House's decline and fall

[flywoman]

(Reposting my comment on the journal of a non-House fan friend who wanted to know, "So what I'm asking is, what happened to turn so many against it? What the heck COULD have happened that was so awful everyone decided House would be better off with a bullet in its brain?" )



I definitely agree that the format of the episodes has always been very
formulaic. However, one of the biggest complaints among my set this past
year was that too much time was spent on exploring the regulars'
personal lives (especially the House/Cuddy relationship) and not enough
on a compelling Patient of the Week plot. Recent announcements by the
creator that he intended to restore the show to its roots have been met
with cautious optimism. With enough medical mystery ideas, I think the
show could have endured as a beloved procedural for eight plus years.


I think that the big problem has been with the writers' inability to
envision anything like believable character development. In the first
season, House was clearly the hero of the story - eccentric and
misanthropic, but on the side of the angels, willing to risk his career
to save his patient in an unorthodox way, etc. I loved his flirtatious
friendship with Wilson, a fascinating foil to House, and enjoyed the
antagonistic sexual tension with his boss Cuddy. I also enjoyed House's
complicated relationships with the three original Cottages, each of whom
was there to serve a particular professional purpose on the team (once
mocked by House as "No!" "Yes!" "Have you considered the ethical
implications?") but also had an interesting personal dynamic with their
mentor.


I agree with jcello that a once-brilliant show became a parody of itself. I think that the
end of S3 would have been an excellent time for the show to end, and one
of my own favorite fics is an AU in which it does because House is
diagnosed with terminal cancer. Instead, they brought in new characters
(which in the context of a medical school makes sense, but they just
weren't as compelling as the original ones) while failing to move the
old ones along in their careers and personal lives. So on the one hand
we saw stagnation for the secondary characters, and on the other, the
three leads - House, Wilson, and Cuddy - lost their intriguing
multidimensionality and became caricatures of their previous selves.


In particular, starting as early as the second season, one can see the
writers, astonished by the success of their show, start flexing their
muscles in an attempt to see just how unlikeable they can make House
without completely alienating their viewers, and how much psychic pain
he can inflict on himself and those who care about him. This culminated
in a dramatic way with his driving his car into ex-girlfriend Cuddy's
house at the end of S7, but really his behavior had been building to
something on that level of appalling for a long time. Now the actress
who portrayed Cuddy has left the show (and I certainly can't blame her
for that decision!).


Many of us wish that we could quit, too.


ETA: What the heck is wrong with the paragraph spacing on LJ since they changed the rich text toolbar??