I’ve enjoyed the series House for a while now and can highly recommend it, not as ideal art, but as an almost perfect artistic representation of the platonic misantrope. House is displayed as rational, brilliant, an atheist, deeply mistrusting of humans, very rude and deeply unhappy. A main theme of the series is that House tries to avoid seeing his patients and when he does he is usually rude. The reason? His theory is that by caring about his patients, getting emotionally involved with them, he loses his objectivity and becomes a bad doctor. Another major theme is “everybody lies.” Very often the plot is to solve a medical mystery by finding and revealing the patient’s lie. House is deeply skeptical of altruists, not because he thinks that self-sacrifice is bad, but rather because he thinks that altruists are hyopcrits – they are egoists in disguise. Of course, he thinks that all people are inherently selfish, and by that he doesn’t mean that in a good way.
So why do I enjoy the show? Apart from spoonfeeding us with the false antagonism of reason and emotion Hugh Laurie, playing House, is actually a brilliant actor and at times very funny. He transforms the show from something that would be a mediocre cliché into an enjoyable experience. And the medical mysteries are quite fun too.
