I was musing today about dichotomies in entertainment, and how there are almost always two vastly different sides to anything. My working example is the TV medical-drama genre, although I’m sure more dedicated couch potatoes could name tons more. (If this were a post about movies, I’d be talking about Volcano/Dante’s Peak or Armageddon/Deep Impact instead.)
But I basically chose the TV medical-drama because I happen to be watching quite a bit of them these past couple of months, in the form of the current dichotomy of House and Grey’s Anatomy. (In the mid to late 90’s, the relevant titles would be E.R. and Chicago Hope.)
House, as you may or may not know, is about a crusty but benign doctor played by Hugh Laurie who solves medical mysteries with as little contact with his patients as possible. Our Sherlock Holmes leads a team composed of a sentimental but damaged female, a self-obsessed rich kid, and a black dude with a chip on his shoulder. His only friend is a kind but conflicted doctor played by Robert Sean Leonard.
In Grey’s Anatomy, meanwhile, our main character is a brassy but confused surgical intern played by Ellen Pompeo, who falls in love with her charming but (it turns out) married boss and gets into all sorts of odd but forgivable scrapes. Her fellow interns include a sentimental but damaged female, a self-obsessed frat-boy, a well-meaning but clumsy dork and a tough but lonely korean girl. They’re supervised by a black lady with a chip on her shoulder.
As you can probably tell, similarities abound between these two shows. On the other hand, the crusty but benign male character (or brassy but confused female) appears in nearly every successful TV series, so it’s not just each other they’re similar to, but the whole industry.
Of course, it’s their differences that I really wanted to write about here, so let’s talk about those.
The first thing you’ll probably notice about Grey’s is the voiceover narration, which is a standard amongst most modern female-centric series. (I believe the thinking is that women are complicated creatures, and without a thoughtful voiceover, it’d be too easy to misunderstand an episode’s meaning.) House, on the other hand, is about a relatively simple creature. He’s not happy, so he makes other people not happy as well. No voiceover narration necessary.
But where Grey’s has a helpful amount of VO, House’s value-add is its trademark snappy banter. For comparison’s sake, check out this list of memorable quotes from House, versus this one from Grey’s, two examples of which I will copy-and-paste below:
From House:
Dr. Gregory House:The eyes can mislead, a smile can lie, but the shoes always tell the truth.
Dr. Wilson:They were Prada, which means she has good taste.
Dr. Gregory House:They were not Prada. You wouldn’t know Prada if one stepped on your scrotum.
Dr. Wilson:Okay, well… they were nice, pointy.
From Grey’s:
Dr. Derek Shepherd:It’s not the chase.
Dr. Meredith Grey:What?
Dr. Derek Shepherd:You and me. It is not the thrill of the chase. It’s not a game. It’s? it’s your tiny ineffectual fists. And your hair.
Dr. Meredith Grey:My hair?
Dr. Derek Shepherd:It smells good. And you’re very, very ballsy. It keeps me in line.
Dr. Meredith Grey:I’m still not going out with you.
That right there is essentially where these two shows differ the most. Where House is flippant and glib, Grey’s is warm and irresistibly cuddly.
Don’t get me wrong though. Grey’s is a funny, entertaining show, but at its heart, what it really wants to do is make you cry, and gasp, and say things like “You stupid man! Can’t you see she needs you right now??” House’s premise, meanwhile, is about a drug-addict doctor with no friends and a wife who left him when he became handicapped, and yet makes you laugh every single episode.
It’s not really for me to say which is the better show, although I could make a few sweeping generalizations about which demographic they’ll mostly attract. Since women are more likely to follow any given TV show regularly, and Grey’s is generally more targeted toward females, it’s also not difficult to imagine which show has better ratings. (It’s fairly close though: Grey’s maintained a viewership of 25.4 million last month, versus House’s 22.2, according to this writeup.)
My personal preference is definitely with Hugh Laurie and his box of snappy comebacks, but I don’t mind sitting out an episode or two of Ellen Pompeo (and, lest we forget, Katherine Heigl) every now and then. It’sMaybe, just maybe, these two shows were conceptualized as polar opposites for the simple reason that, when taken together, they “fill each other out,” so to speak. A wholistic medical-drama experience, if you will. Wonder what kind of demographics you’d get on a show like that.