Changes on "House"?

I've enjoyed House since I started watching it midway through the first season.  I like the medical mysteries and the way they use those to structure a show that's really about the characters (unlike, say, Law & Order, which really IS about the case each week, or even CSI which is more of a balance but seems to skew heavy toward the cases).  Hugh Laurie has won some well-deserved accolades for the show and he is surrounded by a talented supporting cast that keeps things interesting.

As those thoughts might indicate, the show's foundation is its strong writing and acting.  But that doesn't mean the other elements are poorly done - quite to the contrary, it's always been well-directed and shot, and some of the cinematography is quite striking.

Which is why the major shift in the show's visual style over the past two weeks has been so disruptive.  I don't know if it's a by-product of a change in directors or DPs, or a conscious choice by the show-runners, but the way the past two episodes of House have been shot is markedly different than what we're used to.  The patient interactions haven't changed much, but the shots dealing with the principal characters, whether they're involved in general conversation or conducting a "differential diagnosis" around a conference table, have all gotten noticeably closer and tighter.  Gone are the wide shots of a whole room, two- and three-shots of small groups, and even medium close singles.  In their place are increasing number of solo shots, with tight facial framings - close-ups of House himself are the worst offenders, as it appears there is now some law that no shot of him can be wider than the top of his head to the bottom of his chin.  In the 11/16 episode in particular, this excessive use of close singles at times made it difficult to tell who was talking to whom, and where people were in the space (one scene at the conference table was particularly confusing, since no two people were ever shown in the same shot).  I had thought maybe this was an anomaly, but last night's episode offered more of the same...

In general, I'm not opposed to tight framings or the fragmentation of space - as I've written in some of my scholarly work (including my upcoming book Beyond Dolby - shameless plug), these are common trends in the cinema tied to a number of factors including surround sound, movement of crew between television and film, etc.  What I don't understand here is the logic behind messing with what had been a very effective, if not necessarily "in-your-face," approach to a successful show - for no apparent reason.  I simply don't think the new style is as good a fit for House as the old one, since it overemphasizes faces and the characters and upsets the show's careful balance of medical mystery with character drama (one might argue that the heavy use of single shots in the 11/16 episode was to emphasize the emotional distance between all the characters at the time.  Fair enough, but that doesn't explain why this strategy was continued, or what that had to do with the ridiculously tight CUs of House in that episode or the next - certainly characters can be split up through framing even in medium shots).

Here's hoping the makers of House get this out of their system and return to what works:  keep the cranky title character, snappy dialogue, and bizarre cases - just stop showing all that stuff from quite so close.