Cox, Becker & House

So I guess I have a thing for bad-tempered doctors with hearts of gold.

Cox (from Scrubs), Becker (from Becker) and House (from, uh, House) all, sort of, fit the above description. But they are different in rather interesting ways. Cox and Becker, for instance, are much more functional than House and not just because of his leg. They have a greater ability to interact with others and, in Cox's case, are much more medically fallible.

In fact, Cox is the most realistic of the three. He is a very good doctor but, as far as I know (I've just started watching the show), not a genius. Becker isn't a genius either, but Becker sets himself apart by willingly staying in the Bronx when he could, with his credentials, make more money elsewhere.

Like the other two, Cox is aware of his own personality flaws (in the episode last night--these are reruns--he tells Newbie, "You want to be me? I don't even want to be me.") Unlike Becker, who isn't always aware of his effect on others, Cox--like House--can deliberately changed his behavior to produce an outcome, such as the episode where he provokes Kelso into taking back rounds--for Kelso's own good.

And Cox has an ex-wife girlfriend and a son and an intern who adores him.


Becker does eventually get a decent girlfriend--played by the very talented Nancy Travis. Like Cox, his personality, while not entirely environmentally induced, is strongly influenced by past unhappiness: multiple divorces, a bad childhood (that's Cox), etc. I'm not saying the writers use that material as an excuse for Cox and Becker's behavior, but it is important to understand their backgrounds in terms of the distinction between Becker & Cox and House.

With House, the producers (who I am now going to refer to as David Shore since Shore is the only one I know [from Due South, another great show]) are doing something rather difficult. House really isn't supposed to be a doctor with a heart of gold. House is really supposed to be a jerk. A complicated jerk but a jerk. The environmental complications--his leg, his lost girlfriend--do not fully explain him. I realize "The Jerk" was supposed to elucidate this, but I thought it was much better elucidated in the episode with the carpet stain. Yes, House plays games, but Shore wanted to make it clear, through that episode, that there's a real part to this guy that can't stand inconsistencies in his environment. It isn't supposed to be this weird thing that House goes through every now and again. It is supposed to BE House. All the stuff he does and says isn't a "front" or bad temper or a coping mechanism or disillusionment (which Cox, for example, portrays very well) but the guy himself. (Although House does have a stinky dad.)


And once you accept that basically House is NOT someone you would really want to spend time with, it gets a lot easier to spend time with him. He manipulates and plays games with people NOT because secretly he is trying to help them be better people (yuck) but because he really can't stand not to know why people do what they do. Other people create chaos, and he doesn't want chaos even though he believes in chaos. He MUST dig out Wilson's secrets. He MUST find out what is wrong with his patients. He MUST know.

Which makes him difficult to be around but a great diagnostician.

What makes all three of the doctors interesting to watch is that all three of them act the role of "fool"--not "fool" in the Ben Stiller sense but fool in the old Shakespearean/King Lear sense. They say things other people don't admit/want to hear. (I must include Cox's ex-wife girlfriend here, especially the episode where she keeps trying out lines like, "I'm not wholly myself when Cox isn't with me" and then saying, "No, it doesn't sound like me, does it?")

Now, I've got a big dose of Jane Austen in me--I believe in appropriate conversation for appropriate venues, but that didn't stop Jane Austen skewering people in her letters to Cassandra. It doesn't really work for effective day-to-day living; it is much better to accept other people's fallibilities and forgive and all that.

But it makes GREAT television.

TELEVISION

My Guess: The Next American Idol

I confess, I watched American Idol this season. I'm being apologetic NOT because I think people should be apologetic about watching television but because I'm usually down on "reality" TV. I don't want reality TV to take the place of good, old-fashioned non-reality TV--like Buffy and such. (CSI is more or less "reality" TV with non-reality characters, much like Law & Order, which is a lot like watching your local news, only more interesting.)

However, I did watch American Idol this season, mostly to listen to Simon's comments and to read Television Without Pity's summations. In any case, I've been surprised at how nobody (that I've read so far) has caught on to why Melinda got dropped.

Melinda was/is phenomenal. She's a true professional. And that's why she didn't win. American Idol is very American in that at some fundamental level we think we're watching, LIVE, an Horatio Alger book. Horatio Alger wrote a bunch of books back in the 19th century about poor boys making good. They were probably all poor white boys but they were plucky and intrepid and made money and moved into the middle class. (Unlike Jeffrey Archer characters, they remained pleasant people and didn't try to kill each other or other people.) And much has been written about how influential this idea is in the American psyche.

Well, yeah. And that's not necessarily a bad thing, no matter what grad-school tries to tell you. And it does explain American Idol. Melinda didn't need anyone's help to "make good." She was already a professional with style. American Idol did give her more confidence but other than that, her leap up the rung isn't quite as far as it will be for . . . Jordin.

Yup, that's my guess. I like Blake, and I think Blake is a very, very gifted young man. But, first, I agree with Joe R. from Television Without Pity that first place really won't do Blake any favors. Secondly, it will Jordin; it will make Jordin's life (I'll pause here and say that for the sake of Jordin's future happiness, I hope that isn't true in the long-term, but I'm sure it will be true in the short-term.) Jordin is not a professional (as far as I know). She's a high schooler with a powerful set of lungs who is the same age as the show. Ha Ha Ha. (I've been reading too much TWP, and I'm beginning to adopt the style. She's not, of course.) The point is, the voting audience can make a difference with Jordin's life, in a way they really couldn't in Melinda's. Based on descriptions of Melinda's graceful farewell (I never watch the result shows; I draw the line at that much substancelessness), I would say that the 29-year-old was kind of sick of the whole thing and ready to walk away. Which is lovely really. But if you're a voter on the show, you're going to want to vote in the person who cares to win. And the person who cares the most, I think, is Jordin.

TELEVISION

Spiderman, Angst, Redemption and All That Good Stuff

As a devotee of Spiderman 1 & 2, I went to see Spiderman 3 for my birthday, and I'm sorry to say I was disappointed.

It was basically me and a bunch of twenty-year-old males who also don't have to work on a Friday afternoon. They were disappointed as well. "Geez," one complained as we left the theatre, "they killed off the two best villains in one movie!"

I agreed although my complaint has more to do with Spiderman's, aka Peter Parker's, response to that killing. Or, to be more precise, Peter Parker's response to his bad side. Which is, to sum it up, not that much.

I'll give Tobey Maguire a pass on this one since I think he is a very talented actor, and I think he "got" the jerk part of the script very well. That is, I think he understood how to make Peter Parker a jerk without making him over-the-top villainous.

Here's the problem--he never really pays for being a jerk and hurting his friends and basically enabling one villain into existence. It's one of those "Well, he learned his lesson, he's sorry, hey, really, really bad things happened to him too, ya know, let's just let the whole thing drop" treatments. And that just doesn't work in terms of good storytelling.

I've been rewatching some Buffy and have been struck (again) by how much Whedon, whatever his personal theology, understands the concept of redemption in both a human and a literary sense. The fact is that "paying for it" or "feeling bad about it" or "being forgiven for it" or "accepting one's part in it" is a major theme is most of history's great literature, and it simply doesn't work to ignore that as a literary and a human reality. (A thorough introduction to the letters of Paul never did any writer any harm.)

In a purely technical sense, Angel is not Angelus, but he inhabits the same body, and therefore still pays for that body's crimes. (Additionally, there is a ton of evidence within the show itself that the type of harm a vampire does is based on the worst aspects of the original personality. So Spike becomes a passionate obsessive and Angel becomes a sadist and Willow and Xander form a weird sort of incestuous relationship where they torture Cordelia. In other words, in Whedon's universe, how you lived your life as a human will be reflected in exactly how awful or creepy you are as a vampire.)

Not only does redemption work on a literary and human level, but it also works on an emotional one. And I think that the powers-that-be for Spiderman 3 made a huge mistake here. The audience is willing to let the hero suffer. Really. I got the feeling with Spiderman 3 that the writers were trying to protect Peter Parker from the worst effects of his bad behavior. Why????? It doesn't hurt the hero in the audience's eyes if he/she is forced to pay/be sorry/make up for being a jerk.

Take, for example, Edmund from C.S. Lewis' Narnia books. I've read some rather silly tut-tutting articles (by adults) who think that Edmund was a victim, poor little boy. Yet Edmund remains the favorite of many readers, both young and old (and including me). First of all, Lewis (and Paul) understood what the silly adults and Spiderman 3 writers failed to grasp: sin--once you've defined it--is sin, whatever the extenuating circumstances. Second of all, Lewis understood, as does Whedon (intuitively, I think), that in order to take someone seriously, you have to take their actions seriously as well as the consequences of those actions. Lewis takes his children protagonists seriously--which must be very refreshing to your average child.

To return to Spiderman 3, it's worth watching on a large screen, but not at full price. Wait for the $1 theatre.

MOVIES