House, what changed?

I am going to devote three blog posts to the three television shows I consider to be the best. These are House,Frasier and Seinfeld. These shows are all very different, but I believe they have more in common, then you'd think. This first one is about House.

House is a show that is completely focused on its main character, the genius, damaged Dr. House. Almost everything the other characters do on the show has some connection to him and in the rare instances that there is no connection to House, the show simply becomes less good.

Dr. House (Hugh Laurie) is a truly genius doctor that saves lives most other doctors can't save. It's interesting that House does indeed know a lot about all kinds of diseases, but that is not the main reason he saves all of these lives. That's his even greater knowledge of the human condition. During the debates about his patient, it are actually his team members that come up with the most possibilities for the disease their patient has. Eventually House finds the cure by deducing the character of his patients. This is practically what happens in every episode and originality is not the shows biggest strengths. However the dialogues are often brilliant and discuss ethical and philosophical issues. There is also a lot of humor.

House himself has some problems too. He is addicted to Vicodin, because his leg is in constant pain. This makes him miserable and misanthropic. He has only one true friend, the oncologist James Wilson. It is often said though that House always was a bit miserable and misanthropic. His leg trouble just made it worse. House is a pessimist, who doesn't have a high opinion of the human race. His two favorite phrases are: "Everybody lies" and "People don't change." Unfortunately most of his patients give him no reason to change his mind. House debates religious people the most. He is a rationalist who tries to find a rational reason for everything.

The main theme of the show seems to be the (in)ability to change. I believe that the show shows that House does want to change. The reason he can't do this is that he believes he needs a big obvious reason to do this. Not for himself, but for the people around him. They need to know that there is something different in his life that is out of the ordinary to truly believe that he is finally going to change. They have known him for so long, that otherwise when he tries to change they believe he lies, that he has some hidden agenda, or that he is having some problem and they start worrying about him. The irony is that House seems to be right about this. To I hope to show this all by citing a lot of different examples from the show.

To a lesser extent all of this also applies to a lot of the other characters on this show.

The first hint of this comes in the season 1 episode 'Babies and Bathwater." A billionaire named Edward Vogler will give money to the hospital if everything in the hospital is to his liking. Of course he doesn't like House, and they get into a lot of fights. Vogler though is willing to forgive and forget everything if House gives a speech about the greatness of a new medicine, which may earn Vogler a lot of money. House doesn't believe in the medicine and deliberately screws the speech. After this, we literally get a glimpse into House's mind. House is fantasizing about talking to Vogler. They are having a friendly conversation and House says that he is sorry Vogler got cancer and that he'll do anything to help him. We see that House thinks that something drastic needs to happen so he can talk normally to Vogler. One may not think that this is very obvious, but this is the first time we get a direct glimpse into House's mind and it's not something that happens very often in the show. It has so far only happened then, in the last episode of the second and fourth season, and during the last couple of episodes in the fifth season. I can't think of other examples unitil the last episode of the second season which is, not without reason called 'No reason.' In it House is shot. During his coma, he hallucinates and looks for reasons why he's shot. House always treats his patients badly and they or their relatives have quite some reasons to hate him. None of them ever shot him though. Since this one did, House thinks his actions had a completely different and worse impact on this guy then on anyone else. There must be a reason for House, why exactly this guy shot him and not someone else. It never occurs to him that this might simply be a bad guy.

After being shot and coming out of his coma House request to be treated with ketamine. Apparently that can diminish his leg pain. For a while it does. During this period we see a reasonably happy House, that treats his patients and the people around him better. At the same time his best friend Wilson bores him to death with his analyzing about why House changed. The ketamine wears off though and House picks up his old habits. The situation is again like it used to be, so House has to be like he used to be. This sets up season 3, the show's greatest season yet.

House gets into trouble when he verbally and physically abuses detective Tritter, a cop who is as stubborn as House and won't back off until he teaches House a lesson. Tritter tries to force House stop using Vicodin. Of course House doesn't want that, but he is in even more trouble when Tritter finds out House has been forging Wilson's handwriting to get even simpler access to Vicodin. This, unfortunately for House, is a criminal act and he can go to jail for it if Tritter can prove this. Tritter offers House a deal though. He can either go to jail and lose his medical license or go to a withdrawal clinic. House doesn't want anything of that. But at Christmas Eve something happens. House almost dies of an overdose. Now this is something that never happened to him, so now he has a reason to go to the clinic. Unfortunately for, now Wilson has a reason too to admit to Tritter that House really forged his autograph. While in the withdrawal clinic House apologizes to Wilson, because he got him into so much trouble. Even though Wilson is his best and only friend, House doesn't treat him too well either and this is the first time in the show we see him sincerely apologize to Wilson. Of course he now has a reason: to apologize is part of the withdrawal course. Every addict has to apologize to someone he hurt because of his addiction. Back in court House is saved by Cuddy's testimony, which is completely unbelievable, but well, if he went to jail the show would be over. He still has to pass a night in jail though for showing contempt for the court. There Wilson again over-analyzes House apology, Tritter can't do anything to House anymore and we're back to the situation like it was before Tritter. And House of course stops the withdrawal course and becomes his old self again. There is no more a reason to behave otherwise.

Still in season 3 there is the episode Half-Wit. On a side note, this episode stars the wonderful character actor Kurtwood Smit, as the harsh father of a piano player. He specializes in playing harsh fathers, most notably in That 70's show and Dead Poets Society. In this last movie he played the father who drove Robert Sean Leonard's character to death. Robert Sean Leonard is the actor that here plays Wilson.

Anyway, in this episode House tries to fake he has cancer. Suddenly Wilson, Cuddy and his fellows all start acting nicely towards him. His condition changed, so now the people around him change their behavior too. Cameron, a fellow of his who has a kind of a crush on him now finally kisses him. Of course this is not a simple kiss. She tries to take a DNA sample to test if there is nothing to be done about his cancer. She needs a reason too to change her behavior. It's important to note that House doesn't want his fellows or his friends to think he has cancer, but some doctors in Boston. They have discovered some drug that they inject in your brain if you have cancer so you don't feel depressed. We assume that House hopes that this will make him happy. More importantly if someone asks why he is happy, he could have a clear-cut answer for it. It doesn't really matter it's unethical. We've seen House do even more unethical things and we've seen him talk about them.

House Training is a pretty important episode. Due to a mistake of House and his fellows a patient dies, which makes Foreman want to resign. But this is not the most interesting part of this episode. House suspects Wilson uses anti-depressants, and hopes to drug him to prove it. He buys two cups of coffee and drugs one of them. He then calls Wilson for a cup of coffee. He gives him the cup that's not drugged. Wilson doesn't trust his friend and takes the other one which is the drugged one. He can't believe that House'd do something nice for no reason.

Foreman eventually does quit and House doesn't seem to be really bothered by that. In fact he even fires Chase when he becomes mad at House. That is not something that hasn't happened before and there is not really a good reason why House should fire Chase. During the show we've seen House predicting the behavior of complete strangers. So it shouldn't surprise him that Cameron, who by now has become Chase's girlfriend, would quit too if he fires Chase. I believe that House saw Foreman's quitting as a great chance to start over with a fresh new batch of fellows. Foreman, Chase and Cameron have known him for so long that, he believes, that they'll probably ask lots of questions if he really tries to change and probably will not believe him.

Well, his plan doesn't really work. First of all Foreman, Cameron and Chase keep working in the same hospital and of course so do Cuddy and Wilson. Secondly all his new fellows want to work with him because of his reputation as a great doctor. But they also know his bad sides. This is a bit of an uneven season, mostly because in the first half of it the writers sometimes make House's character go way over the top. The second half is great again, though with a great climax in the finale. But before that finale there are two other great episodes. The first one is 'Games' where there is lots of discussion about whether their patient of the week can change or is changed. But an even greater episode is 'No More Mr. Nice Guy'. The patient of the weak is there a guy who is to nice for his own good. House looks at this extreme niceness as a symptom for a disease. There is no real reason to do this and it is rightly pointed out to him that he thinks this, because if niceness is a symptom for a disease, then rudeness might be too. Once the disease is cured, the extreme niceness or rudeness will too. The interesting thing is that House's rudeness has of course nothing to do with a disease, the guys niceness though does. But the most interesting part of this episode is that House fakes he has syphilis. And unlike in Half-Wit, this time he does hope everyone believes him. Not because he wants them to feel sorry for him, but because he knows that syphilis can be cured with medicines which as a side-effect can alter ones personality and make one nicer. House starts to act nicer and the people around him really believe him, though they worry that he might lose his diagnostic abilities. House eventually makes the error of telling Wilson that he faked syphilis, but asks him to not tell it anyone. Wilson does tell it though to his girlfriend Amber, who out of spite for House, tells it to his fellows. And so everything turns back to normal. Not for long though. In the two-part finale House gets drunk in a bar and calls up Wilson to pick him up. He is not there, so Amber comes to pick him up. They get in a bus and the bus has an accident. House hits his head hard and becomes unconscious. When he wakes up the rescue workers are underway, but he feels pretty fine and goes to the hospital. Unfortunately he forgets that Amber was with him, but he does have an uncanny feeling that he forgot something. At the end of the first part he remembers and in the second part he and Wilson find Amber in another hospital. She is pretty banged up from the crash, but that's not the worst thing. She was sick to begin with. The crash destroyed her kidneys and after lots of efforts she does die. House who electroshock-ed his brain to remember exactly what happened to her gets into a short coma. He then hallucinates that he is with Amber in a bus. In this scene we finally really realize that House is not happy with his life and really does want to change. He says to Amber that he doesn't want to be miserable, he doesn't want to be in pain and that he doesn't want Wilson to hate him for what happened. In season 5 we'll see House hoping to achieve all those things.

Over the seasons we've seen House causing Wilson, lots of trouble. Wilson was a better friend to House, then the other way round. But Wilson could never stop his friendship with House. Now Amber died, partly due to House, Wilson finally has a real, identifiable reason to stop his friendship with House. At the beginning of season 5 he does just that. The first episode is fittingly called 'Dying changes everything.' Wilson also quits his job at the hospital. It was pretty clear that Wilson would eventually come back and restore his friendship with House. Unfortunately the writers made it happen very fast. This situation lasted hardly three episodes, but it was handled very well. After Wilson breaks his friendship with House, House tries to visit him. Of course he only does this after he finds a reason that he can give for his visit. His patient might have cancer and Wilson is an oncologist. In a brilliantly acted scene by both it is obvious that Wilson does want to restore their friendship, but since nothing changed since last time they talked he can't. They eventually restore their friendship in the episode 'Birthmarks' House's father has died, but House doesn't want to go to the funeral. But Cuddy drugs him and forces Wilson to drive House to the funeral, because House's mother wants him there. Wilson could of course refuse. He doesn't even work for Cuddy anymore. But now he actually has a reason to be with House again. After an interesting road trip where we find out how Wilson and House met and House finds out that his father is not his real father, Wilson and House restore their friendship. Wilson realizes that House is, despite some flaws, a truly unique and interesting person. All is well again. Wilson does not hate House. Birthmarks is the fourth episode and until episode 15, 'Unfaithful' this season is pretty mediocre. There is a bit too much time devoted to Thirteen's troubles with Huntington's disease and there is even a episode with a hostage situation. This episode is probably the worst episode on House. Apart from being very cliched it has also a big plot hole. The hostage taker wants to test every medicine he gets on one of his hostages. If it kills them he won't take it. That is pretty logical, but in the end he ends up with only Thirteen. Thirteen wants to sacrifice herself and take the medicine, even though she has Huntington's and it could kill her. The hostage taker knows this too. Thus it's utterly pointless for him to try the medicine on her first. Eventually all ends well and nor he nor Thirteen die.

Despite all this there are a couple of episodes between episodes 4 and 15 that are worth mentioning. These are 'The Itch' and 'Joy' and 'Joy to the World'. In 'Joy' House and Cuddy kiss. In the next episode, 'The Itch', the consequences of this kiss are examined. Again we see that the characters don't know what to think of this, because there was not really a reason for them to kiss. The episode also seems full of symbolism. House treats an agoraphobic, who is more cowardly then phobic. After treating him, House, calls him out on his cowardly behavior. It actually feels more like House is speaking about himself. At the end of the episode there is a brilliant parallel sequence, where both House and his patient try to be less cowardly. The patient manages to get out of his house. House goes to Cuddy's house, but he just can't bring up the courage to ring up. There is also a weird dream in the middle of the episode where House tries to kill a mosquito and destroys his house in the process. In 'Joy to the World' Cuddy adopts a baby. This shocks House. It's a change for Cuddy, so naturally House thinks this will change their (not romantic) relationship.

As I said earlier this were all fairly decent episodes, but a bit too melodramatic and not really up to the standards of the rest of the show. Luckily this changes by episode 15, Unfaithful. From that episode on till the season finale there is a stretch of brilliant episodes. Unfaithful does not have much to do with the theme of change, but it contains a lot of philosophical debate. The next episode though, 'The Softer Side' deals a lot with change and is one of the best episodes on the show. Everybody is worried when House suddenly starts to act nicely. He has started using methadone. It makes the pain in his leg go away. Unfortunately it also makes him less focused on his cases and at the end of the episode he stops methadone. The cost of his change was to high for him.
In 'Simple Explanation' Kutner kills himself for no apparent reason. House searches for one and when he can't find it he goes literally insane. He starts to hallucinate and sees Amber again. At first he knows he hallucinates, but in the last episode he hallucinates that he stops using Vicodin and has sex with Cuddy. This he thinks is really true. When he finds out it isn't he goes to a psychiatric hospital. Here I unfortunately must stop. Since I live in the Netherlands, I haven't seen anything yet from season 6.

The first steps to this blog.

I've enjoyed movies for my whole life. The movies I remember seeing most in my youth were the Eddie Murphy movies from the end of the 80's and beginning of the 90's. I think that the first movie considered as calssic that I saw was E.T. and I didn't and still don't like it really. When I grew a bit older I started to appreciate other, more serious movies too, like The Shawshank Redemption and Forrest Gump. But still I considered movies to be a bit silly entertainment, not something that could or should be considered as art or even very seriously.

I did like pointless information though and non-fiction books that had chunks of information about all kinds of things. I didn't really like to read books about one single subject. I found it a bit boring. One day someone wondered who played Tess in the Roman Polanski movie of 1979. So I googled Tess and found the information on IMDB, a site that was until then unknown to me. By the way, Tess was played by Nastassja Kinski. Well IMDB is a site full of pointless information about movies. I searched around for actors and actresses, the oscars and the imdb top 250 movies. I mostly forgot the information I found, but I was perplexed that a lot of the movies I liked hadn't won important awards or weren't in the to 250. There seemed to be a lot of movies that were considered better then my favorites.
I believe that somewhere around this time I went to a bookstore where I found a book named "The best movies of the 80's" It was a book that had chunks of information about a lot of movies from the 80's. So I bought it. I enjoyed the book and more importantly realized that one could tell a lot more about movies, then merely that the movie was fun, thrilling or had nice actors in it. Even about Beverly Hills Cop! This book though, didn't spark me to go and see the movies depicted in it, but to read the books "best movies of the 90's" and "best movies of the 70's" of the same series. Anyway, these movies seemed more interesting and now I started to rent these movies or watch them when they were on tv. It were two movies though that made me realize that movies could be more than simple entertainment and that filmmaking might really be considered an art. This were Good Will Hunting and Pulp Fiction.

The first movie showed that a movie could have a really great story and it could be about real human beings with real problems they could overcome. It showed that we could really care about and feel for the characters. The second one showed that a movie doesn't need to be made in only one way, that it could be incredbly original and that even violence could be fun and didn't need to be punished in the movies. And both movies of course had great dialogue and great scenes. I still didn't know much about other things like cinematography and editing, but for then it was enough. I started to really love the movies. Now, I've seen them both a couple of more times, I see they have some flaws. The 'not your fault' scene between Will and his psychiatrist is not on the same level as the rest of the movie and I don't really like Uma Thurman's story in Pulp Fiction. But their virtues still far outweigh their flaws and these will probably always be among my favourite movies, together with Inglourious Basterds and Annie Hall, while Tarantino and Woody Allen are my favorite directors.

This post was inspired by something I found out when I was strolling past these years Oscar-nominations. Someone named Lawrence Bender is nominated for producing Ing. Basterds. I found out he was also nominated for producing Pulp Fiction and Good Will Hunting. I've never heard about him, but he surely spends his money well.

The oscars!

Well, its time for a lighter post. The oscar nominations are in!



The best picture category was expanded and now there are 10 nominees which are Precious, Inglourious Basterds,Avatar,Up in The Air,The Hurt Locker,Up,An Education,The Blind Side,District 9 and A Serious Man.



Precious is a movie with a much longer title. Apparently it's based on the novel Push by Sapphire. I haven't seen it, but it seems a bit bizarre. It is about a pregnant, overweight, black teen who is abused by her mother and her classmates and lives in poverty. She alreday has one kid, and both that one and her current one are because she is raped by her father. On top of that she has AIDS and her first kid she calls Mongo, because it's a mongoloid. I might have forgotten something, but you just can't keep count of all the horrors. I am obviously not very interested in seeing this one. Its oscar-nominated director is Lee Daniels and it's Oprah Winfrey's favourite movie.



Inglourious Basterds is one of the three big favorites to win the oscar. As I said I find it the best movie of the decade. Tarantino is nominated for Best Director and Original Screenplay. Tarantino is a great director, but an anoying speler.



Avatar is another one of the big favorites. I have seen this movie. I do not like it very much, but the movie and James Cameron deservedly are nominated for Best Picure and Best Director. It's story isn't very good, but Cameron has created a completely new and unique world all by himself. He,Tarantino and the Coens are probably the only directors whose movies probably couldn't have been made by anyone else. He will probably lose to Bigelow though, which means that he should expect jokes to be made about him, especially at the Balkans.



Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker is the biggest favourite. In fact all the other nominated directors say they hope that Bigelow will win. They probably like the movie, since apart from Tarantino they are all married or gay(Daniels). Jokes aside, I haven't seen The Hurt Locker, but it probably is a great movie. Some even consider it one of the best war movies ever made. If Bigelow really wins, she'll become the first woman to win a best director oscar.



Up in the Air I'have already discussed at length. Jason Reitman is the most likeable director and he managed to get his dad an oscar nomination for producing. Jason Reitman now suddenly has 4 oscar nominations in three years. That's more than many acclaimed directors in there whole career.



I haven't seen Up, and I don't really plan to. I am not a big fan of Pixar, but it was only a matter of time when one of their movies would get an oscar nomination for best picture. It's also nominated for best animated feature. In Up stars Christopher Plummer. He stars in three of these years oscar-nominated pictures. Besides Up these are The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus and the Last Station, for which he got nominated for a best supporting oscar. There he plays the famous Russian writer Tolstoy.



An Education seems like a classic oscar-movie which I'll see some day. I have absolutely no idea what to write about this one.



The Blind Side and A Serious Man have got only one other nod, besides their best picture. I don't believe that some other time a movie was nominated for best picture with only two nominations. A Serious Man deserved more, and judging from the trailer The Blind Side seems a horrible movie and deserves less.



District 9 is probably the first South-African movie to be nominated for an Oscar. 2010 starts well for South Africa. That is hopefully a good sign for the football world cup that's going to be held there this year. Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon also got nominated for Invictus. Playing Nelson Mandela is probably the easiest job Freeman ever had. As for Matt Damon he has been nominated twice for an Oscar now. The first time he played a genius, now a rugby player. He's obviously versatile. He also seems to need a Cameron blockbuster.



The acting categories are a bit boring since it almost completely certain that Jeff Bridges,Christoph Waltz,Sandra Bullock an Mo'Nique(Apparantly no last name) will win.

Leading nominees are Colin Firth, (one of the dullest actors I've ever seen. He usually plays people who are depressed because of a woman. This one is different though. Now he is depressed because of a man.)George Clooney,(who plays an ordinary man, which is probably very though for him.)and Jeremy Renner for Best Actor.
For Actress the others are Carey Mulligan ( apparently considered the new Audrey Hepburn), Meryl Streep for the hundredth time, Helen Mirren and Gabourey Sidibe, who got prestige because she doesn't resemble her character Precious at all. That's not a surprise.
Other Supp. Actors are Stanley Tucci and the very underrated Woody Harrelson
Unfortunately no Melanie Laurent or Diane Kruger for Supp Actress, but Penelope Cruz, Maggie Gyllenhaal,Vera Farmiga and Anna Kendrick.

Finally a very funny fact: George Clooney is nominated for playing a character named Ryan Bingham. Some real person named Ryan Bingham is nominated in the Best Song category for writing the song The Weary Kind for the movie Crazy Heart.