Summary:
Hugh Laurie is Dr. House, a genius diagnostician who is bitter and cruel yet is many people's last hope. Working at Princeton Planesboro Hosptial House commands a team of three bright doctors, Dr. Eric Foreman (Omar Epps), Dr. Allison Cameron (Jennifer Morrison), Dr. Robert Chase (Robert Sean Leonard), almost always referred to simply by their last names. Their boss boss is Dr. Lisa Cuddy (Lisa Edelstein), the hospital administrator. House walks with a cane and you soon learn that this is because he had a near-deadly thigh infarction (basically a heart attack in your leg), the situation most attribute to his bitterness and to which he justifies his incessant pill popping of vikodin. House's closest "friend" in the hospital is Dr. James Wilson, again usually only referred to as "Wilson," a cancer specialist who somehow bears with House's jokes and puns and tries to help House and give him advice, both in life and in diagnostics.
Critique:
Some of my friends kept pushing me to watch this show and I expected some fluff like ER. The medicine is more intense and more intriguing - forget the sappy shit of patients dealing with death - House jumps in with his wit and cynicism and you can't help but smile. The show is intense and interesting, when there is social melodrama its rarely drawn out like ER or even Scrubs, and most things are resolved in only an episode. The shows make you laugh while keeping you interested in each of the new cases and the clinic type format the show keeps alive brings in multiple new patients while bringing new victims to House's acerbic wit. At the same time, the first fourteen or so episodes seem wayward and lost, rudderless as each episode has little to no connection to the previous episode and they start to seem the same: intro collapse, bodily refussal of treatment, trache the patient, House figures it out. However, in episode 15 the show introduces an interesting element that carries over for about six episodes that binds the episodes together and makes them more interesting. The formula essentially stays the same, but not the episodes are building on each other. This continues in the end where another new development keeps the episodes interesting and unified. All the actors are great but Hugh Laurie is simply amazing - literally becoming House (something presumably difficult because Laurie is British and very nice). His lines are delivered perfectly, great timing, great attitude, he becomes the perfect cynic, the perfect "hero."
Verdict:
If you missed these the first time around, they're worth the $40 on DVD
If you liked this show, watch...
...Nip/Tuck
...Bones
...Scrubs
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