House

I'm terribly addicted to this new medical show, House (thanks, wnd ;), and I think I've finally figured out why.

In many ways, it's everything I hate in a show. Needlessly gory (lots of drilling into people's heads and poking needles in their eye, all in the name of making them feel better), endlessly repetetive (each show follows exactly the same format: person x gets sick, they make some wrong diagnoses, person nearly dies, Dr. House makes a brilliant deduction and saves the day), and frighteningly callous (Dr. House gets mad at patients families when they question his diagnoses after he's already been wrong several times, and the doctors routinely decide they need to give someone drugs that will make them sicker in order to diagnose them. blarg?)

But what keeps me coming back is House himself. Craggy-faced, cold-hearted, mentally and physically scarred, totally dysfunctional at everything but medical diagnoses, I am fascinated by the character. He has all the callously witty one-liners I wish I could have -- but can't, since I actually care about other people's feelings. House is abrasive and truly unique.

It's the same phenomenon that keeps me watching CSI -- I don't care about the mystery, or about the gory things, or about the cool technology -- I like Gil Grissom. Like House, he's a loner with no passion other than his work, but he says just enough cryptically nice things to keep me from hating him. And he's a mystery. I like people who are mysteries.

And the crappy thing is, I can't even skip through the gross/stupid parts. Because the problem with liking characters is, they're all through the episode. Snappy dialogue and brief moments of emotion could happen anytime, so watching the episode with my finger on the fast-forward button just won't do. It'd be way easier if I just liked knowing the solution to the mystery -- then I could watch the first five minutes and the last, and presto, I'm done. But no, I like the characters, so I have to watch the whole damn episode.

I have become the proverbial moth to a porch light -- I keep coming back despite the fact that I don't like the show. Do producers do this on purpose? Are they trying to see how far they cam push physical grossness and repetitive storylines without losing viewers? Are they trying to see how much character trumps plot?

I'd love to work through this some more, but I've got to go now. CSI is on.