TVSquad

(S03E03) In the third episode of this third season of House, we'd been shown in previews that it would be one of the more "controversial" episodes of the series, or at least of this year's batch of shows. As it turns out, it definitely fit that bill, though the controversy wasn't as plain as day as what the advertisements would have us believe. This time around, House and his team are given a patient who has been doing a number of medical tests and experiments on rats, who had recently started coughing during a dissection of one of his "patients," passed out, and had one of his rats start biting his lip while he was out cold. As it turns out, this doctor was fairly well-known within the medical community for a number of his "experiments" in the past, including a number on humans, namely babies.

Faced with the medical dilemma of a patient who knows what he is talking about and doesn't want to suffer through whatever pain he is in for, the team must do what they always do, choose whether or not to treat the patient for his pain, or attempt to cure what ails him, even if it is against said patient's wishes.

It's definitely been something we've discussed here before, about how sometimes this show is so much more about what isn't necessarily "shown" on the screen as far as video goes, but about what is said between the lines, or almost what's implied. If there's something seen in a thread this season, it's that what's going inside a few of the characters - House, Cameron, and Cuddy - is what's driving the stories. Cuddy regrets her keeping something from House, House is torn between truly being "healed" and the addiction he clearly has to pharmaceuticals, and Cameron isn't sure what she wants both in her personal and professional life.

As we quickly learned, House wasn't being quite so forthcoming when he was to "put out" his patient, Ezra Powell (Joel Grey). He was looking to have his team leave the room not so he could get away with anything, but more so that they wouldn't have to feel associated with what he was doing. Sure, they were making a conscious decision to leave the room and let their boss do what he wanted, but that wasn't all that was going on. As the medical tests continued on during this week's show, it almost seemed like they weren't necessary. Not that we were so sure that House was correct in his diagnosis of what was making Powell so sick, but we saw a bit of Cameron's feelings come out after a teenage girl was enamored with House's actions during his clinic hours, when he easily diagnosed her father. It's pretty clear that while she might not actively be interested in House, she is definitely interested in not seeing him with someone else, especially a 17-year old girl.

Also present this week was House's cane, that he pulled out of the closet last week as the show began to close, which caused a big stir with his colleagues. Is he really "back" as the same old House as he used to be, and does he really need the cane to walk, or is there some sort of phantom pain going on that he is more comfortable dealing with, rather than just handling the fact that he'll feel good 90% of the time and will experience pain here and there? I'm not sure we'll ever get an answer, but we will probably have something to learn from what Cuddy appears to be hiding, because it can't just be guilt at this point. Pregnancy, I'm thinking no, but you never know. If anyone might be able to spot pregnancy a mile away, it'd be the wonder doctor, right?

Once the results all become clear, the team has no choice but to tell Powell that his case is terminal, and he won't be making it much longer. And that's when it all becomes clear. Ezra Powell is heaving a bit in his bed as he lives in last moments on earth, House is leaving the hospital, and Cameron is seemingly stressed out in the locker room. As House makes his way back into work the next morning, he's greeted not only by a calendar with a date six months off when his clinic patient's thong-showing daughter will be legal, but Cuddy wondering if he knew anything about Powell dying the previous night. After seeing Powell cleaned up by a nurse and his eyes closed, we see House giving Cameron a pat on the shoulder, as she is openly upset sitting in a large room on the campus, leaving us no choice but to know what happened here. Now, whether or not she did what she did because she was upset with what Ezra Powell stood for or the fact that she reached a point where she could relate, we may never know. But it's definitely clear as a bell that the wishy-washy-ness that she had shown for the first few weeks of this season is gone, perhaps forever.