COMPARE & CONTRAST :
The Sword and the Scalpel
(Morning after Autumnal Equinox)

Now I remember why I gave up on network television. Watching an interesting program with commercial interruptions is like walking through a gallery that assaults you with advertising billboards between the fine art. Distracting and shameless.

While watching the season opener of House, I began to have a wild feeling, like Chu Zhaonan (Vincent Zhao Wen Zhou), caressing the hilt of his sword and trying to restrain himself from unleashing its power:

I'm going to have to figure out where to download House sans advertising, or wait until the DVDs come out.

So House is in and out of the institution, where he confronts the concept of compromise with the system to get his own life in order. And don't we all.

It's the same conflict in Seven Swordsmen: Chu/ZWZ kills all the people he was trying to save from the evil establishment and destroys his own self in the process. It's hubris, stuff of tragedy. House and Chu are both trying to overcome it. I have yet to see who really succeeds. (I think we already know hardly anyone really does, as seen in Greek tragedy,the Bible and Shakespeare.)

Last night I left Chu at the Buddhist Temple where he is trying to come to grips with what he did (while the girl whose love for him was unrequited is arriving with a sword to avenge her father, who was accidentally killed when Dad fell on Chu's blade. But of course in these things -- soap operas, really --no one learns the truth until too late, if ever.) I have a feeling House will be back at Mayfield at some point; it seemed too simple last night (or it was the commercial interruptions). I have yet two more commercial free episodes with the Swordsmen; I'll watch them tonight; unfortunately I know what happens. There is more hope, for House.

And yes, there was blood spurting out of mouths in both shows.

COMPARE and CONTRAST

Rather than doing anything really important or productive over the Labor Day weekend, I indulged excessively in video entertainment. I had the complete Season 5 of House, M.D, to finish (can you watch just one episode at a time? I like to watch ALL the DVD episodes, the whole season, pretty much back-to-back, once a year, commercial free) and a number of wuxia/kung fu movies, featuring Vincent Zhao Wen Zhou and Tiny Tony Leung.

How they compare and contrast:

1. They all feature a lot of blood spurting out of mouths, frequently, but as a result in House you're more likely to end up with a lumbar puncture, not quite so severe as impalement on a sword.
2. In wuxia, medicine is usually some gooey paste, a foul tasting herbal concoction, or swift jerking of limbs back in place. No MRIs and diagnoses of Cushing's, Wegner's, amyloidosis or lupus.
3. I actually worked for a guy once who looked exactly like House, but he was not so...hyper-rational (or as Season 6 hints, mentally ill; I will try to remember to tune in to the 2-hour Season Premiere of the only TV program I watch anymore, but not usually on TV); and I still work with some guys who look not unlike Tony and Vincent. Still, none of them are diagnosticians or kung fu masters...that I know of.

But now I have a new idea to integrate wu xia and Western medicine. (If CCTV hasn't already thought of it. ) A TV Series, Kung Fu Doc. (Or at least an interesting House storyline.) In Wudang, I had a hard time taking seriously the TCM prescriptions of this guy who looked exactly like Jackie Chan. He can star in the series! Here is his hospital. Enter at your own risk.

And it came to me as I awoke this morning (9/10, after reviewing House's hallucinatory end-of-season episode last night) that there is a fourth compare and contrast. Both genres explore the distinctions and connections between body and spirit, the material and the non-material, to say nothing of plots involving opioids. I would love to see House be cured of his pain and doubt by a Taoist master (preferably played by Vincent Zhao) projecting qi (energy). Or maybe Wilson could take up qigong; he seems most open to these things.