"Broken"

[sigma7]

Thoughts re: last night's two-hour premiere of House.

-- Subtract everything that wasn't Cuckoo's Nest and that's not even one full episode.
-- If you believe Scott Morrison's review (and you should), Alvie's "more subdued than most manics [he's] encountered." Wuh.
-- I was dreaming/hoping/praying that the catatonic patient wouldn't be miraculously revived via House's actions by the end of his stay -- that'd just be ridiculous. About the only thing that redeems it is how badly it indirectly devastates him.
-- I liked Dr. Beasley a lot. Almost Elizabeth Mitchell without the ABC logo tattoo. Sad that she got to see asshole-in-full-bloom House as he almost incapacitates the entire population of the hospital inside two minutes of yard time which, while on one level a little fun to watch, was a bit sickening to see from someone who's taken the Hippocratic oath.
-- Couldn't buy Hal in the stall. Can't buy the oral Haldol scene under any circumstances. Forcibly medicating someone as clever as House? For being irrationally violent? Orally? Someone's been sampling the 100mg stupid pills.
-- Not sure I buy the Nolan's dad scene. What I did like was how it altered the dynamic between him and House -- not in terms of adversarial relationship (because aren't all of House's relationships adversarial?) but in terms of power: Nolan loses the power he has but retains the benevolence he's always had -- I was waiting for him to become another Vogler/Tritter scenery-chewing recurring antagonist, but I find this much more interesting. Hope it's not the last we've seen of him. Lydia I can do without, but pretty much anyone else I'd like to see again.
-- The only reason "House raps" doesn't equal "jumping the shark" is because I'm still a little baffled over that whole "House hires a PI" bit. I hoped someone taped it and sends a DVD to PPTH.
-- Are we sure House just had a psychotic break and started hallucinating dead people and isn't being tormented by The First Evil? Who says there can't be a Hellmouth under PPTH? If we have to lose the Massive Attack credits, can we at least replace them with this?

Comments

[roseneko.livejournal.com]

*avoids reading*

Aw, no fair. I have to wait a week for it to come out on Hulu. Although I suppose that's better than waiting the whole season for the DVDs like I used to have to do. :)

[sigma7.livejournal.com]

Well, if you're one of those who hated the formulaic episodes of House, this one these will be a welcome relief, I think. And Hugh is a treat to watch, as always, even when he's all tormented.

[roseneko.livejournal.com]

Quite true. :) I never minded the formulaic episodes so much, as the writers on the show (unlike so many other network TV shows) seem to understand the concept of character development - they know that what's interesting isn't the disease of the week so much as how the main characters react to it and change as a result. But I'm all for shaking up the formula, too; some of the show's most stellar episodes ("No Reason", "Three Stories", "House's Head/Wilson's Heart") have come from them tossing everything out the window and starting fresh. So I'll look forward to it. :)

[erica-roo.livejournal.com]

Alvie's "more subdued than most manics [he's] encountered."

That's good to know because he reminded me to no end of my husband... who is constantly playing drums on anything that stands still and making up songs. Now I can continue to blame the caffiene and not send him to the psych ward. ;-)

[foenix.livejournal.com]

I rather enjoyed last night's episodes. The rehab stuff was pretty typical fare for this sort of stuff, and it had the usual triteness and eye rolling, but the actors were all entertaining enough to make it worth sitting through, especially Hugh.

When we first met the unresponsive girl, I flashed back to Homer in the sanitarium, with the guy who didn't speak, and Homer gets him to with one sentence. "Hi!"
"Hi. ...What, no one ever reached out to me before!"

[samson-of-5.livejournal.com]

I for one enjoyed the entire episode, felt a lot like it could just stand on its own, like a House movie made alongside the series. And just because they didn't do the Massive Attack credits for this, it doesn't mean they aren't going to for the rest of the season. Many shows have done different for a season premiere yet gone back to the same credit roll for the rest of the season. I am quite happy House stopped seeing dead people at least by the time he got out of detox. It's funny to think we went all this time with him taking Vicodin like candy, and here the physical pain wasn't what was making him all that cranky. He ain't cured just yet, but he does have the tools for a full recovery in his braincase. I'm looking forward to see how he handles it this season. I wouldn't be surprised if Cuddy isn't the one with the psychosis by season end. Of course he doesn't have his job back...yet.

[roseneko.livejournal.com]

Okay, finally got around to watching it last night. Some thoughts on your thoughts:

--I'd say it was about half-and-half, myself. But one of the things that struck me was that it seemed quite a bit like a multi-episode arc (possibly three or four normal-length ones) that got compressed into a two-hour timeslot, either because the studio figured people wouldn't want to watch House-in-a-mental-hospital for multiple weeks or because the writers wanted to get to something else. All the basics were there, but it felt a little too pat in places. Never unbelievable, quite (thanks in no small part to the actors), but like there were some additional scenes developing things a bit further that had to be cut. I have no idea if this is the case or not, but if I'm right perhaps they'll have an extended edition on the DVD.

--I actually had that thought, myself. Not that I've met many manics in person, but I took a bunch of psychology classes in college (including Abnormal Psychology) and every description I'd read (and video I'd seen) was about Alvie x5 - literally a constant stream of chatter. Often quite charismatic and persuasive, too - more than one mental hospital employee has had to field calls from interested investors calling about some idea a manic-depressive had sold them on while in a manic state. (Interesting sidenote - the "I don't need my meds" refrain that Alvie gives at the beginning of the episode is a common one among M-D patients. Getting them to stay on medication can be really tricky, because that manic state is a hell of an addictive high on its own. It also doesn't help that the standard treatment drug (lithium) completely leaches all of your emotions away - compared to that, I think I'd be willing to deal with a bout of depression here and there.)

--No real thoughts on the catatonic patient, except that it was sort of expected, so I guess it didn't bug me that much. Or more precisely, my reaction was just sort of "*sigh* Oh well" rather than abject disappointment. :)

--I wasn't such a huge fan of Dr. Beasley. She seemed to me to be trying too hard to channel Nurse Ratched with slightly less venom, which just made her bland and uninteresting.

--Hal in the stall was definitely pushing the limits - I work in a field where employees have to get drug tests, and supervised tests are definitely more rigorous than that. The Haldol sequence I found slightly more believable, though, if only because institutional living tends to encourage the "one size fits all approach" rather than flexible thinking that can adapt to a given situation. I admit I was puzzled why there wasn't a syringe involved, though, especially as Wikipedia tells me intramuscular injection is quite common for the stuff.

--I was actually quite glad that Nolan didn't turn out to be another Vogler (which I was dreading). House's writers have been consistently quite good at almost everything except coming up with believable villains - I didn't find the Vogler or Tritter arcs particularly suspenseful, as we never got anything resembling a real sense of motivation for either of them (petty revenge doesn't count, as it's frankly a boring motivation for any kind of character). Nolan was much more interesting, and I agree that it would be cool to see him again.

--Brian and I were thinking that Hugh Laurie probably has a rider in his contract that he can stipulate at least one crazy thing he/his character gets to do each season - "this season House gets to fondle Cuddy's ass", "this season I want to make out with Franka Potente and do an improv rap", etc. It seems like the sort of thing he'd do. :) I actually thought it was a sweet scene - I think that's the first time we've seen him participate in a group activity that way, and it felt like a genuine reaching-out rather than a scripted activity. (To me, anyway.)