Law & House?

During an episode of Law & Order, actress Anne Dudek played a teacher who has an affair with her 16 year-old student. In House, she plays the newbie/doctor/girlfriend of an oncologist who dies in a bus accident with House.

It's confusing and it makes me chuckle when I see an actress/actor who I've focused onto one role take on another. Of course, these roles weren't meant to last a lifetime but I keep combining traits from their characters and filtering it into one, default individual, whom I definitely don't know. It does throw off the concept of the story and I end up confusing myself. When Dudek gets tried in Law & Order as a teacher, I wonder why she's not a doctor!?

On TV this happens more frequently. In cinema, it only takes a few minutes to throw all those preconceived notions out the window. Johnny Depp, so morphous and pliable, blows my mind! One could have never guessed he was Gilbert Grape and the Hatter without some serious thought. Leonardo DiCaprio? That flip-flop between heroic and gangly Jack Dawson to "Revolutionary Road's" Frank Wheeler is pretty prominent.

On tv, I think the characters become permanent because of the consistent showings we get of their lives. We engrave a singular character in our minds and associate them with any other character the actor/actress chooses to stretch. In film, the actors/actresses are pliable and can become this one person for an hour and a half and change it when they feel the character has had its run.