Over the Shark, On to the Beach, and Straight on to Cancellation

I am willing to put up with a lot of stupid shit from my entertainment. I have watched every last episode of Lost and 24, I love the Die Hard series (including the new one), and still get perverse joy from watching Quentin Tarantino's cinematic tripe. As I write this, however, I feel that a certain line has been irrevocably crossed. What line, you may ask? The degree of bullshit I am willing to put up with from none other than Doctor Gregory House M.D.

The show has been going south for a while now, but I've stuck with it simply because Hugh Laurie plays such an unbelievable asshole that i marvel at the writing required to come up with somebody who is such a genuinely awful human being. This last week's episode has officially torn it for me. Perhaps you may have seen it, although if you have I'm surprised you're reading my blog instead of projectile vomiting all over your keyboard.

There were so many status quo changing elements in this episode that there is simply no way for any kind of return to a healthy equilibrium to make even remote sense. House almost got one of his doctors killed, alternated between chatting up and openly harassing a man with a gun pointed at him and other people, got the gun away from the guy, gave the gun back to the guy, then proceeded to be oh-so shocked and indignant when SURPRISE: the lunatic with the gun failed to act rationally in regards to other people's safety.

You don't play up a character's keen intuition into the workings of people's minds (all people are bad) and then take away that intuition when a character so repugnantly shallow even I could identify the, uh, character flaws starts waving a fucking gun around. And why did nobody think to simply breach Cuddy's office when this shit was still in first gear. Everyone in the House universe with the surprising exception of Chase and Foreman turned into hyper-emotional mongoloids, whining about their problems (sometimes to the fucking hostage taker) and talking through their inabilities to have normal lives. Hell they chatted so much you almost forgot that there was a man with a gun and a fucking SWAT team assembled at the hospital.

So, Dr. House, I say to you this: I have had it with your stupid bullshit. You have run out of medical scenarios that could even be minutely based in reality and thusly have to revert to waxing existential on mortality for about 20 fucking minutes every episode, and when that doesn't work, you throw in a bunch of people with guns, only you fuck that up too as nobody who would ordinarily be trained in using them seems to remember that they even have them. To say this show jumped the shark with this episode would be giving it too much credit. It's as if the show tried to jump the shark, but didn't quite get enough momentum and fell straight into its gaping maw, where it was promptly digested and shat out to become plankton food.

Oh also, the above paragraphs contain spoilers or some shit.