Hello and welcome to Watch This, our regular feature in which we take a chunk of British television, welcome it into our living room office, listen to it cough while we clutch its dramatic undercarriage, consider its pop-culture symptoms, and then offer a diagnosis through commentular debate, real time review, live critique, and really bad extended metaphor.
This week, if you hadn't but guessed it, we'll be watching the return of some major-league award-winning US hospital drama on Five. First, House, starring the eminently lickable Hugh Laurie from 9-10, and then, if we're not medicoed out, and depending on how it's going, the new series of Emmy award-whiny Grey's Anatomy starts at 10.
Now obviously these are dramas, which move a lot faster being - or so you'd hope, more tightly plotted and better written than reality television. Therefore it won't be possible to do an exact blow by blow, unless I pause the magic telly box every minute and a half and finish the whole charade 42,000 words and 9 hours later. And no one wants that.
So instead, it'll be more of a brushstrokes affair (you know, with the guy from the cleaning product adverts) where we look at the general enjoyableness, random observations, and a tally of something random. Like a) the amount of diagnoses given to the patient before we hit the correct one (usually anywhere between one and eleventy-billlion), b) the number of times Hugh Laurie emphasises a word using his chin, or c) pinpointing the moment of zen that will lead to the inevitable mental leap and subsequent diagnostic breakthrough.
Stil, though, in case you haven't yet seen it and are waiting for the perfect moment to crack open the show: WARNING: Spoilers May Be Involved. Obv.
8.55: Has it started yet? I am very excited. I do so love Hugh. I mean House.
Yes, it's as formulaic as chese on toast, but that's not necessarily a BAD thing, is it? You put some cheese on some toast, stick it in the grill, and jobs a good'un, perfect hassle-free snack. And so it is with House. But the cheese is a patient. And the toast is a hospital bed. And the grill an MRI. Apart from that, exactly the same.
9.04: There are two people arguing, by phone. Excellent. At any moment, one of them will keel over, and blood will start pouring out of their head. or their ears. Or out of their other end, as (apologies for being coarse) sometimes happens. But who will it be?
They're having an argument about going to the cinema. But she feels ill. In fact, the room around her is spinning. Or not spinning, so much as shaking. Quite a lot. As the room starts to vibrate, violently she shouts at her enamorata on the other end of the line. "Call 911, I'm hallucinating!".
And then is immediately proved wrong when the building falls on her.
9.03: Titles. Oooh, bagsy I know what's wrong with her! A building fell on her! Is that it? Was I right? Is the programme over? I win.
9.05: No, those were not the end titles. Apparently it will be more complicated than that. Phew.
House is he stands in his office playing a guitar far too loud for a hospital where you'd think people might be trying to rest up. Luckily, pretty lady-boss Cuddy turns up to tell him off about it.
Oh. No, she doesn't. She wants to talk about the patient, and about the fact that since House's team left him he has done nothing.
"In what universe does mastering Eddie Van Halen's two-handed arpeggio technique qualify as 'absolutely nothing'?" Laurie mugs, mainly with his chin.
[Chinny=ONE]
House says the lady had a building fell on her. I said that!
Cuddy says she has a very big fever. Has anyone checked there isn't a radiator stuck up her bum? Could happen. Force of impact and whatnot?
Ahem.
9.07: As those who have watched the end of the last series will know, House and his happy band of three little Houses (bungalows?) have been rent asunder, by one of them being fired and the other two leaving.
Bosslady Cuddy and House's best friend Wilson (that bloke from Dead Poet's Society who shot himself in the head)(but is better now) are arguing about the best way of getting House to hire some more people. Which he says he doesn't need.
Back in his office House is writing words on his big white board. Or 'whiteboard' as I believe it's known in medical technical terms. And asking three empty chairs about what they think.
"Are you talking to me?" Comes a voice. Has the team come back?
Oh. No. It is a portly cleaner. Nevertheless, he is immediately brought into the room and made to act as team, being asked to diagnose a piece of cleaning equipment that he found crushed yet running hot in his cupboard. Various ideas are tossed around.
"Maybe it's lupus!" says the cleaner.
Oh, my son, so much to learn. It's NEVER lupus. Three series of this, and every week someone suggests it is lupus, and every week it is never lupus.
9.09: House takes the cleaner - now known as Dr Buffer, to see the patient, where he asks intrusive questions and is generally rude to the boyfriend and mother of the unconscious one. While clearly better at being a cleaner, Dr Buffer makes a good doctor, actually patting people on the shoulder and saying "We'll make her all better" whether it's true or not.
Laurie makes a point without actually saying anything, using chin alone. Chin = 2!
9.11: House has asked the cleaner to break into someone's house, which he will for $50. House looks pensive. Chin.
Ad Break.
9.14: Ah. Apparently $50 is too much for a break in. Perhaps Hugh has forgotten the exchange rate, because that's very cheap.
Having broken into the house, House sticks his head under the sink, and has a lie down on the bed, giving us time to consider the texture of stubble against the coloured sheets.
Phew. After opening a window, we continue watching.
He's found a diary, and raided the fridge, and reached diagnosis one. She was depressed and on anti-depressants, which have reacted with her pain relief. Diagnosis one!
9.17: She needs dialysis, Dr Buffer informs the family, asking them to sign a form.
They ask what he's not telling them. And find out he's a cleaner.
In Cuddy's office, seconds later, we are treated to the same old 'Everybody Lies' conclusion. And then, satisfied that this diagnosis and a dose of dialysis will do it, House limps off. On the same leg he always has?
Yes. Of course. He's award-winning, you know.
9.20: House happily goes back to his office and switches on the amplifier to play guitar, triumphantly.
A long lead trailing across a room, and up a wall, to a note in cut out newspaper letters 'I have your guitar, await further instructions'.
The phone rings. Ah! The comedy subplot!
Wilson has kidnapped the guitar until House interviews and appoints a team.
9.22: When Cuddy talks to the lady in the bed, whose name I still haven't got, she is reactive, but seems frighted by something. Perhaps she is scared of Hospitals. Or doctors. Or hospital doctors who are prone to wearing ridiculously short skirts and pouting.
House and Cuddy then toss around some ideas about why the fever thing isn't working. House leans, manfully on his cane. Cuddy sits on a table, leaning against her free hand, her long legs propped at a right angle on the chair beneath her, her long, mahogany curls falling over the shoulder of her silken lab coat.
Really? Head of medicine? REALLY? Is there a doctor in the house that can confirm or deny this kind of behaviour?
Oh! Doctor in the house! Doctor in the house! House! Get it?
Shit, I'm missing loads.
9.24: House treats her again, notices she's still sweaty. Diagnosis two! Alcoholism. She has the DTs.
The family say No! We would have known! What do you mean! He say Well you didn't know she was depressed. They say Oh yes, you're right there.
9.25: Cuddy goes to give some treatment for the DTness. She notices that the patient is doing something funny.
She is opening and closing her mouth and visibly straining. You know what I think it is? I think she is on heat. My kitten is on heat and sitting in front of me doing Exactly That. Except with her bum in the air.
Oh no. She is, pouts Cuddy, screaming. Silently. This is more poetic than my theory, I won't deny it.
Ad break.
9.31: Diagnosis three! Pancreatitis. Cuddy and House are arguing about whether pancreatitis is caused by the IV alcohol or not. And then Cuddy stops arguing. Refusing to enable the non-team diagnosis of House any longer.
9.33: The comedy subplot continues apace. We already had a mysterious faked beeper page where House got Wilson out of his abode so he could sneak in, look for his guitar and erase his favourite shows from TiVo. Now 'someone' has sent a disemguitared fretboard to House in a box. All of this surrounded by dialogue which is light and frothy and one of the things that people love about this show.
And which totally doesn't work if I try and write it down.
9.36: I win! Again! During an MRI, while House and Wilson discussed the recruitment of a new team, the patient started bleeding from the mouth AND anus! That's what I said at the beginning of the show!
Bum-bleeding FTW!
Sorry. There are possibly other things to crow about. No, no, actually, that'll do fine. Yay! I was right!
9.38: The patient is taken into surgery, because of all that terrible internal bleeding. During a non-enabling discussion in the gallery above the surgery, House has another brainwave.
Diagnosis four! She has recently had an abortion. To check this, of course, he suits and gloves up and goes into the OR, and checks under her big blue skirt. "If you want to see vaginas" says the surgeon, "there are websites for that" "Do I look like I'm made of money?" Says House.
Nice.
He stalks out of surgery and breaks it as gently as he can (not at all, then) to the boyfriend/husband that his partner had had an abortion and was on the pill, so didn't want children, like she'd said. This on top of being a depressive alcoholic.
In the meantime, there is the boyfriend of another of the people in the building collapse, who has just died (the person, not the boyfriend) "Then why are you still HERE?", Laurie chins.
Seriously, I's bedside HIS manner, I really would. Is that a phrase? It is now.
9.43: Diagnoses 5, 6 and 7. Dr 'I don't need a team' House has gone down to the emergency room and is shouting at all the doctors to answer his questions. One feisty young lady takes up the challenge, and rationally explains why it is both Crush Syndrome (I said that! A building fell on her!) and some other syndrome, and something else as well. The problem with these things combined is that, well, she's pretty much fucked. To put it in technical medical terms.
After telling the family just this, he notices something else. There's a lump on her arm.
Diagnosis 8! She's allergic to something! FFS!
9.47: Meawhile, by the way, in the comedy subplot, House has stolen and hidden an elderly cancer patient of Wilson's.
Oh how we laughed!... No, really, we did. Or sort of chortled, anyway. Or kind of made a 'shnuh!' nose-laugh noise.
9.49: There's an ad break. How's it going? Is this GOOD? Is it what I've been waiting for all these long months?
Actually yes. Though I do miss his team. Even the one who used to be in neighbours.
By the way, just before the ad break, I think we had House's revelatory moment of zen.
9.52: Ah yes, he did.
And he has come to the family and said yes, I thought there was all this stuff she hadn't told you. But actually ... the only way it was completely explainable was ... if this isn't her.
And it isn't! It is the other man's girlfriend, the one that died yesterday, remember?
He even pulls the tube out of her throat and asks what her name is. She says it is 'Liz', which means a lot if you have been watching this closely enough to realise what everyone's name is.
Oh right, yes, it's the wrong one.
"Your girlfriend never lied to you" he tells the boyfriend of the apparently dead woman who isn't in this room. Belatedly.
9.57: Have they done that storyline before?
Ah, well, whatever. And so it ends, with a nice little scene of House giving one of his back-turned, deadly one-liners to the sound of an opening door... and then discovering it is not the intended victim, Cuddy, but the rotund cleaner again.
Then delivering it pitch-perfect when the door opens again, and it DOES happen to be Cuddy this time. "I did it all by myself, mommy" he says "How did you know it was me?" says the clueless Dr Inflatable.
And then we see him. Back with his guitar, and setting up some potential candidates for a trail run.
"In six weeks, one of you will be gone. And another 28 of you..."
That's right, he has a team. Of dozens. How jolly.
10.00: And that's that over with. And it remains one of the only shows that I don't immediately want to download/buy a whole season of and watch them all at once, mainly because you just can't watch that many things that formulaic in a row.
Apart from Murder She Wrote, obv.
10.01: Grey's Anatomy is starting, and I'm going to drop down to once every break, as there are too many characters, and I don't know the show as well. Mainly because I watched the whole previous series over one week quite a while ago. And though it is unutterably whingy, as a show, it still makes me cry almost every single episode. Against My Will. And with no indication of how. It is a manipulative little tyke of a programme, it really is.
10.13: First break!
Ok, so far we have had: - Blonde Izzy weeping on the floor covered in only a prom dress, wailing over the death of her short lived hunky heart-patient fiance Denny. A lot. - An abandoned baby and some catholic school girls. - A car crash victim who turned out to have THE PLAGUE. Seriously. - A bunch of surgeons and patients in quarantine, because of that. - Ellen Pompeo eating a sandwich and calling it comfort food. Really? Because that certainy explains her weird big round head. It is entirely made of carb run-off. - Lots of flashbacks. Not to the last series, but to events we have not seen before - the mixer drinks for the new medical interns, etc.
Also, we have had titles that were still running across the bottom of the screen at 10.12. I know it's commonplace, but it still amuses me. Mainly because it means that for the first quarter of the show, the subtitles cover almost everyone's faces.
Question: Sacla pesto advert with the man and the hitting kitchen implements and the 'SA!' 'CLA!' 'SA!' 'CLA!' - is it actually from the 80s, or is it some weird nostalgia thing?
10.29: Second break!
In the second portion: - A lot of whining about dead Denny. Yeah, Izzy, he was fit, but you knew him for about half an hour, and most of that time he was on his back. And not in a good way. - A flashback to the moment that Dr McDreamy first threw his big ginger wife out of the house for cheating. - Sandra Oh, whose doctor-name I cannot remember, telling everyone what it means to sit shiva over the dead. And much as I love Sandra, I went to the toilet. But if anyone wants to know, I can give a brief summary of it later. Shiva, I mean, not my toileting. - Handwringing over abandoned babies and parents who don't want to admit their daughters might be sexually active. - The nice (comparatively-)podgy doctor who was mysteriously going out with George obsessing a bit more over George. Oh move ON my love, my dear Callie. He's Just Not That Into You. Or was that another show?
10.44: Third break!
We have: - had some more whining - lost a patient; the car crash/plague victim. Obviously. - had a touching scene between the plague victim's plague-ridden husband, Omar - who is losing his Omarbles - and Bailey, who is very upset about something we can't remember from the end of series two. - wished Five had run a couple of episodes from the end of the last series into the beginning of this one. Because there's emoting all over the place, frankly, and though I felt connected the last time I saw the episode they're emoting about, I'm thoroughly disconnected from it now. - watched George sweat a lot, and worry he had the plague and hadn't had the chance to tell Callie he 'might love her one day'. 'Maybe'. She should think her lucky stars. - Found out the teenage mother of the abandoned bathroom baby. The giant ginger doctor cried. Addison. Really. Who would call a child 'Addison'?
11pm: Last break, and it is over: - Dr McDreamy is in love with the heroine, lollipop doctor. - Grey's Anatomy makes you start talking gibberish (see preivous sentence, immediately above) - After lying on the floor in a prom dress for 24 hours, Izzy stands up and declares herself 'Ready'. Wow. Now THAT's rational thinking. No point in hanging about mourning. Especially when you only knew him for 27 minutes, as previously discussed.
And over all, what we have learnt? ... 1. Hospital dramas. People love them. Livebloggers, not so much. 2. Sometimes people die of the plague. But sometimes they are ok. 3. People who have biuldings fall on them aren't very well at all, and generally die. 4. Even if they're not feeling quite themselves at the time. Ha. 5. Everything - in both shows - is about to become a lot more complicated. 6. In an enjoyable and soapy kind of way.
And now I need a drink please.
Next week - something else. Who knows what? We might do The Apprentice, maybe.
In the meantime - thank you, and good night.
