Cottage Industry
It's been all TV, all the time for me recently. Such is my backlog of shows to watch (I'm on to my sixth 25-disc DVD cake, and still have stuff in the second that I've yet to see. That's not to mention the 120GB HD in my downloading machine and the 80GB HD in my watching machine - yes, they're different - that are both also full) that I've had to step it up from merely three or four eps a night before bed - I've had to start much earlier, breaking only for dinner. I'm determined to greet the start of the new US TV season in September with nothing outstanding to watch.
It's Rapidshare's fault, of course - Rapidshare and BitTorrent. A Rapidshare premium account is a dangerous thing for someone as helplessly addicted to long story arcs as I am. I watched Invasion in sodding HRHD, for example - High Resolution HDTV, 700MB per episode: 17GB for a 22-ep season. Good stuff it was, but the knowledge that you get another 3,000MB every day from Rapidshare just means that you end up scouring the web for forums with rapidshare links for TV shows. I found some good ones, downloaded some stuff I'd never heard of that came well recommended - now I've got to watch it all.
Not falling into that last category is House. I've been aware of House since midway through its first season, and continued to download it despite having watched the first few eps and then not stuck with it. It was good, but had the feel of a strict procedural which makes for a tedious "monster/crime/case/disease of the week" feel which plagues much American TV since the networks are unshakeably convinced that their audience comprises exclusively drooling morons incapable of remembering story threads week to week. This fatuous assumption having been comprehensively blown out of the water by the success of 24, not to mention later seasons of Buffy and Angel, the networks unsurprisingly insisted that their showrunners continue to waste the potential for complex, involved stories of episodic television and instead make standalone eps (see Season 5 of Angel after the astonishing achievement of Seasons 2, 3, and 4).
It took several comments on the front page of Television Without Pity to alert me to the fact that House had not been condemned to this fate. So I watched nearly two seasons in a fortnight, and am glad to say it lives up to the promise of the early episodes, promise that nonetheless seemed destined to drown in procedurality. We still meet the case of the week before the credits (a formula from which the show has deviated only two or three times), but increasingly less screen time is devoted to its solution in the episode, the writers evidently realising what a rare and brilliant combination of character and actor they have in House and Hugh Laurie and therefore preferring to get their money's worth rather than simply having him standing around regurgitating medical terms.
However, the show nearly tripped up recently. Spoilers follow, for those thousands of House fans beating a path daily to this blog who might not be entirely up-to-date. I say "tripped up" - I'm sure nothing of the kind was ever likely, but the audience only realises this at the very end of the arc. House becomes the target of a vendetta by a policeman whom he humiliated, leaving him in an exam room with a thermometer up his rectum with no intention of returning (this before House knew his occupation, of course). The cop, ably (ie hatefully) played by David Morse, responds by exploiting House's belligerence and his Vicodin dependency to bring him within a whisker of disbarrment and jail. No sane TV show, of course, would ever send its main character to jail for more than a night, which is exactly what happens, because "at the last minute" the principal witness against House alters her statement just enough to derail the prosecution.
The point is, we know House is a prick. He's rude, and insensitive (the recapper at TWoP, whose name is Sara M, is convinced House is racist because he doesn't overlook that fact that one of his assistants (whom she memorably calls The Cottages) is black. He's not racist, Sara - it's just your hairtrigger cultural assumptions. If he were racist, he wouldn't employ Foreman, or he would pay him less than the others, or he would routinely denigrate his ability as a doctor on the basis of his skin colour. None of these he does. I notice you don't get upset when House mocks Chase's Australian accent. This is no less racist, but because Chase isn't black, you let it slide), and he's a drug addict - but we also know that that is how he functions and how he performs his difficult tasks better than anyone else. The risk the show ran, or appeared to be running, was that it seemed House was going to get his comeuppance, so beloved of Hollywood hackery, for his abrasiveness and unorthodoxy. By comeuppance, I don't mean that House would have to go to jail - as already noted, that's not an option for a TV show. But what I didn't - with a passion, I didn't - want was to have House chastened, muzzled or emasculated by the experience. So the sight of him, fresh out of rehab, knocking back Vicodin in the cell in which he was spending the night for contempt of court, was a tremendous relief. I would have had to stop watching the show otherwise.
It's Rapidshare's fault, of course - Rapidshare and BitTorrent. A Rapidshare premium account is a dangerous thing for someone as helplessly addicted to long story arcs as I am. I watched Invasion in sodding HRHD, for example - High Resolution HDTV, 700MB per episode: 17GB for a 22-ep season. Good stuff it was, but the knowledge that you get another 3,000MB every day from Rapidshare just means that you end up scouring the web for forums with rapidshare links for TV shows. I found some good ones, downloaded some stuff I'd never heard of that came well recommended - now I've got to watch it all.
Not falling into that last category is House. I've been aware of House since midway through its first season, and continued to download it despite having watched the first few eps and then not stuck with it. It was good, but had the feel of a strict procedural which makes for a tedious "monster/crime/case/disease of the week" feel which plagues much American TV since the networks are unshakeably convinced that their audience comprises exclusively drooling morons incapable of remembering story threads week to week. This fatuous assumption having been comprehensively blown out of the water by the success of 24, not to mention later seasons of Buffy and Angel, the networks unsurprisingly insisted that their showrunners continue to waste the potential for complex, involved stories of episodic television and instead make standalone eps (see Season 5 of Angel after the astonishing achievement of Seasons 2, 3, and 4).
It took several comments on the front page of Television Without Pity to alert me to the fact that House had not been condemned to this fate. So I watched nearly two seasons in a fortnight, and am glad to say it lives up to the promise of the early episodes, promise that nonetheless seemed destined to drown in procedurality. We still meet the case of the week before the credits (a formula from which the show has deviated only two or three times), but increasingly less screen time is devoted to its solution in the episode, the writers evidently realising what a rare and brilliant combination of character and actor they have in House and Hugh Laurie and therefore preferring to get their money's worth rather than simply having him standing around regurgitating medical terms.
However, the show nearly tripped up recently. Spoilers follow, for those thousands of House fans beating a path daily to this blog who might not be entirely up-to-date. I say "tripped up" - I'm sure nothing of the kind was ever likely, but the audience only realises this at the very end of the arc. House becomes the target of a vendetta by a policeman whom he humiliated, leaving him in an exam room with a thermometer up his rectum with no intention of returning (this before House knew his occupation, of course). The cop, ably (ie hatefully) played by David Morse, responds by exploiting House's belligerence and his Vicodin dependency to bring him within a whisker of disbarrment and jail. No sane TV show, of course, would ever send its main character to jail for more than a night, which is exactly what happens, because "at the last minute" the principal witness against House alters her statement just enough to derail the prosecution.
The point is, we know House is a prick. He's rude, and insensitive (the recapper at TWoP, whose name is Sara M, is convinced House is racist because he doesn't overlook that fact that one of his assistants (whom she memorably calls The Cottages) is black. He's not racist, Sara - it's just your hairtrigger cultural assumptions. If he were racist, he wouldn't employ Foreman, or he would pay him less than the others, or he would routinely denigrate his ability as a doctor on the basis of his skin colour. None of these he does. I notice you don't get upset when House mocks Chase's Australian accent. This is no less racist, but because Chase isn't black, you let it slide), and he's a drug addict - but we also know that that is how he functions and how he performs his difficult tasks better than anyone else. The risk the show ran, or appeared to be running, was that it seemed House was going to get his comeuppance, so beloved of Hollywood hackery, for his abrasiveness and unorthodoxy. By comeuppance, I don't mean that House would have to go to jail - as already noted, that's not an option for a TV show. But what I didn't - with a passion, I didn't - want was to have House chastened, muzzled or emasculated by the experience. So the sight of him, fresh out of rehab, knocking back Vicodin in the cell in which he was spending the night for contempt of court, was a tremendous relief. I would have had to stop watching the show otherwise.
posted by Novus at 14:36
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