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This episode we talk about the 2000s show House, and how this influential medical procedural connects to the real life experience of patients and doctors.
Content Warning: We do touch on themes of medical trauma.
This episode is hosted by Julian Harper, Maggie Brennan, Alasia Destine-Defreece, Adrienne Beckham.
Music for this podcast is by Carl Trunk from Pop Pop Pop Records.
“it’s a creepy stormy day”
Pop Pop Pop Records
Transcript
[01:00:01.03] – Julian Harper
Hi, everyone. Just a little content warning here. This episode, we speak on themes of medical ableism. Just keep that in mind while you’re listening. Do please enjoy the podcast. Thank you. [singing 00:00:39].
[01:00:19.22]
Hello, everyone. I am Julian Harper, the host of The Art is the Tool, and I’m joined by my co-hosts/co-workers/friends. Adrienne Beckham.
[01:00:57.18] – Adrienne Beckham
Hi.
[01:00:58.17] – Julian Harper
Maggie Brennan.
[01:01:02.02] – Maggie Brennan
Yes.
[01:01:02.10] – Julian Harper
I definitely know their name, and Alasia Destine-DeFreece.
[01:01:07.03] – Alasia Destine-DeFreece
It should be the hardest one, and yet you get it every time.
[01:01:10.07] – Julian Harper
Today, we’re going to talk about everybody’s favorite: medical procedural from the 2000s, House. I’ve written out this intro here. House, the show imagines a world where doctors cosplay as detectives and play out cop procedural tropes on the final frontier of the human body, sometimes the patients themselves. The show imagines diagnosis as a pathway towards personal salvation, medical absolution.
[01:01:46.13]
House is flagrantly racist, sexist, ableist, but is presented as a world-weary survivor, speaking to the uncomfortable truth and telling it like it is. As described by his in-universe friend, colleague, and enabler, Dr. James Wilson, when asked if House is a good man, states, “Well, he’s a good doctor.” That is an introduction to our conversation today. In preparation…
[01:02:15.23] – Alasia Destine-DeFreece
Did you write that, Julian?
[01:02:16.12] – Julian Harper
I did write that.
[01:02:17.14] – Alasia Destine-DeFreece
Oh, that was really beautiful.
[01:02:18.17] – Julian Harper
I like to use my degree sometimes. In preparation, we all watched or attempted to watch the pilot episode. Some of us have different degrees of experience with the show. I remember watching the show a lot, but I think everyone has now a point of reference.
[01:02:39.19]
Even in the first episode, there is so much to get into. Part of me maybe feels like starting with House themselves and the way that they’re presented. I brought up a quote that IMDb uses specifically, and it’s from a scene where House is talking to the patient. The patient is Rebecca Adler.
[01:03:03.09]
In the first episode, it’s, I believe, a kindergarten teacher, and they have been going through all these different diagnoses, having all of these different responses to the treatment. This is what Rebecca Adler says. They say, “I just want to die with a little dignity.” Dr. Gregory House says, “There’s no such thing! Our bodies break down, sometimes we’re 90, sometimes before we’re even born, but it always happens, and there’s never any dignity in it! I don’t care if you can walk, see, wipe your own ass… It’s always ugly. Always! You can live with dignity; we can’t die with it!”
[01:03:38.10]
Let’s get into what is House’s deal. What? Why? Maybe what were the writers thinking? But I’d love if we could talk to them because I have a lot of questions for them.
[01:03:54.01] – Adrienne Beckham
Can we just summarize it as like internalized ableism, maybe?
[01:03:57.19] – Maggie Brennan
No, the way that in my notes, the first note I took is the way that I hollered at House’s first line, “They all assume I’m a patient because of this cane.” I was like, we’re really starting off strong. That’s the first thing that you say in the first episode of this.
[01:04:14.15] – Alasia Destine-DeFreece
The first quote that I wrote down was “People don’t like a sick doctor.”
[01:04:19.14] – Maggie Brennan
I wrote that down, too.
[01:04:21.23] – Alasia Destine-DeFreece
There were so many lines that internalized ableism, but then also just like, it’s such a genius of the world trope or attempt at that in a way where I’m like, why does the genius of the world have to be an asshole? Can I say that?
[01:04:44.22] – Julian Harper
Yeah.
[01:04:46.00] – Maggie Brennan
Can I say those words?
[01:04:46.21] – Adrienne Beckham
It is very like the artist in pain of him. Like the suffering genius. Serving artist.
[01:04:56.11] – Maggie Brennan
Which I feel like is a really big, particularly this era of television, that was the thing. It’s like, get this strong man persona, give them a sad backstory and have that be licensed for them to be an ass.
[01:05:20.22] – Adrienne Beckham
Licensed for them to be sexist? There were some wild things. Then I had to remember. I was like, “Oh, yes.” The 2000s. When this show came out, I was like, “Maybe that’s part of it,” but it seemed like there was a vested interest in having him be ableist, sexist, and racist, and still be the hero, and I question why.
[01:05:47.22] – Alasia Destine-DeFreece
He’s not like other doctors.
[01:05:49.03] – Julian Harper
Agreed. I think that he’s presented more like a detective, more like someone who’s gone through a war, that their disability is presented as this scar that never heals. It reminds me, I was reading, I just finished Against Technoableism by Ashley Shew. They talk a lot about disability tropes. This one fit really neatly to the bitter cripple.
[01:06:31.13]
I think of characters like Lieutenant Dan and Forrest Gump, I’m trying to think of other examples. House is presented as someone who’s persevered. He’s made it through and made the best of it. He’s made the best of an unlivable situation as an excuse for their behavior in the same way that I feel like a cop show engages with those ideas.
[01:07:04.21] – Maggie Brennan
When I was first watching this, I was like, “This is the trope. I’m not loving this.” I wonder as a question to pose to the room: Do you guys think that that’s trying to directly go against the idea that people who are disabled require the sympathy of others? Because I am thinking about how that seems to be one of House’s things, and he does not want sympathy. He, because of his whole tell it like it is thing.
[01:07:38.15]
I’m like, “Where’s the middle ground between normalizing, not treating someone who’s disabled like some charity case, and that’s needing your sympathy, or needing you to baby them in some way, because that seems he’s like, ‘I’m tough. I have a hard exterior. I’m not soft because of my disability. I’m even tougher than everyone else.'”
[01:08:07.14]
I totally understand trying to change the narrative of how people who aren’t disabled interact with people who are disabled. But I’m like, “Does that mean they have to be bitter? Does that mean House needs to actively be kind?” As you said that quote, he’s not a good person, but he’s a good doctor.
[01:08:32.13]
Why can’t there be a middle ground between in content, in media, normalizing people who are disabled as being capable still? I think that’s what House is. I’m super capable, but how can you do that without doing this bitter, the bitter crippled trope, as you said? I feel like it can’t be that hard.
[01:09:03.13] – Alasia Destine-DeFreece
I feel like that would require him to fundamentally change the way that he thinks about his own job, because he also says another quote that I wrote down is that he doesn’t treat patients, he treats the illness. There is a deeply personal relationship, at least in my experience, between being chronically ill and how that affects you, just your identity, and how you handle yourself, especially at the doctor’s office. I wrote down red flag after that quote.
[01:09:41.02]
He says that patients lie in the same scene, I think, and then there’s this montage of him seeing a bunch of patients who are like… He’s like, “You’re all so stupid.” But there was one patient in that montage in particular that I took some notes down about because this guy comes in, and he’s like, “I’m concerned that I might have these different ailments.”
[01:10:08.23]
It got me thinking about the process of self-diagnosis before, or not self-diagnosis at large, but a person noting how their body feels over time and then coming to the doctor with like, “Hey, I have these concerns,” and the doctor being like, “No, it can’t be that.”
[01:10:35.10] – Maggie Brennan
You’re stupid and a liar.
[01:10:36.23] – Alasia Destine-DeFreece
Literally that. It’s happened to me. It took changing doctors twice for me to get answers about what was going on with me. I was just seething on my little couch watching that.
[01:10:50.08] – Maggie Brennan
I feel like it paints it as we’re supposed to be normalizing doctors, not trusting their patients, and maybe it’s because I’ve only seen the first episode. To be clear, I’m on the end of I have not seen the show before. The first episode was like, “Oh, this is House.” When I was younger, all I knew about House is that there was also a show called Castle, and I assumed that they were related somehow.
[01:11:17.08] – Julian Harper
The architecture.
[01:11:19.06] – Maggie Brennan
That being said, I had no context for going into it, and I’m like, “Is this an attempt to make people who watching this show and are taking note of their own elements and illnesses?” Is the message that we’re not supposed to trust people, or we’re not supposed to let people share their own experiences with their doctor, because in the end, House was right? Which, and again, I’ve only seen this one episode. I’m like, maybe there is a greater arc where he stops being racist and sexist, and ableist. Anyone who’s seen more of the show, Julian, perhaps, does that happen? Is he nicer?
[01:12:02.08] – Julian Harper
I want to speak about two things. One, I want to respond to Maggie, what you’re saying in that, yeah, I think House also did a lot of damage for the actual field of medicine, because I think it really reinforced the idea that doctors are detectives, and that the truth is something outside of the patient, and that they have to discover the truth, and that the patient is a barrier to that truth, and that you work through different tests, you work through different analysis. It totally disregards the fact that all good medicine starts with self-diagnosis.
[01:12:58.07]
It starts with the patient recognizing that there’s something wrong and going in and asking something. The genius narrative doesn’t work very well if they’re working mutually with everyone. Then I wanted to speak to what you were talking about, Alasia, when you’re talking about pity, because I think that House has expertly weaponized other people’s ableist projections to garner pity, not in the sense that, not as a weak individual, but pity as someone who is allowed excuses in the face of abuse and violence, like the pity that he uses is as a shield for them as a doctor. Even in the episode, he threatened a coworker, had them break and enter into a house.
[01:14:23.10] – Maggie Brennan
For real? The racism of that whole part. Oh, my God!
[01:14:27.09] – Julian Harper
I don’t know, borderline or… No, just actual sexual verbal abuse, but there’s another scene. Their boss is like, “I would like to fire him,” or we can’t get rid of him, but he’s the best doctor we got, and I don’t care if we lose your money, which totally disregard the fact that he would be a better doctor if he treated people better.
[01:15:01.13]
It reminds me of a conversation I had with my oncologist, where they were like, “Pediatric cancer patients do so much better than adult cancer patients because their care is so much nicer.” There are so many things. There are so many people that band around that everyone’s trying so hard. Imagine if your adult care were like that. But House is just like, it is a barrage, both for his coworkers and for the patient.
[01:15:36.09] – Maggie Brennan
There is a quote, he says, that touches exactly on that point of the way that he uses his disability to garner pity to say and do things that are not okay. But at one point, he was leaving a room and says, “Are you going to grab my cane and stop me from leaving?”.
[01:15:54.18] – Alasia Destine-DeFreece
It was an elevator.
[01:15:55.23] – Maggie Brennan
Yes, and there are a lot of times when he does point to his use of a cane. There are a lot of jokes that he makes. It is that garnering pity, but not in a way that says I’m weak, but rather in a way that’s like…
[01:16:16.04] – Alasia Destine-DeFreece
What are you going to say about it?
[01:16:17.14] – Maggie Brennan
What are you going to do about it? What are you going to say about it?
[01:16:19.12] – Alasia Destine-DeFreece
I have nothing to say except, yeah.
[01:16:26.08] – Adrienne Beckham
I will say it is interesting about House as someone who’s seen a bit more of it. It is interesting how, over the course of seasons and episodes, they engage with the overall character art of House. With shows like this, I think they’re only good if you’re able to actually question the morality of the character and actually engage and challenge that character. I think in later seasons, they do, though it’s been a long time since I’ve seen the show, so I don’t know how effective that ends up actually being, or they engage with it, but he still ends up being an asshole. He’s never not an asshole.
[01:17:39.23] – Maggie Brennan
Does he ever apologize for his actions or even admit that he’s wrong about something? There are so many times when I was like, “He should not be speaking to that person.” It’s everything he says. It’s every scene other than when he’s the detective who’s like, I’ve solved the mystery again.
[01:18:00.15]
But from the perspective of you all who have seen more of it, do you feel like there’s ever a point where his relationship with patients specifically changes? Because that’s one of the biggest icks I’m getting from him is just the way he talks about patience, the way he calls them all liars, the way he says, “I don’t want to talk to patients at all.”
[01:18:25.23] – Julian Harper
I think that throughout the show, and it has been a while, but from what I remember, the show definitely does engage a little bit more with that, and there are definitely times when they’re more sympathetic than others. There are also episodes where they engage with House as a patient themselves, and I think that some of those help navigate a lot of their internal beliefs. I was telling Maggie about an episode where they are kept in the mental health facility and barred from practice. They are roommates with Lin-Manuel Miranda.
[01:19:23.03] – Maggie Brennan
No way.
[01:19:23.22] – Alasia Destine-DeFreece
I remember now.
[01:19:24.22] – Maggie Brennan
No way. What episode is this? Look it up. I need to watch this.
[01:19:27.18] – Adrienne Beckham
I forgot about it.
[01:19:28.20] – Julian Harper
There’s an exciting rap.
[01:19:31.10] – Maggie Brennan
No, there’s not. I was going to ask, is there a musical number?
[01:19:33.16] – Julian Harper
Oh, most definitely.
[01:19:35.03] – Maggie Brennan
You shut your face right now. I’m watching that episode tonight.
[01:19:39.16] – Julian Harper
They’re like, I’ve changed my entire opinion. House Stan.
[01:19:46.15] – Maggie Brennan
This is my favorite show now.
[01:19:48.03] – Julian Harper
I think that maybe what’s frustrating is that, no matter the character arc, House still gets to play Detective Dr. God indefinitely. The people around them, they’re helping entrench this systemic problem. This also reminds me, I read a complaint by Sara Ahmed, and they talk about how when you make a complaint in the institution, sometimes you learn better how the institution functions, and I think about how so many people make complaints about House.
[01:20:36.22]
That’s a common thread, that they’re finding ways to historically defend their decision to keep an abuser in their workplace. I think that later you find that what Dr. Lisa Buddy and House had like a romantic relationship. You’re seeing the abuses of power circulate around this person.
[01:21:11.06] – Maggie Brennan
I think something that’s interesting that we haven’t touched upon is the fact that that doctor colleague who said that House is a good doctor, not a good person, James.
[01:21:23.03] – Julian Harper
Dr. James Wilson.
[01:21:25.15] – Maggie Brennan
He lied about Rebecca Adler, the patient, being cousin, so that House would actually care about treating her because he would not have “taken on that case, detective talk” unless there was a big reason for him, too. It’s interesting how it’s like, yeah, sure, he might be a good doctor, but he’s also not treating people unless he feels like it. That’s weird to argue and be like, “No, we have to keep this abuser because he’s such a good doctor,” but it’s like, “That doctor would not have helped this woman if she wasn’t supposedly this guy’s cousin.”
[01:22:10.13] – Alasia Destine-DeFreece
It’s like this difference between being a good doctor and a good diagnostic encyclopedia. Because in my mind, being a good doctor is also being a kind person who is willing to extend some degree of empathy for the people you are talking to who don’t feel well.
[01:22:29.23] – Adrienne Beckham
It just seems like House. He treats his job like solving puzzles. At the end of the day, it’s not about anything other than solving the puzzle, and if he’s not interested in the puzzle, he’s like, “I don’t want it.” In that way, it’s very childish. It’s interesting, too, because there are a couple of episodes after the first episode, where the main plot is like, House is treating this… He treats this patient, and they end up…
[01:23:13.05]
He injects them with something, and they end up going into cardiac arrest, and the whole episode is centered around, everyone’s like, “Maybe you just made a mistake, and injected them with the wrong syringe.” He’s like, “No, I didn’t,” and the entire episode, he only takes on the case and solves it just so he can prove that he was correct, and he did not make a mistake. The episode ends with him, in fact, having been right, and he didn’t make a mistake.
[01:23:46.06] – Maggie Brennan
Which is what happened in the first episode when he gave Rebecca the steroids, thinking that it was… There was a reason… I’m not a doctor.
[01:23:56.09] – Alasia Destine-DeFreece
Hold on, I have to [inaudible 00:23:57].
[01:23:57.14] – Maggie Brennan
Amazing. He’s like, “Steroids are good for…”
[01:24:00.13] – Alasia Destine-DeFreece
Steroids are good for cerebral vasculitis.
[01:24:06.22] – Maggie Brennan
Yes. Even she was mad at him. The first time that he actually introduced himself to her, to be like, “It’s actually a worm, I’m pretty sure,” and she’s like, “I don’t want to do this anymore,” and that led into the whole dying with dignity conversation. Even then, he made a mistake. The steroids resulted in her having another seizure-like moment. Of course, she was mad and was like, “I don’t want to do this anymore. I just want to die.”
[01:24:38.04] – Alasia Destine-DeFreece
Because there’s no evidence, too. Can you tell me why you think that this is what’s wrong with me? There’s no communication happening.
[01:24:47.01] – Adrienne Beckham
It opens up this question of, at what point is House just creating problems, so he can solve them?
[01:25:01.06] – Julian Harper
Again, reminds me so much of a cop show because it’s hunch, gut, detective work. They don’t have the emotional capacity to admit that they’re wrong because in the show, the entire premise of the show, the pattern is someone comes in, there’s like maybe two or three wrong diagnosis, most of which are confirmed by House. They are this arbiter, and they are absolute. They always find… It also reminds me of a legal drama because they’re making their case for every single thing. When it goes wrong, they find a way to spin it in their favor.
[01:26:04.12] – Alasia Destine-DeFreece
Can I share a little bit of wisdom from the creator of the show on this note, actually?
[01:26:08.22] – Maggie Brennan
Yes, please.
[01:26:09.07] – Julian Harper
Most definitely.
[01:26:10.03] – Alasia Destine-DeFreece
There was a little interview that was given, I guess. I don’t know where. It’s like a panel of people talking. The Paley Center? I don’t know what that is. Anyways. He was asked directly because I guess there had been another quote earlier on in the show run, where he drew on the character of Sherlock Holmes for House.
[01:26:34.23]
Somebody was like, “Why that?” He said he was always a big fan of the character, and he also found that similar trait of Sherlock Holmes wasn’t solving the case because he cared about the client. He was solving the case because he knew he was right. He was like, “I need to prove that I’m correct.” Those parallels to the Sherlock Holmes universe really informed the Dr. Wilson dynamic and Wilson as Watson. That being the basis for his point of care, his philosophy of care.
[01:27:17.21] – Maggie Brennan
Or lack thereof.
[01:27:19.03] – Alasia Destine-DeFreece
Literally that.
[01:27:20.21] – Julian Harper
That’s super interesting. I wanted to pivot because I think there are some things that we wanted to talk about. One, specifically, there’s a Black physician that is told that they are hired because of their previous criminal history, and that they are coerced into breaking and entering into this person’s home, even though they certainly could have just asked.
[01:27:56.18] – Maggie Brennan
Why didn’t that come up ever?
[01:28:00.07] – Julian Harper
Because House doesn’t trust anyone. He’s like, “I’d rather break the law than to ask some simple questions.”
[01:28:17.06] – Maggie Brennan
He’s keeping a tally of how many times he breaks the law, also, because he does break the law a number of times in this one episode.
[01:28:22.22] – Julian Harper
The information that they found was that they ate ham is not that impressive, and it does not require one to break into someone’s home, and it’s something that could simply be asked. In fact, if they were a good doctor, they probably would have asked, “What did you eat?” A simple way to get information from a patient about their health.
[01:28:55.00] – Maggie Brennan
But Julian, patients lie. They can’t be trusted. She’s going to lie about what she eats.
[01:29:02.10] – Julian Harper
To get to the heart of it, you got to get to the truth. In this discussion, you already see this weird balance of power. I bring up the Black physician. Let’s see if I pull up the character’s name. Dr. Eric Foreman, played by Omar Epps. Because the way that the show presents race is also, I think, interesting. Interesting in the pejorative sense. For instance, in a conversation, I’ve been saying stuff wrong, but Dr. Lisa Cuddy is everyone’s boss.
[01:29:59.23]
They were talking to House because they’re reckless and bad, and they want to pretend that they have some authority, but House seems to be running the show. They were talking about House and how they just make guesses. They just guess all the time, and they just happen to be right, and House is like, “I know what I’m doing.” Dr. Lisa brought up specifically the Tuskegee experiment. They said, “We don’t make guesses since Tuskegee,” which is not true about Tuskegee. It was long, and the whole point of its problematic nature is because they knew.
[01:30:47.09] – Maggie Brennan
That’s why I’m like, that’s not an accurate reference.
[01:30:50.21] – Julian Harper
They knew the violence that they were doing and that they were actually just murdering people.
[01:30:58.03] – Maggie Brennan
That was the problem.
[01:31:00.11] – Julian Harper
Later, the iconic quote was like, when we make mistakes, people die, which is true. But the irony is that, also, doctors can intentionally make people die, and that there is a misunderstanding of race, and power, and violence. Even in the conversation that Dr. Foreman and with another, I think Dr. Allison, in that particular, while they were snooping in the house and digging up carpets, and stealing food, they were having a conversation about how each of them got hired.
[01:32:02.19]
For instance, they were having a conversation, and Dr. Foreman was like, “I work really hard. I got into the best schools. Apparently, I just got hired because I have a record.” Then she was like, “I didn’t get into the best schools or whatever.”
[01:32:24.14] – Maggie Brennan
He’s like, “I did, and I had a 4.0.”
[01:32:27.09] – Julian Harper
I bring it up because I feel like it was really weird how it was presented in the show, almost as if Dr. Foreman had it easy and the other physician had it hard. I’m like, “Wait, the show is presenting this character who says that they grew up and had a hard life, that they were able to get and be in these positions, and then I don’t know.” Later on, it doesn’t even register in terms of the show because House is like, “I just hired you because you’re pretty,” or like this.
[01:33:11.02]
I think that later on in the show, and Adrienne, if you watch immediately after that episode, those open episodes and stuff. Everything is a test for House. Every bad thing he says, every violence he does, often turns and is switched into some social experiment that he does on not only his patients, but his coworkers. Sometimes you’re like, “Well, that’s obviously a racist or sexist or ableist thing to say.” Later on, it spins into some character test or some professional test.
[01:33:56.23] – Maggie Brennan
He did go from saying, “You were hired because you’re pretty,” and then she was like, “How dare you?” He was like, “The pretty people have it easy. The fact that you kept going and tried your best shows that you had determination, which is why I hired you, because you didn’t have to try hard, because you’re pretty, and you still did, and that’s why I hired you.” It’s like, “What?”
[01:34:19.21] – Adrienne Beckham
Which is the show’s out of being like, “See, we can actually say racist and sexist things because it’s not actually racist and sexist.”
[01:34:28.15] – Maggie Brennan
It’s actually a genius idea.
[01:34:32.01] – Adrienne Beckham
It’s actually a compliment, and he’s like, that’s not helpful, actually.
[01:34:36.17] – Julian Harper
It’s framed as self-awareness totally.
[01:34:43.05] – Alasia Destine-DeFreece
I don’t know. I found another quote from the show creator, David Shore. He was inspired by a memory that he had of a doctor’s visit where he was experiencing some hip pain, and then he made an appointment. By the time the appointment arrived, 3 weeks later, his hip was fine. He refers to himself in the quote, too. He’s like, “We all have to deal with idiots. I was a lawyer. I always had to deal with idiots. Then I was the idiot once at the doctor’s office because I went when nothing was wrong with me.”
[01:35:17.00]
He was extremely taken with the fact that they were all being incredibly polite to him, even though he was “Wasting their time because nothing was wrong with him.” I was sitting there, and I was like, “Man, these people are being so nice to me, and they don’t have to be.” What would happen if there was a doctor who was just blunt and told me like it was, and that I was wasting their time? And then he wrote House.
[01:35:47.18] – Julian Harper
That is so incredibly enlightening because I think about how… It’s almost as if austerity were personified into the idea that people are wasting doctors’ time with their questions and their thoughts, and opinions health. Even their fears and desires, and hopes to live is a time drain.
[01:36:22.14]
It seems to me as a way of continuing a narrative of scarcity resources that imagines individuals with disability, individuals with chronic illness, individuals that need the intensive care that is presented in-house. No one goes to House because they need like… well, some people do. They have their like side scenes with people who get their primary care from House for some reason.
[01:36:57.02] – Maggie Brennan
Which is actually the whole part.
[01:36:58.18] – Adrienne Beckham
It’s like a free clinic.
[01:36:59.10] – Maggie Brennan
It’s like that. He refuses to work in the clinic, and that’s what he really got in trouble for with his boss is because she was like, you need to do X amount of hours or X amount of people at the clinic, and you’re not doing that. He’s like, well, I don’t want to because it’s a waste of my time, essentially.
[01:37:17.18] – Julian Harper
Community care is a waste of House’s time because he could be berating a really sick person.
[01:37:25.12] – Maggie Brennan
Or being sexist or racist to his coworkers.
[01:37:30.08] – Adrienne Beckham
Not that I understand where House is coming from necessarily, but there is a conversation to have about the role and impact of internalized ableism on a person with a disability. In that respect, is it a valid conversation to have? Yes. Does the show do a great way, a great job of engaging with that conversation? I think the question that I walk away with a lot with House where I’m like, “Are we actually doing this appropriately?” Is House actually aware of how he may be projecting his own feelings of in that or his own emotional journey that he’s having, but maybe refuses to engage with?
[01:38:31.14] – Maggie Brennan
Again, you’ve seen more of the show, but based on that first episode, the illegal practice of giving somebody medication, switching it out with candy, and taking it.
[01:38:55.07] – Alasia Destine-DeFreece
Illegal.
[01:38:57.14] – Maggie Brennan
You can’t do that. There are multiple crimes in that one instance.
[01:39:03.06] – Alasia Destine-DeFreece
There seems to be the implication of… Again, he’s a doctor, so I don’t know. I don’t know. But the implication of that self-medication. I’m like, “Why are you not seeing a doctor yourself? Why do you not think that that’s okay for you to do?” As someone who’s treating other patients, it’s weird to me that you see that as so beneath yourself.
[01:39:37.17]
Part of it is like access to resources, I guess, because as a doctor, he can give that one person fake medication because he knows that that person maybe doesn’t need the actual thing they’re asking for. But again, that goes back to, how much is he actually listening to that patient and working through why this patient feels like they need specific medications instead of just giving them the fake stuff?
[01:40:06.01] – Adrienne Beckham
The show owners actually have another quote on that note as far as, “Why aren’t you seeing a doctor, Dr. House?” They were talking in the same interview that’s archived by the Paley Center. They’re talking about why House was written with the disability that he was written with because initially he was going to be in a wheelchair. Then the network said, “No, that’s too…”
[01:40:34.11] – Alasia Destine-DeFreece
That’s too disabled? Is that the implication?
[01:40:38.04] – Maggie Brennan
They said, “No, he can’t. But you could give him something else.” They said, “Okay.” Then it was going to be some big scar on his face. But they eventually ended up with, “Oh, he will have some impairment where he needs to use a cane.”
[01:40:55.12] – Adrienne Beckham
There’s actually a couple of episodes later, after the first episode, there’s one instance. There’s two episodes, in one episode, there’s a husband and a wife, and they brought in their son who’s being treated by House. They’ve been going back and forth trying to find the answer. Then there’s a moment where House and Dr. Wilson are sitting outside having lunch or something, and the parents come up to House and are just like, “What are you doing? Why aren’t you doing something for our kid who’s dying?” They’re like, “You haven’t even visited him. Do you even know anything about him?”
[01:41:50.03] – Alasia Destine-DeFreece
If you knew anything about House parents, you’d know that he hates to talk to patients, and he doesn’t trust your child.
[01:41:55.12] – Adrienne Beckham
House’s response is to rattle off all of the kid’s current vital signs. He knows the case. He looked at the chart. He’s seen it.
[01:42:11.17] – Alasia Destine-DeFreece
He hasn’t talked to the kid, but he did look at the chart.
[01:42:14.09] – Adrienne Beckham
It’s framed in a way where it’s like, “I don’t care about your kid, but I do care about your kid. I care about your kid enough. I’m doing my job.”
[01:42:25.14] – Alasia Destine-DeFreece
I care about your kid from a medical standpoint. I do not care about how your kid is doing as an actual human being.
[01:42:33.04] – Julian Harper
In some ways, it’s like, he cares about his scoreboard, and that he doesn’t want to a defeat on record. He’ll fight to the death to make sure that he’s undefeated. I also wanted to mention that I hadn’t even seen this till now. The title for the pilot episode is Everybody Lies.
[01:43:28.17]
Pilots usually are maybe heightened, or maybe they’re trying to work through what’s the show going to feel like, what’s the premise going to be. But House felt fully flushed out from the beginning. This is not an exaggeration. This is an exact carbon copy of exactly what House is about.
[01:43:41.07] – Alasia Destine-DeFreece
That’s exactly what House says over and over again in that first episode. It was like being hit with a hammer the number of times that I was told that patients lie, and that House doesn’t trust them. I was like, “You’re a doctor. What am I supposed to make of this?”
[01:43:57.09] – Julian Harper
Well, maybe we can sum up some of our last thoughts. I think for me, I was just imagining… Something one of our other coworkers, Katie, often says is, when they’re talking about the models of disability, “You don’t often go to your doctor’s office and talk about how good you’re feeling.”
[01:44:24.23]
In my experience of good doctors, in a lot of ways, you’re a partner in life, especially if you have a chronic illness or if you have things that require a lot of time and attention is like, you have such a personal and intimate relationship with this person that… Sometimes when you have a really good doctor, they’ll celebrate wins with you.
[01:45:03.23]
That’s a really amazing experience to feel further away, both from death and also closer to community. I don’t know. I feel like that’s a powerful moment that I’ve had with different doctors, even in the weird, cheesy way that doctors do that. But I don’t know. Imagining a world where House saw himself as a collaborator and a community member, what would that look like? Definitely, he would have more friends.
[01:45:54.01] – Alasia Destine-DeFreece
He could use some families.
[01:45:55.06] – Adrienne Beckham
Maybe he would like his job a little bit more, because you get the impression that he does not like what he’s doing. I don’t know. When you’re in the room with a doctor, and you can tell that they’re just phoning it in, you know. The patient knows. I don’t know. I feel like it also even comes into play. There’s that one part in the sequence we were talking about earlier where he sees a bunch of clinic patients in succession, where there’s a mom who brought her son in, and he has asthma, but the mom doesn’t let the kid… The mom is like-
[01:46:36.01] – Alasia Destine-DeFreece
He uses an inhaler.
[01:46:36.12] – Adrienne Beckham
The inhaler, he just uses it when he needs it. He’s supposed to be using it daily. House admonishes her for that lack of understanding or lack of perspective because she’s being characterized in this 30-second clip to be a really alternative medicine, crunchy granola person. House is like, “Well, if you listen to the real science, you would know XYZ thing.” I feel like you would hope that most medical professionals would see that and be like, “Well, let me explain to you why your son needs this treatment in this way.”
[01:47:17.08]
It’s more of sharing perspective and sharing information and leading you in a way versus being like, “You’re wrong and bad, and you’re killing your son. Get out of my sight.”
[01:47:31.15] – Alasia Destine-DeFreece
I also wish that he had talked… In the world that you’re describing in which he is a nice person and a good doctor, that’s an opportunity for the kid to also understand what’s going on with his own body, and he didn’t speak to the child. He spoke only to the mother and then stormed out.
[01:47:49.09] – Adrienne Beckham
I don’t think the child spoke at all in that situation.
[01:47:52.05] – Julian Harper
That’s a theme with doctors. I had many doctors that assume that they’re smarter me, and that makes it okay for them not to explain what’s happening to me. That has happened over and over again. I’ve switched doctors a number of times because they are unwilling to explain what is happening, and it becomes dire.
[01:48:19.17]
I like what you said, Maggie, because I think in the truth of it, I think that doctors often assume… I was listening to this American Life podcast, and they were talking about how half of the people that come to emergency rooms lie. They lie about why they’re there, and then you come to the truth like, “Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.” It’s real. Doctors really assume this. I think I’ve always thought that there’s a reason why that is, though.
[01:49:03.21]
That trust building and that care has to be earned. That when someone’s intelligence, like House, is used as a force field to protect them from even the idea that their callousness has led to worse off care. Definitely envision a world where doctors can see themselves as equals to their patients and see themselves as collaborators in creating a quality of life.
[01:49:59.06] – Adrienne Beckham
Yes. Absolutely.
[01:50:02.14] – Alasia Destine-DeFreece
House 2.0. We can make a new show.
[01:50:06.05] – Adrienne Beckham
How many seasons did the show get? Wasn’t it like nine seasons? It’s very long.
[01:50:10.06] – Julian Harper
This is a very popular television show.
[01:50:13.11] – Alasia Destine-DeFreece
It is over now, right?
[01:50:14.18] – Adrienne Beckham
Yes.
[01:50:15.06] – Julian Harper
Yes, with comedian, Hugh Laurie.
[01:50:18.20] – Adrienne Beckham
I mean, he is. I see the guy. It’s not in the context of this show.
[01:50:24.03] – Julian Harper
I just want to see it’s-
[01:50:27.19] – Adrienne Beckham
Eight Seasons.
[01:50:29.01] – Alasia Destine-DeFreece
Eight Seasons.
[01:50:30.00] – Adrienne Beckham
Wow.
[01:50:30.23] – Alasia Destine-DeFreece
That’s long. What year did it run from?
[01:50:33.15] – Julian Harper
2004-2012.
[01:50:36.07] – Alasia Destine-DeFreece
Wow.
[01:50:36.20] – Julian Harper
Yeah.
[01:50:37.14] – Alasia Destine-DeFreece
I did not realize it entered the 2010s at all.
[01:50:42.14] – Julian Harper
It ended when I graduated high school.
[01:50:47.18] – Adrienne Beckham
Yeah, same.
[01:50:49.08]
Well, I knew the Lin-Manuel Miranda episode was in 2010 because I had looked it up after Julian talked to me about it, and I was like, “How long ago?”
[01:51:01.01] – Alasia Destine-DeFreece
Again, obviously, I’m going to be watching that tonight. That’s my final thought.
[01:51:04.01] – Adrienne Beckham
It’s part of the two-episode season premiere.
[01:51:09.07] – Alasia Destine-DeFreece
Is Lin-Manuel in both of the two episodes?
[01:51:12.20] – Adrienne Beckham
Yes.
[01:51:13.06] – Alasia Destine-DeFreece
Then I will be watching both.
[01:51:14.05] – Adrienne Beckham
According to Julian nodding.
[01:51:15.14] – Julian Harper
I believe so. It’s later on in a show’s progression when they’ve got the most outrageous cameos going on. In this show with this abusive doctor you’ve got.
[01:51:40.13] – Adrienne Beckham
Well, 2010, like Lin-Manuel Miranda wasn’t as-
[01:51:46.13] – Alasia Destine-DeFreece
Was he known yet?
[01:51:47.13] – Adrienne Beckham
I think he had just [crosstalk 00:51:49]. Also, I think at that point, he was also writing on Teams for other stuff.
[01:51:57.15] – Julian Harper
There’s a lot of stuff done.
[01:52:00.21] – Alasia Destine-DeFreece
I can’t tell if you’re joking about there being a wrap in it.
[01:52:06.06] – Julian Harper
I’m not joking. There is a wrap in it.
[01:52:08.03] – Alasia Destine-DeFreece
I don’t think I’m going to believe you until I watch it. I feel like House, working with a patient. I’m like, “I don’t trust you right now.”
[01:52:14.18] – Julian Harper
I think they’re both framed as mental patients in this institution.
[01:52:21.02] – Alasia Destine-DeFreece
I’m going to have a lot of thoughts about that.
[01:52:23.00] – Julian Harper
It’s not as fun a wrap as you’d want.
[01:52:29.06] – Alasia Destine-DeFreece
That makes sense.
[01:52:31.13] – Julian Harper
But I think that might be a good place to-
[01:52:35.05] – Alasia Destine-DeFreece
Let’s end with Lin-Manuel.
[01:52:37.13] – Julian Harper
Let’s end with Lin-Manuel. As it all began. Thank you, everyone, for listening to us, if you got through this whole thing. We’ll catch you in the next one. Bye.
[01:52:56.19]
The music for this podcast was written and performed by Carl Trunk from Pop! Pop! Pop! Records. You can check out this song, It’s a Creepy Stormy Day, and others from Pop! Pop! Pop! Records on Bandcamp.
