House spoilers follow.
Two nights in a row, programs have resorted to the “it was all a dream” explanation for something. On Sunday, it was Cold Case. Last night it was House. There had been many comments about the unlikelihood of a 12-hour detox program for a years-long vicodin addiction, but television programs are rarely accurate about how long it takes to do something. People are pregnant for a few weeks, DNA tests are done during commercial breaks–why not an overnight rehab?
The reveal section of this week’s House was more than a little confusing. It was a bit like the reveal at the end of Sixth Sense, where the audience is again shown crucial scenes armed with new information so we can re-evaluate them. (That was a kindness on the part of the director, I thought–I might have been tempted to say “let them watch the movie again so they can see for themselves”). However, in Sixth Sense, we were always presented with camera reality, not some warped version filtered through a delusion. When they rebooted last night’s episode, we were shown how the camera lied to us. It wasn’t a lipstick, it was a bottle of vicodin, for example. I confess to feeling cheated, once I stopped being confused. However, the show redeemed itself a little with a fairly powerful ending. I thought that Cameron would have noticed House’s conspicuous absence from her festivities, though, given their past, but that would have taken a lot of screen time to play out.
I think it’s absolutely hilarious that Cobie Smulders is as pregnant as a house on How I Met Your Mother and the producers have chosen to simply pretend that she isn’t. Sure, they’ve shot her mostly sitting down to obscure it, but there have been moments when it has been totally obvious. They even made a joke about it last week, when Robin got sick from food poisoning. “Yes, I’m pregnant,” she declared, to see how differently the men in her life would react.
Breaking Bad is doing a decent job of making a difficult-to-like character the protagonist of a series. There are a lot of reasons to dislike Walt. He’s manufacturing and distributing one of the worst drugs in modern society. Sure, his motive is to earn enough money so he can provide for his family when he dies of cancer, but this is a means that’s hard to sympathize with. He’s lying to everyone in his life, and that will be his legacy. And yet it is a compelling show. Even Walt’s dumb-as-a-brick, sleazy cohort has some scruples and aspirations.
Heard from my agent last night that the “on acceptance” part of my advance for the forthcoming book is on its way to me, so, in five short months, the entire process has been completed, from proposal to contract, to execution, to revision, to proofs and final payment. Amazing.
