To House or Not To House

My newly (and FINALLY) installed AT&T cable TV service includes a Digital Video Recorder. What a great toy. I can record up to four programs at once and replay them on any of the TVs in the house. I can even do it on the fly ... like say if Wife has some urgent task that needs immediate response -- such as taking out the garbage or like telling me why we're having chicken not steak for dinner. Click, I push the "Pause" button and when I come back later I click "Play" and take right up where I left off -- merrily skipping commercials as I go.

It lets me record future shows and even set up a series record so that I get all the shows in a series without having to think much about it.

Which brings me to the real topic today: House -- the Fox Network dramatic series about a diagnostic physician at a major metropolitan hospital. I'm fairly well addicted to the show, and I wonder why. I really like Hugh Laurie. Reading his Wikipedia entry was interesting because -- some what frighteningly -- he has characteristics in line with his not-very-nice TV character: Dr. Greg House. He's a musician. He's suffered from clinical depression. He's got an eye for hot babes (he had a relationship with Emma Thompson). But he's a Brit (despite having locked in a good American accent), his university degrees are in archeology and anthropology, and his original theater experience was as a comic.

On the one hand I'm surprised at myself for liking the show. Dr. Greg House is a real asshole, frankly. He delights in manipulating people, is addicted to pain medication, got himself high on LSD to manage his migraines, likes hookers, and hates hospital clinic duty. He routinely dumps on his best friend, such as when he incrementally increased his requests for loans from his friend just to try to get a fix on how much his friendship was worth. His stock saying is "Everyone Lies". If he were a real doctor he would have been sued, barred from practicing medicine, and probably would've been beaten up and/or shot dead long ago.

Generally when faced with a character like this I'd say, "Why do I care about what happens to this guy?" then I'd switch stations. I do that with most reality shows since they tend to be populated by people that I would not chose to associate with under almost any imaginable circumstances.

And yet I'm recording every "House" program and even watching the re-runs. I think it's because I wish I were so good at something that I could be as big of a jerk as House and people would just live with it. The only way he gets away with being the way he is, is to be such a flippin' great diagnostician -- even without actually meeting his patients -- that everyone looks the other way when he acts out. And he acts out a lot. I act out a lot too, but nobody looks the other way. So, I vicariously live my life through House -- with his quick acerbic wit, flaunting all rules and quite a few laws, and pretty much putting on a show of never giving a damn what other people think.

Or maybe I just watch because his female boss (Dr. Lisa Cuddy played by Lisa Edelstein) looks great and always wears low cut tops. Afterall I'm never going to be that good at anything to be able to act like House.