The most random thing about Olivia Wilde I just learned is that when she was a kid she had Christopher Hitchens as a babysitter.
God I forgotten just how much I enjoyed the last 8 years of this show... [yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vz4uABC4Huc&feature=related[/yt]
Great video really shows how much the show has declined over the last two seasons given the vast majority of the clips were from Seasons 1-6.
Personally, and I know opinions are like arseholes, although it has changed, I don't agree with your assessment that House has declined in the last few years, I still find it entertaining and Hugh Laurie is still brilliant. Things change and to be honest, if the programme hadn't done that, I'm sure there would be many people commenting on it's inability to change and stay the same. As the philosopher Jagger once said: You can't always get what you want.
House crashing his car into Cuddy's house really damaged the character for me and I don't think the dynamic between him, his team, Foreman and Wilson to some level really ever recovered. His brilliance as a doctor also seems to have eroded over the last couple of seasons (compared to the first couple seasons) and this past season has had many farcical almost sit-com like moments in it. Last season was largely okay until he and Cuddy broke up and then I think the show fell off the rails a bit though it still had its moments. But when he crashed his car into Cuddy's house, skipped the (country?!) and this season opened up with him in prison, well... I dunno it was hard to really get back on board. He went from being called "a world-famous diagnostician" whom people sought after the country and world over a man with a reputation that meant something to the hospital and pretty much being called one of the best doctors of our time to being an ex-con. The character lost some humanity, some spark and humor. He went from putting his job on the line to ensure his patient got a new heart simply because it was his job to do everything he could for her to being a man with a tracking anklet on him. I dunno, somewhere between season 5/6 the show got lost and I don't think it ever completely recovered.
agreed. the end of House and Cuddy is one of those moments where i think the show lost something. House had recently been released from the asylum and had kicked Vicodin...only to go way off the deep end once his relationship failed. i always felt the character of House was stronger than letting that mess with him as much as it did.
Hell, we know when he split with Stacy he just became more of a miserable misanthrope. He didn't go on a bender with hookers shooting arrows in a hotel room, jumping off balconies culminating in him crashing his car into Stacy's house.
The moment that really killed it for me was the episode towards the end of s7 when House decided to operate on his own leg in the bathtub, whilst Chase and Thirteen worked on Thirteen's flatmate(?). It was all kinds of terrible and I've only gone out of my way to watch it three times since, most recently the penultimate episode. I will of course watch the finale, but for me the show's not been the same since mid-season 6, or even since the s6 premiere which was excellent.
I love the show, even now, but I think it went off the rails when House shot a body in the morgue and put a bullet into the MRI machine. That was, what...second or third season? All sense of even feigning reality went out the window after that for me. Ever since, I enjoy the dialogue and performances.