This Week In Non-House Hugh Laurie: I Need Your Help To Stop Talking About Hugh Laurie

Today's post marks the 21st installment of "This Week in Non-House Hugh Laurie," and I think it's officially run it's course. I've been getting tired of talking about the guy and, as it turns out, I think you are as well. But I do like the idea of exploring the other work of people who are primarily known for one role.

So I'm going to ask for your help to find out who to talk about next. Basically, we're looking for someone who almost everybody associates with one character (i.e. Kiefer Sutherland is now Jack Bauer) but who also has a potentially extensive collection of other work that nobody seems to talk about anymore. If you know of anyone that fits in that category shoot me a line in the comments section. I will look to cut down each person's coverage to eight weeks or less so the more I get the better. I'll be looking to start as early as next Monday if I get a good idea for someone to use.

As for Mr. Laurie, I know it's time to move on but I would be remiss if I didn't at least acknowledge what is probably my favorite movie that he appears in, Monsters vs. Aliens. Honestly, I think I like it more for Seth Rogen's B.O.B. than anything, else but Laurie's Dr. Cockroach, Ph. D. definitely has his moments. So I leave you with 11 seconds of Hugh Laurie as a cockroach.



...and here's a montage of B.O.B. Because he is awesome.

This Week In Non-House Hugh Laurie: Friends

Alright, at first I was going to say a few words about how Friends is one of those shows that my hate-all-things-popular nature wants desperately to despise but can't help liking. But once again this train of thought was derailed by the fact that every clip featuring Hugh Laurie's guest spot on Friends has had its embedding disabled on YouTube.

So now I'm going to ask a simple question: Why do you assholes keep doing that?? I understand that TV and film studios often demand that clips be taken down due to copyright violations, but why is it that we can leave a clip up but make it so that you can't embed it? I'm honestly asking here because I can't count how many time's I've had a clip that I wanted to share and took the time to come up with some terribly witty things to say about it, only to have my plans obliterated because I couldn't embed the damn thing. And if anyone tells me that maybe I should check to see if I can use the clip before I start coming up with something to say about it, I say screw you, buddy, I shouldn't have to put extra effort or forethought into anything. Ever!

Now I'm going to have to be extra clever and come up with a way around my inability to embed a clip. Therefore, if you still give enough of a crap about the dumbass Friends clip to want to watch it, click on Hugh Laurie's ever-put-upon face to link over to YouTube.

This Week In Non-House Hugh Laurie: The Man In The Iron Mask

It's quite the coincidence that the Oscars were on last night, because today's clip comes from a movie that didn't even come close to winning one. The Man In The Iron Mask was quite the turd. I'm not sure if director Randall Wallace was going for anything artistically satisfying, but take a look at this montage featuring Laurie as the King's Advisor and see if you can tell what's wrong with this picture.



Can someone tell me why it is that a story based on a French novel about the French monarchy doesn't really seem to feature any French people? The obvious target here is DiCaprio, who seems about as regal as King Ralph. But it's not like anyone else is making much of an effort either, including Mr. Laurie. He can do a hell of an American accent, but I guess French was beyond his grasp.

Now I realize that MITIM isn't the only movie guilty of giving up on making everyone's accent sound authentic. I doubt that ancient Romans, for example, sounded anything like Russell Crowe. But you'll notice that the accents in Gladiator at least seemed to stay consistent within each nationality. In MITIM, however, you have what seems to be an American King of France being consulted by an Englishmen, with an American, a Brit, an Irishman, and just one Frenchman as the highlighted members of his royal guard. I hope Alexander Dumas enjoyed his swift kick to the nuts.

This Week In Non-House Hugh Laurie: Spice World

Oh, Hugh. You've gotta be kidding me. What in God's name possessed you to say yes to Spice World? Granted, he's only doing a minute-long cameo as a parody of the classic detective Poirot in some bizarre daydream sequence. But really....why?



Actually, I've got some theories about how he wound up in this cameo. In fact, I've got ten of them. So I thought what better way to tell you about them than with some special guests.

David Letterman: Well, well. This may be a new low. Now I'm stuck doing guest spots on some lame blogger's website. Oh well, it still beats NBC.

Paul Shaffer: Ha HAAAAA! That's too good Dave!

David Letterman: Thank you, sir. Now, what have we got here...ah yes, "The Top 10 Reasons That Hugh Laurie Did Spice World."

Paul Shaffer: Hoo boy, this should be great!

*plays a few obnoxious sounding lines on the piano*

Letterman: So here we go.

Number 10...He needed money to cover the $400,000 in back taxes that the IRS claims he owed,ignoring the fact that he lived and worked in England.

Number 9... Famed Poirot actor David Suchet told him about a "really unique opportunity" to play a new take on the character.

Number 8...Posh Spice agreed to have sex with him.

Number 7...Sporty Spice agreed to not have sex with him.

Shaffer: Hey now, I'd totally do Sporty Spice.

*plays a few sleazy sounding lines on the piano*

Letterman: Yeah well you'd be willing to do anyone willing to have sex with someone who looks like a walking penis with dwarfism. What's next?

Number 6...He found out that Stephen Fry was doing a cameo, and he couldn't bear to let him ruin his career alone.

Number 5... He was performing some kind of a delayed hazing ritual for alma mater Cambridge University.

Number 4...On the set of A Bit of Fry and Laurie, he accidentally slammed his balls in a car door and claimed to director Bob Spiers that there was no more painful an experience to be found on Earth. After a mere 2 years, Spiers found a way to prove him wrong.

Number 3...He was told that this would be his gateway to a role in a big budget US movie. Unfortunately, that film was Stuart Little.

Number 2...He wanted to give loser blog writers something to bust his balls about.

Shaffer: Just like this blog right? Ha HAAAAAAA!

*tries to play a few intelligent sounding lines on piano, but they just wind up sounding obnoxious and sleazy*

Letterman: Yeah, Paul. That's swell. Just put your head down on the piano would ya? And now, the number one reason why Hugh Laurie agreed to be in Spice World....

I dunno, maybe he's just a fan of the Spice Girls.

This Week In Non-House Hugh Laurie: 101 Dalmatians

I came pretty close to not bothering with a post this week. Between getting sick and having work take over my weekend I really wasn't feeling it. But I've really been slacking with this thing so I figured I can at least take a few minutes to show some mindless Hugh Laurie slapstick.

Said slapstick comes from the live-action version of 101 Dalmatians, a movie that I quite frankly didn't even know had Hugh Laurie in it. But the wife has been looking forward to this post for a while. She wanted me to start with this one, actually, but my strict work ethic demanded that I stick to posting clips based on chronological order. Except for the couple of times that I didn't feel like it. Anyway, here's a montage of Hugh Laurie's turn as Jasper.



So, I realize this is an odd thing to think when watching clips from a movie for children, but Hugh Laurie doesn't look well. His eyes have dark circles. His hair is disheveled. His teeth are dirty and crooked. And I know what your thinking. Of course he looks unwell...he's English. But I think it goes beyond that. I strongly believe that Jasper was a heroin addict.

Here me out here. Let's look at the facts. Jasper is often irritable, even violent with his associate. This is surely the attitude of a man who badly needs a fix. Which is why he's willing to work for a woman who kills cuddly puppies just to make a coat. He's even comfortable with accosting an "old bird" if it means he can finally catch that dragon. For those who need visual evidence, I've produced a couple of pictures for comparison.

One of these men seems to be doing everything he can to look like a crazed drug addict. The other one is Leonardo DiCaprio.

So next time you think you're just watching some harmless fluff about cute puppy dogs, keep in mind that you are really watching a study on a man whose habit has taken total control of his life. It's tragic, but it's important for children and parents to watch it together so that they can talk candidly about the pitfalls of drug addiction. I would like to thank the creators of 101 Dalmatians for being so bold when they could have just made Hugh Laurie into a silly, one-note buffoon.

This Week In Non-House Hugh Laurie: Letting The House Super Bowl Ad Slip In

Greetings from the exotic land of Virginia, where I'm currently staying for a few days for a work training. I haven't seen any lovers yet. Just a few couples who looked like they were wishing for a quick, painless death for themselves or a slow, brutal death for their significant other. Perhaps it's time for a license plate change, Virginia.

As you know, last night was the Super Bowl, the magical time of year that the biggest ad minds get together to market products that, quite frankly, don't need to be marketed anymore. I mean, honestly, did anyone rush out for that bag of Doritos they had forgotten because they watched a guy suck cheese powder off another guy's finger?

To be honest, most of the commercials were pretty weak sauce this year. In fact, the only thing that gave me a real belly laugh was the Mean Joe Green parody they used to promote House. Now I know that the whole point of this segment is to explore Hugh Laurie's other characters, but I couldn't just ignore this gem.



Say what you will about how this is an unoriginal parody that's been done a million times before. Or that it was just kind of a stupid throw away promo that no one really gave much thought to. Or even that the show itself has become kind of stale after 6 seasons. I won't argue any of that. But you seem to be forgetting something very important...a small child gets hit in the face with a cane!

I could watch a small child get hit in the face with a cane every day for the rest of the year and it wouldn't get old. Now I have something to dream about to keep me sane when it takes me an hour and a half to get out of the grocery store because the aisle is blocked by a fat kid arguing with his mother about why he can't get the family size bag of Double-Stuff Oreos. Dammit, now I want Oreos. But before I go, I leave any remaining doubters with Exhibit A on the cultural importance of physical comedy.

This Week In Non-House Hugh Laurie: Tracey Takes On

Hugh Laurie really likes him some sketch comedy. One would think that after appearances in the Footlights Revue, A Bit of Fry and Laurie, and Look at the State We're In!, he would have gotten a little burnt out. But I guess the prospect of working with Tracey Ullman was too much to pass up, as he appears in two sketches from the first season of Tracey Takes On.

In both sketches, he plays a character named Timmy. Timmy is a member of Parliament, and British comedy being what it is he is of course a fumbling idiot lowlife who thinks that he's sophisticated but is really just a scandal waiting to happen. This first sketch, called "Death," just plays on that theme by having the newspapers pick up on an embarrassing tradition that he takes part in with other members of Parliament. It's entertaining enough, but nothing new.



The next sketch, though, is memorable for me not particularly for Hugh Laurie, but for Tracey Ullman's dead on impersonation of Her Royal Highness, Princess Margaret (yes, I'm well aware that this is supposed to be about Hugh Laurie, but Hugh Laurie doesn't really do anything worth talking about here so humor me). To be honest, I had no idea who Princess Margaret was until I watched this bit, so I did a bit of reading on Wikipedia to get some of the basics.

As it turns out, Princess Margaret's life was something out of a soap opera. She tried to marry Peter Townsend (not the guitarist from The Who) in 1953, but was forbidden to do so by the Church of England as he had been divorced. She wound up marrying a photographer named Antony Armstrong-Jones, who she cheated on more than once. One such affair was with a man 17 years younger than her, making her a cougar in the public eye well before being a cougar was cool.

Apart from the drama and the scandal, another aspect of Princess Margaret's life that seems to have defined her, especially later in life, is that Her Royal Highness could be a world-class bitch. This is the angle that Ullman takes in her representation of Margaret, as every line in the following clip seems to be meant to hurt someone's feelings.



Now, never having met Her Royal Highness, I can't really say if that's how she truly was, but judging by the following clips of some of her interviews, but match up Ullman's impression with clips of Princess Margaret's interviews in the following clip, and tell me that she's not pretty well dead on.

This Week In Non-House Hugh Laurie: Sense and Sensibility

I'm a little late on the post this week. It was a long day at work and I just didn't have it in me to write anything. I'm sure I've lost all my readers now.

After watching Hugh Laurie in the following clip from the 1995 film adaptation of Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility, I have a feeling this may have been the movie that the casting directors for House saw that made them want Laurie for the role. As Mr. Palmer in the following montage, every line he utters oozes with contempt, specifically for his wife and a woman I'm assuming is his mother-in-law. It's almost as if it were a House episode in which he hallucinates himself as a Victorian-era Englishman. And considering some of the more recent plot lines in the show, I'm rather surprised it hasn't been done.



Now it's not unique to find the "put-upon husband" in anything by Jane Austen. But what sets Laurie apart is that he says even the most innocuous line in such a way that it's clear he's fantasizing about beating his wife to death with a blunt instrument. And I don't know about you, but I think that every Jane Austen novel would be a little more realistic if the men were physically abusive. It would certainly give the title Persuasion a whole new meaning.

This Week In Non-House Hugh Laurie: Look At The State We're In!

Ah, damn you, Hugh Laurie. You just had to take part in political satire. Now I have to use the word political, which seems to be the quickest way to get yelled at lately. Ah well, I'll just have to stay as spineless and opinion-free as possible...which will probably also get me yelled at for being indifferent.

This week's clip is from a British mini-series from 1995 called Look at the State We're In! It's weird but I can't really find any information on it at my usual entertainment sites, and a Yahoo! search came up snake eyes as well. Fortunately, it doesn't seem all that hard to figure out. It seems that Hugh Laurie and friends just wanted to give the government some shit. In the following clip, Imelda Staunton plays a local official who realizes her position doesn't really have any responsibilities, and when she goes to get some answers as to why this is so, she talks to Hugh Laurie.



I really liked this clip, if for no other reason than the odd comfort that I take in knowing that everyone deals with their own political shenanigans. Sure, we've had a pretty tense year here in the States, but no matter what the country you're in or what era you're talking about, there are people who think that those in charge are doing a crappy job. And it's usually better to make some light of it rather than frothing at the mouth. It helps keep things sane. But it seems I may be getting dangerously close to forming an opinion here, so let's just say Hugh Laurie is a silly, entertaining Englishman and leave it at that.

This Week In Non-House Hugh Laurie: A Pin For The Butterfly

I'm not sure if this is a sign of the film-making style of the mid 90s, or if Hugh Laurie was just taking whatever roles he could get as a means of branching out from his usual goofball schtick, but these last few clips have been really fucking weird. Last week, we get a mostly naked Laurie practicing Thai Chi as a way to cope with his life as a con artist collapsing around him (thanks for the explanation from clat, by the way). This week, we get something that makes naked Thai Chi seem perfectly reasonable.

It comes from a 1994 movie called A Pin for the Butterfly. In it, Laurie plays an uncle to Marushka, a little girl who wants to escape the clutches of Stalinist Communism in Czechoslovakia and travel to America. This was an entry at Cannes, so you know you're in for some melodrama. But there is no real way to prepare you for what happens starting at around the 1:50 mark.



What the hell was that? Did we really just watch Hugh Laurie kill himself via electrified fence? Either this is a dream sequence, or Laurie was captured by the Communists and imprisoned in a Bugs Bunny cartoon.

Even if it was a dream sequence, I can't help but think the emotional impact of the scene was blunted by the fact that it's one of the more unintentionally hilarious moments in recent memory. First, we have the stock communist march playing in the background while the prisoners trudge their way to...well, who knows where the hell they're going. Then we get the vulture screech, which I can only imagine is the director's attempt at subtly telling the viewer that this camp is a hopeless place where people go to die. Either that, or he just thought a vulture would sound totally bitchin'.

Then there's the piece de resistance: Hugh Laurie declares his freedom with all of the flare and emotion of a high school student reading out of a Social Studies textbook. He sprints off, apparently leaving his fellow prisoner catatonic from his brazen act. He then takes a swan dive into a fence so powerful that it instantly vaporizes his skin and leaves only a perfectly white skeleton. Oh, and then cut to his skull perched on the fencepost.

I'm surprised that Cannes even bothered showing other movies at the festival in 1994. No way anything was going to top that.

This Week In Non-House Hugh Laurie: All Or Nothing At All

Something that I didn't realize blogging is that it's very similar to working out. If you don't keep it up on a consistent basis, you tend to lose the motivation to keep doing it at all. I can't believe I've breezed through two weeks without one little complaint. I've got to get the blood flowing again. I'd make a New Year's resolution but by now we all know that's pretty much the only sure-fire way of guaranteeing that a person won't do something.

So instead I'll just get back into the swing of things with this week's Non-House Hugh Laurie. This time we find Hugh Laurie taking a darker tone in the mini-series All or Nothing at All. He plays a con man named Leo Hopkins whose addiction to the game starts taking its toll on him. It actually sounds like an interesting little tale, and if you're feeling bored it appears that you can actually watch the program in its entirety on YouTube.

What I'd like to show you, however, is an experiment in your powers of prediction. Begin watching the following clip from the 0:16 mark through the 0:30 mark. Then, take some time and predict where the story will have taken you by the 1:30 mark. Got a guess? OK go ahead and play the clip from that point.

Ha! Bet you didn't know the train was getting of at this station! The funny thing is that even with the context of the connecting 60 seconds, I'm still not exactly sure how we get from glib Hugh Laurie to crazy 80's B-movie villain Hugh Laurie. I will say that I'm more intrigued to give All or Nothing at All a chance just to make some sense of it. Or, if anyone has already seen it, you're welcome to just tell me.

This Week In Non-House Hugh Laurie: Merry Fucking Christmas

OK, I realize that if this were a normal week House would have started already, and I said I'd post the non-House clips in the hour leading up to a new episode. But, thank Jesus, it's a Christmas miracle. House is on hiatus so tonight is just a rerun. So nuts to you. It's not like your reading this anyway.

To celebrate the season, I'm fast-forwarding this week's post to the year 2008 for Laurie's hosting of Saturday Night Live. But I must warn you, if you're anything like me then you will want to skip the cold opening by Gilly, a character so bad that it makes me long for the days of "It's Pat." Actually, scratch that. "It's Pat" still sucks ass. Anyway, skip to 0:15 to avoid the colon tumor that is Gilly.



I have to admit, this skit really shouldn't be funny. It's one of those one-note skits that SNL is infamous for (I love Keenan Thompson, but "What Up With That" is NOT FUNNY!). But I think I like it because it would be fun to have a Christmas dinner like that. Granted, I'm sure plenty of families do have a Christmas dinner like that and they would probably say it's not a good time. But what if you just planned a dinner where the whole point was to yell at each other and treat each other like shit. Then after about an hour you can go back to at least pretending to being nice to one another. I don't know, am I the only one who thinks that would be a blast?

Well, with Christmas coming up this will most likely be my last post until next week so have a fantastic Christhanukwaanza, and I'll leave you with a bonus clip: some unexplainable montage of Hugh Laurie pictures set to a piano instrumental of "Silent Night."

This Week In Non-House Hugh Laurie: The Legends Of Treasure Island

I remember when I first started looking into Hugh Laurie's back catalog, I found that this guy had some really impressive range. Originally seeing him in House, I didn't even realize that Laurie is English. He can really lose himself in a role, be it a crotchety but brilliant doctor, or a goofball Prince of England.

Which is why I find it so surprising that he spent most of his early career being typecast. Case in point: The Legends of Treasure Island. To this point, it seems as though most of Laurie's work has been as an ignorant, but well meaning aristocrat. But in 1993, however, the creators of Legends introduce Laurie to new territory as a voice actor. And how do the creators of the show exploit this new medium for Laurie? By making him an ignorant but well meaning aristocrat...and a bird.

If you take a look at this week's clip (starting at around 7:35) you'll see what I mean. The good news is that if you find yourself entranced by the whimsy of this animated tale, you're in luck because it's one of those shows that nobody gives a rat's ass about so YouTube has complete episodes posted. I, however, will just assume that the show ends with them finding treasure on an island of some kind.

This Week In Non-House Hugh Laurie: Jeeves and Wooster

After last week's tangent that had little to nothing to do with Hugh Laurie, I'll try and stay on point as we take a look at Jeeves and Wooster, a.k.a. A Bit of Fry and Laurie, 1930s Style. For those of you who read more than I do (don't be too impressed with yourselves) you might know Jeeves and Wooster as characters from the short stories of P.G. Wodehouse. The series was adapted for TV by Clive Exton, whose prior work includes the epic period piece Red Sonja.

And the Oscar never, ever goes to...

One thing that I have to share with you from the show is the opening sequence. You'll see that Hugh Laurie is nowhere to be found, but you'll also find that the theme song will be stuck in your head for a better part of the day.



As the following clip will show, there isn't a whole lot about Jeeves and Wooster that will surprise you if you're already familiar with the work of Fry and Laurie, aside from the fact that Fry plays the straight man a bit more than in the past. Laurie, as usual, is a buffoon, and similar to his turn as Prince George he's even dumber for not realizing that he's a buffoon. The humor is a bit more low-key here, and to be honest a little of this show goes a long way for me, but it's still worth a look.

This Week In Non-House Hugh Laurie: Strapless

If there is anything I like more than movies and movie trivia, it's crappy movies that big name actors would like to forget they were ever in. If I ever met, for instance, Adrien Brody, I would not dream of mentioning his Academy Award winning performance in The Pianist. Shit, I've never even seen that movie. Nor would I ask him what it was like to act the part of a disabled person in The Village, or how hard it was to bulk up for Predators. Nah, if I ever met Adrien Brody, I would smile, look him in the eye, and say "I loved you in Angels in the Outfield."

If you didn't know that Adrien Brody was in that movie, don't worry. I'm fairly certain he forgot he was in it, too. But everyone in showbusiness has to work through that crappy movie, either to get started or to make a house payment. And Hugh Laurie is no exception.

To be fair, I know very little about this week's pick, a 1989 movie called Strapless. The synopsis on IMDB is some drivel about an American doctor who goes to work in London and meets some guy and blah blah blah whatever. What's important is that Hugh Laurie is neither of these characters, nor is he anywhere in the vicinity of top billing. In fact, I'm pretty sure the following montage is at least 80% of all of Laurie's scenes as the character Colin.



So for all I know about the movie, Strapless could be a cult hit in England. It may be what kicked his career into high gear, paving the way for his introduction to the U.S. as Gregory House. But seeing as that breakthrough didn't come until a decade and a half later, I'm going to say that's a big no. I just hope he bought something really cool with the money. A minibar, perhaps?

This Week In Non-House Hugh Laurie: Blackadder Goes Forth

OK, this will be the last of the Blackadder Hugh Laurie. Other than a special here and there this was the last season of the series, which ran in 1989. This iteration of Laurie's character is Lieutenant George Colthurst St. Barliegh, right hand man of Rowan Atkinson's Captain Blackadder. Laurie is doing his usual clueless goofball schtick here, and I really didn't have much to say about it until I watched these clips from a Blackadder documentary:



At around 3:45, Laurie discusses the challenge of making a screwball comedy set in the trenches of World War I, and it hit me that this was the first season where the characters are actually likeable people. As funny as the earlier seasons are, most of the characters in them, especially Laurie's Prince George III, are kind of assholes. But in the fourth season, Lt. St. Barleigh may be an idiot, but at least he's brave and loyal. Hell, in the final scene, just about everyone gets to go out as the good guys. Unfortunately, they're also going out in a charge against German machine guns:



I don't know about you, but I was kind of impressed by how they chose to close out the final season. But if you're also like me, you'll find yourself fairly depressed as well. So let's end Laurie's Blackadder stint on a happy note:

This Week In Non-House Hugh Laurie: A Bit Of Fry And Laurie Season 1

Last week I introduced you to A Bit of Fry and Laurie with a skit from their pilot episode, which aired in 1987. It wasn't until 1989 that their first proper season began. Which begs the question...what the hell takes so long to produce British sitcoms? Blackadder had a three year gap between its first and second season. The recent dramedy Doc Martin ended its fourth season in 2009, and won't even begin filming until 2011. What gives? I mean, I like British sitcoms but most of them aren't exactly epic in grandeur. It's usually just some people on a soundstage acting snarky.

Eh, whatever. This week's clip takes the silly factor that I mentioned from last week and goes ahead and cranks that bitch right up to 11. There is absolutely no point to it other than to be bizarre, but as usual it works like a charm.

This Week In Non-House Hugh Laurie: A Bit Of Fry And Laurie Pilot

In a fine example of my strong work ethic, I've decided that I should also bring back some non-House Hugh Laurie on top of my chronicling of my epic adventures in Europe. It takes real grit to search Youtube for 3 minutes and write a paragraph about the first clip that catches my attention.

This week we get to the start of A Bit of Fry and Laurie. The pilot for the show came out in 1987 and the series lasted all the way to 1995. By British standards, that's a run that would put The Simpsons to shame.

The clip I chose for today, "The Word 'Gay'", is pretty much your classic example of Fry and Laurie's humor, which is basically just to take the stereotypical British facade and make it as silly as possible. I guess the cultural norm has a lot to do with the direction that comedy will take. Here in the States, for instance, we have a cultural hang-up with sexuality. So, naturally, a lot of our comedy has to feature at least a boob or two. For Fry and Laurie, acting goofy is their version of T and A. So enjoy this week's clip, if for nothing else than to hear my new favorite word, "assbandit."

This Week In Non-House Hugh Laurie: Blackadder 3

I really was going to try and stick to posting a Hugh Laurie clip in the hour leading up to House, but as you can see that steadfast weekly tradition lasted about one week. In my defense, however, I am up to my balls in wedding plans (T-minus 11 days) and today I had to get to my first dance lesson with the fiance. Hey, you can laugh if you want to, but if anyone is going to make an asshole of themselves on the dance floor it's going to be my alcoholic family and not me.

I'll at least be keeping in line with posting today's clip on the same night as House, although I think Laurie's depiction of Prince George in the third season of Blackadder is about as far from Gregory House as a guy can get. House is very smart. George is very stupid. House is dry and quick. George is flamboyant and rambling. In fact, close your eyes and listen to the following clips, first one of House and then one of George.





I don't know about you, but if I didn't already know it was the case, I'd have no idea the same guy is playing both of these characters. Oddly enough, it seems that in real life Laurie might be closer to House, one of his more recent characters, than any of the goofballs he made a name playing in England. He's fought clinical depression throughout his life, and in most of his interviews he seems to want to be anywhere but where he is. Take this clip of Laurie on Ellen, for example.



But, in all fairness, I don't think anyone wants to be on Ellen. Anyway, here's another Prince George clip.

This Week In Non-House Hugh Laurie

Well, it seems that my doing a post on Hugh Laurie the night before the season premiere of House managed to hoodwink a few extra readers into stopping by my blog. This is a shameless use of keyword placement that has no place in my work. That is why I am going to be posting this weekly segment at a new time...Monday nights in the 7 o'clock hour, just before the new episode of House, on the Fox TV network. But don't worry, I won't give you any "House spoilers," or "House gossip," or anything about "Thirteen" being "bisexual."

Anyway, by a lucky coincidence my first clip of Hugh Laurie last week seems to be some of his earliest televised work, which means it will work nicely to at least start off going through his career in chronological order. Today's clip marks his first appearance (aside from a blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo earlier in the season) of Laurie in one of the best comedies ever to come out of England, Black Adder.

In the upcoming clip, Laurie plays Prince Ludwig, a villainous master of disguise. The role is pretty funny, but it pales in comparison to Laurie's work as George later on in the series (we'll get to that on a later date). Laurie has some good lines here, but most of the fun is had by Rowan Atkinson, who plays an asshole better than just about anyone. Except for maybe "Hugh Laurie as House."