Crushable » house

Video Gallery: House‘s 8 Best Moments

Natalie Zutter — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 21:11:59 +0000

Fox’s medical drama House has officially been cancelled, with a series finale to come in May. Like I said yesterday, the series was showing its age, so it’s ready to go off the air. However, that doesn’t mean that it wasn’t one of the more piercing, wickedly funny, utterly compelling shows out there from 2004 onward. In honor of its passing, I’ve compiled a list of the seven best moments.

Now, I’m biased, because I was a diehard fan up til about season 3; my strongest memories of bizarre medical plotlines and romantic entanglements are from the early seasons. That said, there are some moments from later seasons included. (I grabbed as many videos as I could, but strangely, there aren’t a lot of clips on YouTube, so in some cases I’ve substituted photos.)

“Three Stories”

You need to watch this whole damn episode (1×21), is what it comes down to. House gives a lecture about three cases of leg pain, but over the course of his story and several flashbacks that fans learned to scrutinize for every possible detail, we learn that he’s actually telling the story of his crippled leg. With the episode coming at the end of the first season, it was perfectly timed to begin to delve into this antagonistic character’s deep-seated pain — because of, as we learned, a decision that he never got to make — and addiction.

“It’s Never Lupus!”

Every show needs a running joke—for House, it’s diagnosing every mystery patient with lupus. House himself doesn’t, of course; his team always returns to that idea, despite him telling them that it can’t be. One of the show’s better moments was the first clip from this video, when House reveals that he stashes his drugs in a lupus textbook because… You get the idea. I loved it when the show got this self-aware.

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House Creator David Shore Thanks Fans For Supporting The Show

Natalie Zutter — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 00:00:13 +0000

After eight years of bringing us unbelievable medical cases, a riveting mix of drama and bittersweet humor, and one of the most unique interpretations of the Sherlock Holmes character, Fox‘s medical drama House is ending.

The news broke today, after creator David Shore pushed the network to tell him one way or the other. At the end of 2011, both parties had agreed to push off the decision til after January 1, but Shore, obviously sensing some unease, decided that he’d rather have advance warning to prepare an adequate series finale for May.

We knew that the show was nearing its last legs when series regular Lisa Edelstein left last year, but it’s definite now that the network has confirmed the decision. While it’s difficult to see such a brilliant show go off the air, it’s worth nothing that it had been losing steam for some time now, with cast shake-ups that couldn’t restore the snappy repartee of the first few seasons, and the writers throwing the cantankerous Dr. House into increasingly unrealistic situations (rehab, jail, and so forth). We’ll always remember the good times, but it’s time.

We can always count on E!’s Kristin dos Santos to get a statement from the creators; here’s what David Shore, Katie Jacobs, and star Hugh Laurie had to say to fans:

After much deliberation, the producers of House M.D. have decided that this season of the show, the 8th, should be the last. By April this year they will have completed 177 episodes, which is about 175 more than anyone expected back in 2004.

The decision to end the show now, or ever, is a painful one, as it risks putting asunder hundreds of close friendships that have developed over the last eight years – but also because the show itself has been a source of great pride to everyone involved.

Since it began, House has aspired to offer a coherent and satisfying world in which everlasting human questions of ethics and emotion, logic and truth, could be examined, played out, and occasionally answered. This sounds like fancy talk, but it really isn’t. House has, in its time, intrigued audiences around the world in vast numbers, and has shown that there is a strong appetite for television drama that relies on more than prettiness or gun play.

But now that time is drawing to a close. The producers have always imagined House as an enigmatic creature; he should never be the last one to leave the party. How much better to disappear before the music stops, while there is still some promise and mystique in the air.

The producers can never sufficiently express their gratitude to the hundreds of dedicated artists and technicians who have given so generously of their energy and talent to make House the show it has been – and perhaps will continue to be for some time, on one cable network or another.

The makers of House would also like to thank Fox Broadcasting and Universal Television for supporting the show with patience, imagination and large quantities of good taste. The Studio-As-Evil-Adversary is one of the many clichés that House has managed to avoid, and for that the cast and crew are deeply grateful.

Lastly, the audience: some have come and some have gone, obviously. This is to be expected in the life of any show. But over the course of the last eight years, the producers of House have felt immensely honored to be the subject of such close attention by an intelligent, discriminating, humane and thoughtful – not to mention numerous – audience. Even the show’s detractors have been flattering in their way.

Making the show has felt like a lively and passionate discussion about as many different subjects as could possibly be raised in 177 hours. The devotion and generosity of our viewers has been marvelous to behold.

So, finally, everyone at House will bid farewell to the audience and to each other with more than a few tears, but also with a deep feeling of gratitude for the grand adventure they have been privileged to enjoy for the last eight years. If the show lives on somewhere, with somebody, as a fond memory, then that is a precious feat, of which we will always be proud.

Everybody Lies.

We can only hope that Shore and Jacobs go on — together or separately — to create an equally compelling, intelligent, snarky show. Because I do believe that House as a series showed audiences that they could dive into a fast-paced, technical-jargon-heavy show and still find its heart.

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Hollywood Jobs: Dustin Paddock, Script Coordinator For House

Celine Geiger — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 15:58:13 +0000

Dustin Paddock is a network TV veteran with over a decade of prime time production experience under his belt. He is currently the Script Coordinator on FOX’s medical drama House. Dustin met me at Miracle Mile hotspot Sheddy’s in Los Angeles to discuss the highs and lows of the gig, why he refers to himself as “a closer,” and what Hugh Laurie is like in real life.

How did you get your start?

Gradually—I moved step-by-step up the ladder from the bottom. After college, I drove out to L.A. in my hatchback, and got my first job as a production assistant at Dick Clark Productions. About a year after arriving in L.A., I got my first job on a primetime series, The Drew Carey Show, which was also my first job on a major studio lot—Warner Brothers. I was there for a year, then jumped to another sitcom to be the Assistant Production Coordinator—but I went back to working as a production assistant so I could work with writers and learn more about writing. I got on a new hour-long show—Get Real starring Anne Hathaway and Jesse Eisenberg—originally as the writer’s assistant, but, a week on the job, the Script Coordinator they were looking to hire backed out, and they gave that job to me. I’ve been a Script Coordinator ever since.

Explain to me what exactly it is that you do.

In a nutshell, when the writers are done writing their script, they give it to me and I do everything that needs to be done to it before it goes to anyone else. I like to use a baseball analogy. I like to refer to myself as the closer: I come in at the end of the day and do what I do to finish the job.

What are some of the things that need to get done before a script can be distributed to cast and crew?

You always have to create a title page, a cast list, and a set list [for every script], so I make those lists and I attach them. All the scenes get a number; if a writer moves a scene, you have to renumber the scenes so that they’re in the new order. You have to keep track of every line that gets deleted or changed from draft to draft. Pages also get “locked,” so that if you’re gonna add text to page 5, but you have more text than will actually fit on the page, you have to create an additional page—page 5A—between page 5 and 6 [so you don’t push page count].

It sounds like there’s a lot of technical stuff you have to just learn on the fly.

Yeah. A lot of it is grammar and logic and continuity. For example, if a character is age 24, and then later on in an episode they refer to them as age 30, you have to check with the writer and fix it before it gets published.

Every episode of every show—every word gets scrutinized. If you change one word, you might have changed something five scenes later, or the entire plot, especially with all the medicine in a show like House. My job exists because they need someone to keep track of everything.

You’re in charge of so much detail! How long does it all take to put one script together?

When I was starting out, it would take me sometimes four hours to put a script out for production. It was a laborious process until I started to get good at it, and to trust myself. Now it takes me two hours or less. And a lot of the time, you’re working at night. The writers will work all day on the changes and give them to you—and then you basically start your job.

So, your hours are totally unpredictable.

I never know what night I’m gonna stay late. Some nights I’m done by 5pm, some nights I’m done at midnight.

How do you manage your social calendar?

I actually don’t mind if I’m working late. It’s kind of hard sometimes; my wife has to understand that I’m not gonna be home every night at 6. But after hours, the atmosphere in the office changes. It loosens up a little—you might have dinner brought in or eat dinner with the other writers. And you can use the downtime to write your own material. Not only are you there in the environment with working writers, seeing a new script every week or so—you have time to work on your own stuff, and you can’t beat that.

Photo: Alex Solether – it was taken outside the House stages (Stage 14) on the FOX lot.

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The Daily WTF: Naomi Campbell’s New Home Will Look Like A Giant Eye

Liana Maeby — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 21:09:56 +0000

Naomi Campbell‘s got a billionaire boyfriend and he’s building her a house on the Turkish Isla Playa de Cleopatra. And he’s clearly into the Egyptian name of the island. How do we know this? Because he’s building the house in the shape of the god Horus’ eye.

But like, only from space. So we presume dude’s buying Naomi a rocketship as well. Man, billionaire boyfriends sure are the best.

(via BuzzFeed)

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The 10 Worst Fictional Employees

Molly Horan — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 20:31:15 +0000

Horrible Bosses comes out this Friday, and while having a bad boss sucks, a less-than-helpful coworker can be twice as bad. So today while you grumble at an unfair workload or someone who gets by while being chronically late, ask yourself if the guy in the cubicle next to you has ever brought a firearm into work, let a kid drown, or run a car into the boss’ home. It’s all about perspective.

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Gallery: Celebrities with Portraits of Themselves in Their Homes

Liana Maeby — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 19:46:17 +0000

Hey guess what? It looks like Lindsay Lohan‘s design aesthetic is a very fervent “pictures of myself, please.” The actress, under house arrest, was recently photographed in her home — and the shots gave us not one, but two self-obsessed portraits. Oh, actors. Here’s a gallery of other celebrities who have used their own visages as decoration.

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Fan Service: Why Lisa Edelstein Leaving ‘House’ Has Nothing to Do with the House/Cuddy Breakup

Natalie Zutter — Fri, 20 May 2011 15:59:37 +0000

This week we learned that Lisa Edelstein, who plays Dr. Lisa Cuddy on Fox’s House, won’t be returning for the show’s eighth (and probably final) season. The big question, of course, is how House (Hugh Laurie) will function without his boss/ex-lover, and if Edelstein’s exit may have hastened along this season’s House/Cuddy breakup.

Edelstein’s official statement was frustratingly vague:

“After much consideration, I am moving onward with a combination of disappointment at leaving behind a character I have loved playing for seven years and excitement of the new opportunities in acting and producing that lie ahead.”

Already rumors have swirled that the producers planned the breakup of the show’s most dynamic couple (“Huddy” as the fans call them) around Edelstein’s decision. But this is probably not the case. Showrunners David Shore, Katie Jacobs, and Greg Yaitanes have been managing fans’ expectations for close to five years, throwing out hints before sweeps episodes and taking Twitter abuse after Huddy’s many stops and starts.

I can’t track down the exact link, but I clearly remember an interview with Shore on a House fan community where he said something along the lines of, “Even if we put House and Cuddy together, they may not stay together.” That was seasons before their first kiss, and when they broke up this year, Shore basically reiterated what I remembered:

“We knew it wasn’t going to last forever. We knew it couldn’t last forever. We had it mapped out since the beginning of the season that it was going to last almost exactly this long. It’s like anything else we do on the show. We go, ‘Let’s explore that. And once we’ve exhausted the exploration, let’s move on.’ …House is not a good boyfriend. House is not a good spouse. He’s got deep issues, and the reasons Cuddy breaks up with him are very valid. Taking House down an ultimately happy road just seems unrealistic.”

Michael Ausiello at TV Line reported that Edelstein, who had been fully expected to renew her contract for season 8, bowed out because she was asked to take a lower salary due to budget cuts for the entire show. So it seems that it was solely her decision, and one that will be difficult to translate within the world of the show.

No matter what the producers do, it’s going to look contrived when Cuddy just ups and leaves. The season finale airs Monday, which means it was written and shot a few weeks ago. Because we don’t know where in the season the contract negotiations came up, this may have been too tight a window to write a proper exit for Cuddy. So, will she be explained away with a few lines of dialogue in the season premiere this fall?

No word yet on if Edelstein will appear in season 8 to tie up any loose ends.

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Why Isn’t Anne Dudek More Famous?

Lilit Marcus — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 18:36:58 +0000

If Fametracker.com still existed, Anne Dudek would be perfect for their “Hey! It’s That Guy!” feature. The actress has worked steadily over the last few years and created wildly different yet great characters on some of TV’s most popular shows, but she doesn’t have the name recognition of some of her less-talented peers. I’d say “Meet Anne,” but you probably already know her.

Role #1 – Francine, Mad Men

Betty Draper (January Jones)’ neighbor Francine served as a way to make Betty’s character more tolerable and give a glimpse into typical 1960s suburban life. Like Betty, Francine’s husband cheated on her. Unlike Betty, Francine chose to stay with him rather than get a scandalous divorce. Though Betty remarried, she’s still in Ossining for the time being, which means Francine might make another appearance.

Role #2 – Amber, House

Amber was one of the people brought in as a potential new doctor and got the nickname “Cutthroat Bitch” (because, well, she kind of was). She didn’t get the job, but she and Wilson ended up falling for each other. In a heartbreaking episode, Amber was in a bus accident and ultimately died (it’s more complicated than that, since we are dealing with House here).

Role #3 – Natalie, How I Met Your Mother

Dudek only appeared on two episodes of HIMYM, but they were memorable ones. She played one of Ted’s ex-girlfriends, who he broke up with on her birthday. When he reconnected with her years later, he did a classic Ted move – he broke up with her on her birthday and then claimed it was for her own good because she ended up meeting a great guy later. I hate Ted.

Role #4 – Danielle, Covert Affairs

Though it’s a small role, it’s a crucial one. Danielle is the sister of main character Annie (Piper Perabo) who is a secret agent. Danielle doesn’t know about Annie’s other life and often acts as her conscience.

Role #5 – Lura, Big Love

This is possibly my favorite Anne Dudek role. As the conniving wife of compound prophet and leader Alby Grant (Matt Ross), Lura did whatever it took to keep herself in the favorite wife role and her husband in power. Sometimes that extended to arson and attempted murder, which she did all while rocking a prairie dress and big hair.

While most of Dudek’s credits are on TV, I would love to see her morph into a kind of Melissa Leo. Leo worked consistently but lingered in the shadows as her costars got more attention and fame. It wasn’t until her Oscar-nominated performance in the indie Frozen River that she popped up on Hollywood’s radar, but she had already established years’ worth of goodwill along the way. Someone give Anne Dudek an Emmy already.

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Parenting Lessons from ‘Teen Mom 2′: No, Not Everybody Is a Cheater

Lilit Marcus — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 20:22:11 +0000

This week, I am clearly obsessed with the hair of every person on this show. Leah’s changes in every scene, Kieffer’s makes him look like a porcupine, and Jenelle’s probably smells like weed.

Also, I want MTV to branch out and put some of these girls on other shows. Leah’s baby issues would finally get a diagnosis thanks to the team on House, and Judge Judy would have Jo and Kailyn’s custody argument settled in about twenty seconds.

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Liana Maeby — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 18:48:03 +0000

Mark Zuckerberg has a new home – And Gawker has the photos. It’s just a few blocks away from his old home and only slightly larger. Think billions of dollars, Zuck! (Gawker)

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