TVSquad

(S04E02) Hi, I'm Jen, and I am going to be sharing reviews of House with Rich Keller, alternating weeks. Here's the way these reviews are going to work: We are going to include both reviews and recaps of each episode-- sort of reviewcaps, as our illustrious leader Keith McDuffee calls them. I will indicate in bold where the review begins and then, down below it, where the recap begins. So, if you don't want to have to read a recap, you can skip it.

I *know* tonight's post has a very long recap. I like the small details. Please give me a couple of times to find my groove. But this is one of the reasons I am putting the recap after the review, so if you haven't seen the show yet, please take that under advisement. And if you like recaps, or didn't get a chance to catch the episode, then you can find out about it there. I'm starting under the jump. Ready? Set? Go.

Review

I think the production decision to get rid of Cameron, Chase, and Foreman and to have House find a new team was actually a brilliant stroke. I love the show, and have been watching it faithfully for four years. However, I could see the novelty of the cases becoming a strain. The show has also explored romance between most of the key players, and also House's complicated relationship with each of his team members. So, in order for the show to continue, infused with new dynamics, new blood, if you will, it was important to make this move. I was resistant at first to the re-ordering of the team. In fact, I think I had the same reactions as House to catching glimpses of Chase, Cameron, and Foreman in the hospital: Was that one of my old friends? Not that House would ever admit that.

There was a lot to like about this episode. Yes, there were too many applicants. The fact that they were numbered actually worked out quite well -- having to remember their names would have been too confusing. I understand that the large pool meant that we had a tougher time guessing who he would choose (though not really), and it showed how coveted the position was. However, we didn't really have more than glimmers of time to enjoy the sly jabs of the cut-throat competitors before they were onto the next thing.

Some of my favorite moments were rather obviously designed to be that way, but I think they worked: When Amber convinces all of the doctors that washing House's car is humiliating and that they will doubtless all be fired anyway, and then she steals his keys and goes to the car wash, that was both funny, bold, and really obnoxious. Perfect for House. And House.

I also enjoyed the repartee outside Greta's apartment when Mason tells Henry that they don't necessarily have to let the old man in if he can't climb in, because, after all, this is a competition. So, Henry lies his way into the apartment (which is a nice set up for his other huge lies, to be revealed later).

Kal Penn is a terrific actor and I am thrilled to see him here. His chutzpah at turning his number upside down, refusing to leave, and then suggesting that they get the patient drunk were all vintage House moves, very playful, creative, and irreverent. I am so glad he made the cut and that he will be back again. I'm just sorry he's not one of the applicants who got to get drunk with House. It was great that as part of House's control group too, House played the role of the heavy drinker.

One of the commenters from last week noted that House hadn't been popping pain killers in the opening episode. Likewise, there was nary a Vicodin in sight this week either. To what does this portend? Was he ever taking pain killers? Was he just messing with his original team? Did his original team lead him to take pain killers? This will be explored, hopefully, because his addiction has been such a huge part of who House is for so many years. I don't think that two full episodes with no drugs can be overlooked.

Do you think House just replaced his old team with new, interchangeable members? I was surprised that House fired Mason, the guy who had broken into Greta's apartment, and who told Cuddy the astronaut's true identity. I had liked his personality, and I thought (as I saw below in the recap) that he was going to be the replacement for Chase (I still think he might be, actually). He is enough of a suck-up to be, and tells Cuddy everything.

House was grilling Mr. BYU about his belief system, and how quickly he was willing to surrender it for House's judgment. He wants the doctor to think on his own and to follow his own judgment, but he also wants everyone to do what he wants them to do, he is already establishing his dynamic with this character. I actually don't like Amber much, and from what I could tell, she is the only female who remained. I really thought House was going to choose (also) the one whom he was quizzing about her family life. Number 13. She reminded me the most of Cameron. But Amber takes chances, she's cutthroat, she doesn't worry about the rules, and she's sneaky. She is a good addition to House's team. The plastic surgeon is also really obnoxious and rude to the patients, but he is also smart and persuasive.

I think it will be fun to watch the dynamics unroll. Either House will whittle down his team back to three, or maybe his justification about salaries will work with Cuddy. It's a lot of balls for the writers to keep in the air though, for a show that thrives on character development and character dynamics. The bottom line for House will always be that if he continues to save lives, he can do whatever he wants. But will we be willing to embrace his new team?

I have to admit that my favorite scene of the episode was during the surgery when we suddenly heard Chase's voice from the gallery. It was so good to see him again, and his elevated status, his voice coming louder than life, he was angelic. He seemed like House's guardian angel, sent to protect the patient, and it was also a bit like having him return from the dead. He and House communicated in a brief moment: The plastic surgeon asked whether House would hire Chase instead of them, and for a second, House seemed as though he were asking. Chase turned him down. It was small, subtle, beautiful. In that tiny instant, we could see, even more than in House chasing down hallways for glimpses of his former team, that House realized that he had made a mistake. That he wanted his old team back. But perhaps it was still time for all of them to move on. Students can't stay with teachers forever, nor children with parents, no matter how much love has been held in the relationship. And so it always hurts when the decisions to separate are made.

What I am really wondering about, though, is why Chase and Cameron would remain at Princeton? They really could have, believably, gone to Mayo. So, what is unfinished about this chapter for them? And what about Foreman? Is he really in New York as Cuddy and Wilson insist, or is he sticking around to? And why?

Recap

A female pilot (and prospective astronaut, hence the double entendre in the episode's title) has neurological problems during a prototype test. She has visual problems in one eye that make it appear as if she is seeing a supernova, and affects her perception of the landscape. When she lands her plane, she chews out the geeky tech guy who set up the test flight about the spinning gyro (that wasn't spinning). But it is clear from her labored breathing, the fact that she pulls out her communication cord and says it got disconnected, and her expression after he leaves that she is worried about what she experienced.

Next, jump to House grilling his room full of job applicants. Cuddy did say she didn't care how he found a new team. He opens by showing them a picture on a huge screen and asking who it is a picture of. After he promises not to fire them for wrong answers, he fires the first woman to answer, who is also the woman who helped him in the ER last week. The man in the photo is the actor Buddy Ebsen. He was diagnosed with an allergy to the aluminum dust in the makeup for the Tin Man, a part he held for one day. He wants the applicants to provide seven alternate diagnoses while Cuddy chews him out about his application process.

House then gets a page... from himself. The astronaut is in his office with $50,000 for medical bills to diagnose her. House asks her what she is hiding. He tells him something is wrong with her eyes and ears, and she is a captain entering NASA's astronaut training program. She did research on House and figures with his shaky ethics, he'll keep his mouth shut and fix her. She tells him that she crashed a flight simulator because she started to hear with her eyes.

House runs back to his applicants and tells them to work up the astronaut, and to keep her identity confidential. They start to question her. One person asks if she spends much time above 20,000 feet, and she gets to go run some labs. He scatters them with different jobs, and assigns three people to break into her apartment. The remaining people have to wash House's car. They philosophize about whether it is a privilege or demeaning to wash his car. Everyone leaves except the guy who said he'd be happy to trade an hour for a chance to learn from House.

There are similar arguments at the astronaut's apartment. The doctors are too arrogant to jump through House's hoops. The woman who got everyone to quit washing House's car comes back with House's stolen keys, saying she never intended to quit, but she got rid of the competition. They take House's care to a car wash. One of the older doctors at the apartment lies his way in while the two younger ones go in the window.

While House is tormenting three applicants with tortoise porn, he sees Chase walking down the hall and runs out of his office eagerly. He gets his car keys back and calls for more tests. While the applicants are arguing, the astronaut has a heart attack in a hyperbaric chamber, and a fire starts when they attempt to V-fib, but the astronaut lives, and the showers go on.

House gathers his flunkies to talk about the latest developments. The woman with the car keys tries to get her colleagues into trouble and House calls her on it. More division of labor. House tells Wilson that he saw Chase in the hospital. Wilson tells House that Chase took a job at the Mayo Clinic in Arizona a week ago. Wilson thinks House is losing it, due to repressed guilt for firing Chase. House's flunkies continue to bicker over patients rather than giving quality care. They report their results to House and he gives them more responsibilities, testing her thyroid, which could stimulate another heart attack, and this would indicate a problem with her thyroid.

House's flunkies start badgering her and arguing and reveal that they broke into her home. the astronaut starts hallucinating, seeing more sounds in ultraviolet colors (synesthesia). She locks herself in a room and they tell her that her identity will be revealed if she doesn't open it. At that moment, House sees Cameron walk into the hospital, but he gets distracted by the astronaut bursting out of the doors. Cuddy finds them all in the hall trying to give the astronaut a sedative and wants to know who the patient is, so one of the flunkies says, "Osama bin Laden."

Cuddy goes and asks the flunkies in the classroom who the patient is. They don't know anything, except for the guy who broke into her apartment, who tells Cuddy the woman's identity. I have a feeling this is the new Chase (his name is Mason). The other flunkie with a name is the oldest applicant, Henry, probably also to-be-hired. House fires Mason. Cuddy insisted that they chart every other test, so House asked them how they can to tests when they can't do tests. House tells Wilson that he has seen Cameron now, and to tell him how they can do tests without doing tests. Wilson accuses him of having hallucinations of Cameron and Chase. Wilson tells him that Cameron and Chase are engaged and buying a home in Scottsdale and offers to call them. Wilson tells House he will choose people he doesn't like because liking them would be stressful.

House goes back to the flunkies, and number 6, whom he had fired, is back in the room with his number turned upside down, insisting that he was actually number 9. It's the great Kal Penn from Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle and The Namesake. He has a name too: Kutner. He proposes getting the patient drunk to see if her liver is working, so he gets to be number 9, and not fired.

The guy who was washing House's car is a Mormon from BYU, so House makes him the control in their drinking test with the astronaut. He wants to see how fast the non-drinker gets drunk. House challenges his religious beliefs. While they are drinking, House asks the Mormon about The Magic Underwear. I am a former Mormon, so I laughed out loud. House starts badgering the guy about his beliefs. While they are arguing, House thinks he sees Foreman, so he leaves the room when the astronaut , Greta, starts crashing and gasping for air. She refuses intubation because NASA will need to know why.

Cuddy tells House that Foreman is in New York, and then smells alcohol on him. House just walks away, and sees Greta's bed is empty and a broken shot glass is on the floor. The applicants take her into a room with a treadmill so they can show that they gave her oxygen in response to a routine stress test. House starts asking the female applicant when her brother left home. House tells the patient she either has lung cancer or tubular sclerosis. The astronaut refuses to have a biopsy because of the scar. She begs House to find a way to diagnose without doing anything that NASA can trace.

House asks the applicants how they can force a patient into surgery. The plastic surgeon says they can do breast implants to explain the scars when they do surgery on her lungs. The plastic surgeon convinces the astronaut that getting laughed at is worth pursuing your dreams. Cuddy tries to get an explanation, and House tells her that she'll be investigated along with her if he tells her, so she leaves. House is pimping the applicants during the surgery and they aren't giving him good answers, when Chase's voice comes over the microphone from the gallery with an explanation. He says he is on the surgical staff now, so the gallery isn't off limits. The applicants ask if House is going to hire Chase, and Chase shakes his head slightly. House looks to his surgical team briefly then back, and Chase is gone.

House chews out Wilson for lying about Chase and Cameron. Cameron is new newly blonde head of the ER. Wilson maintains that Foreman is still in New York. The applicants tell Greta that she has to come clean with NASA. House comes in and tells them that they don't have to tell NASA. House already called them. He tells her, "I'm not an idiot. Those shuttles fly over New Jersey."

House gathers the flunkies to tell them who has been fired. He ends up hiring more than three people, including Amber, the woman who had stolen his car keys, Kutner, Mr. BYU, the plastic surgeon, and one whose role didn't really stand out. House talks to the oldest applicant and confronts him about having never gone to medical school, which is why he let another applicant do an echo. He has hoped that House would break rules for him. House decides to hire him anyway as an assistant and a consultant. "It's not my dream job," Henry tells House. "Actually, it is," House tells him. "It's just not your dream title."

House goes to visit Cameron and tells her she is an idiot. She tells him that she needs to get doing some good out of her system. House tells her he didn't really rat out Greta; he just had to stop some leaky faucets. Cameron tells him that it isn't because he thinks Greta will be vigilant about her health: It's because he couldn't kill her dreams.