The first episode of season three of  House aired the other night (is it already season three? I remember when the show was advertised relentlessly during a Superbowl weekend). The first thing you learn from it is that Greg House (Hugh Laurie) can walk. In fact he can run, and later on in the episode he skateboards. This is a different status from where we left him at the end of last season, hallucinating long philosophical conversations with the man who shot him. In 3.1 we learn that the police have not apprehended House’s assailant, nor learned why he attacked the doctor in the first place (a set up, perhaps, for a later Sweeps Week broadcast). Meanwhile, Cuddy (Lisa Edelstein) injected House with a serum that might cure his bum leg artery, that which keeps him in continual pain and, presumably, with an acerbic disposition.

 

Meanwhile, Dr. Allison Cameron (Jennifer Morrison) has a new fuller haircut, a kind of throwback to Barbara Feldon as Agent 99. It makes her looker cuter and softer, with its forelocks and feathered look. Yet her character is a lot tougher. She stands up to House, says no, and views him with the impatience, contradicting the conniving lies he presses on family members. The other two doctors in the fellowship to study with House, doctors Eric Foreman  and Robert Chase (Omar Epps, Jesse Spencer) didn’t have a whole lot of airtime, but Cuddy did, even sharing with House a sort of bedroom scene, while also proving to be a stronger opponent of House’s. Robert Sean Leonard, as Dr. James Wilson, continues his role as reverse court jester; court bucket of cold water, I guess you could call him.

 

The opening sequence, in which a guy in a wheelchair rolls himself into the swimming pool, a mega version of what Bill Murray does in  Rushmore. It’s a sequence that attempts to take you into the mind and sensations of a quadriplegic, showing the world from his POV, and which concurrently conveys a great deal about his family dynamics. The ep lured a big star in the form of Kathleen Quinlan, who is married to someone I knew in high school, but her role ultimately is as ephemeral as those of all guest stars, as we watch week after week after week House ponder then solve a medical mystery whose confusing symptoms send the team down one wrong path after another.

 

Coincidentally,  House M.D.: Season Two  was released on DVD on Tuesday August 22 (retailing for $59.95), so House obsessives could have caught  up with or relived the second season in anticipation of the third. My complaint about the second season was that it got bogged down in whether or not House was going to lure back his ex-wife, Stacy Warner (Sela Ward). This was a totally annoying and irrelevant subplot, because essentially we don’t care why House is the way he is, and don’t necessary want him to change or be happier. We prefer him to be sharp enough to crack wise at his bosses and colleagues the way we are never quick enough to do in the real world at our terrible jobs.

Yet the romantic subplot, such thin gruel compared to the sexual musical stock closets of  Grey’s Anatomy, was itself a solution to the problem of the first season, which is that every week it is just about the same thing, even time-able by commercial breaks. There is the  Six Feet Under prologue, where someone collapses somewhere. There is the jaunty opening sequence, which finds House annoying his hospital somehow. There are the three early diagnoses coupled with family problems and home invasions by the staff looking for clues to what makes the patient ail, which take us to the 45-minute mark. Then, finally, there is the resolution to whatever personal subplot is offered up, during which House has the brainwave that solves the A story medical mystery, or also the B story if that one has dragged out this long (in the case of the 3 premier, noticing that a quadriplegic’s toes show signs of scurvy, at the 17 minute mark).

 

This repetition is one of the reasons that friends of mine have dropped the show. Yet I continue to watch it when I can, despite being terrified of hospitals and medical procedures. It’s because the mysteries are so dang clever.  House is one of the few network shows that demands the viewer keep up. Moreover it shows people thinking, crisis-born thinking, and then the product of that thought. It’s also one of the few shows that has an unrepentant unpleasant person as its central character. House is the WWF of medical dramas, where the villain is the protagonist.

Seeing season two again in a short amount of time only highlights the repetition factor, but also emphasizes the braininess quotient, but then again also the misguided subplot element. This six-disc set has all 24 episodes from the second season, with a small parcel of supplements.

 

They begin with an audio commentary by creator David Shore and producer Katie Jacobs, which is mainly nuts and bolts stuff (House has a cold for the episode; did Laurie really have a cold? No) and they are reunited for a yak over the season finale, “No Reason,” where they don’t really get into the philosophical implications of one of the most complex TV shows ever aired. There is also some alternate takes, a blooper reel, and “An Evening with  House,” an 18-minute shat with the cast and crew at the Academy of Television, Arts and Sciences, with Shore, Singer, Laurie, and the rest of the cast, which concentrates most on the show’s origins.  Finally there are trailers for  The Office, Las Vegas, BSG, and Inside Man. The transfers are excellent and each episode has five chapter scene selection.

 

“Thank you” is the theme of the season premier, and it ends with a “miracle cure” that I would be curious to know complies with medical science. Still, it’s affecting, and sets up the season to follow as one in which House will battle with his drug addiction, with his “relationship” with Allison, and his need to alienate everyone around him. All that’s missing so far from  H3 is a villain; but  House hasn’t been too good at villains, especially if you remember the straw man from S1. The show is better when it concentrates on the brainy matter of medial mysteries.

 

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