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I did not watch House MD of my own volition. I watched it with someone else and against my will.

This is because I never thought House would be my type of show. It wasn't. I didn't like it.

House MD asks the question: "What if there was a Doctor who was so good at his job that he didn't need manners or procedure?" and then leaves that question unanswered. The thing is that the show is a weird mix of grounded and ridiculous so I genuinely come to clash against the setting fairly regularly. I mean, that question is the core conceit but the show also has human moments of failure showing that he's not really godlike just really good and the show also goes out of it's way to reveal that he only really uses his very good doctoral skills to patients who have extremely rare conditions and the show also tells us that he's largely apathetic to if the patient gets better or not. So, he's just kind of not very good. Like, yes, the show has this hospital get the strangest mish mash of 0.001% likelihood diseases but even within that suspension of disbelief the guy doesn't really do much before the start of the episode and after the credits.

So he just limps around sexually harassing nurses and insulting people until the one day a week he does anything. If he's made to do clinic work during his downtime he just actively does the worst he can on purpose. Even during that one day a week, he still fucks up sometimes. On top of that we're keen to the fact he causes lawsuits and the hospital has a special House lawsuit fund for this above average doctor who doesn't do much more than cause issues.

The show is most interesting when takes the spotlight off of House's kooky dynamic with the medical world and instead uses this core concept as a vehicle to leverage honest complaints against medical procedures. I don't know much about the behind the scenes but it feels as if many of the writers have a particular care to flesh out the realistic cons of House as a living thing which blows up the suspension of disbelief, when the show neglects the real-world ramifications and treats House more like a story-telling device then things get a lot more fun.

This may sound like a major nitpick considering that many of the show's arcs center around House's faults but I don't mean that, I don't mind the camera honing in on his personal flaws and the issues that causes in his personal life, I specifically mean how confusing his employment at Princeton is in universe. As an aside, I don't care about House's personal life!

It's a loop that repeats way too fast! Some shows reuse plotlines but this one does it way too often!! When interesting things do happen, things are rushed back into status quo and the loop repeats. Even after House fucking drives his fucking car into his boss' dining room because she isn't fucking him anymore, the show skips forward to show him in prison and then he gets out, makes amends, and the loop continues anew. House's personal life doesn't change at all, not in the entire eight seasons! Well, at the very end things change. I swear though, if they got a season 9 that they'd skip forward, House would just return, make amends, and then they'd just go back to normal.

If you're a house fan reading this, I'm sorry. The show does what it does well but I don't like it. It just never clicked with me. I've never been into the, like, alpha-male shows like this, Rick and Morty, BBC's Sherlock. These are all shows that I've watched against my will and all follow the same formula. They show why they're awesome then undercut their awesomeness with a moment of 'woah, this type of guy would suck in real life. Here's how he's hurting himself and those around him' then undercut that with a 'Sike! He was kidding! He's too smart to be bothered by that!' to undercutting that with a 'Now that he's alone we see that he was joking about not being bothered and is really hurt' then undercutting that by having him do it again next episode. We're supposed to both revel in their genius and apathy yet be empathetic for the damage it causes while also laughing when they lie about being hurt and continue to do it again- none of these are intended to cancel out and we're supposed to react genuinely to all of them!

All three of these shows have multiple scenes of the protagonist pretending to change their ways as a means to manipulate their nicer-companion as a joke, yet also tackle their genuine attempts to change in the same breath. Leading to the ideal viewer going from "Oh my god, he's really trying to change!" to "LOL he's just joking! His apathy is awesome!" to "Oh my god, he's really trying to change" and I just don't have it in me to do that.

A show that handles this stereotypical hyper-intelligent alpha-male styled character well is Breaking Bad. The show both had moments in which his genius came in handy and you could be awed by the baddassery but then geniunely show the damages he caused by acting this way. Breaking Bad struck the perfect balance of "Badass" and "Oh my god this guy needs to fucking die!" and it did this by making any empathy for the protagonist be really subtle. At the end you may feel bad for Walter but you will definitely know that he had it coming and that he deserved it. When House temporarily died we were meant to feel just sad, not that he ever deserved it. We were meant to laugh as Wilson began complaining about him. House never geniunely gets criticized in the show, not in any meaningful way, he gets everything he wants (sans Cuddy who just leaves the show anyways.).

None of these really fall into the same category. Rick and Morty is a comedy aimed at younger teens, it's geniune moments of attempted pathos are themselves ridiculous due to the setting and the character's innate irredeemability. Breaking Bad is an adult drama, there are comedic elements and dark humor but it is no means a comedy so it can be handled more genuinely. House MD is a dramedy and they never balance the two leaving comedy and drama to clash instead of work together. The show never really pulls together the way I'd expect an eight season show to.

The general idea of the show is Dr. Sherlock, he's solving medical mysteries! It's a pretty fun idea but as someone who doesn't know jackoff about medical-stuffs, uhhh, it's just random shit. Ahh the patient is orange that means he is suffering from 120% hemoclystacin levels likely caused by his swollen Globuroma! Then House sees a cat and is like "Ah, it's actually a flunted morlovian cyst on a purlated blood vessel in his durrated fresach. *insert slur*."

When that happens I just nod. Sure, man, yeah.

Like a completely unpredictable mystery means that I'm just sitting there trying to engage with a cast that I generally dislike as they talk about serious topics in the silliest way possible.

That's another thing, the show is largely a vehicle to talk about social issues so the team has set social views that cause them to split on an issue. This ranges from "This guy is black/a woman/gay/fat to this guy is a cannibal" the issue is that on an episode where someone is fat/woman/black/gay then, like, they should come across this regularly. I can't say that doctors can't be judgey but, like, they can't have a meltdown every time someone is fat. The funniest episode of the show is the one where Chase is throwing an honest to god tantrum over a chubby fucking 9 year old girl. Like sorry she's not hot enough for you to kiss, man, but you gotta just do your doctor stuff. It's literally your job.

The original team consisted of the most boring people, somewhat intentionally to contrast with House, which made the show very dull at times. Cameron was nice, Chase was mean, House was eccentric and Foreman was black. This might sound poor on my end but in the early seasons Foreman wouldn't really talk much unless the episode was about racial issues. This was a running joke on my watch-through where I'd see the patient was black and immediately turn to my sister and say, like, "Foreman episode!" and sure enough... He'd be like "You don't understand doctor. I have to sell crack to make money to support my mother!" and Foreman would be like "I get it. Go to college, turn your life around" and then the patient would either agree or disagree. It wasn't...Very interesting

If a patient were gay or something then Chase would say "Kill yourself" and Cameron would be like "No, you can learn to tolerate them!" and then House would egg them on. The show was very uninteresting at that time

Later the show changes out the team for a more varied cast and the time away allows the original trio to grow. This was an incredibly bold move and I genuinely adored seeing the entire team get fired, it was true to House's team, gave them a great oppurtunity to change things up and was super risky. I really liked that. It was a great decision

The next team was fun. I was particularly enthused by Kutner and Taub. Later Masters would join and I would quite like her too. The arc in which House selects his new team was the highlight of the whole show to me. I adored that arc,and they never topped it.

Killing of Kutner was again, very bold, but also an incredible decision. I couldn't praise that enough. It helps that Taub got a good bit of focus and character depth due to it. Taub would continue to be my favorite for the rest of his time on the show. Which was luckily, very long. Unlike Kutner and Masters.

Masters had a really fake personality. She was a cartoon girl in a real world show, this played to my tastes as I've never been one for grounded shows anyways. The only issue is that the she joined to counteract the most cynical version of House's team who all took personal issue with her. Every episode would have the cast genuinely just mock and make fun of her, the entire cast. Watching it back to back got really tiring, watching everyone just bully the newcomer to tears every episode. There was never any change in her dynamics with anyone and even her final firing played on a joke used during her initial hiring. So...She didn't amount to much despite having some of the most enjoyable drama and the best character-centric episode (her final episode).

Eventually I was left with Taub of my favorites, I couldn't give less of a shit about literally anyone else in the show. Not even neutrality but actively hoping to see them fail and suffer.

My love of Taub is somewhat inexplicable but he's got a really interesting charm to him, he's genuinely charismatic. I think I might have a little bit of a crush on him

Lastly, the last season's team of whoever and whoever fucking sucked. The last two team members were horiffically boring, tenfold for the prison nurse. She was just Cameron again but with a slight edge. House tries to figure out what's wrong with her in an arc that heavily resembled and mirrored many plot beats of House learning what was wrong with Thirteen which already resembled and mirrored many plot beats of House trying to learn what was wrong with Cameron.

I never really cared for House recruits, is that intentional? Her and the CIA lady were both radically boring.

It may sound stupid but if this show dropped the drama and focused on the comedy I'd probably like it. The bit with Foreman and House watching the wrestling match got the first and last genuine laugh from me. I'd love more of that.

I'd give it a 3/10. With 5/10 representing my average enjoyment of a show.