House Will Never Be Cute

I caught an advance of tomorrow night's "House," and once again I was unexpectedly blown away. Too often, the machinery of this show can be so repetitive and ridiculous. Are the doctors actually still breaking into patients' homes to do research? And yet Hugh Laurie and his writers manage to defy the absurdities over and over again, as the character of House remains not just intense, but thoroughly unromanticized.

The medical-procedural part of the episode is about a piano-playing savant whose already damaged brain may be in trouble. It's familiar "House" business, with House doing his usual Sherlock Holmesian deductions, except that the savant is played by musician Dave Matthews. The role doesn't ask too much of Matthews -- just some childlike mugging -- but he does a nice job of it. And that's good news, since he has parts in two upcoming movies, one with Sissy Spacek and the other with Ryan Gosling.

Still, the hour belongs to Laurie and House, who appears to have a secret regarding his own health. I won't go into it here, except to say that the show proves once again that addiction and depression are not cute and that House will never be the predictable TV hero we want him to be. The writers have turned us into Sherlocks, in a sense, and they continue to give us clues about who House truly is. And as we solve the mystery, the answers are rarely pretty.