The second season just started last week, and the first season just came out on DVD. There's an element of ongoing story, of course, but nowhere near what you get with Lost and 24 and that sort of thing--if you miss one episode or come into the middle, you won't be totally overwhelmed. It's on Fox, and in Utah it's on Wednesdays at 8:00pm.
The basic premise is the same as a lot of shows, really: it's kind of a hospital drama crossed with a forensics show, so there's nothing new in that area. The kicker is with the main character, Dr. House, who is coarse, rude, horrifically insulting, addicted to painkillers, and acted with genius by Hugh Laurie, who takes this insufferable character and makes him incredibly sympathetic. He is one of the world's leading diagnosticians and works at a teaching hospital, and spends most of his time working with three interns/residents trying to "solve" diseases.
Most of the episodes follow a noticable formula, but as I said the reasons to watch are the characters. The episode that won the Emmy, "Three Stories," is actually the one that broke out of the formula: one of the professors is sick, so he gets called in to teach the guy's class. He tells the students about three different patients, all of them complaining of leg pain, but then twists those stories around and plays with chronology, continuity, and belief. It really was a ingenius episode.
