readingrat | The Liz Friedman Interview: A Few Thoughts

I read the Liz Friedman interview that Barbara Barnett posted and found it very insightful. Read the interview here. Some things, such as the way the writers work on an episode were new to me. Some of the thoughts they had on the characters, how they saw the break-up, etc. were interesting, because they partly mirrored mine. In some instances there were, of course, divergences. I did have two points of criticism, both not so much in matters of content (which is a matter of taste, I guess), but in the manner of the writing process itself.

Character Continuity

House MD is a show that prides itself on showing how people interact with their surroundings. It sets on character exposition and development, one of their main creeds being, according to Liz Friedman, that characters don't change in a major way. As such, it must be the aim of the show to achieve character continuity, and if a character does change, there has to be a valid explanation for it. There can't be inexplicable jumps in behaviour or actions that violate what we know of the characters.

This is, however, an aspect that is being violated by the writing process as described by Ms Friedman. Writers are apparently given an aim for an episode and left to their own devices on how to achieve it. If they work as a team, there are at least two of them discussing what a character is like, but all too often a single writer is responsible. Now I don't doubt that the writers discuss a lot of things in bigger meetings, but there doesn't seem to be anyone who has an overview over what has been decided for certain characters. There seems to be no basic standard to which everyone sticks, a sort of blueprint of each character that may not be violated.

Take for instance the episode 'Two Stories'. We are shown a House who has to 'try tremendously hard to do simple things like taking out the trash or not using [Cuddy's] toothbrush', according to Ms Friedman. Ah, so House is a bit of a slob. It's possible. In theory. There's a lot of fanfic that works with that premise. Unfortunately, there has been no evidence so far to support this character trait, but quite a bit to refute it. Whenever we have seen House's apartment from the inside, it has not been in a huge mess. His bathroom has always been pristine. His coffee table is cluttered, but it is not a rubbish dump. There are no left-overs lying around, the trash is not piling up. (Anyone who is a 'messy' themselves or has a teen in their household will appreciate that House doesn't come anywhere near qualifying for the epithet.) When he was living with Wilson, Wilson started a fight with Sam because he thinks she put cups on the coffee table without coasters, put the milk in the wrong place and loaded the dishwasher inefficiently. Would Wilson even have noticed if House had been causing the kind of mess that he was making at Cuddy's place? Would he not have attributed these things to House straight away? Would he be bothered at all after being subjected to House's mess for over half a year?

Now if House MD were a sitcom the question of character continuity wouldn't matter. Sitcom characters don't have to make sense, they have to be funny. If the sloppiness were a trait that is irrelevant to the plot (as it was till now) it wouldn't matter either. Unfortunately, the question of whether he can clean up his own mess or not has become a central issue with the aforementioned episode. Before I watched the episode I had decided in my mind that House was no Mr Messy based on the evidence I cited. So when I watched 'Two Stories' I came to the conclusion that House is no overtaxed stereotype male, but a compulsive teen who needs to see just how far he can bend Cuddy before she breaks. Teens are like that - they do (or don't do) a lot of stuff because they need to see whether they can get away with it. Now teens can be made to see sense - it's hard work and a challenge, but it can be done. Slobs are a different issue and it probably isn't worth the bother. If House is a troublesome teen who overdoes the provocation bit, both Cuddy's reaction ('I need time off from you') and House's attempts to right matters make sense to me (teens can be wonderfully contrite once they realise they've broken you). If not, if he's just a slob, then the thing to do is to figure out how to work around it - tell him that if he can't get rid of his own mess he'll have to pay someone to do it or whatever - but slamming phones on his fingers doesn't get anyone anywhere.

I'm sure that whoever wrote the episode was thinking along the lines that Ms Friedman depicts - after all, they will have been discussing episodes that close together with each other. Hence my interpretation was erroneous. But - my erroneous interpretation was based on solid facts as seen in previous episodes; the writer's assumption that House is a slob is based on nothing. And this is where I lose patience with the show. I'm not asking for much: a basic knowledge of previous episodes; that he writers sit down together to discuss each other's scripts and to figure out whether the new script fits into canon or not; someone who keeps track of canon. As I see matters, either the writers are paid so much that one can reasonably expect them to have an overview of what has taken place so far, both in terms of timeline and character development, as part of their job description, or they are paid so little that one can carve another job out of the huge budget that House MD commands for some poor would-be writer whose only job it would be to ensure continuity. I don't care whether Wilson's time line defies the theory of relativity or whether Cuddy's sister has an everyday name and another one for special occasions, but if there is something that becomes an issue for a character, such as House's pain or now his homemaking skills, then if the show wants to keep its claim to being a character-based show, it sorely needs to buckle up.

Character Credibility

If the lack of character continuity is carelessness, then a lack of character credibility is a sign of thoughtlessness. I frequently have the feeling that the writers make characters do things that advance the plot without fully anticipating the impact on the viewers. The action causes the viewers to attribute some intention to the character that the writers perhaps never intended. At that moment the writers may not care much, because creating tension, drama, and angst has priority. But many viewers take these actions very seriously and incorporate them indelibly in their view of that character.

Take for instance Wilson leaving House in a pool of vomit in 'A Merry Little Christmas'. In all probability we were meant to see a man at the end of his rope, despairing of his friend ever making the right decision and deciding that his friend would have to deal with the consequences of his own actions. Unfortunately (again), there are a lot of viewers who happen to know that from a medical point of view, leaving someone who has OD'd lying in his own vomit is somewhere between 'failure to render assistance' and 'homicide'. In most countries either is a criminal offence, and a doctor who leaves someone in that state can't plea ignorance, as you and I perhaps could. As I said, I doubt that was the intention. From the writers' pov Wilson had to leave so that House would make his way to Tritter of his own volition - an important point, because we're supposed to see that House has come to his senses and is not acting solely because Wilson is bullying him. However, by not considering the moral and legal consequences of their story arc for Wilson, they sabotaged Wilson's character.

It's the same with Cuddy at the end of 'Bombshells'. Her decision to dump House can be admired or despised, depending on where one is coming from. (I happen to accept it as a rationally good decision, but I reject it on moral grounds. I'm sure there are as many opinions as there are viewers.) What no viewer, regardless of where he or she comes from, has condoned so far is Cuddy leaving House alone after dumping him, although she knows that he's got vicodin and that he is likely to be devastated enough to take it. It's marginally better than what Wilson did - House hasn't taken anything yet and there's no sign that he'll OD -but that's about it. Now this is something that neither Ms Friedman nor Ms Barnett consider worth mentioning when they discuss Cuddy's behaviour. Maybe they simply didn't see it. But others did. Ms Friedman, who wrote the episode, should have seen it, but if she did, she decided to ignore it because if she hadn't, she would have had to forgo that wonderful final scene where House sits in the bathroom like at the end of 'Help Me' hoping that Cuddy will come back and 'save' him. Having Cuddy call Wilson or Nolan and one of them arriving would have been a tad too shallow and undramatic, so the writer duo basically sacrificed the credibility of a supporting character (once again) just to keep their plot angsty and dramatic. Whether they intended it or not, Cuddy abandoning House to relapse is now an indelible part of canon that cannot be rescinded.

A third instance, is House intending to use his CIPA patient as an illegal organ donor. What he does - suggesting a dangerous procedure that could impair her health severely - simply to benefit himself is no better than what people who buy illegal organs from third world countries do. Actually, it's worse. People who buy livers or kidneys are usually dying; House isn't. House finally allows Wilson to dissuade him from his course of action, but so what? He intended to do it and he would have done it, had his team and Wilson not run massive interference. How does this fit with the man who puts patient well-being first, who decides to abort a working pain management regime (methadone) because its mellowing side-effects endangered a patient of his? Few viewers seem to have noticed the moral implications of House's deeds in that episode - it is rarely cited as an instance of House's lack of values - but whenever I think of that episode I quail inwardly: a doctor taking advantage of a patient's helpless situation, and the patient a minor at that, for his own gain. Morally it puts him in the same league as Ezra Powell, the cancer researcher who experimented on children without informing the parents of the risks. Had the writers intended that? I don't know. Perhaps they really did, but somehow I have the feeling that the person who wrote the episode (a) didn't have a particularly well-tuned moral antenna and (b) was not supervised sufficiently.

House MD portrays a man's search for truth. If that search is meant to be credible to the audience, then writers and producers need to sit down together and define a few core truths on which they base the series.