HOUSE, M.D.: 24. "Autopsy"
Micky DuPree
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The actors in the roles of patients on this show are so consistently
good that not only do I want to praise the kid in the A plot to this
episode, but I also want to praise the casting director and the roster
of episode directors they've used on the show for their work with the
actors.
The hustle-bustle pace continued from last episode, but they did slow
things down for the big talk between House and the patient.
So far the writers seem determined to get out of the season-one formula
of three red-herring misdiagnoses before they nail it in the final reel.
That's not a bad thing, although they had also developed a pretty good
strategy for upping the stakes each time too. But now the watchword
seems to be dual diagnoses with sequelae. All the patients in the U.S.
with more than one unusual thing wrong with them are now going to be
magnetically drawn to Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital.
Spotted in Andie's medicine cabinet: "VALIUM", "DR. ESPINOZA", what
looks like "VICOCIN" but I'm guessing is "VICODIN", and probably
"CODEINE".
CHASE: Benadryl might help.
HOUSE: Already did a thousand milligrams.
That's 20 times the standard dose. Shouldn't his nose have fallen off?
I find it strange that someone who was so stoic while going through
Vicondin detox would whinge and try to take time off because of hay
fever.
They've spent a little money building scenery to go outside the windows
so they don't have to keep the blinds drawn all the time. I kinda wish
they hadn't, though. Now whenever I do notice it I'm always going to
think it's a painted backdrop like the Ponderosa ranch.
HOUSE: Differential diagnosis. On your marks, get set --
FOREMAN: Hallucinations could be caused by --
HOUSE: Whoa! Wait for it. -- and go.
I know this is a small point, but this was a strange line to me. I
can't remember House ever trying to restrain the fellows from
brainstorming before once a case was taken. If anything, I'd have
expected him to praise Foreman's initiative. What with all this "You
can use the markers. You can't. Wait for it" business, it was like
House had turned into a petty control freak putting them through
obedience school not fellowship training. Foreman seemed to think this
was strange behavior too.
HOUSE: [To Cameron] And you, stay away from the patient.
Is House finally throwing in the towel on making Cameron do her job?
Doesn't sound like House.
HOUSE: What the hell is this?
CAMERON: Black walnut and ginger.
HOUSE: It's nice.
Is it supposed to be an herbal remedy? And if so, since when did House
find nice words to say about an herbal remedy? Was it supposed to be
Cameron's way of saying, "You were right," about the cancer patient last
week? Was it supposed to be House's way of accepting an olive branch?
'Cause House hasn't cared for such gestures so far.
HOUSE: If people could choose the sex of their doctors, you gals
would be out of business.
Not from what I've heard. Women consume more health care services than
do men in the U.S., and women have increasingly been choosing female
doctors. But it was nice to see Cuddy cracking the whip on House's
clinic hours again. So much for my theory that other cast members would
be given the clinic stories to give Hugh Laurie some time off. This
week they just cut back on clinic time.
HOUSE: And you wanted Rivkah to feel all _gemutlicht_. I get
it. It's a _shandah_.
(Spelling taken from the closed captions.) As near as I can piece it
together from Yiddish sites, "You want your Rebecca to be at ease. It's
a [matter of some] shame [to you]." But feel free to correct. DIY
translations from the nonfluent should be mistrusted only slightly less
than DIY surgery by laymen.
While Laurie can do a horrified double-take with the best of them, I
had to wonder if this was the same House who once assured a patient that
he had been a doctor for 20 years and wasn't going to be surprised; the
same House who once took an infected pierced scrotum in stride.
Is it hideously expensive to get a circumcision from a real surgeon with
a local anaesthetic and the usual medical precautions? Is it difficult
to find a surgeon willing to perform one on an adult male? It CAN'T
hurt worse than DIY with only gritted teeth to sustain you. What am I
missing here? (Besides the subject genitalia, I mean.)
CHASE: I'm thirty.
Time compression is one thing, but aging four years in one season is
ridiculous. It does make for a sensible retcon, though, and resolves
the time-line contradiction in "Cursed."
Chase has caught Cameron's disease of overidentifying with the terminal.
Major alarms were going off in my head when he kissed the patient, but I
have to admit, I can see him being susceptible to a wide-eyed dying
kid's pleas. Spencer played it with excellent discomfort. I loved that
House sussed Chase out just by looking at his demeanor. I wish that
House had given him a harder time over the kiss, but I liked that he
took the humiliation approach rather than the anger approach, and I
liked that Foreman and Cameron were doing a silent omigod thing around
him.
I wish that it had turned out that Andie had been molested (yeah, like
they'd necessarily be able to tell from running a rape kit months after
the fact), because there seemed to be something to what House said about
her manipulating people. It wasn't an evil sort of manipulation, but
she was working Cameron as well as Chase.
I could have sworn the oncology department was in the other direction
from House's office, but maybe they changed their minds. Hm. Real fake
trees waving in the real fake breeze.
I could have bought the pebble-throwing bit more easily if Wilson had
told House that even 16-year-old Romeos had switched to text-messaging,
and House had sniped back that if he had paged Wilson, Wilson would have
ignored him since he wasn't Debbie in Accounting.
That is a poster for _Vertigo_ in Wilson's office after all. I can read
the title this time, plus James Stewart's and Kim Novak's names.
Unless House has a muscle-weakening disease they haven't told us about
yet, the gag about Wilson opening the jar for him was strange rather
than funny. Come to think of it, it wouldn't be funny either way.
A cardiologist wouldn't have picked up on the extra heartbeat flap
first? This wouldn't all have been recorded via electrodes onto a line
graph? This was a little weird. (I thought the three valves were
cycling at different rates, but that just shows what I know.)
CHASE: I'm not really sure I should be spending more time with --
HOUSE: She'll be unconscious. You'll be safe.
Well, at least Chase was having doubts about the kiss. I loved House
telling him that his virtue would be protected.
HOUSE: If you're dying, suddenly everybody loves you.
WILSON: You have a cane. Nobody even likes you.
HOUSE: I'm not terminal. I'm merely pathetic. You wouldn't
believe the crap people let me get away with.
Yes, I would, and House obviously doesn't respect people who let him.
But according to this logic, Andie should have been a little monster
whose behavior people explained away, not a kid who acted all saintly.
WILSON: And if the [heart] tumor's metastasized, there's nothing
we can do.
Considering that they'd been watching her like a hawk for her other
cancer, wouldn't they have discovered evidence of the heart tumor
metastasizing before they tripped over the tumor itself?
WILSON: [To House] Go to hell.
That was overdue, as were the daggers Wilson shot House when he caught
House spying on him as he delivered the bad news to the patient. Of
course, to put things in perspective, it helps to remember that this is
the same guy who sticks out his hand for money from House every time a
patient thanks him for the terminal news. Wilson did seem to be pissed
off on Andie's behalf here, but it's not like Wilson doesn't know how
the emotional distance thing works for doctors (especially after having
lectured Cameron on it just last week).
Actually, for the sake of the story, I was extremely glad they didn't
have House automatically cut a patient some slack just because she was
nine and dying. In his reflexive cynicism, House treats the whole human
race as guilty until proven innocent. Even if he couldn't attribute
deliberate affectation to the kid, he could at least blame her nobility
on a pathology. I think the only problem I had with the kid was that
when you come right down to it, House is right. Everybody does lie,
even certifiable nine-year-old saints. I wanted him to catch her in a
minor, non-self-serving lie (like he caught the otherwise truthful and
sincere Senator Wright in a lie in "Role Model"), even as he was
revealed to have been wrong about her in the larger scheme of things.
Andie did come off as a little too good in the end. I bet she'd lie in
a heartbeat (no pun intended) to protect her mother.
There was a wonderful unguarded expression on House's face when he had
finished pitching the live autopsy to Cuddy, going from smart-mouthed to
all of a sudden pleading with her not to tell him there's no Santa
Claus.
Whoa. They had someone pass by the window visible *through* Cuddy's
window. Does the set go back that far or is it just a facade with a
window?
I bought into the expressionistic lighting on House's face when Wilson
gave him the autopsy consent forms. Even though it looked a little
artificial to have a narrow band of light fall across his face, by this
time House was already contemplating his talk with Andie, and the light
seemed to indicate that something was up.
Unfortunately, because the summer trailers spliced in the footage of
House offering to assist Andie with suicide after footage of Clarence
from "Acceptance," I knew just by the shirt that House was wearing what
was coming. But it still played well. I have to admit, offering to
assist a nine-year-old in suicide is even more radical a concept than
offering the same thing to a death-row inmate.
HOUSE: What if you're right about her? What if she just is
that brave?
WILSON: That doesn't mean she's mature enough to handle this
kind of decision.
HOUSE: Either she understands or she's not brave. You can't
have it both ways. If she does understand, then she
deserves to know what's going on.
True, and well reasoned (I missed this version of House last week), but
it's not like House hasn't decided on his own before that a mentally
competent patient should get more treatment whether said patient wanted
it or not. I suppose this week it was evidence that House was
completely confident in the rapidly terminal diagnosis.
It almost seemed like House wasn't just offering Andie the option of
suicide, but pushing it as an agenda. But I can buy that he was probing
for affective anomalies at the same time, looking for emotional symptoms
of her problem, and trying to break through any potential martyrdom. I
think that by the end of the talk, House knew she was for real (just as
he came to realize about Senator Wright) and that the clot wasn't in the
amygdala.
I counted 15 people at the "dress rehearsal" (not including the dead
guy). Why was House the only one not wearing a surgical cap?
Morty the corpse flinched at one point. :)
HOUSE: Gruesome and low-tech. Kiss me, I love it.
"Gruesome," "low-tech," "I love it," all good, but I can't imagine House
saying, "Kiss me," even in jest, unless the next line was to tell Chase
he was just kidding.
Loved Foreman's self-assurance in the final surgery. I guess House's
lesson about self-doubt being a bad thing when you're right has sunk in,
although the fact that they had to depend solely on eyeballs didn't ring
true. Surely they took stills of the MRI? Hasn't medical imaging at
PPTH moved into at least the 20th century? They have to use ears alone
to find heart valve irregularities? They have to use eyes alone to find
clots?
I think that was an x-ray of conjoined twins right before we saw House
chopping up his meds, but why they'd have that on House's desk, I don't
know.
House was back in two shirts and a jacket at the end. Is this the last
of the one-shirt experiment?
WILSON: It's all about speed, isn't it? One thing to another,
never standing still.
Boy that line sounded hokey. Yeah, it ended up tying into the very last
scene of the episode, but it seemed forced here.
HOUSE: I know my way around a razor blade.
Since when? I can think of at least three ways to go with that. The
gag either needed more explanation or else needed to be dumped.
It is worth asking why House is so good at cutting up drugs. He never
seems to be in so much of a hurry to take Vicodin that he can't wait for
it to go through his stomach. It's also worth asking why he didn't just
use a mortar and pestle.
HOUSE: I was wrong.
I was surprised Wilson didn't alert the media.
I don't think the extreme closeup on House in his office near the end
entirely worked. It will probably look slightly better in widescreen,
though.
WILSON: [Andie] stole that kiss from Chase. What have you done
lately?
I have to admit that despite my discomfort with the kiss, I'm highly
amused by the fact that Chase's coworkers (correctly) treated Chase as
the bigger naif in the encounter. And Andie stole another one on her
way out the door.
Andie triumphantly running the gauntlet of appreciative hospital
personnel at the end was just too much for me. They really shouldn't
make me root for her to have a relapse.
I think I was more touched by the fact that House trusted Foreman's
eyesight over his own than I was by the fact that House came downstairs
for Andie's departure. I liked the character better when he spied with
concern on the 12-year-old diver from afar in "Kids" than when he
mingled with the crowd and let a dying kid hug him here. Squishy Uncle
Greg (not quite soft yet since he didn't seem to hug back, but give him
time) just doesn't have the same edge.
A '65 Corvette isn't enough to scratch a midlife crisis itch? If one
fast toy isn't the cure, is a second one really going to do the trick?
And they couldn't manage even a single shot of Laurie on the bike?
I kept waiting for House's hay fever to tie into the rest of the plot
somehow. If it did, though, I missed it. Usually there's some sort of
free association going on between the A plot and the subplots.
The live autopsy was audacious enough that you'd expect it to be written
up in a journal. I have difficulty imagining House being interested in
writing about a case once it's over, but I have no difficulty imagining
him farming out the actual writing to the fellows. In fact, that would
make a cool framing device for an episode, having one of the fellows
type up a case history for a journal article, a la Scully doing her
reports on the _X-Files_, as the story unfolds in flashback. On the
other hand, maybe the live autopsy was too audacious and they'd all just
as soon not attract the notice of the law or medical licensing boards.
I assume that House had to publish *something* before he got tenure,
though, and that the fellows still need to stack their C.V.s. It would
also be cool if an old case history looked House up because the medical
problems were starting to recur.
There's something odd about the second-season House. He's more
extroverted, more of a showman, like he's deliberately playing to the
crowd. In fact, he seems to be running the whole hospital now. I could
buy him winning over Cuddy on the request for a live-patient autopsy
this week, since they've almost always overlapped on the issue of
patient care (and a nine-year-old is bound to play on more heartstrings
than LL Cool J), but House playing ringmaster/choreographer in the
operating room (like they wanted House to channel the Bob Fosse
character from _All That Jazz_) was something I just couldn't swallow.
It's one thing to postulate that House doesn't trust other doctors, so
that's why his own team does a wide variety of procedures that anywhere
else would be performed by nurses, technicians, and doctors in other
specialties. But when a diagnostician gets to boss around an operating
room full of neurosurgeons, cardiac surgeons, anesthesiologists, and
assorted whatevers without anyone saying boo about it, I'm completely
unconvinced. What surgeon would agree to that?
And as for House himself, he's always been portrayed as a brilliant but
antagonistic loner, and yet here he was flawlessly leading a large team
of independent specialists who were eager to do his bidding without
friction, personality conflicts, professional differences, or turf
disputes as if he had been born to the role (even getting them to laugh
at a joke at one point). Who was this maestro conductor of the
orchestra? He seemed like House's more socially engaged twin brother,
the one who can actually get other professionals to trust him.
On the other hand, House seemed more intelligent and professionally
thorough this episode than last, so at least I didn't get the feeling
that the writers simply couldn't keep up with their own character this
time.
-Micky
David Johnston
It isn't though. People who will endure the most staggering suffering
can be total babies about minor scratches.
>
>
>They've spent a little money building scenery to go outside the windows
>so they don't have to keep the blinds drawn all the time. I kinda wish
>they hadn't, though. Now whenever I do notice it I'm always going to
>think it's a painted backdrop like the Ponderosa ranch.
>
>
> HOUSE: Differential diagnosis. On your marks, get set --
> FOREMAN: Hallucinations could be caused by --
> HOUSE: Whoa! Wait for it. -- and go.
>
>I know this is a small point, but this was a strange line to me. I
>can't remember House ever trying to restrain the fellows from
>brainstorming before once a case was taken. If anything, I'd have
>expected him to praise Foreman's initiative. What with all this "You
>can use the markers. You can't. Wait for it" business, it was like
>House had turned into a petty control freak putting them through
>obedience school not fellowship training.
I doubt he'll ever do it again. It was just a joke that he thought
was funny on that day.
Foreman seemed to think this
>was strange behavior too.
>
>
> HOUSE: [To Cameron] And you, stay away from the patient.
>
>Is House finally throwing in the towel on making Cameron do her job?
>Doesn't sound like House.
He was merely being public spirited and sparing us the agony.
>I wish that it had turned out that Andie had been molested (yeah, like
>they'd necessarily be able to tell from running a rape kit months after
>the fact),
They would in fact be able to tell if a pre-pubescent had been full
penetration raped. She'd have stretch marks. Of course child
molestation comes in degrees and full penetration isn't necessary for
it to have happened.
> HOUSE: If you're dying, suddenly everybody loves you.
> WILSON: You have a cane. Nobody even likes you.
> HOUSE: I'm not terminal. I'm merely pathetic. You wouldn't
> believe the crap people let me get away with.
>
>Yes, I would, and House obviously doesn't respect people who let him.
>But according to this logic, Andie should have been a little monster
>whose behavior people explained away, not a kid who acted all saintly.
House is engaging in projection.
>
>
> WILSON: And if the [heart] tumor's metastasized, there's nothing
> we can do.
>
>Considering that they'd been watching her like a hawk for her other
>cancer, wouldn't they have discovered evidence of the heart tumor
>metastasizing before they tripped over the tumor itself?
Probably.
>Loved Foreman's self-assurance in the final surgery. I guess House's
>lesson about self-doubt being a bad thing when you're right has sunk in,
>although the fact that they had to depend solely on eyeballs didn't ring
>true. Surely they took stills of the MRI?
But of course taking the stills wouldn't mean that they'd found it
> HOUSE: I know my way around a razor blade.
>
>Since when? I can think of at least three ways to go with that. The
>gag either needed more explanation or else needed to be dumped.
>
>It is worth asking why House is so good at cutting up drugs.
Is it worth asking why the actor is so good at cutting up drugs?
Hm. Perhaps a subject best avoided.
He never
>seems to be in so much of a hurry to take Vicodin that he can't wait for
>it to go through his stomach. It's also worth asking why he didn't just
>use a mortar and pestle.
I'm guessing the razor blade's intimation of illicitness would have
greater appeal to House.
>Andie triumphantly running the gauntlet of appreciative hospital
>personnel at the end was just too much for me.
I actually skipped over that bit.
trotsky
House's joke in no way implied he knew the first thing about "cutting up
drugs". He was making a joke about recreational drug use--big deal.
Marco Schmidt
>Disjoint observations on the 9/20/05 episode. Spoilers abound.
[...]
Individual has now added the recently created group alt.tv.house-md to
their newsgroup list. If enough people ask their respective news
providers to add that group as well, would the House fans in this
group be willing to move discussions about the show to its own group?
A simple mail to the newsmaster should be enough to have it included
in the newsgroup list.
I find rec.arts.tv very crowded, which has kept me from participating
so far. On the other hand, it would be a pity if people missed
discussions because their provider does not carry the group yet, but I
guess there's always a transition phase with discussions moving to
specialized groups. Maybe there could be crosspostings to rec.arts.tv
for a while, using alt.tv.house-md as Followup-to: group.
Regards,
Marco
Micky DuPree
policy yet?
Spoilers for "Autopsy."
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trotsky <gms...@email.com> writes:
: David Johnston wrote:
:: On Wed, 21 Sep 2005 22:33:34 +0000 (UTC),
:: MDu...@theworld.com.snip.to.reply (Micky DuPree) wrote:
::: HOUSE: I know my way around a razor blade.
:::
::: Since when? I can think of at least three ways to go with that.
::: The gag either needed more explanation or else needed to be dumped.
:::
::: It is worth asking why House is so good at cutting up drugs.
::
:: Is it worth asking why the actor is so good at cutting up drugs?
Laurie could have been taught by an expert how to go through the motions
(does Hollywood lack for expertise at cocaine cutting?), and he didn't
have to do as good a job as we actually saw, since the camera cut away
so much.
: House's joke in no way implied he knew the first thing about "cutting
: up drugs".
Except that House was explicitly doing a good job of cutting up drugs
onscreen. Wilson even remarked on that very fact. Yes, it was an OTC
drug, not an illegal one, but since House said that this was a new
delivery system for diphenhydramine (generic Benadryl), then that leaves
the logical next question as exactly what did House learn this skill on?
We certainly haven't seen him cutting up or snorting his Vicodin.
: He was making a joke about recreational drug use--big deal.
That's just it. Nothing about the scene indicates or implies that it
necessarily had to be a joke. The supporting implications are that it
wasn't. I can buy that it was partly a gag about House shaving
infrequently. (He has to shave sometimes, though, or else he'd grow a
full beard.) It could even be a dark joke about slitting his wrists in
the past (which would be given the lie by the lack of scars on his
arms). But the fact remains that House was cutting up his
antihistamines like a pro. Why wouldn't a doctor use a mortar and
pestle instead? Like a lot of character bits lately, if it was supposed
to be funny, it wasn't. If it was supposed to be serious, it needed
clarification.
-Micky
trotsky
> trotsky <gms...@email.com> writes:
>
> : David Johnston wrote:
>
> :: On Wed, 21 Sep 2005 22:33:34 +0000 (UTC),
> :: MDu...@theworld.com.snip.to.reply (Micky DuPree) wrote:
>
> ::: HOUSE: I know my way around a razor blade.
> :::
> ::: Since when? I can think of at least three ways to go with that.
> ::: The gag either needed more explanation or else needed to be dumped.
> :::
> ::: It is worth asking why House is so good at cutting up drugs.
> ::
> :: Is it worth asking why the actor is so good at cutting up drugs?
>
> Laurie could have been taught by an expert how to go through the motions
> (does Hollywood lack for expertise at cocaine cutting?), and he didn't
> have to do as good a job as we actually saw, since the camera cut away
> so much.
>
>
> : House's joke in no way implied he knew the first thing about "cutting
> : up drugs".
>
> Except that House was explicitly doing a good job of cutting up drugs
> onscreen. Wilson even remarked on that very fact.
Are you telling us this from personal experience? Or are you claiming
that two guys that busted their asses (presumably) to make it through
med school somehow along the way learned how to create good lines of
cocaine?
Yes, it was an OTC
> drug, not an illegal one, but since House said that this was a new
> delivery system for diphenhydramine (generic Benadryl), then that leaves
> the logical next question as exactly what did House learn this skill on?
> We certainly haven't seen him cutting up or snorting his Vicodin.
In fact, it's a little stupid to think there is much skill involved in
serving up a line of cocaine. Why don't you guys ever admit to your
untenable positions?
> : He was making a joke about recreational drug use--big deal.
>
> That's just it. Nothing about the scene indicates or implies that it
> necessarily had to be a joke.
Sure, genius doctors that are all in the know about cocaine use. Again,
that's just stupid.
The supporting implications are that it
> wasn't. I can buy that it was partly a gag about House shaving
> infrequently. (He has to shave sometimes, though, or else he'd grow a
> full beard.) It could even be a dark joke about slitting his wrists in
> the past (which would be given the lie by the lack of scars on his
> arms). But the fact remains that House was cutting up his
> antihistamines like a pro.
Please explain how you know what it looks like when "a pro" does it.
Why wouldn't a doctor use a mortar and
> pestle instead?
Uh, because House has a perverse sense of humor? Or hadn't you noticed?
Like a lot of character bits lately, if it was supposed
> to be funny, it wasn't. If it was supposed to be serious, it needed
> clarification.
No.
Terry McNeal
MDu...@theworld.com.snip.to.reply (Micky DuPree) wrote:
>My ISP hasn't added alt.tv.house-md yet. Does the n.g. have a spoiler
>policy yet?
No. We could use the policy from alt.tv.angel:
"There are different views on spoiler space, and ata's consensus view
is hardly set in stone, but inserting spoiler space is never wrong.
The group does seem to be veering toward more spoiler space usage
rather than less."
-- from the alt.tv.angel FAQ,
William George Ferguson
-- Terry
Ian J. Ball
Terry McNeal <gree...@gmail.com> wrote:
The most important one is true pretty much everywhere:
NEVER put a spoiler development in the Subject Title.
Ian (And it's best to put "SPOILER" in the Title of any post that
contains true Spoilers for the recent episode of interest...)
--
"Read less. More TV." - Dr. Greg House, "House"
http://homepage.mac.com/ijball/TV-Blog/
Stan Brown
favored us with...
> "There are different views on spoiler space, and ata's consensus view
> is hardly set in stone, but inserting spoiler space is never wrong.
I beg to differ.
Putting it where it is not needed is just as bad, IMHO, as not
putting it where it it.
--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA
http://OakRoadSystems.com/
"You may be the Universe's butt puppet, but I'm its right-
hand fist of fate." -- /Wonderfalls/
David Johnston
<the_sta...@fastmail.fm> wrote:
>On Thu, 29 Sep 2005 19:22:45 -0400 in rec.arts.tv, Terry McNeal
>favored us with...
>> "There are different views on spoiler space, and ata's consensus view
>> is hardly set in stone, but inserting spoiler space is never wrong.
>
>I beg to differ.
>
>Putting it where it is not needed is just as bad, IMHO, as not
>putting it where it it.
>
Why?
Stan Brown
favored us with...
Micky DuPree
: What with all this "You can use the markers. You can't. Wait for it"
: business, it was like House had turned into a petty control freak
: putting them through obedience school not fellowship training.
I wasn't imagining things: the fellows have written with the markers on
the whiteboard before in House's presence without his objecting or
remarking on it. Foreman did it in "Honeymoon," for example. This
control-freak business is an unfunny retcon that seems designed to aid
in getting House to mug for the camera now that he's a bona-fide media-
celebrated capital-C Character.
: Is it hideously expensive to get a circumcision from a real surgeon
: with a local anaesthetic and the usual medical precautions?
I read one fan's theory that the self-circumciser and the little girl
staying alive for her mother were both supposed to be about the
sacrifices people make for love, but if that's what the writers were
really shooting for, I think the comparison is awfully weak (and House
didn't make his usual free-association connection between the two
cases).
: I wish that it had turned out that Andie had been molested (yeah, like
: they'd necessarily be able to tell from running a rape kit months
: after the fact) ...
Although House acted like they had conclusively proven the negative.
: ... because there seemed to be something to what House said about her
: manipulating people. It wasn't an evil sort of manipulation, but she
: was working Cameron as well as Chase.
Either that or have someone point out that being able to manipulate
people is one of the few consolation powers of being a terminal kid.
House got close when he said that everyone loved dying kids, but his
earlier observation about inappropriate sexuality simply got dropped.
: A cardiologist wouldn't have picked up on the extra heartbeat flap
: first? This wouldn't all have been recorded via electrodes onto a
: line graph? This was a little weird.
They could have made me happy if only one of the fellows had said, "Hey
can't we look at the printout?" and House had said derisively that real
doctors don't need no stinkin' printouts, because he wanted to develop
their listening skills.
: (I thought the three valves were cycling at different rates, but that
: just shows what I know.)
That still bugs me. Surely they're supposed to cycle at the same rate
even if not at the exact same time, right?
: HOUSE: If you're dying, suddenly everybody loves you.
: But according to this logic, Andie should have been a little monster
: whose behavior people explained away, not a kid who acted all saintly.
I think I got it straight this time. House believed this might well be
the case. He hadn't spent any time observing Andie personally at this
point. He had only listened to the accounts of others, notably Wilson's
accounts in that scene, which House dismissed as clouded by emotion.
Theory A got busted when House spied on Andie from afar as she received
the news that she would be dead within the week, so House shifted to
Theory B: bravery as a symptom of pathology.
: WILSON: [To House] Go to hell.
:
: That was overdue, as were the daggers Wilson shot House when he caught
: House spying on him as he delivered the bad news to the patient.
: [....] Wilson did seem to be pissed off on Andie's behalf here, but
: it's not like Wilson doesn't know how the emotional distance thing
: works for doctors (especially after having lectured Cameron on it just
: last week).
I've discovered via email that I need to make it clear that I was
referring to *Wilson* not maintaining emotional distance, not to House
having it in excess. Wilson didn't just want to keep a potentially
unhealthy influence out of the room when the bad news was delivered. He
could have accomplished that by giving House a simple no. Instead, he
got *angry* with House, despite the fact that he had seen House do the
cynical-bastard routine before, even with patients who were circling the
drain, and taken it in stride. Wilson was getting emotionally involved
with Andie like just about everyone else was.
: They have to use eyes alone to find clots?
I can understand why they would want to eyeball the clot while they were
reperfusing, so they could be sure that they had gotten what they had
come for. What I can't understand is why Foreman had to be standing
there guiding the neurosurgeon as he did the embolectomy afterwards. We
saw in "Honeymoon" that this hospital knows how to use videotape during
procedures. We know from this episode that, at a minimum, this hospital
knows how to store audio files on disk (because House downloaded the
heart valve sounds to his iPod). Couldn't the MRI have been recorded to
one of these media so the surgeon could just rewind and look for
himself? Why did the final surgery depend solely on Foreman's eyeballs
and memory?
: I kept waiting for House's hay fever to tie into the rest of the plot
: somehow. If it did, though, I missed it.
I never did find a tie-in. If they had had House admitting to Wilson
that he was trying to get clinic patients to ditch him because they
thought he had a cold, that would have been one thing. But with the
exception of the pilot, House has never sought the slightest bit of
sympathy for anything, great or small. He really doesn't care what
other people think. It's a not entirely healthy streak of machismo.
The complaining in this episode came out of left field, leading me to
wonder if the hay fever was introduced solely to make House
hypocritically look like the whiner that he was unfairly trying to make
Andie out to be.
The hay fever wasn't funny and since it didn't provoke one of House's
free association "Aha!" moments to give him insight into the A plot,
they should have just ditched the whole subplot. I hope this doesn't
mean that we're going to be cursed with this subplot every fall either.
The more I see him, the more the second-season House looks too
extroverted. It's as if someone high up decided that the show has
become a hit based on its hero's media reputation as outrageous and
unexpectedly sexy, so they've taken off one of his shirts, given him a
haircut, and had him mug and grandstand for the camera.
I would have been a lot more impressed if they had replaced the whole
hay fever subplot with a subplot about the difficulty that a doctor who
had actively antagonized two surgeons ("The Socratic Method," "Detox")
and one oncologist ("Babies & Bathwater") that we've seen (and who knows
how many other hospital employees besides), and who couldn't get anyone
but Wilson to vote to keep him when Vogler wanted his hide, had to go
around the hospital mending fences in order to put together his "big
musical number" for Andie *and* still be allowed to conduct the
orchestra. If there had actually been some stumbling blocks and effort
involved in assembling this dream team, I think I would have bought it
more.
Yeah, I can see surgeons being willing to do the procedure, but only if
tactical control of the procedure were ceded to them. But for the sake
of letting the hero of the series keep the spotlight, all of a sudden
every last high-powered professional in the hospital was willing to play
Beta to House's Alpha. Getting a D+ in "plays well with others" has
been one of House's persistent and consistent character flaws from day
one. Yet here I couldn't help but feel that the writers were allowing
their hero to take center stage in true Hollywood fashion because he's
gone from being a cult figure to a genuine mainstream hit. It was well
performed but unbelievably written.
-Micky
trotsky
> Watched it again.
>
>
> : What with all this "You can use the markers. You can't. Wait for it"
> : business, it was like House had turned into a petty control freak
> : putting them through obedience school not fellowship training.
>
> I wasn't imagining things: the fellows have written with the markers on
> the whiteboard before in House's presence without his objecting or
> remarking on it. Foreman did it in "Honeymoon," for example. This
> control-freak business is an unfunny retcon that seems designed to aid
> in getting House to mug for the camera now that he's a bona-fide media-
> celebrated capital-C Character.
>
>
> : Is it hideously expensive to get a circumcision from a real surgeon
> : with a local anaesthetic and the usual medical precautions?
>
> I read one fan's theory that the self-circumciser and the little girl
> staying alive for her mother were both supposed to be about the
> sacrifices people make for love, but if that's what the writers were
> really shooting for, I think the comparison is awfully weak (and House
> didn't make his usual free-association connection between the two
> cases).
I think a distinction has to be made about how many cases on the show
are based on real life cases.