Yes, I get the impression that the writers had in mind a gruff-but-appealing Quincy-type doctor, only more insane and more extreme because the 21st c is cooler than the 20th.
But Laurie invented the character he wanted--I think that's fairly clear. It's all done with the style of the performance, rather than the writing. So I would not say that the writers aimed to hit a compromise position; they just provide situations (what is a noncomedic equivalent to a sitcom? A sitdram?) and then Laurie lets the character off its leash and it runs around and barks, and occasionally bites someone in the leg. That's what was going on in S1, S2, and S3, I think, and it's still more or less working.
(What made me bag the show was its effort to refresh its franchise by introducing a flood of utterly uninteresting new secondary characters. This meant that any scene without Hugh Laurie in it died on the spot. By the end of the 2nd episode the piles of scene-corpses had begun to rot, and some turned into zombie-scene-corpses.)
It's a dilemma for a TV show (or a book, movie, play) when one character has to carry the whole thing. I think it's fine for the character of House not to change. He's a classic antihero. Heroes and antiheroes don't change; they do what they do, and remain consistent--Odysseus, Buffy, Hamlet, Dracula, the Joker, Heathcliff, etc. (Unlike other protagonists, who Learn, and Grow, and Come to a Conclusion--Elizabeth Bennet, Raskolnikov, Macbeth, Lord Jim, Pip, etc.)
It may be that the TV folks want to claim that House is justified (or redeemed) by his magical life-giving properties, but House himself relentlessly denies it. If anything, the tension between the character of House and the ingrained formulaic assumptions and expectations of TV (that the actions of protagonists must always be justified; that protagonists must always be heroes) is the thing that remains interesting in the show.
I'll probably rent S4 and S5 at some point, cause I'd watch Hugh Laurie read the phone book.
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yati
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Date: 2008-12-17 06:24 pm (UTC)But Laurie invented the character he wanted--I think that's fairly clear. It's all done with the style of the performance, rather than the writing. So I would not say that the writers aimed to hit a compromise position; they just provide situations (what is a noncomedic equivalent to a sitcom? A sitdram?) and then Laurie lets the character off its leash and it runs around and barks, and occasionally bites someone in the leg. That's what was going on in S1, S2, and S3, I think, and it's still more or less working.
(What made me bag the show was its effort to refresh its franchise by introducing a flood of utterly uninteresting new secondary characters. This meant that any scene without Hugh Laurie in it died on the spot. By the end of the 2nd episode the piles of scene-corpses had begun to rot, and some turned into zombie-scene-corpses.)
It's a dilemma for a TV show (or a book, movie, play) when one character has to carry the whole thing. I think it's fine for the character of House not to change. He's a classic antihero. Heroes and antiheroes don't change; they do what they do, and remain consistent--Odysseus, Buffy, Hamlet, Dracula, the Joker, Heathcliff, etc. (Unlike other protagonists, who Learn, and Grow, and Come to a Conclusion--Elizabeth Bennet, Raskolnikov, Macbeth, Lord Jim, Pip, etc.)
It may be that the TV folks want to claim that House is justified (or redeemed) by his magical life-giving properties, but House himself relentlessly denies it. If anything, the tension between the character of House and the ingrained formulaic assumptions and expectations of TV (that the actions of protagonists must always be justified; that protagonists must always be heroes) is the thing that remains interesting in the show.
I'll probably rent S4 and S5 at some point, cause I'd watch Hugh Laurie read the phone book.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFD01r6ersw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSk2GWWWCJs