: Re: Do episodes of the show House follow a constant structural pattern? I've seen a few episodes of House M.D., and I wonder, are the episodes written according to a fixed structural pattern?

Other answers above are good, but it's worth adding that in the best episodes of House (as well as Scrubs) the medical condition and the wider social situation are interconnected. Medical symptoms create a compelling initial problem, but the solution is never a mere chemical prescription or surgical procedure.

There are at least two resolutions to the medical problems: either the team (primarily House) solves the mystery by insight outside of strict medicine, or the team confronts defeat and has to learn how to deal with it somehow.

The extra-medical insight is usually that the team investigates the social situation of the patient, or the team has antics among itself, and those interpersonal struggles illuminate some key fact about the patient and her disease. Call this the "social-to-medical" structure.

And likewise on the other end, both solving the mystery and failing to solve the mystery often teaches the team (primarily House) about their own characters and situations. This can also teach the patient or the patient's family about themselves. Call this the "medical-to-social" structure.

There are also episodes where the specific medical resolution is irrelevant to the main story, but these are harder to generalize about. Usually the medical situation simply precipitates social events, or the medical setting is just a general backdrop to bring out the curious personailties of the team. These I suppose would be "social-to-social" story lines, which are constantly refreshed by the rotating team cast and their different combinations of interactions with different patients.

Hope that provides some food for thought.

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: Re: Do episodes of the show House follow a constant structural pattern? I've seen a few episodes of House M.D., and I wonder, are the episodes written according to a fixed structural pattern?

More posts by @Shelton455

: Which goes first: summary, background or justification? I am trying to write a long expository piece and cannot figure out which information should come first. Here are three candidates: A

: I tend to find technical books through recommendations on Hacker News. You can also submit to other, similar venues - Reddit, Digg, Slashdot, etc. If you feel like being a bit subversive,

: How do you introduce terms? There's a few different styles for technical (academic) papers. Which is the preferred style to introducing new technical terms? For example, here is a paragraph

: Write about academic plans A graduate school application form asks me to write about my academic plans. What I can think of is only the course arrangement in graduate study. So am I missing

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