Maybe it was ever thus and I'm just watching more TV, or watching more critically, of late, but I'm finding that rather a lot of otherwise watchable television is let down by being very formulaic.
A few minutes of backplot here and there do take the edge off it a bit: House seems to be ahead of CSI on this point, and certainly has more than Law And Order; I've not kept up with it well enough to say how it stacks up against e.g. the Eccleston Dr Who series.
I do appreciate that none of these programs are trying to tell a long-term story in the way that e.g. Babylon 5 was - to be a serial rather than a series if you like. Possibly the last thing I watched that made a decent stab at it was The Lyon's Den, which was flawed in other ways.
I saw about 3 minutes of it tonight and was stunned to hear Laurie. No idea what the plot is/was though.
I would have liked to watch more, but housemates had obtained a film called Seabiscuit which they were very excited about and which therefore took precedence.
I guess it's still drama if the plot's the same each episode, because so are things which are identical each time they're shown. It's just a series of adaptations of a drama, and so kind of lots of parallel arrows rather than one big arrow end to end.
The medicine is incidental. It's all about House (and his colleagues, to a lesser extent). A bit like 6 Feet Under, where there always used to be a Death-of-the-week, but it was actually (usually) about the family. There's a Medical-puzzle-of-the-week, but it really doesn't matter what it is, or whether the patient lives or dies.
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House rocks. End of story.
Date: 2007-03-22 11:38 pm (UTC)Re: House rocks. End of story.
Date: 2007-03-23 12:11 am (UTC)Maybe it was ever thus and I'm just watching more TV, or watching more critically, of late, but I'm finding that rather a lot of otherwise watchable television is let down by being very formulaic.
A few minutes of backplot here and there do take the edge off it a bit: House seems to be ahead of CSI on this point, and certainly has more than Law And Order; I've not kept up with it well enough to say how it stacks up against e.g. the Eccleston Dr Who series.
I do appreciate that none of these programs are trying to tell a long-term story in the way that e.g. Babylon 5 was - to be a serial rather than a series if you like. Possibly the last thing I watched that made a decent stab at it was The Lyon's Den, which was flawed in other ways.
Re: House rocks. End of story.
Date: 2007-03-23 01:04 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-23 01:03 am (UTC)I would have liked to watch more, but housemates had obtained a film called Seabiscuit which they were very excited about and which therefore took precedence.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-23 02:08 am (UTC)Rubbish telly, though.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-23 07:52 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-23 09:45 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-23 08:02 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-23 09:45 am (UTC)if you understand some italian
Date: 2007-03-23 08:35 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-23 10:05 am (UTC)Thanks for the CSI by the way! Now I can fuel my forbidden Grissom love every day! ;)
(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-23 11:22 am (UTC)I never have been one for medical "dramas", mind.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-23 11:42 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-23 12:29 pm (UTC)A bit like 6 Feet Under, where there always used to be a Death-of-the-week, but it was actually (usually) about the family. There's a Medical-puzzle-of-the-week, but it really doesn't matter what it is, or whether the patient lives or dies.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-23 12:57 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-23 12:58 pm (UTC)They are a bit plot-of-the-week, but there's some character development in there too.