I watched a few episodes of House during a Saturday TV marathon, and now I think I'm going to watch more often. I think I only watched bits of the show before, where I was impressed with Hugh Laurie's American accent.
I know it's fiction, but I can't believe what Doctor House gets away with: he's often a jerk and breaks the rules, and he's not really suspended and certainly not fired. And if he's dragged to court, the hospital will pay his legal fees (his boss said they budgeted like 50k per year to defend him). He's only a doctor, not management, yet they're often willing to take care of him no matter what.
I think the real departure from reality was when a rich administrator wanted to give the hospital over 100 million dollars, but he wanted the House out of there as a condition, and he expected the Board to vote for his dismissal. But they eventually decided to keep the House instead of the 110 million dollars!
Seriously--what business or organization would give up over 100 million dollars for ONE person, especially a jerk who often gets in trouble, and is a legal risk?
Maybe that's why the show is popular--in real life, we'd be fired, and seeing him get rewarded for his intelligence and talent is escapism for us. Though of course, there are plenty of jerky people in workplaces everywhere who get special treatment because they know how to play the game or know how to bring in the bucks. But Doctor House gets rewarded for just being himself.
5 comments:
Have you browsed the House medical reviews site? http://www.politedissent.com/house_pd.html
I don't analize, I just ENJOY! :)
Ah, but House is a fantastic doctor, is he not? Certainly when it comes to diagnosing and treating his patients. He may lack any social skills and he may not have a clue when it comes to good conduct and 'normal' polite behaviour etc. -- but hey, I find it very refreshing that he is so NON-PC (it gets a bit too much at times with all this PC-ness, I think) and his sarcasm -- oh boy; fantastic! I love Hugh Laurie and it's been fun to see and hear him play an American (I agree btw in terms of his American accent). Mind you, I know him from British comedy shows (like Black Adder) in which he speaks with his normal British accent.
Got into the series earlier this year and started watching it whenever it was on -- now, however, after we moved house, we decided not to have cable TV anymore. So there's no House on my telly anymore...
Gotta love Wilson too btw :-D
Non-PC is refreshing? I thought Europeans prefer PC :D
Hugh Laurie is probably one of the few actors who we can say is "a good American actor". In fact, if people didn't know he was British and we said that, they'd might agree.
I never saw Black Adder--I'm gonna do a YouTube search now :D
Thanks for the link Outerhoard--looks like a good nerdy site!
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