For someone as pop culture-obsessed as I am, I do tend to take rather long breaks from my shows every so often. Real-world concerns and the beginning of the NBA season kept me from watching much scripted drama at all for about three weeks there; when at last the mood struck I had four new "Lost" episodes and a 10-hour "House" marathon to digest. I have a sort of elaborate point to make about "Lost" and its perceived decline, but I'll get to that eventually. First, I want to give "House" its due. I've never fully embraced the show for a bunch of silly little reasons: scheduling conflicts, feature-stingy DVD releases, Peter King's repeated endorsements. I wasn't an early adopter, not checking the show out until it started in reruns on cable. Maybe for this reason alone I always forget about it when I start talking about the best shows on TV right now. It is, it really is. My automatic response for my favorite show right now is always "Veronica Mars," but that may be fading. Great first season, underrated if convoluted second season, but now in the third year it appears like the series is not going to be one of those that can successfully redefine itself, forever operating in the shadows of unfulfilled promise. "House" on the other hand is now as it has always been; as a procedural show that downplays serialized elements it has no real need to rotate characters or radically redraw its boundaries.

Watching the recent marathon, mostly of second-season episodes I had seen once or twice before, I was again surprised by how much I like "House." On an episode-by-episode basis, has this show given me any less pleasure than "Veronica Mars" or "My Name Is Earl" or "Stargate Atlantis" or any of the other current TV shows I make absolutely sure never to miss? I would say it's right up there. It doesn't lend itself to as much postshow analysis due to its very nature, but it's amazingly rewatchable for a procedural show. I like the whole cast (although it is still deeply weird to me that nobody at the show or at Fox noticed that Omar Epps' character has the exact same name as Topher Grace's from "That 70's Show," which in this viewer at least causes some inappropriate reactions from time to time). Considering the glut of hospital dramas in TV history, I appreciate the stylized, sophisticated look of the show's sets. It's not the right choice for everything on TV, but in this case the decision to go with what's visually interesting over strict realism is dead on. The show's interiors match up nicely with its trademark CGI sequences of tiny virtual cameras whooshing through blood vessels David Fincher-style. It's instructive to compare the huge, 2001-like operating rooms and labs of "House" with the claustrophobic, dingy look of "Scrubs" or the detail-oriented, real world-scale sets of "ER."

My favorite thing about "House" though might be its cynical, frequently disturbing take on sexuality. Dr. House's whole character hook is that he distrusts his patients pathologically and firmly believes everything they say to be obfuscations meant to make his job of curing them more difficult. People lie more about sex than anything else, and so there's hardly an episode goes by without some sort of salacious twist. I mean, no matter what your favorite -- the nun who turned out to be an former hooker, the rape-fantasy couple, the clinic visitor who was sleepwalking every night to (and through) rough encounters with her ex -- this is foolproof material. I'm amazed Oliver Sacks hasn't beaten the "House" writers to it, actually. But the show goes deeper than merely relegating the kink to its guest stars and walk-ons.

House himself is, of course, a psychologically fascinating fictional creation. There are way more aspects to this than I have time here to discuss, but I do wish to make one observation relevant to the topic of human sexuality as depicted on the show. One of the many endearing things about Hugh Laurie's characterization is House's neo-Socratic justification for his frequently appalling behavior. Since the doctor alone seems to realize that in the sexual arena human beings are craven, barely sentient beings helpless in the face of their filthy desires, he's in his estimation free to point this out to others or demonstrate it himself whenever the mood takes. He's the proverbial one-eyed chicklet in the kingdom of the blind, if you'll excuse an old expression. As frayed as House's logic in this case may be, it's deeply amusing to watch Laurie flirt with Cameron, bait Cuddy, mercilessly taunt his male colleagues for trying to maintain decorum, and openly lust after teen patients. House's running commentary is a useful dramatic device in the stories of the supporting cast, who have doubts of their own already when it comes to developments like the breakup of Wilson's marriage or Cuddy's decision to have a child as a single parent. A medical show seems like an obvious venue to take a grown-up look at sex issues, but for whatever reason the grand tradition in the genre has been partner-swapping soap storylines more suited to "Friends" or "90210." It kind of boggles the mind that "House" and "Grey's Anatomy" are nominally about the same subject.

There's another layer still. In its best episodes, "House" really makes the viewer feel complicit in all the sex weirdness. The constant stream of foxy female guest patients is just the beginning (not to overlook the comely regular Jennifer Morrison, who as I see from her IMDb profile is a Cubs fan, poor dear). One of the baseline assumptions "House" makes is that in order to be a good doctor, you sometimes have to be a bad person. When considering matters of life or death, things like privacy, modesty, and good manners fall by the wayside. It's always better to show than to tell, and the "House" eps that really resonate are the ones that make the viewer feel a little uncomfortable themselves. As the show has gained confidence and narrative momentum, this is something that's been happening increasingly often. (And they are on the right network to be TV's leading non-pay cable creepy sex show.) There were two scenes in the marathon last week that struck me in particular. In one, House injects Dr. Cuddy with a vitamin shot right to the rear, her hands grabbing a desk for support and her skirt hiked up as high as TV-14 will allow. In another, House engages in what can only be described as remote-control foreplay with Dr. Cameron, undressing her with a piece of advanced robotic surgical equipment as a skeptical patient observes. My point is, this is a creepy show made by a bunch of deviated preverts, and it makes me kind of proud to be American that it's hugely popular right now. As for how I feel personally about the recurring Michelle Trachtenberg-in-a-clean-room fantasy "House" has instilled in my brain, that's somewhat more ambiguous.