New Favorite TV Curmudgeon - House

Did you ever notice that the best characters on TV are curmudgeons? From Archie Bunker and Lou Grant (on the Mary Tyler Moore Show), to Andy Sipowicz (NYPD), and even Ted Dansen's sitcom doc Becker, it's the unhappy people that are so much more interesting. Maybe it's a corrolary of Tolstoy's observation that while all happy families (people) resemble one another, every unhappy family (person) is unhappy in their own way.

My new favorite curmudgeon, discovered in reruns this summer - Dr. Gregory House, M.D.. From telling a kid to Google "hemorrhoids" after listening to some particularly loud groaning in the hospital men's room, to answering a question relating to the meaning of life with something along the lines of "I take comfort in the belief that it isn't a test.", the show's creators and actor Hugh Laurie have created a classic curmudgeon.