House, on FOX
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*Since A.V. Club has changed its formatting, I can no longer find its reviews for this series.

British comic actor Hugh Laurie plays Dr. Gregory House. It's really hard to get used to him doing an American accent. He's very believable. In fact in one episode he faked a British accent, which was amusing for its irony, but also because I thought he really sounded like an American faking a British accent. But that's neither here nor there. The character is a bitter, sarcastic genius who no one likes. He has a bad leg and walks with a cane, but he's pretty much always had the personality he has now, so that's not the cause of it, nor does it get him much of any sympathy. He does have one friend, Dr. James Wilson. And House also supervises a team of intelligent young doctors: immunologist Dr. Allison Cameron (Jennifer Morrison), neurologist Dr. Eric Foreman, and intensivist Dr. Robert Chase. Together the team each week tries to figure out what's wrong with some patient. The stories follow a pretty predictable pattern: House is disinterested in the case and refuses to take it on; House learns there's something strange about the case, and then takes it on; the team come up with several possibilities, and some of them will be wrong, and possibly the treatment makes the patient worse; finally they figure out the truth, and save the patient's life.

All the while, House will believe he's right, and finding out he was wrong never seems to change his attitude much, nor does it make him any more likely to doubt himself, from week to week. He just never stops distrusting people. He always tries to be completely honest himself, even when that means being rude, offensive, off-putting. He also often ignores the rules in order to do what needs to be done to save a life. This of course always annoys Dr. Lisa Cuddy (Lisa Edelstein), the hospital administrator who has to deal with all the legal and ethical troubles House keeps causing.

There is some character exploration in the series. We mainly just get to know House, but we do learn a little about his staff, who often disagree with one another. And Dr. Cameron was also interested in House romantically, but nothing came of that. At the end of season one they had one date, which didn't go well. Also at the end of the season, House's ex, a lawyer named Stacy Warner (Sela Ward), shows up wanting House to help figure out what's wrong with her husband, and save his life. She returns in season two as a lawyer for the hospital, which is awkward since House still has feelings for her.

And that's pretty much all I can think to say. The first season I wasn't watching, probably because I was watching something else in its time slot. But I read a lot of good stuff about it, so I watched reruns over the summer, and rather liked it. So I thought I'd watch season two, but... there were two other things in its slot that I wanted to watch, so I... think I watched a few reruns again next summer, though probably not as many as I had from season one. And after that, I pretty much stopped trying altogether, so I don't know what's been happening past the second season. It's a good show, because the medical mysteries are interesting... but mostly I like it because House is an interesting character, and he's really funny. He gets to say very acerbically funny things because he doesn't care if anyone likes him. Which makes the audience, if not the people around him, like him. But the thing is... as much as I enjoy the show, I think it's interesting and well written and acted... I don't feel like there's really much plot to follow. This doesn't bother me, but at the same time, it made me not mind if I missed any episodes (when I was still watching), and not mind that I eventually stopped watching. But it's definitely a good show.