House M.D. Swan Song, The Doctor Directs, Everybody Dies a Postmortem
HOUSE SEASON 8:
Everything changes but can people change? Not according to Dr. Gregory House (played by Hugh Laurie) but if he wants to get out of prison and get back to working at Princton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital again he has to change the way he does things or stay locked up. Everything is different now for House, he has a new team working with part of his old team, his old team member Foreman (played by Omar Epps) is now his boss, and now House must follow rules and orders or he will end up back in prison.
THE FINAL SEASON:
It’s odd that in this final season of the show House that I come to appreciate the show for what it is, a good, fun, and emotional show. This was not my first time that I had seen the show but it is the first time that I’ve watched a whole season of it. Before now the most I’ve watched of House was a few episodes that play in syndication and in no particular order. Sure the episodes would be in order as far as how they played out in the season but the seasons were never in order and I would end up watching episodes 5, 6, and 7 of season 2, then 18, 19, and 20 of season 5. Not a good way to watch a show if you want to know what’s going on with the stories and characters.
Odd enough still is that right before I ended up watching this final season of the show on Blu Ray I had watched the last 4 episodes of season 7 the week before. Now I might not know the complete story of all the characters and plots leading up to where I started with season 7 but I did know enough going into season 8 that I was able to keep up with the show. In fact one thing that I liked about season 8 is that it was done in a way that even with not knowing the show I was able to understand everything happening. This final season was almost like a beginning of a new show rather than one that was ending after 8 seasons.
Now when I said that I finally came to appreciate the show that’s because before I always thought that the episodes where the same, it starts with someone having some mysterious illness, House gets the case, he yells and belittles his crew of doctors, they try to solve the case by going through all sorts of ways to cure what it might be, they mess up, House belittles others, then the patient is cured, end show. Well, there is that core to it in every episode but there’s also the real portion of the show, House. This show is not about the sick person House helps but rather the interaction of the characters with House and his process of coming up with a cure.
I really enjoyed all the different interactions between all the characters, though I was a little irked when the characters Dr. Chi Park (played by Charlyne Yi) and Dr. Robert Chase (played by Jesse Spencer) had moments where there might have been some sort of thing going on between them but was then dropped right after it was brought up. Not that I was wanting to see these characters being given a full story of them together but it felt like I was being teased with these characters wanting something. Other than that I really enjoyed this final season a lot and felt that the ending was as perfect for this show and the characters as it could have been. I won’t give it away but the show did what I first figured would happen but then they took it to a whole different level of an ending that I never would have guessed but fits so well. This was a very well written show that took these new characters into it’s fold while allowing the show to end with some real closure and I think in a way that any fan of the show will agree with that it couldn’t have ended in a better way then it does.
HOUSE ON BLU RAY:
I have to state right off what I really don’t like about this Blu Ray first because it annoys me so much that it was done this way. The packaging. Yeah I know this has nothing to do with the quality of the show being on Blu Ray but when I have a show that’s on Blu Ray I want to know that I’ll be keeping this show for awhile. Blu Ray is not cheap and Blu Ray television shows are higher priced then the movies and that’s why I want the disks to be safe in the case. For season 8 of House, 4 of the 5 discs are stacked on top of each other. Disc 1 is on top of disc 2 and disc 3 is on top of disc 4, meaning less protection for the individual discs. I would rather had a thicker case with more fold out sleeves than this thinner case that has the discs stacked on each other.
Now that I got that out of the way let me say that I thought this Blu Ray was excellent. Not only does the show look brillent on my HDTV set but it sounds just as good and it comes with all sorts of features. The most liked feature for me is the ultraviolet copy of the entire season, which you can download, giving me the option of watching anywhere I go. If all Blu Rays offered this feature for their television shows I would be getting a whole lot more of them. I was also impressed with how the show looked on my computer screen and on my phone, I had to watch at least one episode on both devices just because I could do it.
Links
[1] http://www.shakefire.com/tags/house
[2] http://www.shakefire.com/tags/the-final-season
[3] http://www.shakefire.com/tags/ultraviolet
[4] http://www.shakefire.com/tags/hugh-laurie
[5] http://www.shakefire.com/tags/omar-epps
[6] http://www.shakefire.com/tags/robert-sean-leonard
[7] http://www.shakefire.com/tags/jesse-spencer
[8] http://www.shakefire.com/tags/peter-jacobson
[9] http://www.shakefire.com/tags/odette-annable
[10] http://www.shakefire.com/tags/charlyne-yi
[11] http://www.shakefire.com/tags/season-8