Why Does the World's Most Popular TV Show Feature a Misanthrope Who Gets Away with Everything?

Gregory House is a cantankerous, antisocial misfit riddled with imperfections – physical and otherwise – who is nonetheless successful and loved. Wouldn’t you like to be able to get away with that?

And wouldn’t you like to feel that no matter what ails you, no matter how rare, fatal, mysterious, or terrifying – whether it's your fault or not – someone will save you? That someone will appear, and with calm, methodical, playful, god-like omnipotence, see inside your body and mind, and heal any ill?

Sure you would. Probably now more than ever. And apparently, given that "House" is now the world’s most-watched television show, that’s what millions of people want too.

Of course, "House" is no "Baywatch." That show, broadcast in 142 countries, had an audience north of one billion viewers at its peak. No kind of salvation "House" offers can compete with salvation needed from the dangerous waves of Santa Monica, California, and offered by scantily clothed, dedicated lifeguards. (In case you weren’t one of those billion viewers, "Baywatch" is an ordinary tale about men and women who drive, run and roll around in the sand.)

But "House," watched by 82 million people last year in 66 countries, edged out "CSI" and "Desperate Housewives" to get the top spot, according to Eurodata TV Worldwide. And that’s no small thing in a year that recorded the highest U.S. TV viewership of all time. (Americans now spend an average of four hours and 49 minutes a day in front of the television each, or eight hours and 21 minutes a day on average per household.)

People are spending more of those couch hours on a TV drama featuring a painkiller-addicted loner, because more than anyone right now, the character of Gregory House (played by Hugh Laurie) offers the fantasy of curing, or at least soothing, the various ills du jour that ail us.

The dream of imperfection

No one can argue there’s an increasing focus on physical perfection, an ideal that mutates almost daily, and that diverts our time and energy from things that are actually meaningful and rewarding.

It’s not just that there’s the annoying, annual New Year focus on cleanses and short-lived, guilt-ridden exercise pledges. It’s not just that models are thinner than ever and Photoshopped into near oblivion. Or even that cosmetic surgery and procedures have become so ubiquitous the National Organization of Women has argued that Botox is an economic necessity for women, saying they can’t get or keep jobs without it. It’s that the daily chore of striving for physical perfection has become so mundane, we’ve stopped noticing that it’s taking over. Like white noise or chronic disease, the Sisyphean quest for physical perfection drains our energy and time, yet many of us hardly notice anymore.

Then there’s House. Unlike the more stylish junior doctors, Gregory House doesn’t wear anything special. Physically, let’s just say he’s good-looking, but he wouldn’t have made it onto "Baywatch." He’s an addict. He’s not sucking back wheatgrass juice or arriving late to meetings, fresh from the gym. He’s appropriately wrinkled for his age, rumpled and seemingly indifferent. Oh yeah, and he walks with a limp.

And with all that time on his hands -- time that many people spend trying to be pretty --- he actually saves lives.

Many of the "House" fans I know are women. And for them, House’s side-effect-free resistance to beauty’s pathology carries a special vicarious thrill. Most of us know in our hearts that there couldn’t be a female House, yet we can dream.