Welcome to Dissecting House: a blog dedicated to the television show House MD, where analytical reviews of season 8 episodes are posted weekly.

Friday 15 July 2011

Mr. Sandman Bring Me A Dream

I was listening to Mr. Sandman in the park when I started thinking about how funny it was that they used this song at the beginning of 'Family Practice'. And by funny I mean cleverly ironic. A lot of us thought it was a reference to the obvious, the fact that perhaps what was happening or what was going to happen would not be real, but a dream or a figment of the imagination of some sorts. I suppose in hindsight we weren't far off. 'Bombshells' is a few episodes later...

Let me go back to why I first thought it was clever to use this song. It's about Mr. Sandman bringing her a dream, "make him the cutest that I've ever seen". And then we have House. The anti-dream in terms of what you think you would want. In reality, despite being a miserable mysanthropic addict, he is an utterly fascinating and brilliant man. He is far from a dream though. So this lead me to think about 'Bombshells' and the fact that he appeared to Cuddy in a dream in order for her subconscious to access the fact that on some level she already knew that he would fall back on his old (candy) cane crutch Vicodin. So at least from this perspective it appears to be a parody reference to Mr. Sandman bringing her a dream man. In fact he came in an almost feverish nightmare, a hallucinatory style dream.

Anyway, I just thought I would write this down as I thought it was an interesting, and on the surface a very strange song choice.





EDIT:


As I don't think I'll be able to speak to Miguel any time soon, I'll stick to my theory for now...

4 comments:

  1. wow i never thought about that ! The music and songs on House are always SO good, i loved this one too, loved the ambiance of the scene :)
    I don't know if it was the purpose of it but i love your idea ;)

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  2. Thank you! I really enjoyed looking into 'Got Nuffin' as well. I'm sure they choose the songs for more than just entertainment value. ;)Their song choices always seem just right to highlight or emphasize what is happening in the moment, or even to portray the character's stream of consciousness. I completely agree with what you said about the song creating ambiance. In this case the song seemed so out of place for what was happening it gave it an almost absurd feel which I thought worked perfectly.

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  3. Thanks! Interested to see what songs they will use in the premiere. They add so much to the tone of the storyline.

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