I was catching up on my tivo now that I’m home, and I watched two episodes of House back to back. Now, I like the show (I know it drives medical professionals crazy, but I don’t know any better so I can enjoy it.) I especially like the soap opera and the mind games people play with each other. It’s far more involving then an episode of 24 where it’s all about shooting, running, torturing someone, and breathless messages to the President.
That being said I really got annoyed today because nothing ever has any consequences. SPOILER ALERT.
So one of the doctors compromised a drug test he was running because he found out his sweetie was on the placebo and not the real drug. The sweetie is begging him not to tell the drug company so he won’t torch his career. Even House is saying it’s not worth losing his medical license. But he’s a stand up guy so he tells the drug company because the sweetie developed some really dangerous side effects. And they tell him they won’t ever let him work on a clinical trial again, but that’s it. So all this build up about how he’ll never be able to practice medicine again was just sound and fury that amounted to nothing.
This happened a few seasons back when House insulted a police detective who decided to go after House for drug abuse (he does abuse prescription drugs.) It went on for episodes, but House never got off drugs, and the cop was forced to back off, and we rewound back to square one.
Now maybe that’s what audiences want — that the situation never changes, the characters don’t change, but it’s starting to bug me. It doesn’t feel like a journey I’m taking with these people. It just feel like mindless repetition (sort of like Republicans. Oh, whoops, earlier post bleed through.)
Anyway, I’d like to discuss this. Do we have to keep things the same? If things change to much will we lose viewers. Is this mindset bleeding over into books? Do we need to hit reset on every form of entertainment now?
