HouseMade

Watched the show HOUSE for the first time last night, starring Hugh Laurie as the arrogant doctor leading a young, good-looking team that gets to the bottom of mysterious ailments. It's been hyped as the best hospital drama since the debut of ER (implying, I guess, that ER sucked after Season One?), but it's really more like CSI than anything, right down to the inside-the-body gore and guck. Good performances all around, but the hospital setting is really dull and underdeveloped, and I have no idea why Robert Sean Leonard is wasting his time in such a nothing role, unless he gets to do a lot more in other episodes. Also too cute with the breaking of rules, such as House having one of his proteges fake a phone call from the CDC to the mother of a dying patient, in order to get her to let them administer the right medicine. She was leery, as they'd screwed up the diagnosis two or three times already. Once she consented and the kid was saved and on the way out the door, she told House that the CDC called...AGAIN, meaning she let him know she knew she'd been scammed, and all he had to say was, "Oops." I realize she was probably so grateful that they'd saved her son's life that she wouldn't mind much, but still, it seemed a little too fast and loose. A decent show, but I could take it or leave it.

I'd never seen the MTV show MADE, either, but it was on in my apartment complex's gym TV up on the wall, and the remote's batteries had been removed. This one was about a high school geek getting in shape for the wrestling team in order to gain respect from his classmates, and to impress the cute girl he liked. It was kind of like RUDY or several other movies, in fact, but more real and took half the time. I admit, I'm a sucker for the geek who betters himself.