Lawrence Kaplow: Writing for TV can serve both art and commerce
Writing for television — and doing it well — is a balancing act, Lawrence Kaplow believes, that demands self-discipline coupled with creativity. It requires a commitment to stay within the rules while keeping an open mind, as well as maintaining constant self-vigilance and working well with others.
Writing for TV — especially mainstream, broadcast network series like Body of Proof, Family Law and the soon-to-end House — means serving two masters: art and commerce.
And, yes, it can be done, Kaplow insists.
Kaplow hopes to explain how, at a seminar for aspiring writers Sunday at Simon Fraser University.
The seminar will cover such practical areas as pitching story ideas, script development, story structure, the politics of the writers’ room, and how to deal with notes from the studio and network.
Kaplow is busy writing much of the time, but he enjoys talking about the work, too, having lectured at New York University, Duke, USC, and Johns Hopkins Medical School.
“I was just back from Kyiv, where I did some seminars with some of the TV writers there, and it was lot of fun,” Kaplow said this week from his home in Los Angeles.
“I certainly wouldn’t claim to say I know everything that I’m doing, by any stretch, but after years of working in this business, some things have become clear to me.”
With the door about to close on House, and having worked on other producers’ TV projects for the better part of 12 years (starting with 2000’s Family Law for Canadian screenwriter Paul Haggis), Kaplow is now working on his own project, which he declined to reveal.
Kaplow’s 2005 script for House, Autopsy, about a nine-year-old girl stricken with cancer who desperately wants to lead a normal life — and sing and dance like her idol Christina Aguilera, one day — earned Kaplow that year’s Writers Guild of America Award for outstanding episodic drama.
Ironically, David Shore, Kaplow’s boss on House and the series’ Canadian creator and senior executive producer — won an Emmy that year, for the first-season episode, Three Stories.
In that episode, Hugh Laurie’s Gregory House reluctantly agrees to lecture a class of medical students by posing three scenarios, which the students must solve during the lecture.
It was the first major award for a series that would go on to earn respect — and ratings success — for eight seasons. Kaplow’s Writers Guild Award, coupled with the first of six lead-actor Emmy nominations for Laurie, cemented House’s reputation as one of network television’s most refined, influential and respected dramas. House closes for good with a two-hour finale on May 21.
Kaplow started his career with Family Law, but it was House that would become his eventual calling card. He wrote the series’ second episode, Paternity, and followed that with episodes in five of the seasons that followed. His most recent episode was last year’s Out of the Chute, in which Dr. House, newly single and back on Vicodin, begins to wonder if anything can excite him any more.
Any long-running series is a work in progress.
“I think David would be the first to acknowledge that, after he wrote the pilot, he didn’t know what was going to be next,” Kaplow said.
“It took a lot of work to figure out. That pilot, even though it was incredibly well constructed, to turn that into a show was difficult. We all had the same goal, to be the best we could be, and if it went down in three, that’d be OK, too, because we would have done something we could be proud of. Everyone worked accordingly. We worked our asses off, and it was great fun.”
Kaplow, a lifelong music buff, tries to incorporate music as much as possible in his writing.
“I come from a musical family, and so I’m always writing to music. Sometimes I’ll hear a piece of music prior to writing a scene. It doesn’t mean that’s the music that’ll be in there, but there’ll be some emotional foundation.”
Autopsy opened with the young girl Andie, played by Pretty Little Liars actress Sasha Peiterse, dancing in front of the mirror, bald from her chemotherapy treatments, to the strains of Aguilera’s Beautiful. The hour ended with Elvis Costello’s uptempo cover of the same song, played over final scene. Beautiful was a canny song choice, not just as an anthem for a girl fighting cancer at an impressionable age, but because, at its heart, it’s also a song about insecurity and low self-esteem. Kaplow didn’t end it there: Bird York’s song In the Deep played over the operating scene, with its lyric, “Thought you had all the answers to rest your heart upon/ But something happens, don’t see it coming, now you can’t stop yourself.”
Kaplow also wrote the 2007 episode, Half-Wit, featuring singer-songwriter Dave Matthews as a piano prodigy afflicted with a rare muscle disorder.
The episode was noteworthy at the time, too, because it was the moment Dr. House’s staff suspected he might have cancer.
The episode featured a moment when, as a test of the piano prodigy’s music memory, Dr. House wheels a piano into his room and plays the opening bars of the Boomtown Rats’ I Don’t Like Mondays.
Of today’s television dramas, Kaplow believes Mad Men uses music best.
“It’s particularly subtle, and I like the way they do that.”
Writing is something one often does alone, Kaplow says, but television is a collaborative medium. Writing for TV often involves sitting around a table with fellow writers, pitching ideas and suffering the slings and arrows of real-time reactions.
“It’s about finding those individual moments that are unique to your voice, even if you’re in a room,” Kaplow said. “If you’re sure of your voice, it’ll have an impact. The best idea isn’t always the one that’s up there. It’s a very subjective business.
“The writers’ room is wonderful, though. It’s like being in school. It’s like being in a graduate seminar, except that people aren’t quite as polite —not because they aren’t polite by nature, but because of the restrictions on time. You need to cut to the finish.”
Asked what the biggest misconception people have about writing for TV, Kaplow laughed and said, “My God, my brain is bleeding. May I think for a second? I feel like I’m on Jeopardy.”
After a pause, Kaplow replied, “It’s daunting. Writing is manual labour. People don’t always get that. It’s not just a cerebral process. It is, but there’s more to it than just that.”
House Comes to an End: Producers and Cast Recall Creating a Curmudgeon
House, a risky, challenging and altogether different kind of medical drama, premiered on November 16, 2004, and turned the genre on its head with a true antihero lead: a doctor who has overt disdain for his patients — and people in general. But thanks to compelling writing and a career-defining performance by British improv-comedy vet Hugh Laurie, the show stayed on the air for eight seasons of abuse (both drug and verbal) and countless diagnoses that were almost never lupus. As House prepares to sign off for good (Monday, May 21 at 8/7c on Fox), TVGuide.com talked to the show's creators and cast about building the Emmy-winning drama from the ground up. This is the first of a two-part series.
Executive producer Katie Jacobs and her partner Paul Attanasio were coming off the failed medical drama Gideon's Crossing when a new idea struck: make a medical show in the vein of another genre-upending show: CSI.
Katie Jacobs: There was a column in the Sunday New York Times magazine called Diagnosis, written by Lisa Sanders. Basically, it lists a series of incongruous symptoms... and then it took 1,200 words to discover the mystery of what the diagnosis was. It was as simple as that — the notion of a medical mystery with the symptoms as the suspects.
David Shore (creator, executive producer): The networks got all excited about the [medical mystery idea] and there was a little bit of a bidding war. It scared the hell out of me because I'm going, "I'm not sure we have a series yet." Germs don't have motives. People watch mysteries not because of whodunit, but because of "why done it." That's what the show became about: Why do people do the things they do? I spent months and months trying to figure out what that first story would be and who the people would be. I needed this character at the center who's fascinated by the things people do and is looking for logical reasons for everything.
Katie Jacobs: The idea for the character came from [thinking], "What do doctors really say when you leave the room? How do they really talk to each other?" "Everybody lies" comes from the notion of [someone] giving their medical history to the doctor. He says, "How many glasses of wine do you have during the week?" You say two, and he writes four. The other thing that really mattered is that when you go into a hospital, more often than not, they do not know what's wrong with you. They figure out what's wrong by trial and error. It's an uncomfortable place to live, but it's true, and I think people really responded to it.
David Shore: Sherlock Holmes was a bit of an inspiration. [I wanted] to make the show about somebody who cares more about the puzzle than about the lives, which then led to thinking about what's more important: motives or results? And what matters more: the emotion or the intellect? House is a bit of my alter ego on a certain level. Most of his attitudes toward things are mine. He's a lot smarter than I am and a lot right-er than I am. So he can get away with saying these things. But the things he says tend to be things that I've thought.
Casting the title character, Dr. Gregory House, a pill-popping diagnostician with a pronounced limp, was crucial. Although the producers saw a number of actors, they were instantly drawn to Hugh Laurie, one half of the British comedy duo Fry and Laurie. At the time, his most recent work stateside was as the wholesome, friendly dad in the film Stuart Little. He impressed everyone.
Bryan Singer (director, executive producer): I was very adamant about the show being called House. There was some concern on the part of the network that the show would then become reliant on the actor playing House. And I said to them, "Have you read the script? He's the guy. The show will always be reliant on his character."
Katie Jacobs: We knew that House was handicapped. The idea was that he doesn't want to see patients, but he really doesn't want to be seen by patients. At first, I remember he was in a wheelchair... and for a short while, I imagined that he had a scar like Beauty and the Beast or Phantom of the Opera. It would have been awful. But the cane was the right choice. Once it was a cane, it needed to be someone who could hold the center walking down that hallway. Hugh was the only one.
Bryan Singer: I had seen a lot of foreign actors and I was very concerned that they would have trouble with the dialect, particularly with all the medical terminology. And there wasn't anyone with a strong voice and a magnetic presence. A tape came up, which was this very rough, self-made audition tape that was done in a restroom in Africa by Hugh Laurie, who I had never heard of. He happened to have a lot of razor stubble and the quality of sound was like one of those Bin Laden videos. It was really bad. And yet, something about his voice really appealed to me. There was a smoothness to it and an articulation that I found really could carry this character. I turned to Paul and Katie and I said, "This is what I'm talking about! This is what we need — an American!" And they looked at me and said, "He's British."
Katie Jacobs: When I put in the tape of Hugh's audition, I saw Bryan Singer get up from behind his desk and walk closer to the TV. And if you're worth your salt as a producer, you don't forget that.
David Shore: Hugh does things I just can't imagine another human being doing. He tells a joke in the darkest scenes and you don't lose any of the depth. He frees me up as a writer to write anything for that character. As long as there is truth behind it, it will work because of him.
Katie Jacobs: What separates Hugh is his ability to tell a joke, yes. That gets you far in terms of forgiveness, but not far enough. What Hugh also has to offer innately, just as an actor, is when the camera is up close, you can see behind his eyes. He can say one thing and still let you know he's deeply wounded.
David Shore: There was hesitation [by the network] about House being addicted to Vicodin, but that hesitation was a good hesitation. It was one of the very few notes they had for us. The note was, "Do it if you want, but if you do it, do it honestly and don't do it as a joke." We never intended to do that. We intended to go with this as a real issue, a real problem, a real dilemma for this character.
Katie Jacobs: You call him a drug addict, and that's true, but he's popping all that Vicodin because he's in pain. You know he's arrogant and he's the smartest kid in class. He's like a huge adolescent. But the abuse of Vicodin also allows you to know he's vulnerable and breakable.
With Laurie cast in the lead role, the producers set about finding his best friend, James Wilson, his boss, Lisa Cuddy, and the three fellows who would make up House's diagnostic team.
Bryan Singer: Many years ago, I made a short film with an old neighbor of mine, Ethan Hawke. Ethan introduced me to Robert Sean Leonard, and I showed him a rough cut of my little student film. Bobby gave me a check for $1,000 and wrote a letter saying, "Keep doing what you're doing." I never forgot that. When he came up on my casting list, I said, "Bobby can do anything. He has the role." I wouldn't have cast him if I didn't know he was brilliant, but literally the moment he came across my desk, I said, "He's going to be Wilson and that's just that."
Jennifer Morrison (Dr. Allison Cameron): The day of my meeting, it was raining in L.A. It was a mess outside, and I didn't have an umbrella. I kept thinking I just needed to get in there and clean myself up and go in and do it. I walked in, and Bryan Singer was sitting in the lobby. There was no chance to ever put myself together, so I walked in like a drowned rat.
Bryan Singer: Since I basically gave the network only one choice for the Wilson role, the network said, "Bryan, we'd really like to get a few choices just so we can be part of the process. So for [Cameron] I sent them reference tapes from three girls. One I don't remember and there were two others. One was a blond girl and the other was a brunette. And both were Jennifer Morrison. This just makes me seem like an idiot, but I didn't know that. They said to me, "Bryan, we didn't appreciate your joke." I said, "What do you mean?" They said, "You sent us two of Jennifer Morrison." And I said, "Well, she must be perfect for it."
Jennifer Morrison: I didn't hear back quickly, so I was like, "Oh shoot, I guess it didn't go well." And I was kind of bummed about it. I had these other test offers, but I felt like this was the one that would have been really special. But I guess it turns out my only competition was myself with blonde hair.
Bryan Singer: I found [Cameron] to be in Jennifer's personality. She's someone who is beautiful but doesn't want that to be their identity. ... I saw her as a character who had some holes. There was loss in her life and no matter how much abuse House could dish out, in some strange, parental way, he was filling the void that the character had at that time in her life.
Jennifer Morrison: She's someone who's drawn to talent and to passion, so House's rough exterior was never really a problem for her. She was seeing that he was saving lives, that he was passionate about saving lives, that he was an incredible talent, and those were the things that were attractive to her. Those were the things that turned her on in life.
Bryan Singer: I thought Jesse Spencer was a nice pairing with Jennifer, both physically and his energy. Jesse had a certain kind of confidence. He carried his looks more comfortably than Jennifer. I always looked at the two young doctors as a team. It was a lot like casting Usual Suspects for me. When I cast Benicio Del Toro and Stephen Baldwin, they were like a team in my mind. It was the same thing here. These were the two young doctors, and they had to kind of jive with each other.
Omar Epps (Dr. Eric Foreman): Foreman really has conviction in what he believes. Foreman and House are alike in some ways, but House is probably a bit more jaded. In Foreman seeing their similarities, he realized what he doesn't want to be like.
Bryan Singer: Omar's got great eyes, and I knew he'd be rolling those eyes in every episode for the first season. Omar Epps is the kind of cool that House can't be. Foreman, to me, was formidable. Everyone else [House] can abuse. Foreman is your formidable opponent.
David Shore: Right from Day 1, there was that sexual tension between [House and Cuddy]. It was just the way those two actors played it. Even if I had tried to not do it, it was going to be there and I enjoyed it.
Bryan Singer: I cast Lisa Edelstein because I saw her play the hooker in the pilot of The West Wing and I thought she was fantastic. I saw her as the hottest hooker in Washington, D.C., but [then-Fox Entertainment President] Gail Berman knew her from Ally McBeal, where she played a transgendered woman. She was like, "I think she looks like a man," and I said, "No. She's hot." Clearly it was a matter of perception. But when I screened the pilot at my friend's bachelor party before it was aired, all my buddies in Jersey were like, "Yeah, she's hot." I made the right choice. (Edelstein declined to speak with TVGuide.com for this story.)
The pilot episode was shot in Vancouver, and Fox put the show on its schedule in the fall of 2004, opting to premiere it in November after the World Series ended.
Hugh Laurie (Dr. Gregory House): I thought the pilot was good. I thought this was a good and interesting story with good and interesting characters. That didn't mean that anyone was going to watch it. That was a big surprise.
Robert Season Leonard (Dr. James Wilson): I remember watching the pilot and showing it to my wife and thinking, "Wow, this is really good. I would watch this. So it's never going to run, because everything I like gets canceled." I liked My So-Called Life. So I was surprised when it ran. It was a tight race for a long time. We didn't have great numbers, but the show has always been good. And then they put us after American Idol.
David Shore: It brought an audience to the show that stuck around, and I am obviously grateful for that. It gave people a chance to sample the show. They sampled it, and they liked it, and that was wonderful.
Katie Jacobs: If you have an audience, and you're growing, you no longer have to think about fighting for your show. Then it's a privilege to sort of use your imagination as to where it could go.
‘HOUSE’ (LAST) CALL: DAVID SHORE TALKS ABOUT THE END
t’s a sad, sad thing to see. Here at the Fox lot, the oversized doors of Stage 15 were usually closed, with a security guard often stationed outside, helping keep safe the secrets of the institution that existed within: Princeton Plainsboro Teaching Hospital.
But for the last few weeks, the doors have been open. Piece by piece, door by door, wall by wall, crews have been dismantling PPTH.
And now it is gone.
Just an empty soundstage remains… for now, at least. Soon, sets for a new project will be constructed within those walls, and the Hollywood circle of life goes on. Creator/executive producer David Shore is all too aware of that. He recalls how cool it seemed at the time when, back in “House’s” second year, construction crews started creating what would become the exterior to Dr. House’s home.
Until he realized that the facade being torn down was the entrance to “NYPD Blue’s” 15th precinct. “I loved that show,” Shore told us. “And I just realized, well, that’s the future. That’s the nature of it. There’s not a lot of sentiment.”
Being just days away from the show’s finale, it’s certainly a time for “House” fans to get a little sentimental. One of the most popular TV dramas of the past decade, its loss gives fans plenty to mourn — no more House, no more Wilson, no more Foreman or Chase or Taub, no more of the dialogue that was written so expertly and performed so brilliantly, no more of the “a-ha” moments that often signaled House’s break in the case, no more of the music-backed montages that captured an episode’s emotions so perfectly.
With that in mind, we spoke with Shore about the end of “House” — and its beginning.
Did he have an “a-ha” moment of his own, when the seeds of the show were first planted? (Click on the media player to hear David Shore.) *** Back when the show was conceived, did Shore have its ultimate ending in mind? And does the real finale come close to what he might have envisioned? *** The annals of TV history are littered with series finales that haven’t lived up to viewers’ expectations. After all, when viewers become invested in a show, its characters take on a new life inside each viewer’s own imagination.
We all have different ideas about where we’d like those characters to wind up (Shore admits he’s had plenty of people tell him how they’d like to see the show end), and so it’s up to the show’s writers and producers to craft an ending that, well, feels right. An appropriate ending that equals — or surpasses — what we’ve come up with ourselves.
And in an age where “spoilers” has become part of our everyday TV vernacular, it’s not easy to deliver a finale that hits the right notes and packs the emotional punch that can only come with the element of surprise. Which is why Shore said he’s taken plenty of precautions to keep the ending secret until it airs — and why he’s refused to talk about anything that could be construed as a spoiler.
Kath Lingenfelter on the writing life and her years on House.
Kath Lingenfelter learned much from her two years writing for the hit medical drama. Now that the series has ended, it's time to move on. Kath Lingenfelter began our phone conversation with a hint of reluctance. As a writer for House, the FOX series that after eight seasons airs its final episode Monday night, she knows how the story ends and having that knowledge gives her the right to be suspicious of journalists. Perhaps I was after that super secret bit of data so many are wondering about: the fate of Gregory House and his long suffering friend James Wilson. Speculation on the final House episode with the foreboding title “Everybody Dies” has been running hot for weeks on Twitter, Facebook, and any House related blog you can name. The answer won’t be found here. After I assured Lingenfelter that I wouldn't press for that much coveted piece of information, she was eager to talk with me about her journey as a writer and her time on House.
Where are you from originally?
[This] is a complicated answer. We moved around a lot growing up. We weren’t part of the military or anything like that. My father was just sort of a roguish soul and his various adventures had us moving all over the country. Currently a good portion of my family lives in Michigan. I have a sister in Chicago and I have brother that lives in Los Angeles.
When did you know you wanted to be a writer?
I’m not sure. I know that at a very young age I was writing really bad jokes that didn’t make any sense. On occasion I would write a little short story for myself. My family’s ambition for me was to be a doctor so the idea of being a writer didn’t seem like an option. I did a little bit of poetry in high school but when I went to college and I was pre-med, I really thought, “Is this what I want to do?” When I took organic chemistry I realized I couldn’t. I couldn’t do this. It really threw everything upside down. And then it was like, wow, I have no idea what I want to do and I have every option available to me, and that [was] terrifying. I graduated from college, was working in a bookstore, living with my parents and my brother who lived in Los Angeles said, “I have a friend who is in the industry. I can get you an assistant job. Why don’t you come out here and see if you like it for three months. If you don’t you go back to Michigan, if you do, you stick around.” It turned out his friend was an assistant at CAA. So I got a job at an agency as an assistant for an agent called Brian Lord, who was a managing partner. After a couple of years, I got the lay of the land and understood the industry more or less, and revealed my dirty secret that I wanted to be a writer. I guess it was then that it really solidified it for me [because] the first year I moved out here, I moved out here without a plan. I didn’t know what I was moving out here for necessarily. I knew if wanted to learn how to write and do it well, television was the best place to do that because TV is a business of writing and making stories in volume. Because I worked in the agency I kind of got first dibs on jobs that were available. I got a job at Jason Katim’s assistant and worked for him on a show called Roswell. That was my very first experience in TV. Sitting in that writers room is how I learned how to write.
What other shows were you associated with prior to House besides Roswell?
I was a script coordinator for years on many, many different shows. In fact, once Roswell ended I followed [Russel] Friend and [Garrett] Lerner show to show. They were writers and I was script coordinator and we worked on Boston Public together and John Doe and a show called LAX. Then I decided it was time for me to really make a big push to get an agent and I got signed with the ETA. My friends Gretchen Berg and Aaron Harberts created a show called Pepper Dennis and they gave me my first writing job. It was a very safe environment to have my first experience writing television. I wrote two episodes for them then went on to a show called Related. That was a great learning experience. Then I went from there to a SHOWTIME series called Sleeper Cell and then Pushing Daisies.
You’ve said you were a fan of House before you wrote for the show. How thrilled were you to get that job?
I was very excited. Not just because I was a fan of the show but because of the prospect of working with David Shore and working with Friend and Lerner again. I had never written a procedural before so I was excited about gaining that set of tools. It actually is not your typical procedural show. It’s not a cop show or a lawyer show. So I was excited about broadening my set of tools and it lived up to all my excitement and expectations and more. Was writing your first House episode a daunting task even though you’d had so much writing experience prior to it? It was terrifying. The funny thing is, before I got that job I had watched over 100 episodes and thought, “No problem. I know how to write this show. I know the show inside and out.” It turned out to be much harder than it looks. It’s really, really hard. I actually pitched an idea and they said, “Great. Do that.” When I really got into it and looked at it, I spent about six or seven weeks really trying to make it work and had to admit to myself that it didn’t work as an episode. It wasn’t the idea I thought it was. I went to Friend and Lerner and said I had to abandon this idea, that I’d like to do something else. “You Must Remember This” was the first episode I wrote for House but it was not my first idea. It was not my first pitch. That was really hard. I was so afraid of failing and six weeks in I’m failing. The great thing about the show is they trust their writers. When you say to them, “This isn’t working,” they trust you. They say, “Okay, then abandon it and find something else”. So that was really nice for me. I was like, “Oh, you guys trust me as a writer. If I say it’s not working, it’s not working.” Peter Blake supervised me on three of my scripts and was a really great guide. He was a great teacher.
You wrote the controversial House episode “Moving On” with Peter Blake.
I did. You got a lot of flak for that episode from a very vocal portion of the House fanbase. As writers, how did you deal with that volatile, passionate sort of reaction to your work? It’s a very delicate balance you have to maintain because obviously you can’t ignore that you’re writing for an audience. But that audience, especially for a show like House, is not a homogenized group. You have this disparate range of tastes and backgrounds and opinions. There’s no way to tell a story that is going to satisfy everyone when you’re dealing with a diverse community like that. The worst thing you can do as a writer is try to please everyone. As a writer, you really have to make a choice, commit to it and do it the best way you know how. So that’s what we did and that’s what we always do. We make a choice, we commit to it and work really, really hard on it. I understand when it doesn’t work for some people. When you’re a writer in television, you’re constantly getting notes. You submit an outline for an episode and you get notes from the studio, you get notes from the network, notes from your showrunner. You turn in a script and it’s the same thing. In order to survive that process, what you have to be able to do is not fear what they’re saying but to listen to the spirit of the note. So when there was feedback on “Moving On” that was vehemently negative, as a writer what I tried to do was to not hear it literally but digest the spirit of the note. What is it they were reacting to? Then I carried that forward as a lesson. If we were trying to achieve this and that’s not what we succeeded in delivering, next time how do we make adjustments? While fans are very, very important, we can’t let them all have their hands on the steering wheel, so to speak, because [we’d] never get anywhere.
Can you give some details about the day you found out House would not be going on to season nine?
Coming back right before Christmas break, there was a lot of conversation, a lot of speculation. Nobody really knew what was going to happen and no decision had been made. And so we were all living in flux. We were all stuck in this limbo and that was difficult for the ones who were writing the last six or seven episodes because we kind of needed to know. We were really in the dark for a while. On the day it happened, a bunch of us were sitting in Friend and Lerner’s office and Olivia Wilde had come in to visit. So we were hanging out with her and David Shore stuck his head into the office and asked Olivia if she would come back for an episode. For [episode] 22. Olivia said, “Yes, of course.” Then David disappeared again. All the writers in the office looked at each other and that’s how we knew. We knew the version of the story we had worked out that would have been the series ending versus that that would have been the season ending. The fact that he had asked Olivia to be in 22 was the answer. [We knew] this was the final season. There was nothing for like two hours except David and Hugh’s assistant running in and out of closed doors. What they were doing was writing the announcement of the series ending. Then Hugh and David asked all the department heads and the writers to gather in the conference room. They made the announcement. Shore said some words and got very emotional. Then Hugh said some words and got very emotional as well. I think it really hit them in that moment and you could see it on them because there was no turning back. We were all just sort of numb for a minute. We couldn’t believe it was really over. It was very, very sad but after subsequent conversations with Shore, when he took us through the process of making his decision, it made sense. Then I was super excited that I was going to be a part of the final few stories on the series. “Post Mortem”, the episode you and David Hoselton wrote, was the final House/Wilson road trip.
I know. [The writers] had actually been bouncing around a lot of ideas and only had tag lines for the final four episodes. 19 was “Wilson Gets Chemo”, 20 was “Fun With Cancer”, 21 was “Wilson Makes His Decision”, and 22 was the finale. So we got “Fun With Cancer”. We had a very long list of different ideas of ‘what does that look like, what does that mean?’ I finally said, “Why don’t we just go for it and do a road trip?” Hoser, which is Hoselton’s nickname, was all for it and those [road trips episodes] were always my favorites. Former House writer Doris Egan was queen of the road trips. I know! She was the maestro of House/Wilson. I know you can’t say what the finale will bring but do you think House deserves to find redemption? The only one who can really speak for the character of House is David Shore so this is absolutely my opinion. We always write our best approximation, then Shore is the one who does a final pass on the script and is really the gatekeeper of the character. In terms of the rules of the show and the integrity of those rules, it doesn’t matter if you’re a good person or a bad person and nobody ever gets the ending they deserve. Then that would imply there’s a purpose behind everything and a guiding force and something larger and there’s a fairness to it all. House is a pragmatist and realizes it doesn’t matter. The fact that he has gotten away with what he has...If there was true karma and true fairness in life and the world then House would have had his comeuppance a hundred times over. It hasn’t and he knows that because he knows that other than physical laws, laws of science [and] natural law, there are no other hard truths. So do I feel there is a fitting ending for House? No, because he lives by a truth of whatever happens happens. It’s not whether it’s fair or just or right or deserving. It just happens. After the show finished shooting, Lingenfelter did not return to the House set to see it taken down, preferring to remember it as it was and move on. This is not to say she is unsentimental about her time there. She will be watching the finale at David Shore’s house with a group of her former colleagues and has kept an item from the set: a small figure of a monkey seen on House’s desk each week. Lingenfelter is now looking forward to her next project, writing for the new drama Infamous, which will air later this year on NBC.
Hugh Laurie, rest of crew make their last 'House' call tonight By VERNE GAY - Newsday
Here's where we stand as one of TV's premiere dramas of the past decade comes to an end Monday night. Dr. Gregory House (Hugh Laurie) must return to jail for six months for parole violation, while Wilson (Robert Sean Leonard) will likely be dead from cancer in five months.
In jail for six months, while his only friend in the cold, cruel and indifferent universe will be gone forever in five.
A rock on one side. A hard place on the other. Click here to find out more!
As usual, this conundrum is all House's fault -- following some elaborate scheme gone very bad that was designed to force a reluctant Wilson to undergo chemotherapy so that he'd stay alive a couple more years, thereby giving House himself a reason to stay alive. But with House in jail, Wilson will probably forgo chemo and die. And without Wilson by his side, what does House have left to live for? Checkmate.
Phew: Grim, dark, scary ... and remarkable.
Remarkable that a series which was always about a battle between the head and heart -- specifically House's hard head and cold heart -- should win countless admirers and viewers while becoming, for a time, one of the most popular shows on the planet.
Especially remarkable that an unrepentant misanthrope with a game leg and taste for Vicodin would become a pop icon for eight seasons.
"House" was a rare bird indeed -- a commercial TV program about the search for truth by a desperately flawed man embittered by the futility of his pursuit. "We became doctors to treat illnesses," House sourly explained in the opening moments. "Treating patients is what makes most doctors miserable."
He further advised his colleagues never to ask patients anything because "everybody lies." tonight's finale on Fox (a retrospective airs right before) is entitled "Everybody Dies."
Back in 2004, Fox had been in the market for its own "Law & Order"-like procedural, and bought an idea from veteran producer Paul Attanasio ("Homicide") and David Shore, a former lawyer from Canada who'd had modest success as a TV writer ("Hack," "Family Law").
Shore's idea, however, was a new twist on a very old idea, or in his words at the time, a "whatdone-it" versus a "whodoneit." House was to be an embittered Sherlock Holmes -- a miscreant doctor with the world's worst bedside manner motivated by a near-pathological pursuit of the truth. Wilson -- his Watson -- would help sand those razor-sharp edges.
Bowing Nov. 16, 2004, "House" was very nearly an instant flop (just over
6 million viewers) but Fox propped the show up behind "American Idol" the following year, and a phenom was born. By the end of 2005, "House" was a TV giant, and the giant only grew from there.
"House" succeeded because of a ferociously intelligent performance by Laurie -- who brings his other entertainer side to the region on Saturday with a blues show at the Turlock Community Theatre -- but he had unusually able support, including Leonard, who left a distinguished stage career for this, as well as Lisa Edelstein, Omar Epps, Jesse Spencer, Olivia Wilde and Peter Jacobson (who joined in '07). All were cast as doctors or administrators who suffered under House's relentless lash or, in the case of Lisa Cuddy (Edelstein), his relentless romantic attentions.
And while a formula, "House" rarely felt like one because Shore's research and writing were models of precision. Words never felt wasted, while every line seemed to service the story or medical case of the moment.
Of course, "House" was smart enough to know that the declaration, "everybody lies," applied to Dr. Gregory House as well. Our tragic hero will probably end his eight-year run with the full realization that truth is unattainable, while his own querulous existence has been, on some level, a cosmic joke.
Shore will only say that the end is "bittersweet."
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