Mods - if this one is already covered, many apologies!
Is anyone familiar with the show, House? I do not watch much television but caught an episode last week that got under my skin a bit. A bit of warning - this is spoilery for this episode, so if you haven't seen and would wait for a re-run, might want to sit this out.
I couldn't tell you the particulars about all the characters, save that Dr. House is an incredibly cynical, Sherlock Holmesian type whose need to show up his staff is equalled only by his superficially unkempt appearance (scruffy, uses a cane).
In the episode I saw a young woman is brought in to the hospital under false pretenses - she's faking an illness in order to end her relationship with her long-term girlfriend (if you just scratched your head, you're not alone). While the doctors puzzle over her symptoms with one another, through the most unbelievable deductive reasoning I've ever witnessed, House diagnosed the impending breakup - without so much as using a rectal thermometer.
The young non-patient can't seem to bring herself to tell her devoted girlfriend that she's leaving which adds an extra level of complication to the story when, shockingly, she turns out to be genuinlely ill - her liver is failing and until they can figure out what caused it, seek to buy her time with a partial liver transplant (donated by the devoted girlfriend, of course).
What I found disturbing about the episode is that, yet again, a mainstream television program takes a gay relationship (though it could easily have been a straight one) and instead of a positive identification, takes the low road with an unhealthy obsession, a near-death experience, a sacrafice, and, finally, a cynical resolution that makes both young women look immature and incapable of a 'real' relationship.
Drama is drama no matter what you do with it, or what characters you use and this episode could be considered compelling an entertaining - but after all we've learned about the presentation of gay characters on television and in film, this story seems particularly old-fashioned and uninspired.
The stereotypes and the cliches are alive and well and aren't going anywhere anytime soon.
I can't say I blame him. 
ol
