Saturday, December 17, 2016

Doctor strange

I am a fan of Hugh Laurie on Twitter mainly because he is different from other Hollywood celebrities. Most of them don’t even make an effort to be real. He’s a rarity, squarely putting him in the league of funny fames like Conan O’Brien, Ryan Reynolds, Anna Kendrick, James Blunt, Ricky Gervais, Stephen Colbert, Louis CK (he shouldn’t have quit Twitter), Chrissy Teigen, George Takei,etc. The trouble with being a star—big or small screen or tiny—is you treat stardom like a shoulder devil and forget to loosen up a bit. That’s also marks the distinction between the smart and not-so-smart celebs. Twitter, because of its spontaneous nature, allows one the space to be accepted or ridiculed for their hilarity. If not for social media platforms, we’d never really get a taste of how the popular peeps think and react to a situation. In any case, the dreg in us likes to believe that they aren’t smart because their onscreen lines are written for them! Which is true but it doesn’t mean that they are incapable of normal. We don’t care that Heath Ledger was a junior chess champion but if he was alive and kicking today, maybe he’d have been on Twitter expressing his love for those B&W squares. Going back to Hugh, after watching Dr. House (first season), i’m a fan of the character he plays in the eponymous show too. His professional aptitude, acerbic wit and his alienating personality work as a magnet. But behind all of the charming traits lies a limping person who can come across as sad. He is interested in others’ lives, particularly those who are working close to him. Not interested in gossip as much as he’s invested in ensuring all of his colleagues are doing their jobs well; he clearly doesn’t have a life of his own. Moreover, there is an episode where he confesses to his subordinate that he’d hate it if others pried on his space the way he does to others but then, he doesn’t have a personal life! Dr. House is strange and yet not so strange. His Sherlock-like attitude towards solving a given problem helps you look at yourself in a better light—be you a patient or a colleague. And while he’s at it, he emits a vibe that says that he can’t wait to get out of his clinic duty (read: hospital) as soon as he can. This despite the well-established fact that he doesn’t have anything waiting for him at home. It’s a paradox of being a prisoner. You can’t and don’t want to escape and yet you keep trying. After all, the patients will get better and leave the building sooner or later but the doctors are stuck inside for life. And Dr. House knows that.

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