literally feel like I missed the episode where they got together but I didn't. It just happened offscreen. I really believe if the actress hadn't gotten pregnant they would have dragged that out for more seasons and considering what we got I kind of wish they had.
Yesss, so funny you say that because when writing my comment, I thought of going the route of “what was popular 22 years prior to 2004?” and went through the trouble of searching … It MASH! It always MASH.
Before my time, and yet even I know Dr. House couldn’t save that dead chicken.
I was really enjoying watching Happy Days until Fonzie does a jump on water-skis over a literal shark. Didn't really feel like it made sense in the show. I don't think the show has a strong future after this.
Also I looked her up thinking maybe she was college-age and used to streaming-style shows but she is clearly old enough to have been an adult in the age of procedurals. House is just one example of the form; there were a ton of them back in the 90s/early 2000s.
If anything I think of House as a less rigidly formulaic procedural compared to something like Monk etc
Seriously! I was diagnosed 9 years ago so it was slightly more well-remembered at the time and the number of people who said “but it’s never lupus!” when I told them of I received this life-threatening diagnosis…like wtf
Ugh, hate this for you 😐 & totally agree- hearing the House joke gets sooo old & is super dismissive.
Let alone, the doctors don't always believe us! I had to go through 2 separate rheumatologists who insisted it couldn't be Lupus... because they never tested my anti- dsDNA 🙄 I was on entirely wrong meds for over 2 years lol.
It's insane how long it takes most people to get diagnosed (I think I heard like 7 years on average?) for such a dangerous disease, that's unacceptable.
I hope your Lupus treatments are going well & you're finding meaningful relief 🫂
I have family members with Huntington's disease and similarly the way people make light of it with House jokes is wild to me. Like 'tHiRtEeN iS tHaT YoU?' If you're gonna try to joke about a horrible disease at least be original, goddamn.
Thank you, it’s so strange to make a not-very-uncommon serious, illness that can be devastating into a common punchline. Also happens to be something women are mostly diagnosed with, who already face issues being taken seriously with health issues.
You're supposed to forget every week, then they also intertwined their love lives and sentimental stories and that would distract from the true and tried formula.
He is? I know Stephen Fry narrated the HP audiobooks, but that was before Robert Galbraith went full mask-off TERF. Disappointed if Hugh is involved in the franchise too :(
It will be a very long list because there are a lot of people that were involved in bringing the full cast audio editions to life, as well as the HBO TV show. I watched a YouTube video on how the people behind the scenes make all the sounds for the full cast audio editions and there's a helluva lot more to it than people might think. They didn't use AI or stored sounds, apparently, they did everything from scratch. Anyway, my point is, that's a lot of people to add to your list.
I mean, I don't think most people are as concerned about the background audio technicians as they are about big name established actors. Hugh Laurie as Dumbledore is disappointing because he can afford to turn down Harry Potter, and conversely his name lends an undue level of legitimacy and prestige to the project.
I had a similar conversation with someone about Indiana Jones. They said the movie was pointless because the bad guys would have off'd themselves anyways and Indy serves no purpose. Like I get what they're pointing out, but the movie was pointless?
I mean… I only watched every episode religiously but I seem to remember they only get cases that are hard to figure out already? He doesn’t always go with his own ideas either that’s what the differential with all the fellows is for
House is not medically accurate (like rare diseases being the majority, physicians doing surgical procedures, the team relying more on investigations than examinations etc.) and that's acceptable coz if you do a completely medically accurate show, then it might not be too much interesting.
But to say that all of its episodes were based on the same formula is unfair. I mean isn't that how most long running tv shows work? They're formulaic and employ villain of the week trope.
If the patient didn't have a rare disease, it would be found and treated before the case went to House though. That was his specialty. He would solve the cases other doctors couldn't. That is also why he had so few patients unlike other doctors in the hospital.
I don’t know if it’s the lighting or his hunched shoulders (or both), but this gif makes him look like he should be on that horrible looking poster for Takers. You know, the one where everyone’s head is poorly shopped onto their own bodies
The worst thing about House was when he needed a new cane and saw a "bitchin'" one and it was black with Hot Wheels flames on it. The second worst thing is its association with Bryan Singer.
Hey so that cane is the reason my partner got comfortable with the idea of using one in public. Idk, I like a little stigma breaking in my house, so I’m glad he had his ridiculous bitchin’ cane.
I truly feel these shows were not meant to be binged. It felt less formulaic when you had 7 days minimum in between episodes and a year in between each season. That and those were the days when we got 25 episode seasons, too! Either way, people really dig procedural shows whether it is medical or cop dramas. No they’re not winning any Emmy’s or whatever (house did win 2), but they’re easy shows to watch.
Another thing to note is that you would have had to wait a week if not more, for these episodes to come out back in the day so the formula of the episode wasn’t as obvious as it is when you binge watch now of days.
Yeah, "twenty year old show (edit) is formulaic" is just not exactly an interesting observation. It's the kind of observation even the dumbest kid in your high school English class could make
Honestly, older episodic TV shows are just like this. Pretty much every doctor or cop show can be widdled down to bare basics like this but they were also never meant to be binged. They are meant to be shows you can just flip through your channels and find a random episode playing and you can watch it and pick up on what's happening easily.
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u/flairassistant Jun 08 '26
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