In Which We Watch "Television"

[akirlu]

Having given up cable, we are back to being rather regular users of our Netflix account. On the whole, this is not such a bad thing, although I do vaguely miss being able to flip on DIY or HGTV of a Saturday morning to watch fix-it TV with my breakfast cereal. And Alton Brown. I do miss Alton Brown. On the other hand, I do not miss losing all the hours that got sucked away painlessly but forever while I was chewing the lotus.

And, as technology marches on, Netflix is getting to be more like having On Demand cable, anyhow. With the spiffy little Roku box Hal got, we can now watch the streaming video feed from Netflix (or Amazon, for that matter) right there on the teevee box. Gloryosky, Marge. The video quality isn't always sterling, but since I seem to spend most of my video "watching" time knitting anyway, it hardly ever makes a difference to me, anyhow.

Swinnyway, we just got done with the first disc of Veronica Mars Season 1, last night. I had somehow never realized it was Yet Another High School Dra-medy. Despite that, I'm finding it pretty charming. All the major characters get to have dimension, and nobody is an unmitigated mustache-twirling Villain. The story has the guts to underplay (some of) its narrative revelations, and at least so far I'm enjoying the Twin Peaksy Who-Killed-Laura-Palmer plot, even stripped of the trappings of Northwest Gothick.

Also recently finished off the first season of House, MD, and was suitably impressed. The story arc that spans the season is not vital to any given episode, but it provides grace notes to each one, when seen in order. I'm a little on the slow side, so I was most of the way through the season, when I sat bolt upright over my knitting and said, "Oh! House is Sherlock Holmes!" Apparently there are lots more clues than I ever noticed, but House's uncanny ability to notice tiny but telling details finally hit home hard enough even for me. I don't really mind the misanthropy -- being asked to empathize with an incredibly smart person who gets exasperated with ambient human fuckwittery makes a nice change from being asked to identify with the fuckwits.

Comments

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

When you say "given up cable," does this mean you're using over-the-air? I can't get over-the-air out here, so if I give up cable, it would have to be Netflix.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

No, we took down our antenna off the roof when we had the moss taken off, so we can't really get broadcast television, either. That's why we're using our Netflix so much more, again.

[spikeiowa.livejournal.com]

Suggest you borrow or buy some rabbit ears. I do alright with rabbit ears and broadcast TV. Even through the digital converter box (necessary after June 12th), it's ok most of the time.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Meh. Rabbit ears won't get me the shows I miss, and we did manage to live for a good 27 years without television in the house, so it's not like it's a necessity, in and of itself. For emergency broadcasting, we have radio. For everything else, there's Netflix and Hulu. It really is a sufficiency.

[wild-patience.livejournal.com]

I always look on TV time as knitting or exercise time. The exercise bike is in the living room for a reason. (Otherwise I'd never use it, although I do sometimes read while pedaling instead of watching a show.)

[bibliofile.livejournal.com]

Yes, TV time is knitting time at least occasionally for me, too. Some shows require that you actually pay attention visually, but not all of them.

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

Wasn't Holmes based on a physician who taught Conan Doyle?

[beamjockey exits, googling]

[beamjockey returns to the stage]

Wikipedia says yes.

[daveon.livejournal.com]

I'm waiting for the Stephen Fry House episode myself.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

It was precisely because I had seen the Fry and Laurie Jeeves and Wooster series that I was entirely baffled by Hugh Laurie's meteoric rise to magazine cover-deity and sex-symbol status back in our teeveeless days when House was first getting popular. Hugh Laurie? People are drooling over pale, chinless, fluttery, wibbling, wot-wotting Hugh Laurie?? Has the world gone mad? Then I saw a photo of Laurie in character and realized that (1) the chinlessness was actually a function of Laurie's physicality as an actor, (2) a bit of a tan and 3-day beard helps him a lot, and he must have gotten a personal trainer for the role, and (3) I also realized from the blurb that he was playing an American(!) doctor, thus eliminating the fluttery, wibbling wot-wottery.

So, er, never mind, then. I guess Hugh Laurie can be sexy. Who wouldda thunk it?

[spikeiowa.livejournal.com]

House is a fuckwit. Else why does he never go to the medical library that almost certainly graces that hospital? I suppose he avoids it because he's Holmes, or perhaps because it's necessary to stretch the episode out to 60 minutes (and torment the patient just a wee bit more).

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

I scent a librarian who feels slighted. :)

But I'm not entirely clear why you think the library would help with House's differential diagnosis, when the usual scenario is that none of the diagnostic candidates fit the symptoms quite right. A friend of mine actually did her medical training in a school where diagnosis was taught by starting with symptom sets (rather than the more typical starting with diseases), and a major component of her training, as I understood it, was learning to eliminate possible diagnoses out of the often hundreds or dozens of conditions that will present with the given set of symptoms. House is not generally portrayed as not knowing what the possibilities are already, but rather as being presented with evolving, or non-typical symptom sets such that either multiple, or no particular, diagnoses fit.

Often the show's solution comes because of key information the patient or their family was withholding or neglecting finally comes to light, often by parallel fact-finding means taken to supplement the patient history that has been taken. Or because the condition evolves over time to reveal new symptoms, or a combination. Neither of these sorts of solutions would be gotten to quicker by looking something up.

Now, I agree that the length of the show creates a deep structural flaw: House can't hit on the right solution too early, unless the writers have struck upon some other way to complicate the situation for long enough to fill up the rest of the hour. And the nature of writing difference creates another problem: it is generally very difficult for people who are not themselves extraordinarily smart to write characters who are, unless they take particular care to observe extraordinarily smart people, and probably spend a lot of time also consulting such people. Writing a genius character is always fraught territory, because so few writers are geniuses.

[spikeiowa.livejournal.com]

Also Veronica Mars' dad is hot. *I* think.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Enrico Colantoni <3 <3 <3.

I kept doing double-takes on realizing he was the head alien from Galaxy Quest.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Yes, I can see what you mean. I've been too busy admiring his versatility, as an actor.