TELEVISION / Reading Between the Subtitles of House, M.D. / Destiny Pinder-Buckley
Image © Fox Network
For months, I painstakingly watched whole episodes of House, M.D. on TikTok, posted by an innocuous user who surely pirated it from somewhere (I have a hunch based on the Mandarin-character subtitles). Every day, a ritual; I waited for this mysterious person to post a singular episode of House in about ten separate parts, each only a handful of minutes long. Like medicine, I took my daily dosage of Dr. House in increments, as prescribed, not crossing the line into addiction.
House is not a traditional saint to worship.
In some ways, it was a form of masochism, in the age of digital streaming, to take several weeks getting through only half of one season. Come on, movie boy, it’s been 3 mins, users commented on the most recent post, adrenaline pumping from being abandoned on a cliffhanger. No more attention span for a commercial break.
Sometimes the internet guru didn’t post for a couple days, apologizing to other faithful fans like me for having a personal life. Chill, he deserves a break! Feel better! Take care of yourself! We love you! we commented as a cult.
This was before I realized I had access to all seasons of House on one of the two subscription services I already paid for. A moral dilemma: I could continue my loyalty to my comrades, other dedicated followers, a community pelted with instantaneous fan discourse (House has so much rizz, so-and-so is out of pocket, did anyone else see…?); or I could branch away, starting at the inception of it all in 2004, and gobble up the whole series, start to finish, before my TikTok god could even publish part one of the finale.
I would be leaving my acquaintances, divorced from the church, an empty seat at my pew in mass. I would know things from the future, in a season they had not yet seen. I would appear a prophet and fraud all at once.
Which is also silly, because the show has been completed since 2012, over a decade ago. And certainly, there are other methods to stream House, however legally or illegally, besides TikTok, which chops off the edges of the frame to fit vertically anyway. Fragments of the masterpiece. I was always staring off-screen, as if the missing scenes would pop up there, completing the picture, making it a true cinematic experience. And I had gaps in the overarching subplots, from mysterious episodes either not posted or too far back in thousands of segmented videos to find.
There was something comforting about House, M.D., a childhood nostalgia from catching snippets of it on the TV as my mom watched with her eyes closed. Hearing Hugh Laurie’s accent (and now being old enough to find it attractive), recalling that Olivia Wilde (who I used to mistake for offspring of Oscar Wilde) is a major character, and also Kal Penn—the Kal Penn of other classics I remember, like Epic Movie and Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle. These early 2000s slapsticks tickle me, sunny days on a floral thrifted couch, sagged cushions, random fleece blanket wrapped around my shoulders, burnt popcorn from the unpredictable microwave, “Hot N Cold” like Katy Perry.
In the end, I defected. I Irish-Exited the TikTok app and pulled up S1 E1: “Everybody Lies”. Surely, I wouldn’t be missed among the several hundred other viewers. I had to get out while I could from those sheep, those blind followers who convinced themselves this is the way to do television, five minutes uploaded every three hours, reacting like a Pavlov dog to the notification chime. I lacked dedication to this kind of internet prayer.
Another benefit of surrendering to streaming meant I could have accurate, English subtitles.
As of late, I’ve taken solace in subtitles, the ability to confirm with my brain what my ears heard by reading. Two-factor authentication. I’m more of a book-learner, anyway. Sometimes I even get a little ahead of the action by reading too fast, but that doesn’t ruin the anticipation for me. They also help me learn the names of the characters quicker, the captions serving as name tags.
I can’t believe the amount of context added by the subtitles of mumbles that would have otherwise never been deciphered. It’s like a new prescription for glasses, that legendary millisecond as the lenses slip over blinded eyes and suddenly things are clear and have dimensions again.
Furthermore, a linguistic treat—I love the creative ways the music or sound effects are described, at liberty:
[ominous toot]
Without the privilege of sound, how does one unpack that? White noise, lack of context—is it a train chugging through a haunted forest at night during a full moon or simply a paranormal breaking of wind?
The name of the item making the noise could be menacing enough:
[metronome]
Or sometimes just:
[♪♪]
For years, my cover photo on social media was a screenshot of the subtitles from a French detective show I watched:
“[musique de suspense]”
I thought it was, well I dunno, well-summarized.
Occasionally, I hear a sound that could not be identified without it being described to me, point-blank:
[household dog Sparky plays the tuba in the living room]
In one week—about a dog year’s with of content later—I caught up to my former TikTok preacher, ready to run laps around him. He couldn’t gatekeep this information anymore. I would soon reach enlightenment by knowing everything that happens in House, M.D.
The formula of House does get a bit repetitive. Curtains rise: currently unnamed patient collapses dramatically, ends up in Dr. House’s lap. Act 1: Potentially still unnamed patient is accused of lying, some subplot texture occurs, a lie is detected, Dr. House makes diagnosis (1). Act 2: Potentially still unnamed patient (because House doesn’t care) is still sick! A team of doctor Hamburglars break into the patient's home or workplace and find a clue, philosophy chat about ethics and the cruel nature of man ensues (wild card: sometimes in a different order), administrative red tape. Act 3: Arg! So many doctors can’t figure it out completely! Mystery illness! The symptoms are goofy, a bit of this, some of that. Wait a minute! Dr. House plays with an object or looks into the soul of the camera lens and connects all the missing dots, a game, he loves that! Dr. House makes diagnosis (2). Standing ovation: patient is likely cured, melodramatic song begins, B-roll of characters wrapping up subplot material, everything is bittersweet.
So maybe the TikTok cinephile was doing us a favor, by keeping us from ourselves, our greed and gluttony, our slothfulness. You only need a little House. Too much and you’ll get sick. Too much of a good thing can be a bad thing.
I noticed a shift in the overall writing style throughout the seasons. On one hand, that’s fair, because a lot of different characters come and go, and it would be unfortunate if they all sounded the same. But the cast of the later seasons sometimes felt like marionettes of the allegories they are meant to represent: morals, discipline, order, chaos. Meh.
Truthfully, I was getting a little bored. The only subplot I cared about at this point was Wilson because I, being from the future, knew that each episode brought me closer to the conclusion concluding. And Wilson is a cutie, a lovable dope character. I want to help him. Normally, I was too lazy to click the pop-up screen that would fast forward the credits and auto start the next episode. I let the music carry on and the words scroll by, the countdown ticking closer to zero, heartbeats flatlining.
At the end of S3 E8, I spy something new, a small tagline of authorship hidden in the subtitles.
[Captioning by Brian at Captionmax www.Captionmax.com.]
A one-hit wonder!
Brian became my new savior, and I was happy to have a name for the artist whose work I admired, even if just a common first name. It’s like finally learning the name of a cute barista at your favorite coffee shop, before you find out they have a natural flirty personality and a long-term partner. The hearts on the coffee cup sleeve were a promotion for Valentine’s Day. Oops.
Who was Brian? Has he been here the whole time? Why come henceforth?
Not to mention the name of the episode: “Charity Case”. Brian, I feel like I’ve cracked a code.
Scariest of all—I have no idea if I’m too late to save you, Brian. If you need saving. Like I said, the show ended in 2012. I have no idea when the series became available on that particular streaming service, or if each streaming service has its own captions, or if the show comes with the captions, waiting like a light switch? So he could have written those captions really anytime between 2012–2022.
Captionmax was acquired by 3Play Media in 2022. I searched the whole new website for “Brian” but found nothing, no news or obituaries.
Maybe, whenever Brian transcribed S8 E3, he knew that House was coming to an end, and perhaps even Captionmax itself. If he got laid off, he wanted proof of his portfolio. I am Brian at Captionmax and I did this. A subtitle graffiti tag. A man on the moon.
No other episodes have his John Hancock.
I’m not typically one for conspiracy theories, but no one is talking about this. After Brian’s earlier antics, I paid attention to the end credits, opting out of the auto play feature, ensuring I witnessed each word on the bottom of the screen. I waited for the plot twist.
In the meantime, I practiced being a copyeditor.
I listened to make sure each word written was spoken. Verifying, fact-checking. I need to see if that qualifies for a resumé. Attention to detail. Proof? This:
Series finale, S8 E22, “Everybody Dies.” As spoiler-free as I can muster, here’s the TLDR: Cuddy has disappeared the whole season, House is out of jail but on thin ice to go back, his bromance Wilson has severe cancer, and House has chased down a former drug patient to an abandoned factory building that starts on fire. In the chaos, Dr. Gregory House, in whatever state, sees people from his past, who are dead or gone.
Love her or hate her, the Amber character gives House good advice in her hallucinative form: “Go home.” (Because House is having an existential crisis about whether his life has any meaning, and Amber is saying “Go be a doctor, dude”).
But that’s not what the captions say.
[Go back to work.]
I wrote it down verbatim on a scrap piece of paper, so I’d have written evidence, in case anything happened. It gets updated, the series is pulled off streaming, whatever. Always have it in writing. I, stupidly, did not include the date—but isn’t that what forensic science is for? They can test the carbon dating of the ink. If Dr. House could notice the tiniest speck on wool socks and diagnose a rare disease, then surely, the government could step in here.
Go back to work.
Brian, is this what they told you? As you neared the end of this project, this massive undertaking of 177 episodes (if you championed them all), did corporate crush you when you asked about the future?
Go back to work.
And it was on your mind, in the final minutes of the episode. Could you not summon the willpower to type, “Go home”? Is there no longer a home for you, Brian?
It’s a simple swap. A little personal touch of Brian expressing creative freedom in the doldrum of a monotonous job, listening, copying and pasting, wondering if anyone is even paying attention. I am, Brian. And this stunt has me worried, Brian, about you.
The subtitle work, otherwise, had been meticulous, a copycat. A forger of words already spoken. I suppose, it’s possible, Brian got lazy and copied directly from the original script, and Amber went off-script, and he didn’t notice.
So why now, at the very end of the series, with hardly enough time for the resolution to wrap up, would Brain fumble?
Methinks it was no coincidence. This is a crucial scene. Soon, everything is over. Viewership went down, production costs went up, and the studio statement is that execs wanted an ending “true” to the titular character. Best to go out with a bang in season eight than to drag on like one of the soap operas House watches on his breaks. That’s too meta, even for him. Everything rides on this. Years gone. A potpourri of medical drama actors about to be released on the market.
Everyone else with cable saw the lackluster climax a decade ago, but for me, this wound is fresh. I went from no-House, to a dainty, daily hit of House, to becoming a full-blown binge artist, devouring episode after episode (and they produced this show back in the day when a season had twenty-plus episodes). At first I thought only eight seasons? Yet each one had its mental toll. Enough.
Soon, I’d be at a crossroads: House my past, and what of my future? Where would I go from there?
And Brian, you were at the end of this journey, too.
You must have also watched all of House since you had to write them down. Every mutter. Every clack of House’s cane. Every major character development. Every outdated joke. Every cheeky sex scene and innuendo, no shortage. Every rattle of House’s Vicodin, however he got it this time. Every tear-jerker moment where the viewer gets a little closer to House’s stone heart. Every grunt. Every shenanigan-filled comic break from the dark stuff. Every guest star cameo. Every death.
[Every. Thing.]
I wish I could say I knew you personally, something meet-cute. By chance we met at a bar, bonded over our superior trivia knowledge of House, M.D., you bought me drinks, chatted me up. I played hard to get. You pursued me with subtitled texts. I gave in. When we didn’t know what to do, we would snuggle and watch reruns of House, comfier with the knowledge of what happens next, safe from the initial suspense. A bedtime story, almost. A fairy-tale.
Brian, I don’t know what’s become of you. You could be an old cynic like House or a young hopeful like Park or a schmuck like Taub or somewhere in the middle like Chase. I know you’re not a rule-follower like Foreman. I hope you’re alright. The world needs more people like you, persistent bards, captioning whistleblowers.
Some translators and transcribers are simply bad at their job, like Jennifer Love Hewitt in Ghost Whisperer, another bygone show. Respectfully, it was her character, Melinda Gordon, not Jennifer Love Hewitt herself, that was willy-nilly in her translations. Written that way. With the unique ability to see ghosts, Melinda often translates the final grievances of the episode’s ghost to a living family member of said ghost. In another predictable turn, the unbelieving family member switches teams––consoled––and the ghost passes over. Dead and finally gone.
“Please, tell her I feel so bad about that final night, how I threw a lit brown paper bag of shit from the balcony onto her prized daffodils—she was about to win ‘Best Landscaping Flowers’ from the HOA for the third year—how I replaced her special fertilizer with radioactive material from a nearby waste plant, causing even the dirt to wither…I was just jealous, and angry, and if I could take it all back, I would…I’ve been stuck here all these years, trying to tell her,” the ghost would rant (paraphrased), for example (parodied).
“He said he loves you,” Melinda would interpret, a bad game of telephone.
“Aw,” the whiplashed family member would reply.
The end.
Honestly, the captions themselves in Ghost Whisperer are decently accurate to the actual dialogue, with some notable flaws, at least on the version I watched on TikTok.
Are you speaking to me from somewhere dead and gone, Brian?
Your Secret Admirer,
[typewriter clacking stops]
Destiny Pinder-Buckley was born and raised (mostly) in South Dakota. Currently, she is getting her MFA in Nonfiction Creative Writing from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
