TVSquad

(S04E16) "Her heart won't stop racing. No idea what's causing it." Doctor in inferior hospital.
"Are you sure it wasn't the bus that landed on her?" House.

The season finale of House packed a wallop. I let my Tivo get ahead of my watching it so I wouldn't have to see the commercials, and I had barely begun the episode when my next-door neighbor burst into my living room exclaiming, "Have you seen House???" We barely had time to hit the pause button while yelling at her to leave and leave quickly without saying anything. But that is the kind of impact this kind of episode has. The season finale, which started last week, covered a bus-load of big themes: fear, wish-fulfillment, anger, risk-taking, the nature of friendship, remorse, and love. The episode was written by four writers, including producer David Foster: that was one of my first clues that this episode was going to be significant. They called in the big guns.

[S04E14] "You don't deserve to be happy." House to Wilson.
"And yet I am. You?" Wilson to House

House treats the symptoms, but he doesn't treat the whole person. He doesn't even claim to. He often makes a clear point that he doesn't care. House likes medicine because he likes to solve puzzles, and what greater consequences can a puzzle have than a human life? But ultimately, even someone dying doesn't matter unless House can't figure out the puzzle.

So, if the above paragraph is true, then why does House go out of his way to kidnap a soap opera star he believes to be dying in order to save his life? Is it really because he can't stand the idea of not watching his soap? I don't think so; he even encourages angsty actor Evan Greer (Sex and the City's Jason Lewis) to quit if he's not happy... well, sort of. But, back to the question: If House doesn't care, then why bother? Because it's a puzzle he can see daily, right in front of him, and he has to solve it. Apparently he has made multiple calls about it, because the actor knows who House is, so House simply takes matters into his own hands because that is what House does. House lives a life without consequences.

(S04E11) "Never before has a profession been so decried by someone who needed it so badly," Wilson [about psychiatry] to House.

One of my favorite parts of this episode was the quote I have chosen to put at the beginning of the entry. Wilson accuses House of not liking Cate, the patient, because she is a psychiatrist. House counters that there are many reasons he does not like the patient, and Wilson comes back with that retort. The reason I like it so much isn't because I think it's meant to be about House. I like it so much because I think it's a sneaky little slam on Tom Cruise. Or at least, if that is too much of a stretch, then I like it because it certainly can be applied to Tom Cruise and his very public outcries against psychiatry.

(S04E06) "My malpractice insurance doesn't cover alien autopsies." --House
"That's fine. X-files are the next wing over."-- Dr. Samira Terzi

Tonight was apparently the "stand-up" episode of House. It had more one-liners than an episode of Seinfeld. And everybody got into the game-- not just House. I guess "Whatever it takes" referred not only to medicine but to extorting laughs. It's a good thing it had so many zingers in it, because that was one of the only likable things about the episode.

"15 minutes for the lap dance, half hour to scrub the guilt off my soul... See you in 45!"-- House

(S04E05) "She said her hoo-hoo burned." -- Kutner

I will be reviewing House for the next two weeks because Richard Keller, my House compadre, is otherwise tied up. I was going to follow the format for the review that Rich devised last week, because I think it's a great format. However, when I began writing the review, I realized that because the plot integrated with what was happening with the characters so intensely that it made sense simply to review the show. For even more House, if you can't get enough, head on over to AOL.

I realized after I watched the episode that we never got to find out who the patient, Robert Elliot, really was. From the moment we saw him, he was mirroring the older brother mugger, and then the doctors, one by one.

(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.

(S02E24) Wow. The second season of House, unfortunately, came to an end Tuesday night, and shocking isn't even the word that should be used to describe it. Most weeks, I really have a good handle on what's actually happening in-episode. This week, I gotta say that I was lost, found, lost, found, and lost. And that's a good thing.

When a man walks into House's office after he and the team are trying to diagnose a patient, asks who he is, and then proceeds to drop a pair of bullets in him, it almost looked for a moment as if it could be the end for our hero, er, favorite obnoxious doctor. But as the episode unfolded, we were shown a House that not only was able to walk without pain in his leg, but was so thrown off by his actions that he was trying to figure out what was real and what wasn't. That got worse once he found himself hallucinating, with the first instance being his "meeting" with an attractive woman outside the room of his current patient. As it turns out, not only was that woman not really there, but she was actually the now-dead wife of the man who came to shoot him.

The Chicago Tribune's Maureen Ryan has an interesting article on the hit FOX series House, including interviews with actor Robert Sean Leonard (who plays Dr. Wilson, both friend and foil to the incorrigible Dr. House) and Katie Jacobs, the show's executive producer. Despite his character growing on fans, Leonard claims he wants to keep his role small so he has free time to spend with his wife. Ah, that's sweet. We also get some insight into Hugh Laurie, who plays the titular role. Apparently Laurie is very self-critical when it comes to his American accent. Personally, I think he does it flawlessly, which is more than I can say for Michael Caine.

Oh yeah, and a reminder to House fans that the first part of a two-part episode airs this evening.

(S02E17) Whether it was House chewing a stogie in the lobby of a hospital, his strange ability to read everyone else at the poker table, or his interest in what appeared to be a child in need of serious medical attention, I can't say much more about how much I dig this show. When a young patient comes in after a bout with bloody diarrhea (on that list of things I thought I'd never mention in a blog), our anti-hero hops up from a hand of poker at which he's got the table beat with pocket aces. At the least, Wilson's flipping of his pal's cars was to give us a sense of how grave House felt about the situation - or how interested he was in seeing what it was all about.

As it turns out, it was another of his hang-ups. First, we had Stacy. Then, we had the guy that got him tossed from school for cheating. Now, House finds himself in a situation to treat someone who has a similar malady to a woman who died a dozen years ago, and he's not going to let this one go away.