Sometimes, there are stretches where TN&V seems to hit a particularly responsive chord in readers. Thanks to everyone who has e-mailed me to comment on the conventional wisdom-correcting story written by the Los Angeles Times' David Savage, the powerful column written by former Washington Post bureau chief Patricia Bauer, and last week's "Law & Order" program which viciously trashed the Schindler family.

 

(If you missed them and would like to take a look, you can read them at http://www.nrlc.org/News_and_Views/October05/nv101105.html;  http://www.nrlc.org/News_and_Views/October05/nv101705part1.html; http://www.nrlc.org/News_and_Views/October05/nv101805.html)

 

If I may, I'd like to talk about last night's re-run of an episode of  "House," a Fox network medical drama which was an unexpected hit last season. I won't get into the nature of the lead character, Dr. Gregory House, except to say I gather he is supposed to be irascible but lovable in an unlovable sort of way. While what follows is largely taken from memory, I believe it's accurate.

 

Why talk about the episode titled, "Sports Medicine," which originally aired last February? Not because the plot is particularly plausible, or, for that matter, makes a lot of sense in parts.

 

It's rather because after the "Law & Order" hit job, I found the show to be remarkably uplifting. Television can do something besides maliciously tramp on a family's reputation. It can be extraordinarily life-affirming even if that’s not the primary (or even secondary) purpose, or even if that's not necessarily what the writers intended.

 

The plot is so complicated, with so many internal twists and turns, it would take 20 minutes to summarize. But for us the pivotal plotline is that the wife of a famous athlete proves to be (miraculously) a match to donate a kidney needed by her dying husband. However, only seconds after hearing that happy news, she learns she is pregnant which means she cannot be a donor.

 

Without hesitation, she says she is going to have an abortion. But her husband is equally quick to respond, no way. He wants that baby and knows his wife does, too. He is not about to allow her to take their baby's life to save his. (For purposes of the show, he is ineligible to be placed on the waiting list for a kidney.)

 

Indeed, when he learns his wife has scheduled an abortion anyway, he takes enough of a drug he had hidden away to almost end his life. His intention is not to commit suicide, but to signal his wife in an unmistakable way not to take their baby's life.

 

Meanwhile, House has a conversation with another doctor about whether the wife ought to do this. House is flippant, but the female doctor says simply, if it were her, she wouldn't have the abortion.

 

When the wife confronts House in the hallway, he tells her about what her husband did and about his determination that she not have the abortion. She angrily responds, it's "my body," to which House calmly responds that this rationale applies to her husband and his body as well!

 

She bursts out crying and House--who is supposed to be a curmudgeon but a softy DEEP down--tells her softly to "keep the baby." As I'm sure most everyone expected, the writers come up with a plot twist so that the husband doesn't need a kidney.

 

As I have mentioned in previous TN&Vs, there is an ongoing plot line in ABC’s "Alias." In the season opener, Sydney Bristow, the super spy, discovers she is pregnant, the same episode in which the father of her baby is killed. (Jennifer Garner, the star, is pregnant in real-life.)

 

The look on her face as she sees her baby on the ultrasound is magical. Bristow's absolute determination to protect her baby at all costs is made abundantly clear.

 

I do not believe, of course, that mere television programs--whether life-affirming or life-denying--are determinative. But I do believe that the messages in the "House" episode and ongoing in "Alias" are far more important than the slanderous "Law & Order" episode because they are so different from the usual fare.

 

They may even signal that it is (gasp!) almost respectable to be against abortion. More important, such programs may be suggesting that some writers are open to acknowledging that there is somebody home there, whose existence needs to be taken into consideration.

 

Some will say, "please!" Television's anti-life bias is too deeply engrained.