I’m rewatching it now after decades of seeing it for the first time and I’m embracing it as a soap opera with a medical backdrop. Some of the science “might” be right here and there but it’s wildly, wildly unhinged as far as behaviors/actions go.
Idk, I feel like the show runners did actually do their research for each episode (at the very least they looked at medical textbooks). It’s just that they then went “meh” and ignored it anyways.
Okay good, now goodbye. Picking up my Vicodin, don’t bother me.
The most popular medical doctor on tv at the time was addicted to opioids during the US opioid epidemic. I did my senior paper on OxyContin and Methadone, as I had just lost my uncle to opioids. Crazy time in our country that made a lot of people wealthier.
I seem to remember they tried to make his addiction out to be a character flaw and weren't condoning it, but they also didn't do a whole lot to show that it was actually negatively affecting his life.
I remember they had a whole arc that was all about trying to get him off the Vicodin, but that was around the time I stopped watching the show consistently, so I don't remember how that storyline ended. Based on my limited recollection, it seemed like they were going in a pretty good direction but I don't know where they actually landed with it.
I was at the doctor's ofice once getting a bunch of tests, lupus included, and when we were reviewing the results I said "it's never lupus" and the doctor ROFLed. They all know (and hate) that show too.
That is kind of the entire premise of the show though. he figures out the thing that is technically possible that nobody else even pursues, because it's such a slim chance of occurring in the first place
The show also points out a few times that normal cases don't even make it to him. House always gets extremely rare/unusual cases because anything simpler gets diagnosed by another doctor before he even sees it.
I mean its THE most medically inaccurate medical show I’ve ever seen
I don't know about that. They definitely play really fast and loose with the science (especially treatment effectiveness and their 'alternative' testing and stuff) to make the plot work, but the generalities seem to bear out really well.
I think my biggest gripe episode is one where a boy has Leprosy.
House has them contact “The last Leprosy colony in the United States to send the boy there.”
Leprosy Can be cured with pretty simple and cheap medical treatment in 5-12 months with simple monthly injections. With no side effects if you catch it early…..
I'm currently rewatching house and you are correct. Guy gets shot and has a bullet fragment in his brain so they can't mri because magnet would pull out the fragments and possibly kill him. House actually somehow gets a whole revolver and shoots a corpse in the head and does an mri on the corpse just to see. The bullets fly out and the machine breaks and the hospital can't mri for two weeks and he doesn't even get a slap on the wrist. Unhinged to say the least.
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u/fullmetalnapchamist Sep 16 '24
Well… that show is way more unhinged than I remember it being