I Watched a Movie (Sherlock Holmes)
I finally figured out where they got the name “House” for doctor Gregory. M.D. It’s because “house” sounds like “homes” which sounds like “Holmes” and House is supposed to be all Sherlock-like. The way he sees a spot on Cutty’s shirt and deduces that she’s pregnant with twins and the father’s an Albanian Minister of Finance with a penchant for cheap cigars and expensive wines. And medical dramas are staggeringly popular, almost as much as cop shows, but a Sherlock cop was done with Monk already, so they went with the doctor thing.
Right? And the thing about Monk is he’s got all kinds of phobias and neuroses, while the thing about House is, he’s an asshole. I have more than one friend who won’t watch the show because he’s such an asshole. But don’t you understand? That’s his appeal. He’s “incorrigible.” He’s consistently right in an environment of being wrong. Assumptions, suppositions, easy logic—these “niceties” have to be set aside, the polite approach to a problem stripped away so the bare, naked, uncomfortable truth can be taken for what it is, and the disease cured.
Or the crime solved. So rather than wince when House is an asshole, wince instead when his colleagues drive him to it. Sure, he’s an egomaniacal self-centered selfish reprobate with little sympathy and absolutely no self-remorse, but he’s right, which is the point of the show.
Oh, wait. The movie. Uh, pretty much everything I said about House. Go ahead and see it.
I watched an interview with the House director who said that yes, House is a play on Holmes and Wilson is a play on Watson. Hah!
Good on you for doing the Wiffli thang. I’ve had some freelance articles to write and I’ve actually been working on two books which I’d like to finish by the end of the school year.