Shared ideas - Grey's Anatomy, House, Bones

OK, that's now 3 separate TV shows that have used the device of someone hallucinating, leading to the realisation they're suffering a serious medical condition. Grey's Anatomy led the charge with the Denny/ghost issue (caused by...cancer or something - I tend to only half watch it), then House brought back Amber, induced by his vicodin addiction, and now Bones has given Booth a brain tumour (as in the show, not the character - Emily Deschanel cursing him with magic would be taking it in a new direction). This has led to him hallucinating Stewie from Family Guy - a bit of a stretch already, even before you throw a brain tumour into the mix.

Being generally more clued-up on film goings-on than TV stuff, I'm used to this happening in movie world. Armageddon/Deep Impact, Dante's Peak/Inferno - there are loads of examples of movies covering the same topic at the same time, but I've not really been aware of TV shows doing it until now.

Trouble is that this is a very specific device, rather than just a broad plot - at least with an asteroid, or a volcano, you can approach it from different directions, both literally and figuratively. In the two pairs above, one took a more cerebral approach, with the other being more balls out. Whereas a character hallucinating then discovering a medical condition is pretty one-note. Grey's Anatomy at least built up to it - the Denny thing obviously wasn't real, but there was no indication of a serious brain condition (because of course in TV-land, seeing things can generally be explained away as a story device or a brief mental lapse). As such the realisation that something was seriously wrong with her, followed by her looking into it, telling her friends, and now being treated, carried a decent amount of emotional weight.

House seeing Amber was an interesting digression, for a couple of episodes, but served no real purpose, and the awareness that Grey's Anatomy had already trodden that path upped the annoyance factor. And now Bones, a show which I like a lot, just throws this curveball in towards the end - I'd heard about the Stewie thing in advance, and while it had sounded tiresome, it was apparently going to be stress-induced. Fair enough, I figured.

But to tie it into a medical problem, giving them a way to end the season with a cliffhanger (although not that much of one - chances of Booth dying and being written out are fairly minimal), just seems like a massively lazy plot device. Irritating in itself, even before you factor in the fact that at least two other shows are doing the same thing at the moment. Pah.