The interesting thing about House, M.D. is that it is a medical forensics program where the actual medicine is probably the least interesting part of the show. Who really cares whether the victim of the week has croup or whooping cough. What makes the show fascinating is the main character and how the patient’s illness is used as a metaphor for something about one of the other characters. For example, this week’s patient’s secret from his wife was used as a chance to rummage around in Taub’s private life. I also think that the writers finally started asking some really tough questions about the characters, like: Why did Wilson put up with House’s guff for all those years? The new detective character adds a different dynamic to the show, too. I liked the discordant jam session at the end.
Fringe has been picked up for a full season, and I think the show is starting to hit its stride. This week’s episode may have been the best yet, and the introduction of the omnipresent ageless bald guy who has to add a ton of peppers and hot sauce to his food just so he can taste something is intriguing. The doctor continues to delight, and the episode managed to create a legitimate reason for his son to stick around.
This week’s Criminal Minds should have been shown closer to Halloween, as it was a great creepy borderline supernatural story. The empty grave, the messages from a killer whose execution was far from textbook and more like something out of The Green Mile. I thought the Hotch hearing problems part was a little bit overdone, but clearly it’s going to be a motif for at least part of the season. I guessed why there was paper in the stab wounds early on, but I thought it was from an attempt to imitate past patterns rather than to lay out new ones.
I’m about 60% of the way through The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. The book started out reminding me of something like Shane, but it gets a little edgier and speculative the farther into it I get.
This morning, I finally finished the first draft of a 1000 word short story written for a no-entry-fee contest. I still have a couple of weeks to toy with it before it needs to be turned in.
