'House'
'House' Prescribes More Medical Misanthropy
LOS ANGELES (Zap2it.com) - They have to wait until next week for the
second season premiere, but "House" fans already are clamoring for an
appointment with their favorite misanthrope.
Anticipating the new season, Fox is rerunning on Tuesday, Sept. 6, last
season's electrifying finale, in which Dr. Greg House (Emmy nominee Hugh
Laurie) saves the life of old flame Stacy's (Sela Ward) husband, only to
have her confess afterwards that she still has feelings for House.
"Starting out the new season, House is thinking, 'I can deal with this,
I can deal with this,' meaning that a person that he probably is still
in love with is right there in his life," explains series creator and
executive producer David Shore. "We want to explore that over the first
half of the season, because it's a very intriguing situation. Here you
have a character who firmly believes in rationality over emotion at all
times, and he's being confronted with his own emotional hang-ups.
"House will be going from 'I'm fine' to 'Wait. Why am I fine? I
shouldn't be fine. And why is she fine, for that matter?' We'll be
drawing the two of them closer and closer together. I'm not speaking out
of school to say that Stacy and House together would be fantastic and
horrible at the same time. Does the fantastic outweigh the horrible?
Once they commit to it, a huge price will be paid."
Ward, who returns for seven episodes this season, says she has no
problem understanding why Stacy is so attracted to House, despite his
cranky misanthropy.
"He gets to say all the things everybody wishes they could say," the
Emmy-winning actress states. "And Hugh is gorgeous, and so 'out of the
box.'" Series regular Lisa Edelstein, who co-stars as hospital
administrator Dr. Lisa Cuddy, concurs that women find the British actor
sexy in spite of his prickliness.
"Hugh is hot," Edelstein says, shrugging. "He's a sex bomb. Let's face
it." Edelstein's attitude may come in handy next season. Didn't another
character suggest last year that Cuddy and House had fooled around at
some point? "Yes, he certainly did allude to that, and Cuddy denied it.
And we're going to allude to that again this season," Shore says. As for
the actor at the center of all this, Laurie says he doesn't have a
problem believing that Dr. House's patients, who are usually in dire
straits when they come to him, would willingly tolerate his rudeness in
exchange for his medical brilliance.
"It's all about proportion, isn't it?" Laurie says. "If your life is
hanging in the balance, the most important thing to you is going to see
the best person for the job. If you have an ingrown toenail, then no.
But if the life of someone you love is in danger, you would withstand
any amount of abuse to get the job done and get the life saved. You'd
have to be convinced, of course, that this was the best person for the
job, and only on TV can you know that."
Laurie admits that his perspective was shaped at an early age. "My
father was a doctor," he says, "so I was raised with a natural respect
for the well of medical knowledge from which they all draw. I don't
think I've ever even gotten a second opinion on anything, actually. I'm
by and large pretty content with whatever a doctor will come up with.
... I take the medicine that I'm given."