House - Season 6

The new House season is finally underway after a long and excruciating wait. Finally is an understatement because last season's finale was something of a killer with House being put into a mental institution and leaving us viewers with alot of questions on what's going to happened to him. I was really hyped for today's episode simply to find out how House would fit in an insane setting and I could really imagine all kinds of crazy scenarios that he'd put the personal as well as the other patients thought. First impression after watching the new episode "Broken" made me realize how much I had missed the show and the character of House with all his silly quirks and insanity. The episode was really good drama with solid acting like always and it clearly paid some homage to my favorite film One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest with House being up to all kinds of mischief and fighting any form of authority as always. The episode also scores points for playing No Surprises by Radiohead during the intro.

Still I am left with mixed feelings, mostly due to the fact that this episode barely had any medicine in it and because it was basically a feel-good episode about House coming to terms with himself and trying to reform so he can be "happy". This may not sound as something terrible and sure you'll laugh and feel good while watching the episode but one rule about House since season one has always been "House NEVER changes!" and it is what has made the show so great. Now I'm getting worried that House is going to learn to conform and become more normal which would for me effectively kill the show, I hope the writers know what they're doing. The other big let down of this episode was in that House gets out of the mental institution at the end of the episode and his hallucinations are never properly explained, the way everything is resolved feels very rushed and screams deus ex machina.

They could have done so much more with the House-gone-insane plot with additional episodes but instead we don't even get to see anyone visit House before he's out, no Cuddy, no Cameron, no Team actually visit House during the episode, which I found very strange. House not only gets out in one episode but also gets his medical license back and it seems the next episode will be back to business as usual. I want to believe that House will continue to excel as a show despite losing some of it's edge for the past three seasons but I am left very worried when plots are just brushed past and restored to status quo with not further development. It's especially strange since some of the new characters in this episode were really interesting and it would have been great to see them get fleshed out more with a few more episodes. House used to be my favorite show for so many years but these past few seasons with the new team have made me realize that the top spot belongs to Mad Men for now, unless the writers of House kick it up a notch again or the writers of Mad Men knock it down a notch.