You want Dr. Gregory House around when you stop breathing or can't stop bleeding. But he's a lousy dinner guest. The title character in Fox's hit drama is a curmudgeonly ball of bile. House hates his patients, mocks his co-workers and can't stand himself much of the time. Third-world dictators have better bedside manners.
"For years television made the mistake of saying: the character has to be likeable," House creator David Shore told the Canadian magazine Maclean's. "Well, no, the character has to be interesting. I fully expected to get a note from Fox saying: 'Make him likeable. Give him a puppy. Write him a dying grandmother.' But I never got that note."
House, a medical whodunit once described as "CSI with germs," has been a ratings winner for four seasons, thanks largely to the show's dour doctor. According to Shore, House (played by Hugh Laurie) is modeled after Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle's brilliant-but-aloof detective. In every episode, House and his team of medical sleuths tackle mysteries, often saving lives. But their behavior would have appalled Holmes' Victorian-era audience.
They objectify patients and discuss their own sex lives in graphic terms. In any given episode viewers may encounter homosexuality (it has been suggested that one doctor may be bisexual), masturbation, pornography or other crass subjects. For much of last season, the Vicodin-addicted protagonist referred to a woman as "the cutthroat b--ch."
He also has a disturbing view of religious faith. "Faith. That's another word for ignorance, isn't it?" he says during one episode. House derides patients' spirituality, calling them "stupid" and "idiots" behind their backs. His arrogance leads him to tell a Hasidic Jew, "You will let me treat [your wife], because in this temple, I am Dr. Yahweh."
Nevertheless, episodes have challenged House's cynical world view. And while the producers would rather ask questions than provide answers, they wrestle with moral issues from diverse points of view. For example, last year House encountered a pregnant woman whose unborn baby was, somehow, killing her. He called the baby a "tumor" and advised her to abort. She refused. House operated on the child in utero to save both lives and, during the operation, the baby grabbed House's fingertip with his tiny hand. House was uncharacteristically at a loss for words. Trying in vain to shrug it off, he later wound up sitting alone, deep in thought, feeling the tip of his finger.
If only that was the norm. Over the show's Emmy-winning run we've seen enough evidence of moral malpractice to suggest that families seek treatment elsewhere.
