The title refers to the medical axiom “When you hear hoof beats, you think horses, not zebras.” Translation: In medicine, the obvious answer isn’t always the right one. Which explains the series premise: a brilliant but maladjusted physician, who runs a diagnostic hospital unit for baffling cases, must look beyond the obvious (and incorrect) medical explanations.
Dr. Gregory House revels in tracking down the zebras when the usual horse-driven answers are wrong. He must be doing something right; the show remains hugely popular in its seventh season.
House Book Author Doesn't Like Everything She Sees
The book’s subtitle is equally revealing: The Unofficial Guide to House, M.D. Since it’s not authorized or sanctioned by Fox or the show’s producers, Barnett doesn’t have to compromise her criticism.
”Just because you’re a fan of the show, it doesn’t necessarily mean you love every minute of it,” she told Suite 101 in a telephone interview. “And yes, I tend to look at the episodes through a more ‘glass is half-full’ versus ‘glass is half-empty’ eye. Because I want to like the show. I want the show to succeed. But it doesn’t always.
“I do watch it with an objective eye. And I don’t like all the characters, and I don’t like all the writing and I don’t like all the (medical) cases.”
House, M.D. Inspired By Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes
Barnett has been writing about House on the internet for three years, calling her blogcritics.org column Welcome to the End of the Thought Process: An Introspective Look at House, M.D. (For the record, there are at least three other books available about the series, including the official one, by Ian Jackman and series star Hugh Laurie, although it’s unclear how much Laurie wrote beyond the book’s forward.)
At 429 pages, Barnett’s book is remarkably comprehensive. Early on, she retraces series creator David Shore’s well-known conception of the misanthropic Gregory House and best friend Dr. James Wilson (Robert Sean Leonard) as equivalents of a pair of fictional sleuth-confederates: Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson.
But long before the book’s inevitable episode guide (covering the first six seasons), Barnett offers 16 chapters of thoughtful, deep-tissue analysis of characters, themes and how-they-do-it explanations. Each regular character gets a chapter.
Whole sections are devoted to the writers’ roles, the series’ creative use of music and how the sets (characters’ homes and offices) reflect who they are. In addition, there are meditations on religion, ethics and other issues regularly addressed on the series.
Author Barbara Barnett Teaches House-Inspired Class on Values and Ethics
Not coincidentally, Barnett even teaches an adult education class at the Chicago-area synagogue where she works. The class, about Jewish values and House, M.D., is called “House v. God.”
Of the show’s warts-and-all eponymous character, Barnett pulls no punches. Well, maybe one or two.
“He is a jerk, there’s no question. He can be a real ass. But I think there is an underlying moral code that this guy has. And it’s very consistent. And it’s very compelling. I mean, he will put his life on the line. He’ll put his career on the line, to save a patient’s life. And there’s a nobility in that, that does overcome his being a real jerk.”
He may be a jerk, but he’s Hugh Laurie’s jerk. Barnett quotes executive producer Katie Jacobs as calling star Laurie a “full (creative) partner” on the show. And Barnett insists there would be no show without Laurie.
“If they had another actor in the role, House would be a different character, completely. I think what Hugh Laurie does is, he brings a humanity into the character, through his eyes, his body language, that isn’t there on the pages of the script.”
Patrick Dempsey Auditioned for Lead Role on House, M.D.
To illustrate the point, Barnett notes if Patrick Dempsey, who auditioned for House, ended up playing the brilliant misanthrope, the series probably would have failed. Ironically, Dempsey ended up on another hit medical series, Grey's Anatomy.
Barnett grew up on Victorian lit: “...Jane Eyre, Sense and Sensibility, all those great precursors to chick flicks. And I completely see House as a descendant of those sort of flawed but somewhat heroic characters. Like Rick from Casablanca. I think I mentioned Batman in the book, i.e. The Dark Knight. Iron Man. These guys who, on the surface, are these really horrible people, but who have in them this innate idealism.”
In the book, Barnett borrows extensively from her blog interviews with House’s cast, producers and writers. Declaring it a “writers’ show,” she’s especially interested in how certain staff writers specialize in depicting particular characters or relationships. Sometimes, she’ll try to guess which staffer wrote which episode, based on how certain characters are treated.
House Scripts Invert Usual Story Structure
Of the structure, Barnett admits the series inverts the traditional “A” and “B” plots in which the primary “A” story – an episode’s mystery illness – takes a backseat to the “B” story of the regular characters' trials and tribulations. “The A plot – the procedural – is really just the bone, the structure, for everything else. And all of the other exploration, and detail, and character study, and drama, and ethical pursuit that the show explores – and without that structure, week to week to week, it’s a mess.
"And because they have that structure, they can do all kinds of interesting things in between, and come out with a different creature every week.”
Chasing Zebras: The Unofficial Guide to House, M.D. is widely available, at a list price of $17.95.
Barry M. Grey - Barry M. Grey is a non-fiction TV writer-producer in Los Angeles whose love of classic film borders on the dangerously obsessive.
Join the Conversation