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Thread: Obligatory House Thread

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    Default Obligatory House Thread

    No Cafe Society forum would be complete with at least one House thread in it, so I'm happy to oblige.

    Originally when House was created it was based (at least in part) on Sherlock Holmes. I'm curious how does it seem to be sticking to that idea? I've read and watched some Holmes but I'm not an avid fan or anything so I'm not sure.

    Do you think the writers/producers are moving away from that idea?
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    Elephant Tuckerfan's avatar
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    Default Re: Obligatory House Thread

    I've not seen every episode of House nor have I read every Sherlock Holmes book, but they're keeping fairly true to the spirit of Holmes, I'd say. The major exceptions would be House's limp, his flirtations with Cuddy, and his use of prostitutes. Holmes was described as being "incapable" of love, and Watson explicitly states that Holmes did not love Irene Adler. To quote from The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes:
    To Sherlock Holmes she is always THE woman. I have seldom heard him mention her under any other name. In his eyes she eclipses and predominates the whole of her sex. It was not that he felt any emotion akin to love for Irene Adler.
    Holmes would not feel anything for Cuddy, while House clearly does, and House certainly enjoys his prostitutes. :mrgreen:

    I don't think that they can really move too far away from the idea of House being a Holmsian kind of genius and have the character retain his appeal. After all, many times House says exactly what most people are thinking, but would never dare to say. If you take away House being absolutely right, then a great deal of his appeal goes away, even without him being snarky.
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    Oliphaunt featherlou's avatar
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    Default Re: Obligatory House Thread

    Regarding House and Cuddy - House may have feelings for her, but he does not act on them (except the one time), and he actively goes out of his way to not move things forward with her. In the last episode, he puts his career and his love of figuring things out ahead of moving things forward with her (to her great chagrin). I think it is safe to say that the most important thing in his life is still the game.

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    Elephant Tuckerfan's avatar
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    Default Re: Obligatory House Thread

    Quote Originally posted by featherlou
    Regarding House and Cuddy - House may have feelings for her, but he does not act on them (except the one time), and he actively goes out of his way to not move things forward with her. In the last episode, he puts his career and his love of figuring things out ahead of moving things forward with her (to her great chagrin). I think it is safe to say that the most important thing in his life is still the game.
    Because "The Game" is all he can be sure he'll ever have. Cuddy, is human, and thus unpredictable. House knows what his flaws are, and he knows that Cuddy is blind to at least some of them, but that cannot remain true forever. If she takes her blinders off, she might decide that she can't be with him. House has real problems dealing with failure, and would blame himself were he to lose Cuddy.
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    Oliphaunt featherlou's avatar
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    Default Re: Obligatory House Thread

    I think you're right, Tuckerfan. He has a strange mix of arrogance and lack of self-confidence.

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    Oliphaunt
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    Default Re: Obligatory House Thread

    Quote Originally posted by featherlou
    Regarding House and Cuddy - House may have feelings for her, but he does not act on them (except the one time), and he actively goes out of his way to not move things forward with her.
    His behavior towards Cuddy often reminds me of a 10-year-old boy with a huge crush on the pretty girl who sits next to him in class.
    He deliberately provokes her for the attention, but would never, ever admit to 'liking' her.
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    Oliphaunt featherlou's avatar
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    Default Re: Obligatory House Thread

    Yeah, there's certainly an element of that to his behaviour.

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    Elephant Tuckerfan's avatar
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    Default Re: Obligatory House Thread

    Something else I've discovered in reading the Holmes stories, he was a slob. On several occassions Watson remarks that Holmes was a terrible house keeper, and that Watson would have to insist that Holmes clean things up. (Watson didn't dare touch the stuff, since it would piss Holmes off.)

    House's apartment seems to be rather neat and tidy, by comparison.
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    Elephant Tuckerfan's avatar
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    Default Re: Obligatory House Thread

    Having now read all of Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories/novels, I have to say that House has it all over Holmes in many areas.

    Holmes has little grasp of humor, while House isn't afraid to whip out a one-liner or two. Holmes knows only those things directly related to investigating crimes and music. House seems to know a bit more (I can't imagine that were Holmes a doctor, he'd know how to hack into a computer). House has friends (though Wilson is the only one really close to him), Holmes only seems to have Watson (and Holmes/Watson slash fanfic would be easier for me to believe than House/Wilson or Kirk/Spock).

    House is an unrepentant athiest, while Holmes leans slightly that way in some stories, but in others seems to hint at religious belief (most prominantly in the ones written after Doyle started swallowing all that spiritualism crap).

    Holmes, however, is not the skinflint who steals from his best friend that House is. Holmes is somewhat frugal with his money, he does however, pay the landlady of the apartment that he and Watson share for a few years a large sum of money for rent. The exact figure is never given, but Watson says that Holmes could have bought the house for far less than he was paying in rent.

    Holmes' opponent Moriarity is barely fleshed out in his one appearance, while House's Moriarity (the guy who shoots House), does get fleshed out, even if it is just as a hallucination.

    The final, really large difference, is that Holmes always is the one to solve the case. He generally has it figured out when someone describes the case to him, and then he goes and looks for the evidence needed to solve the crime. In at least one episode, someone besides House figures out the solution (Kutner), or House seems to have clearly figured out what's going on, but waits for someone else (Cuddy) to realize it, recognizing that it was better for Cuddy if she was the one to diagnose the patient's problem, rather than having House tell her. (That shows a sensitivity that Holmes lacked, though Holmes was perfectly willing to not discuss matters with the police when a public scandal would be the potential result.)
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  10. #10
    Stegodon
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    Default Re: Obligatory House Thread

    Quote Originally posted by Tuckerfan
    In at least one episode, someone besides House figures out the solution (Kutner), or House seems to have clearly figured out what's going on, but waits for someone else (Cuddy) to realize it, recognizing that it was better for Cuddy if she was the one to diagnose the patient's problem, rather than having House tell her.
    In at least one episode, House doesn't even solve the case until the PotW is dead.

    [spoiler:25w6df64]The episode that begins with the woman playing the card game on the street, and she can't decide -- literally, can't decide -- ends with her dying of a staph infection that got into her system through a bra hook that pierced the skin on her back.[/spoiler:25w6df64]

    There also are at least two episodes in which House isn't the first to the diagnosis: cerebral malaria, I think, in the two-part episode in which Foreman nearly dies, and the episode with the two black boys where one has a disease (histoplasmosis) because the land their house is on is old chicken farming land and it hadn't been cleaned adequately.

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