Doctor Gregory House (Hugh Laurie, Flight of the Phoenix) heads his hospital’s version of a medical X-Files, seeing patients whose conditions are otherwise undiagnosable or not responding to treatment.  It’s a good deal for him because he hates to actually see patients, and is in constant pain from an old medical condition that he now controls with the painkiller Vicodin.  At his command are three young specialists, doctors Cameron (the woman), Foreman (the black guy), and Chase (the Australian), with a single friend on staff (Dr. Wilson) and one boss trying to get him to do his clinic hours (Dr. Cuddy).

CRITIQUE

If Dr. House were told to make up flyers of suicide resources for depressed patients, he would probably type something up on how to calculate a lethal dose of morphine based on your weight.  Brilliant and bitingly sarcastic, House doesn’t just say the things he thinks that we would keep quiet about.  He goes a level deeper and sees motivations and denied feelings as easily as fist-sized tumors.  Then he makes fun of them.

“Everybody lies” is the cynical doctor’s maxim, and hence his preference to diagnose and treat without ever actually meeting most patients.  His approach works; by listening to what patients don’t say, he discovers what he needs to know.  Ultimately that is his goal:  He may be the guy who “says what he’s thinking,” but a better description is that he’s the guy who does what’s right.  The only problem is that doing the right thing attunes one to all the things done that are wrong, and that’s frustrating.  The frustration gets taken out on everyone around him via rudeness, offensive behavior, and general misanthropic musings.

All that and we still love this guy.

For all his posturing that he doesn’t care and that he really is made of nails, Dr. House has his own weaknesses.  He’s addicted to his painkillers and clearly hasn’t come to terms with his bad leg or his former relationship.  And if he didn’t care, he wouldn’t be going out of his way to heal his patients.  Less well explored in the first season are the doctors he works with (most notably Omar Epps as Dr. Foreman, Jennifer Morrison as Dr. Cameron, and Jesse Spencer as Dr. Chase) but there is more than enough material to work with for each show to parallel medical cases with personal dramas or histories.  House’s own history is fed to us piecemeal throughout the season, until the last few episodes where more is revealed.

Patients are easy to care about.  We see them suffering and know that it could be us suffering from these strange conditions or wondering if we can really trust a spouse’s claim of fidelity in order to make a diagnosis.  House makes us care even more about the doctors because the characters are so real, and so touching without being perfect.  And it’s generally what they aren’t telling us that makes us want to come back next week for more.

THE VIDEO

House is presented in 1.78:1 NON-ANAMORPHIC widescreen.  Hint hint.  That means if you shelled out big money for a fantastic 16x9 television, you’ll still get black bars at the top and bottom of your set.  Why Universal would opt to release the show in letterbox format is a mystery.  The quality of the video is pretty good otherwise, but the non-anamorphic transfer is highly disappointing.

[Editor’s Note: Universal stated their production schedule for this set was tight so as to get it up for sale before the Season 2 premiere on September 20. However, remastering video anamorphically shouldn’t have taken too long. Case in point, the DVD release of Las Vegas Season 2 features anamorphic video and was released September 13, and its third season premieres next week. So, do the math and you’ll find that Universal had ample time to produce House Season 1 the correct way. Also, if it meant the release date of the set would’ve had to be delayed for one or two weeks, so be it. The quality is what matters, not the time of release (the show did very well in its first season run on Fox, so the idea of bringing out the set three weeks before the new season would be to get more people hooked on the show, but it already has a strong following). In any case, consumers with widescreen televisions can adjust their screen size by zooming into the picture; you only lose very little at the top and bottom of the picture, but at least the video will “appear” close to anamorphic widescreen. –Dennis Landmann]

THE AUDIO

House is presented in Dolby Digital 5.1, though you probably won’t care because there are no gunfights or explosions to utilize all the speakers.  Dialog (which is some of the best writing I’ve seen in recent years) is crystal clear, and that’s all we really need.  Spanish subtitles are also included.

THE EXTRAS

Don’t get me wrong, I did enjoy sitting through more than 15 hours of House to finish the entire season.  I guess I just thought that with so much content, extras might also be on the longish side.  Instead, they’re all quite short and speak more to a cheaper and less involved release by Universal (consistent with its non-anamorphic transfer).

The Concept (4:45) is a (short) featurette on how the show came to be.  The original concept it turns out was just to have it be a team of doctors diagnosing the undiagnosable.  Then they realized that hey, characters matter, and made Dr. House into what he is.  There’s not a lot of meat in this extra, but it does speak to how House stands apart from all the other CSI derivatives.

The Casting Session with Hugh Laurie (1:22) is Laurie reading for a brief scene.  Not particularly interesting or noteworthy unless you want to analyze how well advanced his facial movements are before he’s even gotten the part.

Medical Cases (4:20) is another (short) featurette about the medical aspects of the show, and yes, they do have real doctors writing the stories.  The second half of it is some of the actors musing that they really could perform some of the things they act out on screen.  Not a lot of content here.

The Set Tour (5:32) is an awkward guide to the different sets used hosted by Morrison and Edelstein (who does a bit of a better job for her part).  If you didn’t get the feeling that the extras were just thrown together, you will after watching this.

House-isms (4:00) is about House’s use of sarcastic humor and his willingness to say just about anything to patients and colleagues.  Dr. House (6:30) goes further into the character of Dr. House, but doesn’t anything that should be surprising if you watched the whole season.

FINAL THOUGHT