Doesn't anyone at Fox have any original ideas? Even after getting past all the parodies or rip-offs or parody-rip-offs of other reality shows, and finally getting down to a new scripted series, the network's much-hyped House (Fox, Tuesdays, 9 p.m.) turns out to be nothing more than NBC's boring Medical Investigation with a little more personality. Like Medical Investigation, it concerns a team of highly trained doctors, led by a cantankerous but effective genius (in this case, the titular Dr. House, played by Hugh Laurie), that approaches the curing of mysterious diseases like the solving of crimes, including using forensic investigative techniques ripped off from CSI. The doctors on Medical Investigation are part of the National Institutes of Health, while House and his team work out of the hospital at Princeton University.
House's first episode had nearly the same structure as any given Medical Investigation episode: A strange illness strikes! The doctors spring into action! "Is this it?" "No." "Is this it?" "No." "Is this it?" "Yes! That's it! We found the cure!" The medical jargon on a show like this easily gets old quickly, and if that's all it has to offer then it ends up like, well, Medical Investigation. What House does have going for it is Laurie, who does a good job as the gruff, misanthropic House, a brilliant doctor with a huge chip on his shoulder after a misdiagnosis left him dependent on a cane.
But while Laurie makes House believable, he doesn't make him likable. The doctor is set up as a lovable jerk with a heart of gold, but he just comes off as a jerk. At least he's distinctive, which is more than you can say for the bland supporting cast, fairly easily interchangeable with that of any other medical show. At this point, the show could go either way, becoming formulaic and annoying, with House's nuggets of "wisdom" already tiresome, or developing into a quirky character study that just happens to be about doctors. Let's see if Fox keeps it on the air long enough to find out.
At least they've got a couple of decent returning series to shore them up for a little while. Last year's most critically acclaimed new series, Arrested Development (Fox, Sundays, 8:30 p.m.), was mercifully saved from the scrap heap despite low ratings and given a second shot to live up to the praise and its five Emmys. The ratings have only been up slightly, but given Fox's level of success so far this year, that's good enough. Despite the voluminous hype, I never caught an episode last year, so I was looking forward to seeing what all the fuss was about.
Perhaps it's unavoidable that I was disappointed given the buildup, but I only laughed a handful of times during the show's first two episodes of the new season. Still, Arrested Development is better than virtually every other sitcom on network TV right now, and I'm happy just to see a show that's unconventional and taking risks on the air, even if it's the kind of thing I admire rather than enjoy.
Practically the opposite is true about The O.C. (Fox, Thursdays, 8 p.m.), which I have a hard time admiring but always entertains me. The prime-time soap, another hot new show of last season, has been moved into the unenviable position of going head-to-head with Survivor and the Joey-Will & Grace tag-team, but it's doing better than anything Fox used to run in that time slot. Hammy and self-deprecating, The O.C. is not a show for depth or subtlety, but at its best it wallows in glorious soap conventions while simultaneously making a mockery of the whole idea. Star Adam Brody, as nerd-cum-hottie Seth Cohen, still delivers some of the funniest lines on TV, and the rest of the ensemble, save wooden stick-figure Mischa Barton, always elevate the sometimes-obvious material.
Creator Josh Schwartz perhaps has an over-inflated sense of his own cleverness, but like Arrested Development, The O.C. scores points simply for delivering something resembling intelligence. When it comes to Fox, this season or any, that's no mean feat.