Worst TV Show of the Week Brought to you by the Parents Television Council WARNING: Graphic Content!!! Do NOT push play if you don't want to see the explicit video!!!

House, M.D. on Fox

House, M.D. has always contained graphic imagery and sexual dialogue, but the program also featured suspenseful storylines and witty banter, which gave the show its appeal.  Now in its fourth season, the series has become stale and formulaic, and thus increasingly more dependent on sexual themes and gore.  The January 29^th episode (airing at 9:00 p.m. ET) was a detestable display of sexual promiscuity involving a child and a medical procedure that could easily trigger a gag reflex.

The episode features two stories, both involving promiscuous women.  The first is the mother of an eleven-year-old girl.  The mother openly sleeps with several partners and shares that aspect of her life with her daughter.  As Dr. House attempts to diagnosis the woman’s illness, he sits down with the young girl and asks her to describe her mother’s sex practices.  He asks the eleven-year-old, “Saddle, bronc, or doggy… that’s sex talk.”  As if the question wasn’t horrible enough, the writers have the girl respond, “She used to like to be on top. Now she likes to be on her stomach.  That way she doesn’t have to see them looking at her scars.”  Leaving TV fantasyland one has to acknowledge that in filming this episode, an actual little girl was exchanging graphic dialogue with an adult man about sexual positions.  Is this really acceptable?

In the second plot, another woman is an implied prostitute who comes to see Dr. House for a rash on her neck and chest.  As House probes her symptoms, he asks her if she has had contact with a donkey, engaging in a line of questioning that would lead one to believe she performs in a sex show involving animals.

House: "Do you do a donkey show? I'm not curious. It matters."

Woman: "It's a donkey or a mule. I can never remember."

House: "Wow that's a creepy smile. I bet the donkey's is even creepier...

Antibiotic cream for you and a love glove for Francis. You'll both be fine."

Woman: "You should come see the show. I think you'd like it."

House: "Sorry, I hate Westerns."

She does nothing during the conversation to dispel Dr. House’s assumption that she performs a sex act on the donkey, though at the end it is revealed that she rides a donkey in her role as the Virgin Mary in a church nativity scene.

The episode concludes with House discovering that the mother in the first plot has a breast tissue tumor on the back of her knee.  He jabs the tumor with a syringe and extracts breast milk from it.  When the young girl asks what the liquid is, House sprays the breast milk from the mother’s tumor into her daughter’s mouth.  The graphic sexual dialogue and themes make this episode inappropriate for prime-time television, and earns House the distinction of being Worst of the Week.