House: 8x08 "Perils of Paranoia" - Discussion and Spoilers

[Forbin]

btw, Wilson, by bringing House's gun to work, violated NJ's "illegal possession of a handgun" law, since he doesn't own it. And we can probably tack onto that transporting a handgun without it being in a locked container, transporting it (no doubt) in a part of his car other than the locked trunk, and there's a law about only being allowed to transport a handgun between home and the shooting range without stopping in between...

JFC, I could NEVER live in NJ.

Kind of my thoughts, I'm all for reasonable levels of gun-control but what it seems NJ has is levels of insanity that pretty much renders the purposes of a gun pointless.

It wasn't always like this. When I started shooting and collecting in the 80s, it was fairly normal. My friends and I could go to a land fill and last away. Now here I am after 30 years of constantly changing laws, with a nice collection of inanimate objects and no firm idea if I'm doing anything illegal!

But in NJ you also can't pump your own gas, so...

Sure you can. You just don't HAVE to. And I can't really imagine why you'd want to!

 

[Forbin]

I was too distracted by the fact that they were obviously driving around Southern California.

I watched an old Mannix episode a while ago, where he was supposedly in Washington DC. There were palm trees everywhere!

 

[Christopher]

The car commercial washed over me. But I am not bothered by it. Films and TV do lots of product placement. Seeing all the characters use a Mac every week is more obvious to me.

But when they show characters using laptops, they don't go in for a fisheye closeup on the Mac logo and have the characters have non sequitur conversations about the Mac's special features. The laptops are being used as part of the story and the logo is simply there matter-of-factly rather than shoved in our faces. Subtle product placement is fine, but this was way too intrusive and blatant, almost to the point of self-parody, but not quite far enough that I could believe it actually was intended as parody.

 

[Saul]

The car commercial washed over me. But I am not bothered by it. Films and TV do lots of product placement. Seeing all the characters use a Mac every week is more obvious to me.

But when they show characters using laptops, they don't go in for a fisheye closeup on the Mac logo and have the characters have non sequitur conversations about the Mac's special features. The laptops are being used as part of the story and the logo is simply there matter-of-factly rather than shoved in our faces. Subtle product placement is fine, but this was way too intrusive and blatant, almost to the point of self-parody, but not quite far enough that I could believe it actually was intended as parody.

You don't really need to give a fisheye close up of an apple logo though do you? In the case of the car I didn't even know what they were driving. As I said, that scene didn't hit me as much as subtle product placement. I thought the conversation was used by not 13 to start a conversation with Park.

 

[Forbin]

I love the "Not 13" appellation.

 

[Christopher]

You don't really need to give a fisheye close up of an apple logo though do you?

I don't see how "need" is relevant to my point. It's about the choice they made in this particular instance, the choice to be far more blatant and intrusive than other, more deftly handled instances of product placement. As I already said, I've seen other automotive product placements (mainly in White Collar) that were far more smoothly integrated into the story and far less obnoxious than this was. So it's not about one type of product versus another, it's about two different approaches to advertising the same type of product in the same sort of context.

 

[Trekker4747]

The good news is Hugh Luarie came out again and said this is the finale season for him. I don't believe this is a stunt to get more money. Now we just need to get the writers to realize you can't have a show without him.

I'm not surprised, and I'm sure the network knows this show cannot work without Laurie. But, I suppose, things could still be "up in the air", if there's discussions going on behind the scenes he can't openly talk about it. Eight seasons is a decent run for a drama series like this, look at other TV series that went on longer and just became bogged down in their own formula or just ran out of steam. Heck, I think it was about season 8 I stopped watching "ER" as at that point the show just wasn't interesting anymore. It would have been hard for 24 to go on for another season.

And this season, so far, of House has been a mixed bag. The change of formula hasn't been too bad but I think House's character has been heavily damaged by the end of last season's events and with the loss of Cuddy one end of the "big three" dynamic is gone. It practically took moving Heaven and Earth to get Robert Sean Leonard to come back this season for what little he's going to do, getting him to stick around for another year would be hard too.

If this season is the last I'd be fine with it. The only problem is there's really no other TV prime-time drama series on right now I watch with any real regularity. So if this season is the last then next seasons better have some really good shows starting otherwise I may be done with prime-time TV for now.

Anyway, in the end, I doubt they'll get Laurie to stay on for another year as everything I've read says that working on the series so far has been a strain on him given the longer production schedules of American TV and his family living back in England.

It's shame though the show's drama and impact had diminished so much over the last three or four seasons that Laurie will never get the prime-time Emmy he's so richly deserved for his portrayal of this character. I blame it on some of the choices he's made for submission. There's been some really good stuff he's done that was equally as good as what James Spader was doing on Boston Legal (who won the Emmy for two or three of the first years of House.) Nothing really strong has come from Laurie the last couple years mostly due to the fault of the writing and I'd even say that no single episode or scene can capture what he does with the House character, but it's more of just the whole.

Hopefully the show's writers have a good final-arc written to wrap everything up and close of the characters in a mostly decent way. And for all of his faults, I'd hate to see House's character killed off or meet with an even more down ending. It'd be fine if they simply had a "life goes on" ending with him more-or-less back in good standing with his reputation and in the hospital facing the need to hire a new team and life goes on.

If they do go with a "House dies" ending then it'd be most fitting if they find a true "Moriarty" character for him that House can only save/cure at the cost of his own life.

I love the "Not 13" appellation.

 

[Saul]

You don't really need to give a fisheye close up of an apple logo though do you?

I don't see how "need" is relevant to my point. It's about the choice they made in this particular instance, the choice to be far more blatant and intrusive than other, more deftly handled instances of product placement. As I already said, I've seen other automotive product placements (mainly in White Collar) that were far more smoothly integrated into the story and far less obnoxious than this was. So it's not about one type of product versus another, it's about two different approaches to advertising the same type of product in the same sort of context.

By "need" I mean that the logo is clearly obvious to see without the "need" of a closeup. "Need" I explain more? There's really no "need" I think.
As I said, the product placement of the Car was unnoticable to myself so from my view it was done smoothly because if I think back on products seen in the episode I remember House and Formen using an Apple.

 

[Christopher]

You and I are still talking about two different things. No point belaboring it further.

 

[Trekker4747]

I can't say I noticed any product placement of the car. Maybe I wasn't paying any attention. So, now, the magic of TIVO!!!!

Watching it... It does seem rather blatant. There's two or three needless commercial-like beauty shots of the car and in between there we get Adams talking about some driver assist feature or something or other the car has.

I can see it as rather blatant. Usually when you see product placements in a show it's seeing the company's logo on the device, normally like a "Dell" logo on the back of a monitor or the Apple logo on the back of a laptop, stuff like that. Sometimes it's no more obvious than just a piece of a set like a can of Coke sitting on a coffee table or something.

(Seinfeld actually weaved product placement, nicely, into the actual plots of the show, even though the products they placed were not advertisers.)

But this, pretty much, was a car commercial in the middle of the show. It wasn't a big deal, per se but a bit obvious. I must have been distracted or something during this scene because I don't remember it, including the conversation between Park and NotThirteen.

But it was also pretty quick, shorter than an actual commercial, and aside from the forced dialogue of NotThirteen talking about one of the car's features not too big of a deal.

 

[137th Gebirg]

btw, Wilson, by bringing House's gun to work, violated NJ's "illegal possession of a handgun" law, since he doesn't own it. And we can probably tack onto that transporting a handgun without it being in a locked container, transporting it (no doubt) in a part of his car other than the locked trunk, and there's a law about only being allowed to transport a handgun between home and the shooting range without stopping in between...

JFC, I could NEVER live in NJ.

I think the writers frequently forget that the show is set out of New Jersey. Many others had mentioned the various anti-gun laws, but there's also the thing that a resident must own a permit card for each weapon (not just one for all), PLUS a permit card to buy ammunition. Having that arsenal is not necessarily illegal, though, particularly if all the weapons are American made (via the national foreign assault weapon import ban - not to be confused with the general assault weapons ban which sunset back in 2004) and all magazines blocked off to hold no more than ten rounds. He'd better not have a Ruger 10-22, though. That one will send him to jail for about 10 years in NJ.

I don't live in NJ, but I have known many who do, and yes, it's not a happy place when it comes to such things.

I think the writers forgot one other thing with the whole "does House own a gun" B-story. Several seasons ago, House bought a small snub-nosed revolver and discharged it into a dead man's head down in the morgue to test a theory which promptly destroyed the MRI machine. He actually DID own a gun, which confused me throughout the course of the episode. Everyone knew he used it and everyone knew he destroyed the multi-tens-of-thousands-of-dollars machine because of it. I guess they had to invent a new weapon, the presence of which seemed to only be included to show as a prop for the final scene of House clearly thinking about his dad with his USMC parade sword. A touching ending, but pretty perfunctory overall.

 

[Trekker4747]

Depends if the gun House used in that episode counts as "House owning a gun" considering the number of ways he could have gotten that gun and what he could've done with it afterwards.

 

[Agent Richard07]

The change of formula hasn't been too bad but I think House's character has been heavily damaged by the end of last season's events and with the loss of Cuddy one end of the "big three" dynamic is gone.

I've never noticed a "big three" vibe. To me, it's always been House at the center with the doclings, the best friend and the boss who puts up with him all on the side.

It practically took moving Heaven and Earth to get Robert Sean Leonard to come back this season for what little he's going to do, getting him to stick around for another year would be hard too.

So far, he's been around as much as usual. I wonder if he'll be getting a few epsides off at some point.

Hopefully the show's writers have a good final-arc written to wrap everything up and close of the characters in a mostly decent way. And for all of his faults, I'd hate to see House's character killed off or meet with an even more down ending. It'd be fine if they simply had a "life goes on" ending with him more-or-less back in good standing with his reputation and in the hospital facing the need to hire a new team and life goes on.

If they do go with a "House dies" ending then it'd be most fitting if they find a true "Moriarty" character for him that House can only save/cure at the cost of his own life.

Someone here had a good idea... The last episode starts off with House dead, and left behind is a challenge to figure out what killed him. During the process, House could appear in a recording, nudging the doclings along with his usual crabby smartass comments. In the end, no one gets it right in the time allotted and on the recording, House says... "It was lupus. Idiots." Or something to that effect. Fade to black. A "life goes on" scenario is what I'd want to see as well, but death can work too.

 

[Forbin]

btw, Wilson, by bringing House's gun to work, violated NJ's "illegal possession of a handgun" law, since he doesn't own it. And we can probably tack onto that transporting a handgun without it being in a locked container, transporting it (no doubt) in a part of his car other than the locked trunk, and there's a law about only being allowed to transport a handgun between home and the shooting range without stopping in between...

JFC, I could NEVER live in NJ.

I think the writers frequently forget that the show is set out of New Jersey. Many others had mentioned the various anti-gun laws, but there's also the thing that a resident must own a permit card for each weapon (not just one for all), PLUS a permit card to buy ammunition. Having that arsenal is not necessarily illegal, though, particularly if all the weapons are American made (via the national foreign assault weapon import ban - not to be confused with the general assault weapons ban which sunset back in 2004) and all magazines blocked off to hold no more than ten rounds. He'd better not have a Ruger 10-22, though. That one will send him to jail for about 10 years in NJ.

Wait, what? Do I have to bury my 10/22 or something? It only has 10-round mags. NOW what have I missed?

As for the permit system: A single "NJ Firearms ID card" allows you to buy rifles and shotguns and ammo - just the one card, you don't need a new one for each purchase. IIRC, ammo can be bought using a driver's license for ID too.

For handguns, however, you must go thru the whole procedure for every individual one - apply for a permit to purchase from your town police, fill out a couple of forms, get two friends to vouch for you in writing, agree to a review of your mental health history, pay the fee, then wait for the purchase permit to arrive.

 

[137th Gebirg]

Hmm.. My bad. Guess I got bad intel from my old Jersey cohorts. I guess the perception is worse than the reality in some cases. I stand corrected.

Still wouldn't live there though...

 

[Forbin]

Well, the reality is pretty bad!