(S03E12) It's certainly been a while since we've been treated to Dr. House's charms and ability to make patients feel better in a single bound, but now he's back, and better than ever. Or, at least he's out of jail, and back on the Vicodin. One of the better strings of dialogue that this show has had was in last night's show, when House and Cuddy are discussing the fact that she perjured herself to keep him out of jail, and now he's going to do clinic duty, and next he's going to do his paperwork because she kept him out of jail, and so on and so forth. He's *so* right, and she *so* knows it, and that's why you have to love their interaction, because it digresses to the high school-esque flirting situation, even if it is only from one side, every so often.
Other than the "opening up" that House did on this episode, the other thing that struck me in a big way was the lack of focus on the rest of the characters, sans Cameron. She's left to contend with a patient struck down with a cancerous mass in his lung, who is looking for a place to sleep. He appears to have figured out about her husband's suffering, but she quickly determines that a nurse led him on. To me, this almost felt like this patient was playing a "ghost of Christmas past" type of character, sent there just for Cameron, to change her perspective on things.
House's dealings with Eve, the only clinic patient who happens to have an STD, definitely broke down a fence that we hadn't even approached before. She, after being raped, and coming down with chlamydia (and later is determined to be pregnant), lashes out at House when he touches her. His attempt to pawn her off to another doctor in the hospital end up drawing him back to her in a number of ways, especially when he sees how she reacts to the other doc by trying to kill herself with medication.
Telling stories is something House is prone to do, especially when dealing with younger patients, and others he just wants to get rid of. This time around, with Eve, he tells a story as it traces back to his grandmother, and she doesn't believe that it could be the case, and he just boiled down and played it off as a lie. What I was so surprised by was that, in the end, he came out and told her what the real deal was, how his father was the one forcing him to take ice baths, among other things. He knew, deep down (is there a deep down in House?) that he had to give something up to get her to tell her story, and that that would be the only way that Eve would be able to heal. He also seemed to want to say that she would have a hard time, later on in life, if she had given birth to the baby of the man who raped her. Cuddy wanted House to get a little more humanized by working with patients in the clinic, but I am guessing she wasn't expecting to have this kind of result in this short of a time period. He didn't even have to spend the whole three days there before having a solid breakdown of his own that helped someone for the better.
With Tritter far out of the way, House seemingly making Cuddy a little more happy, and Cameron having a life-changing experience, what could come next for this band of physicians? More random, reckless surgery, or perhaps just more dramatic caseloads that make us all want to scratch our eyes out? I'm still one to say that there's a high chance of someone leaving the team, and the money seems to be leaning towards Cameron, more than Foreman, who had his taste of power not so long ago, and might want more of it. But a little foreshadowing doesn't go a long way on this show, as we've learned a number of times before.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
1-31-2007 @ 12:27PM
David said...
I thought this was one of the best House episodes ever, most likely just for the fact they did something differnt!
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1-31-2007 @ 12:36PM
Chris Wyant said...
This was an interesting episode. I liked that House had to solve a mystery that wasn't medical, but required healing nonetheless. I'm not saying I want House to be like that all the time, but it was an interesting topic. And they tackled (lightly) the abortion debate. I say lightly because it wasn't an all-or-nothing teeth and fingernails debate; it was a discussion.
Something that puzzled me, however, was the old guy who felt he needed to suffer. Anybody else think he was going to be the rapist and that Cameron was going to have to face a conflict on letting him suffer or not?
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1-31-2007 @ 2:23PM
Andrew said...
I thought this was one of the better episodes in a long time, because it really dealt with House on a different level, something we don't see a lot, where he's out of his element, and they got rid of the usual formula for the episode. There's no diagnosis here, aside from the guy with the cockroach in his ear.
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1-31-2007 @ 1:23PM
khamel said...
great episode in my mind. the chemistry between house and the patient was palpable when they were sitting on the picnic table. that actress is familiar but im not sure from where.
not as good as the end of season 1 but one of the top 5 imo.
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1-31-2007 @ 1:29PM
Rob said...
Yeah Chris... I wondered the same thing. I figured that they would have Eve walk by the room where Cameron's patient was staying and she'd recognize him. I just didn't think they'd keep the old man storyline dangling like that. But hey,.. I'm kinda glad they didn't make him the rapist. It would have felt too stereotypically "House" for me.
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1-31-2007 @ 1:50PM
Reuven said...
Great episode. Was this the first one that didn't center around a medical diagnosis?
Also - regarding Cameron's "life-changing experience" - didn't she already have that one in the season 2 premier (Acceptance) -
"When a good person dies, there should be an impact on the world. Somebody should notice. Somebody should be upset."
(No - I don't know them all by heart. I have them on my computer, and recently rewatched that episode.)
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1-31-2007 @ 1:59PM
Heather said...
Funniest part of an otherwise pretty serious episode:
(House and Cuddy have made a bet to see how many patients he can examine without touching them. House is in with a patient, and tells him to put his fingers on his arm to feel his pulse. After a few seconds...)
House: How many beats?
Patient: 26.
House: (astonished) Either you suck at math, or you're about to die in two seconds! (waits a few seconds) You suck at math!
So funny. Great writing. Love this show.
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1-31-2007 @ 2:10PM
malren said...
Hugh Laurie was amazing in this episode - all the more so because I recently watched the entire run of "A Bit of Fry & Laurie" AND "Jeeves & Wooster." His ability to morph seamlessly into these other characters and make you feel and _believe_ them deserves awards.
Oh wait...he just got a fistful. ;)
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1-31-2007 @ 8:45PM
ac said...
Great episode, I think every show needs to do a character driven episode, not just medical/murder mystery.
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1-31-2007 @ 5:21PM
Lacey said...
I really liked this episode.
House is one of my FAVORITE shows, but I felt that the whole Tritter story line got REALLY old really fast.
It was nice to see House back and better than ever, I'm excited for the rest of the season now.
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2-01-2007 @ 4:12AM
Christian H. said...
I really enjoyed this episode, as everyone else obviously :) The girl playing Eve is Katheryn Winnick who was a guest on both CSI:NY and CSI:Miami. But the first moment I saw her I thought she was the stripper from "What about Brian". First time I saw her though and she did terrific :)
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1-31-2007 @ 8:56PM
Karen said...
overall, a very, very fine "House." Missed having a real case though. As far as the rumors of anyone of the team leaving, I don't think any of them should go. The three of them balance each other well... and act as sort of a nice greek chorus. Now with Tritter out of the picture, I'm hoping Cameron/Chase/Foreman finally get some screen time.
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1-31-2007 @ 9:30PM
Stevie said...
AWESOME ep; i was really surprised they didn't have a medical mystery, but i am a sucker for the philosophical talkiness. i've said it before - when are they going to run out of ways to get house to open up to people? this one was beyond transparent: the girl insisting on talking to him for reasons even she doesn't know? i half expected her to say, "because the writers want me to." who cares? their interaction was great. what makes hugh laurie so brilliant is his ability to convey exactly what's going on and still be enigmatic. i knew during the whole grandmother story that it was a lie because of the way he said it. finding out that it was actually covering a truth made it all make sense (unlike this post). i guess i'm trying to say he tells us tons without saying anything outright. it's one of the things that makes the show really fun.
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2-01-2007 @ 4:19PM
scott said...
BOOOORRRRIIINNNNGGGG!!!!
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2-01-2007 @ 7:31AM
Alicia said...
Although I am in the minority here, I didn't like it. I didn't like that they gave us this episode after a 3 week break. Next week it would have been better.
I just thought it was too... campy. Although the line about being stuck in a room was rather deep.
I think that it would have been better with a real medical mystery that he would have knocked it out of the park with, one that reminds Cuddy and Wilson WHY House is... well... House.
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2-01-2007 @ 12:22PM
Jack said...
The interaction between House and Eve was... strange. I half-expected this to be a drug-induced hallucination by House, when he was talking to the guy in his mind after he was shot.
And I know the girl was troubled, confused, had been raped, had an STD, and was pregnant, but her "Every life is sacred" argument could have been stopped with "Then why did you try to kill yourself?"
I dind't understand that part.
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2-01-2007 @ 1:59PM
Michael said...
You've also GOT to love House's explanation to Cuddy just why he wasn't in rehab any longer. After teasing us and his fellow physicians with all the reasons he should go and promising that it wasn't just an excuse to get Tritter off of his back, lo and behold it was just that after all! Classic House!
I too loved this episode and I disagree that this should not have been the episode they returned from a break with. This was the strongest episode since the final two episodes of Season One and it served to hook us right back in for the remainder of the season. I was getting soooooo tired of the predictibility of how the episodes were getting and this one did a 180 on that. Thanks for renewing my faith in one of my favorite shows!
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2-01-2007 @ 8:02PM
Misty said...
Personally, I think that the show needed this episode. We have been trying for weeks to get inside what makes House the way that he is. This episode helps explain why he has to be so annoyingly perfect on every case. As for Tritter being long gone, I don't think so. He was gnawing on that nicotine gum more than House was popping pills for the past couple weeks. In my opinion, Tritter will reappear in the form of a patient that needs House's profound medical voodoo power to make things all better and then the question will be...will House help him?
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2-03-2007 @ 5:07PM
Steve said...
campy psuedo-intellectual talk gets them every time.
I feel sorry for the people that think anything spoken about in this episode was "deep".
I also don't like the fact that the people writing for an atheist house are obviously not atheist. It really gets annoying that he has no answers to simple "philosophical" questions posed to him.
Luckily the rest of the writing and the cast make up for what is easily one of the poorest episodes of House. I did like the lack of a major medical dilemma though, but it only went far enough to point out the inadequacies of the writing staff of this show.
Here's looking forward to next week!
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2-06-2007 @ 12:44PM
rod said...
'I think that it would have been better with a real medical mystery that he would have knocked it out of the park with, one that reminds Cuddy and Wilson WHY House is... well... House.'
That has been made clear on many episodes, including the last one with Tritter and the cartilage-hair dysplasiac woman with the daughter who was misdiagnosed until House had the 'Eureka!' at the end. This was a good time to bring out something challenging to him beyond medical mysteries, his feelings that he's avoided confronting and discussing with anyone. As he said in the last episode, he doesn't know how to handle the situation of a girl being raped. I like to compare this episode in a way with the one that had John Larroquette starring in 'Son of a Coma Guy.' House had to give up something of himself in order to know more about this guy and how he might've gotten sick. And near the end, when he's confronted about why he became a doctor, the manner in which House tells the story is just as it was with the girl in the last episode when wanting to know what horrible thing happened to him. Some people think he lied in the last one to get what he wanted, to help with the girl's suffering by being open, etc., but I I don't believe so. As far as the girl OD on meds and her quote about life being sacred, I agree House could've questioned her as to why she tried to kill herself. But, we already knew her motive, as it was more for attention, his specifically, so the argument would've been useless by then.
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