Tag: Olivia Wilde

• May 21, 2012

  Goodbye, House: Ranking the seasons of House

  

  With House airing its series finale this evening, I thought it was time to bust out a list or two. I love House and I love lists. It seems only fitting. First up, one of the lists I “do best”: ranking the seasons. Obviously, the finale could have some influence on the placement of season […]
• October 18, 2011

  Review: House, “Charity Case”

  

    Even at its lowest point (which was definitely season five, by the way), House has never been a bad series. It has turned in some really tepid episodes – and even those are relatively rare – and for the last three seasons, the series has been generally coasting, but there’s still something about House […]
• October 4, 2011

  Season Premiere review — House, “Twenty Vicodin”

  House is pretty much out of ideas at this point. The series spent the majority of last season focusing on the House-Cuddy relationship, a decision that made half the audience swoon and the other half vomit. I was somewhere in the middle on Huddy, but it always sort of felt like if the series was […]
• May 31, 2011

  2010-2011 season wrap: House

  With the 2010-2011 television season officially over, I’ll be taking some time over the next week or so to look back on how some of television’s best fared this season. General thoughts: End dates are not normal in television and most series limp towards the finish line. This is often more true for series with procedural […]
• May 24, 2011

  Season Finale — House, “Moving On”

  For a season finale, “Moving On” is not an entirely exciting episode. In fact, this episode includes one of the season’s most obvious commitments to a medical case. At various points of the episode, I found myself just slightly bored with the proceedings. But despite all of that, “Moving On” is exactly what House ends as […]
• May 17, 2011

  House, “After Hours”

  When heading into a season finale, there’s always a danger of ramping things up too much. The desire to make everything seem MORE IMPORTANT and MORE URGENT is always there, especially for drama series, but it doesn’t always work in the context of the episodes that came before it. Histrionics for histrionics sake is never, ever a […]
• May 10, 2011

  House, “The Fix”

  UGH. I have no problem with House going to extremes at the end of its seventh season. This is a series that likes to pull out “big” moments and twists during the final few episodes every season, so I expected season seven to try to accomplish those same goals. It’s part of the series’ storyteling DNA […]
• May 5, 2011

  #TVFail Entry 2: House, “Simple Explanation”

  

  The accused: House, “Simple Explanation” (Season 5, Episode 20) The crime: Presenting a terribly manipulative version of the “Very Special Episode” gimmick. Television’s failures are supposed to be obvious. From the overhyped non-starters that flop from the very beginning (hello, FlashForward, Lone Star) to the much-discussed clumsy conclusions of series we were convinced had it all planned […]
• May 3, 2011

  House, “Changes”

  There’s a weird thing going on. I think I’m the biggest critical supporter of House left. I’m not really sure how this happening, especially when I spent a good portion of the last two seasons thinking that the series should be cancelled. I’d like to think I have mostly high standards. Maybe I do, maybe […]
• April 12, 2011

  The TVS List: Three broadcast series that need to be canceled

  

  Note: I’m hopefully going to have more time to write things here over the next few months, so I’ll be trying to bring back the weekly list feature. Trying. Anyway, here’s the beginning of that attempt. It’s spring, which means it is the time of year that everyone takes to the internet to stump for […]
• April 12, 2011

  House, “The Dig”

  I’m willing to face the consequences of this statement: I actually like Thirteen. I know that many House fans have hated her from the beginning because she was more or less replacing fan favorite Cameron, and I can see their point of view. The way that Cameron was shoved not-so-gently off the stage so that […]
• March 22, 2011

  House, “Fall From Grace”

  As we continue into the post-Huddy period of this season of House, it looks like the series is fairly confident in hitting the same notes each week with just enough variation to make subsequent episodes worth watching. Last week, House hung out in a swanky hotel with a bunch of hookers and jumped off a […]
• November 24, 2010

  Test Pilot: File #7, The OC

  

  Test Pilot #7: The OC Debut date: August 5, 2003 Series legacy: The pivot point for a new generation of teen dramas, a genuine cultural phenomenon that burned out very quickly and perhaps the most well-respect straight-up teen drama of all time. Welcome to the newest regular feature here at TV Surveillance, the fantastically titled, Test Pilot. […]
• November 9, 2010

  House, “Office Politics”

  I can’t remember the last time I wrote up House this season and that was mostly because I felt like the first string of episodes, while really solid, were exploring a lot of the same things in only slightly different ways, so it wasn’t really worth my time to again write “I’m totally enjoying how […]
• September 21, 2010

  Season Premiere — House, “Now What”

  The season seven premiere of House is faced with a high degree of difficulty for success. “Now What” needs to somehow convince us that the House-Cuddy hook-up at the end of season six wasn’t random or rash, but also attempt to present a honest and real representation of a relationship that many of the series […]