HOUSE, M.D.: 28. "Spin"
Micky DuPree
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
By now, no one who watches this series regularly would have been fooled
into thinking the asthmatic kid in the prologue was going to be the
A-plot patient. Too easy. I was more thrown off by expecting the kids
to be somehow related to the cyclist. But the adult male with the
speaking part was identified as their father, so I guess they were just
establishing, despite my skepticism, that American kids do indeed
worship cyclists as would later be claimed.
Book spine in the domino run:
THE INTERPRETIVE PROCESS
IN CLINICAL PRACTICE
STACY: Criminal records check -- and you know that's going to
take some explaining.
I like to think that House was busted at least once for b&e on a
patient. The charges were likely dropped after the cure, of course, but
still.
STACY: And you can't have your sole female employee doing your
clerical work, which you'd know if you'd attended the
required sexual harassment seminars.
You probably can if your employee never complains and your boss never
disciplines you for it.
House went and talked to an A-plot patient right off the bat??? The
only other times I could remember that happening were when he thought
the kid in "Paternity" was being sexually abused, when he wanted to be a
baseball fanboy in "Sports Medicine," and when Vogler threatened his
department if he didn't "hold the senator's hair while he upchucked" in
"Role Model." None of those conditions applied here. Usually House
sends the fellows to test for lying first.
Professional athlete cheating with drugs. They did that in "Sports
Medicine." I suppose the twist was that Forster didn't lie about the
drugs. It was just that the drugs and the treatments were masking his
underlying condition.
One token Vicodin this episode.
Foreman was wearing one of those blue-and-white badges under his neck
when they were scanning Forster for the air embolus. I still couldn't
read it, though. Curiosity is starting to get to me.
FORSTER: My accident on the news?
FOREMAN: Yeah, you made "plays of the week."
FORSTER: A few more of those and cycling will be as popular as
NASCAR.
O.K., made me laugh.
CAMERON: We don't make careers out of who can stay awake the
longest.
CHASE: Really? Ever been to, oh, I don't know -- med school?
Doctors do tend to be dismissive of sleep disorder complaints. If they
can suck it up on marathon shifts, they figure so should you. One
resident practically said as much to me.
CAMERON: He's making millions of dollars ripping off fans.
Why was Cameron toying with destroying her career over cheating in
cycling but didn't sweat the issue of cheating in baseball one bit back
in "Sports Medicine"? Little kids who are fans of cheating baseball
players don't count? House's superiority and Cameron's urge to rat on
Forster seemed a bit incongruent with their attitudes towards the
cheating baseball player in "Sports Medicine." House was glad to cover
for the baseball player if it would mean beating the Yankees, and
Cameron didn't give a damn about the moral purity of the sport in that
episode. I guess the American Cycling Association (or whatever) doesn't
have the same rules regarding the automatic reporting by doctors of
member cheating that major league baseball was said to have in "Sports
Medicine," or Cameron would have had an ethical alternative to phoning
the newspapers.
To my admitted surprise, I have not found sports fans to be all that put
out by bending or breaking the rules, at least not by the athletes
they're rooting for. Chase still seemed to want an autographed photo of
Forster.
HOUSE: But when she's frustrated, she gets pissy.
It couldn't have had anything to do with House's inattention to
paperwork threatening to make a lot of unnecessary work for Stacy,
prompting a preemptive strike on her part? Even when House is morally
in the wrong, they almost always portray his analyses of others' motives
as being accurate. There have been exceptions, but they've been rare.
I get the feeling they're going to write him as being accurate about
Stacy, but I really haven't seen them writing *her* as being unable to
live without House so far.
Maybe Stacy is sexually frustrated. I don't know. But until House
started messing with her husband's treatment, she didn't do anything
that struck me as unreasonable for someone who didn't want to be put in
the position of drafting letters and briefs explaining why the hospital
shouldn't be held liable for allowing a doctor to practice with an
expired license and without insurance. Nor did it seem unreasonable for
her to stand over him and make him do it like a 10-year-old who's been
throwing his homework assignments away, because he's probably had
fellows do the paperwork for him ever since he got tenure and she
already explained the legal reason why she finds it unacceptable for him
to fob it off on Cameron again. She was just covering the hospital's
ass and trying to avoid an unnecessary increase in her own workload.
Even after Stacy went ballistic on House in the clinic, which was out of
bounds, he already knew that was how she was going to respond to him
messing with Mark (i.e., exactly like she responded on the roof in
"Honeymoon" to House messing with Mark), yet he did it anyway, which to
me taints "pissiness" as a diagnostic criterion for anything when it
comes to Stacy being protective of her husband. As far as we've seen,
even if Stacy is sexually frustrated, she's nevertheless adhering to
Cameron's dictum that you can't control your feelings, but you can
control your actions (inasmuch as she's not making a play for House). I
don't see the big deal here, but I get the sense that the writers are
making it a big deal anyway.
WILSON: You really, really need to get some.
HOUSE: Oh, I get some "some" all the time. That's why I always
need to borrow "some" money.
I don't know what to make of this. Last season, I would have given long
odds that House's joke about a hooker was just that: a joke, not a sign
of a lifestyle choice. He certainly seemed taken aback and
uncooperative in "Detox" when he initially thought Wilson had gotten him
a hooker. This season, though, I dunno. The above sounded suspiciously
like a "Wouldn't it be cool" line, so maybe they meant it this time.
There have been more mentions of hookers this season, and even in
private with Wilson, House was no longer resistant to the idea. On the
other hand, we've been told that he didn't need the money after all and
he wrote Wilson a check for the entire amount owed last episode, so that
part was a lie.
STACY: It's like watching Oscar Wilde and Noel Coward in the
third grade.
Exactly what I was thinking, except not as generous or literary. I can
understand Mark still being mad at House for his cavalier and unethical
medical testing in "Honeymoon," but this somewhat cruder version of
their first meeting seemed like a pointless rehash. I also seem to
remember that not all the jokes were off-color and grammar-schoolish
last season. There used to be some genuine wit along with the
adolescent remarks. I miss that.
For that matter, I liked the House-Stacy interaction better when they
were both coming up with snappier one-liners to lob at each other.
Stacy even had a good one earlier this season. In this episode, the
triangle was more like mud wrestling, neither clever, graceful,
poignant, nor sympathetic.
I don't think Currie Graham gets enough credit, since Mark Warner is
something of a thankless role, but he's good. He also did a terrific
guest spot on _Over There_ as an Army medic in Iraq who was developing a
bad case of burnout.
In terms of the number of inappropriate remarks about appearance, it
seems like House sexually harasses Chase more than Cameron these days.
Nothing about the group therapy session rang true to me. In the first
place, mixing permanently disabled patients with temporarily disabled
patients seemed like mixing apples and oranges. They're not facing
similar life adjustments. Second, this wasn't couples therapy. Since
Mark had mentioned that House was a problem to the therapist before, the
therapist should have barred House outright from joining the group
because of the potential conflict. Even if Mark hadn't brought up the
subject before, doesn't it cross some sort of professional line for a
doctor and his patient to be in the same group therapy session? Even if
it's not unethical, shouldn't the therapist have refused to allow it as
a simply bad idea?
CAMERON: House has a handicap. All he's aiming for is
normality.
Not the word I'd use. Now that Cameron's seen House demonstrate how to
get away with being a jerk by playing the cripple card, I'm surprised
she's comfortable with the word either.
HOUSE: He's artificially raising his red blood count, so why
isn't it raised?
I'm not a doctor, but once House phrased it like this, it seemed strange
to me that none of the characters had pointed this out before. Given
that "Everybody lies" and the fact that the test results didn't jibe
with Forster's claims, shouldn't their first suspicion have been that he
was lying or somehow mistaken about the efficacy of his blood doping?
On Cuddy's screen:
The Medical Professional's ??? ??? Network
DOCMIXER.COM
Maxwell Abatte
Speaking of House usually being depicted as right about other people,
apparently they're writing his earlier comment about "JDate not working
out" as not too far off the mark. (Cuddy doesn't meet enough guys at
fundraisers, conferences, symposia, and the like?)
The date on the check that Moira wrote was "11/15 2005". And yet it was
still the middle of June last episode. The amount of the check was
harder to make out. It might have been $50,000.00.
I didn't have any trouble at all buying that the old Cuddy would give
preferential treatment to someone who had just made a large donation,
but it didn't fit so well with the new Cuddy who is supposed to be a
good administrator because she's racked with guilt over the unfairness
in the world.
HOUSE: [Stacy slaps his arm.] Well, on the up side, my hiccups
are gone.
STACY: You went to his group.
I'm not a fan of the slapping, nor of walking in on a patient, but Stacy
did have a point. In "Honeymoon," when she complained on the roof about
House screwing with Mark (a complaint that likewise took place after she
hit House, a disturbing facet of their dynamic), House explained (with
some practical justification borne out by results), "Medical screwing --
it's what I do." But there was no medical rationale at all for House
going to Mark's therapy session.
In fact, the really creepy thing about House interfering with Mark's
therapy was that I couldn't remember House ever previously deliberately
hampering his patient's treatment, except for diagnostic purposes. He
confessed to having conflicted feelings over wanting Mark to die, but
nevertheless did his best to save him in the end. (As Cameron would
say, you can't help how you feel, but you can help what you do about
it.) Here, though, House deliberately tried to mess up a patient's
treatment for the first time with no diagnostic or medical end in mind.
That seemed to me to contradict the fundamental premise of the
character: that patient care is always priority number one regardless of
his feelings about the patient. If it was supposed to be a brand-new
development in his character, Stacy should have called him on it, since
she's demonstrated a thorough knowledge of his M.O. in the past (and
continues to make selectively accurate predictions as to his M.O. in the
present, such as predicting his desire to conduct an illegal search
pertaining to her not long before he did exactly that).
This was the first time Wilson admitted to marital infidelity, but it
wasn't a surprise, since House couldn't have been wrong *all* those
times he rode Wilson about cheating.
HOUSE: Wilson's chatty. Plus he's got two ex-wives to support.
First time I could remember a reference to Wilson paying alimony.
Hmm. Foreman ate breakfast at the office once before that I could
remember, but Wilson hadn't before this episode.
HOUSE: She came into the clinic and yelled at me. Then she
left. She came back and yelled some more.
WILSON: Hm. Yelling. That might be a clue.
HOUSE: I know what the yelling means. It's the coming and
going I find interesting. It's not rational.
WILSON: Anger's not rational.
HOUSE: Some anger is. She could have pulled me aside, screamed
at me privately. Her beef is simple and well-founded.
She was out of control.
WILSON: You're having fun.
HOUSE: She's in my face. I need to know why.
WILSON: Professional reasons?
HOUSE: Why else?
WILSON: Do you really think this is going to end well? For anyone?
That's a bad sign. It's possible to hand-wave Stacy's lack of
acknowledgment that House impeded patient care and say it was just Stacy
being upset. However, Wilson wasn't distraught, but he evidently
understood what House was talking about when he said that Stacy was
angry (and out of control). Wilson didn't call House on his previously
un-House-like behavior. That's a strong indication that the writers are
unaware that this is new ground for House. They're not treating it as
an alarming new regression in his personality and professional behavior.
They seem to think it's always been there.
Very naturalistic reflections in Wilson's balcony door. I'd trade all
their set redesign and lighting tricks for better characterization.
Finally, Foreman refrained from betting money against House's medical
judgment, especially this late in the episode.
It was hardly out of the realm of possibility that Forster could have
done himself some serious damage by passing out and falling on the
floor. Despite the cheap laugh, it didn't seem like House to put a
patient at unnecessary risk like that for no diagnostic or medical
reason. He kept Mark's head from falling from a much shorter height in
"Honeymoon" despite having serious issues with the guy. (Now, if House
had warned Forster that the effects would wear off but Forster didn't
listen while House looked on with amusement, that would have been both
funny and believable.)
HOUSE: If we're going to work together, I need to know. Do you
hate me or do you love me? Either way, I think we've got
a problem.
STACY: I hate you, and I love you. And I love Mark.
HOUSE: And you don't hate him.
STACY: No.
Except for the part about Stacy being mad at House, which he gave her
ample reason for, they settled all this at the end of the first season.
Wilson told House that Stacy loved him but couldn't stand to be near him
in "Three Stories." Stacy confirmed it to House at the end of
"Honeymoon": "I'm not over you. [....] But I can't be with you."
Stacy TOLD House why she chose Mark and couldn't stay with House in that
episode. To which House ultimately said, "O.K." In "Spin," was it
supposed to be House that was ignoring what she had said (despite his
accepting it at the time)? Or were the writers the ones ignoring it?
Because I got a lot of the same feeling from this episode that I got
from "Acceptance": they went back over a lot of ground they had already
covered. "Acceptance" was a quick Cliff Notes version of the regular
characters for new viewers. "Spin" was a crash course in the House-
Stacy-Mark triangle, but with the end to "Honeymoon" omitted. Are the
writers going over old ground because they figured a lot of the current
audience hasn't watched the first season? Or because a lot of the
current writers haven't watched the first season? Because 1) I still
don't see the longing between House and Stacy that was there last
season, and 2) it's not Stacy who hasn't already come clean about her
feelings for House. It's House who has yet to declare his feelings for
Stacy in the present day.
CAMERON: He needs blood transfusions every two weeks. Which
means he can dope all he wants. He's got a doctor's
pass. It's medicinal. He got away with it.
Forster also mentioned amphetamines. Maybe transfusions and the oxygen
chamber can be legally prescribed by a doctor and maybe they wouldn't
count as cheating by whatever governing board oversees professional
cycling. But I doubt speed would be allowed.
From "Spin":
CAMERON: [To Wilson] I fell in love with my husband's best
friend. Near the end, I was at the hospital every day.
And Joe would come by after work.
From "Acceptance":
CAMERON: [To Wilson] My husband -- it w-- I met him just after
he was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. If I hadn't
married him -- he was alone.
Now it's "Wouldn't it be cool" if Cameron's husband wasn't alone after
all, and "Wouldn't it be cool" if Wilson didn't call her on it.
They're not even keeping track of what they've done this season.
If Cameron was in love with Joe, then why didn't she take up with Joe
after her husband died? It's till death do you part, not till you get a
crush on your boss eight years later.
WILSON: You can't control your emotions.
CAMERON: No. Just your actions.
Which was the best thing to come out of this episode, and it was sad
that they handed it to the character who's already been painted as
having an "insane moral compass."
I liked Leonard's performance in that scene and I didn't even hate
Morrison's, but I couldn't help but think that a fraudulent bicyclist
isn't a strong enough or conducive enough subject to prompt two people
who weren't even really friends before to suddenly do a mutual core dump
of their tortured romantic confessions. All this might have made more
organic sense as a B plot to an episode like "Fidelity," where they
wouldn't have had to make the tenuous leap from deceiving sports fans to
adultery.
I guess it's official. Cameron really is the feelings sheriff of PPTH.
House unloaded to her last episode, Wilson was spilling his guts to her
in this episode, and she unloads whenever she feels like it. Because
she's got such a great track record with relationships. Yeah, that
makes sense. I hope this wasn't the precursor to Cameron getting
involved with Wilson as her new damaged project to fix. And if they
weren't trying to build up a romantic subplot between Cameron and Wilson
(which seemed dubious given that they keep insisting she's hung up on
House and they made a point of her not being an adulterer), then I have
to wonder why they keep writing lots of personal dialogue for them.
The cover of Wilson's nighttime office reading matter:
1987
Bill James's
BASEBALL ABSTRACT
Could be nothing, could be little hints. Wilson could be coming into
the office early and going home late, or not going home at all.
I guess they haven't got infinite money, though, since I think that was
last week's emergency room entrance substituting for the psych. dept.
The song playing over the last few scenes (identified in the closed
captions as Solomon Burke's "None of Us Are Free") seemed to be about
raising the consciousness of the unoppressed peoples of the world
regarding those who are still oppressed. Maybe it's just me, but that
seemed like an awfully lofty sentiment to be playing over shots of some
privileged white Americans whose most pressing problem is their refusal
to get their own shit together. What foundation do I send a check to to
help upper-middle-class white people with bad romantic relationships?
I am capable of feeling sorry for lonely people, but a little
perspective wouldn't come amiss here. Did the world's supply of
unlucky-in-love songs dry up while I wasn't looking?
If I were a suspicious janitor, I'd follow Mr. I've-Been-Walking-All-
Day-without-My-Cane into the room 1) to help him look for his cane and
2) to cover my ass about any illicit activity Mr. Cripple might want to
conduct.
Inside Stacy's folder:
Psychiatric A[...]
[rest illegible]
Why wasn't Mark's folder filed right before Stacy's in the file cabinet?
I can remember House violating someone's privacy without a medical or
administrative pretext before. He looked at Cameron's medical records
("Fidelity") and Wilson's personnel records ("Histories"). But in those
cases he wasn't afraid to let the snoopee find out. I'm dubious that
will also apply here. Unless we're supposed to believe that House is
really over Stacy, then his invasion of her privacy did not come off as
insatiable academic curiosity about everyone around him, but as
seriously creepy stalker ex-boyfriend who needs to get hit with a
restraining order up-side his head.
Here's what I can't understand: Wilson told House there was no way his
current unhealthy interest in Stacy's marriage could end well. Stacy
herself asked House straight out in "Honeymoon" if the point of his
insistent prying was to get her to abandon her sick husband and fly down
to Rio with House, and House said no. If the only point of House
messing with Mark and prying into Stacy's private records was simply
that he felt he must satisfy his curiosity once and for all, then what
about Stacy's confession to him that she still loved him didn't he
believe? The part about her not being able to be with House anymore?
If so, then it's worth asking why he didn't believe her.
If, on the other hand, House is seriously interested in getting Stacy
back, why did that seem to be the last thing on his mind in the earlier
episodes this season? The only other motivation that was put out in the
open for us to look at was House's confession to Wilson in "Honeymoon"
that he didn't know whether part of him wished Mark would die because he
wanted Stacy back or because he wanted her to suffer. He seemed to have
resolved that one in favor of testing Mark against his wishes because
Stacy wanted it. So House's current obsession with Stacy despite no
acknowledgment that he wants her back just seems weird and a giant leap
backwards in the story.
Is the double meaning of "Spin" supposed to be that Cuddy was right: if
you reverse the pronouns, you see that House is projecting his own
feelings of frustration onto Stacy? He may be an ass, but he's usually
a very self-aware ass. He was right about Stacy seeking him out in this
episode, not the other way around. And they really had seemed to reach
a stable detente before this in "Humpty Dumpty." What changed?
Since we can't have both human-House and asshole-House in the same
episode anymore, we got asshole-House this week. He's awfully glib and
crude, but there just doesn't seem to be the substance behind him like
there used to be.
D Gent
Must procratinate tonite...
In article <dljgs8$ol9$1...@pcls4.std.com>,
Micky DuPree <MDu...@theworld.com.snip.to.reply> blurted:
The character is supossed to remind us of Lance Armstrong-- and I've
witnessed him being worshipped by 8 year-olds.
[snip]
>House went and talked to an A-plot patient right off the bat??? The
>only other times I could remember that happening were when he thought
>the kid in "Paternity" was being sexually abused, when he wanted to be a
>baseball fanboy in "Sports Medicine," and when Vogler threatened his
>department if he didn't "hold the senator's hair while he upchucked" in
>"Role Model." None of those conditions applied here. Usually House
>sends the fellows to test for lying first.
Come on! Cuddy baited him brilliantly so that *he* would want to find
out the lie!
[snip]
>One token Vicodin this episode.
Yes, and the Vicodin bottle is what got launched by the Rube
Goldberg "domino" contraption at the beginning, and several people
noodle him about drug addiction...
[snip]
> CAMERON: He's making millions of dollars ripping off fans.
>
>Why was Cameron toying with destroying her career over cheating in
>cycling but didn't sweat the issue of cheating in baseball one bit back
>in "Sports Medicine"? Little kids who are fans of cheating baseball
>players don't count? House's superiority and Cameron's urge to rat on
>Forster seemed a bit incongruent with their attitudes towards the
>cheating baseball player in "Sports Medicine." House was glad to cover
>for the baseball player if it would mean beating the Yankees, and
>Cameron didn't give a damn about the moral purity of the sport in that
>episode. I guess the American Cycling Association (or whatever) doesn't
>have the same rules regarding the automatic reporting by doctors of
>member cheating that major league baseball was said to have in "Sports
>Medicine," or Cameron would have had an ethical alternative to phoning
>the newspapers.
I'm in full agreement here-- I can't figure out what were supposed think
about Cameron most of the time, and this just adds to it. However, for
some reason, I don't find that frustrating, but fascinating, because real
people are actually just as inconsistent. It make me wonder if the
producers are good enough to do that.
[Stacy stuff]
I find I really just don't care anymore-- Oh, there's some good dialog
between House and her, and I like her, but I just start getting droopy
eyed when Greg talks to Wilson about it. It's all very realistic, and
real life I don't give a damn.
You know, it's actually pretty odd, but this is the first episode of
House where the dialog kept me quite entertained, but the story lines
just bored the hell outta me. And the ending just made me role my eyes.
meh. --dg
--
gent, david
moc.laimg _ta_ retstneg
David Johnston
MDu...@theworld.com.snip.to.reply (Micky DuPree) wrote:
>Spoilers for "Spin," 11/15/05.
>
>.
>.
>.
>.
>.
>.
>.
>.
>.
>.
>.
>.
>.
>.
>.
>.
>.
>.
>.
>
>
>House went and talked to an A-plot patient right off the bat??? The
>only other times I could remember that happening were when he thought
>the kid in "Paternity" was being sexually abused, when he wanted to be a
>baseball fanboy in "Sports Medicine," and when Vogler threatened his
>department if he didn't "hold the senator's hair while he upchucked" in
>"Role Model." None of those conditions applied here. Usually House
>sends the fellows to test for lying first.
Yes but this time House wanted to see for himself a professional
athlete who would admit to taking drugs.
>
>
>One token Vicodin this episode.
One swallow but he took two.
> CAMERON: He's making millions of dollars ripping off fans.
>
>Why was Cameron toying with destroying her career over cheating in
>cycling but didn't sweat the issue of cheating in baseball one bit back
>in "Sports Medicine"?
Ah but this guy was totally unapologetic about what he was doing. No
guilt at all. That meant she couldn't feel sorry for him and she only
has two modes, overly sympathetic and judgemental.
>
>It couldn't have had anything to do with House's inattention to
>paperwork threatening to make a lot of unnecessary work for Stacy,
>prompting a preemptive strike on her part? Even when House is morally
>in the wrong, they almost always portray his analyses of others' motives
>as being accurate.
I get the impression that this an exception to the rule. House isn't
objective and it's screwing up his ability to assess reality.
> STACY: It's like watching Oscar Wilde and Noel Coward in the
> third grade.
>
>Exactly what I was thinking, except not as generous or literary. I can
>understand Mark still being mad at House for his cavalier and unethical
>medical testing in "Honeymoon," but this somewhat cruder version of
>their first meeting seemed like a pointless rehash. I also seem to
>remember that not all the jokes were off-color and grammar-schoolish
>last season. There used to be some genuine wit along with the
>adolescent remarks. I miss that.
I thought Stacy was being rather witty.
>Nothing about the group therapy session rang true to me. In the first
>place, mixing permanently disabled patients with temporarily disabled
>patients seemed like mixing apples and oranges.
Damn skippy.
They're not facing
>similar life adjustments. Second, this wasn't couples therapy. Since
>Mark had mentioned that House was a problem to the therapist before, the
>therapist should have barred House outright from joining the group
>because of the potential conflict. Even if Mark hadn't brought up the
>subject before, doesn't it cross some sort of professional line for a
>doctor and his patient to be in the same group therapy session?
That would be an issue if House was Mark's doctor. But he ain't. As a
diagnostician, even though he routinely oversteps his bounds, he is
"merely" a consultant. And House has done all the consulting on
Mark's case that he's going to do. His therapeutic relationship with
Mark, such as it was, is over as of a few months ago.
Even if
>it's not unethical, shouldn't the therapist have refused to allow it as
>a simply bad idea?
Yes.
>
>I didn't have any trouble at all buying that the old Cuddy would give
>preferential treatment to someone who had just made a large donation,
>but it didn't fit so well with the new Cuddy who is supposed to be a
>good administrator because she's racked with guilt over the unfairness
>in the world.
I'm certain she feels guilty about this too. But hey, fifty grand for
radiology. Feeling guilty doesn't actually _stop_ her. It just makes
her feel guilty.
Micky DuPree
In article <eKudnQtAg6J...@comcast.com>, D Gent
<urg...@invalid.invalid> writes:
: Must procratinate tonite...
Was this a trap for the unwary? If someone nitpicked your spelling,
you'd reply, "I just haven't gotten around to fixing it yet"? :)
Spoilers for "Spin," 11/15/05.
.
.
.
: In article <dljgs8$ol9$1...@pcls4.std.com>, Micky DuPree
: <MDu...@theworld.com.snip.to.reply> blurted:
:: [...] so I guess they were just establishing, despite my skepticism,
:: that American kids do indeed worship cyclists as would later be
:: claimed.
:
: The character is supossed to remind us of Lance Armstrong-- and I've
: witnessed him being worshipped by 8 year-olds.
I had to ask someone who Lance Armstrong was, so maybe the kids in the
prologue were put there precisely for people like me. Since they took
the trouble to show me, I accepted that in their world, kids worshipped
professional cyclists, Forster in particular, so Cameron wasn't just
making empty arguments about defrauding the unsuspecting innocent.
:: House went and talked to an A-plot patient right off the bat???
: Come on! Cuddy baited him brilliantly so that *he* would want to find
: out the lie!
Nope, I still don't buy it, and since House went into Forster's room
confident Forster wasn't admitting to something (despite what Cuddy had
said), House shouldn't have bought it either. The old House had to have
every one of his "horse" objections shot down by the doctor presenting
the case before he would consider the case a worthy "zebra." (Since
he's already proclaimed Cuddy to be a "crappy doctor," I doubt he'd
consider her immune to clever deception.) Then the team had to come up
against a brick wall before he'd intervene with the patient directly.
In the old days, House would have sent in the team with the cynical
instruction that if Forster was willing to confess to some illegal
activity, that must mean he was doing it to divert attention away from
some other activity that he was *really* desperate to keep hidden.
(Getting each new confession out of the baseball player was like pulling
teeth. When he got scared, he did confess to the steroid use, but since
it was in the past, he knew his wife would forgive him. He still didn't
come clean about his more recent pot use -- which was post-recovery and
which his wife thought he had stopped -- until the team figured it out,
though.) If the team uncovered Forster's presumed dark secret (in this
case, House suspected EPO use), that would allow House to be superior
with Cuddy about having been right about the case not needing his
attention after all without his having come to heel on her command.
House wouldn't swoop in for a confrontation with Forster until and
unless the team had failed to uncover the presumed dark secret. House's
anticipated success where everyone else had failed would still allow him
to be snide with Cuddy about having been right all along about there
being a dark secret, while at the same time hopefully distracting Cuddy
from gloating over the fact that she was right all along about it being
a case that required his rarefied attention.
: Yes, and the Vicodin bottle is what got launched by the Rube Goldberg
: "domino" contraption at the beginning, and several people noodle him
: about drug addiction...
Playing with his meds is neither here nor there. They've *said* House
is an addict at several points this season, starting with Cuddy to his
face in the first act of "Acceptance" (which he was surprisingly blase'
about tacitly confirming, considering that at no previous point did we
ever see House admit addiction to anyone except Wilson). But the actual
taking of the meds is down from last year. Perhaps someone noticed that
it seemed like he was taking pills at strategic points of psychological
stress and decided that was sending a bad message.
:: Why was Cameron toying with destroying her career over cheating in
:: cycling but didn't sweat the issue of cheating in baseball one bit
:: back in "Sports Medicine"?
: I'm in full agreement here-- I can't figure out what were supposed
: think about Cameron most of the time, and this just adds to it.
: However, for some reason, I don't find that frustrating, but
: fascinating, because real people are actually just as inconsistent.
: It make me wonder if the producers are good enough to do that.
Once upon a time I would have said they were that good, but not anymore.
If that were the way they were going, they would have had at least one
other character point out the inconsistency to Cameron. It probably
would have been Chase since he was needling her. He was trying to point
out inconsistencies between the way she treated Forster and the way she
treated House, but the way she treated the baseball player would have
made for a much better comparison between similar situations. Wilson
could have pointed it out when he was anxious to try to talk her down
from throwing her career away, and it would have made for a better
comparison than marital infidelity. It could even have been Foreman,
since he also compared her attitude towards Forster breaking competition
rules to her attitude towards House breaking medical and legal rules.
Why not compare apples with apples instead? There are ways to write it
so that House could have been the one to challenge her with her earlier
disregard out of concern for losing a protegee, or Cuddy could have done
it out of concern for the hospital being connected with a high-profile
unethical leak. They were all there for the case of the baseball player
and they all know that Cameron didn't sic the baseball commission on
him. Chase and Foreman know that it didn't even show up on her radar.
We actually expect fiction to be a bit more consistent than real life,
if only to save time in getting to the point. A fictitious character
can be mercurial, inconsistent, and unpredictable just like people in
real life, but when the characters that know her best don't notice that
she's done anything strange (even though they'd have incentive to both
notice and remark on it), that's when my suspicion shifts from the
character to the writers.
: [Stacy stuff]
:
: I find I really just don't care anymore-- Oh, there's some good dialog
: between House and her, and I like her, but I just start getting droopy
: eyed when Greg talks to Wilson about it. It's all very realistic, and
: real life I don't give a damn.
You liked the presumed realism of Cameron's inconsistency, but not the
realism of House having problems with his ex-?
: You know, it's actually pretty odd, but this is the first episode of
: House where the dialog kept me quite entertained, but the story lines
: just bored the hell outta me.
Inconsistency doesn't generally bore me. It often annoys me or nags at
me, but it has to be the exact same inconsistency over and over again
before it bores me. Pardon me while I think out loud.
Something's not working -- as House would say, "Something's missing" --
and I can't nail down what it is yet. Either the character of House is
doing something wrong, the creators of _House_ are doing something
wrong, or I'm reading it wrong.
Hypothesis 1: The character of House is being intentionally written as
going off the rails. His inability to have Stacy, the love of his life,
is deranging his better judgment.
Contra: My biggest problem with this hypothesis is that House seemed
more affected by Stacy last season than he has seemed this season. He
really was temporarily thrown off his game when she first showed up.
When he refused to take Mark's case he admitted that it was solely out
of personal ill will, and yet he prides himself on not letting his
feelings for the patient affect his professional judgment or conduct.
But his self-discipline reasserted itself and he took the case. When
Mark gave him an out by refusing the final test, House leapt on it, but
Stacy pointed out that if it were any other patient, House would still
be going at the patient by hook or by crook. Given what we've seen, she
was right, and House eventually came around again.
This season, House has seemed to be coping with Stacy better than he did
last season. I could have sworn that he accepted her pronouncement in
"Honeymoon" about still loving him, but being unable to be with him. He
hasn't made a move on her, he hasn't gotten all wistful and longing
around her, and he hasn't sought out her company even on innocent
pretexts.
So is House supposed to be misinterpreting Stacy's recent approaches as
fresh encouragement and that's all it takes to make him a little crazy?
Maybe it would make normal people a little crazy, but in the past, House
hasn't been normal. Personally, I wouldn't particularly want him to be
normal. Normal is boring.
Hypothesis 2: The character of House is being intentionally written as
knowing what he's doing. He read Stacy correctly in "Honeymoon" as not
being over him even though he was a little off balance by her presence.
So when he told Wilson that she was being "pissy" in "Spin" and that it
meant she was frustrated because Mark wasn't House, he was right on the
money.
Hypothesis 2A: House wants to use Stacy's frustration to win her back,
in which case reading her therapy file would be designed to give him
ammunition and knowledge of her vulnerable points.
Contra: See contra above. House has seemed to me to want Stacy less
this season than he did last season.
Also, the clues that House used to deduce that Stacy was frustrated
weren't very convincing. Stacy's first approach to him seemed like a
reasonable way to treat someone who has a careless attitude towards
paperwork that's necessary to keep the hospital out of hot water. (In
fact, if anyone seemed "pissy" about this lone visit with valid
administrative requests, it was House.) Her second approach, while not
reasonable, was predictable based on her behavior in "Honeymoon," so I
don't see how even House could reliably separate Stacy's protectiveness
of her husband from the "pissiness" he was diagnosing.
Contra-contra: House is usually defined as reading other people
accurately (even when we in the audience make what would be reasonable
alternative readings in the real world). The only times when I can
remember him being way off base were times when he was using cynicism as
his default interpretative lens, which wouldn't apply here.
Hypothesis 2B: House wants to drive Stacy away from him for her own
good and the good of the primary relationship in her life, a la Luke at
the end of "The Socratic Method."
Contra: See contra above. We would have to take House's word for it
that he knows what he's doing, despite the fact that if he doesn't know
what he's doing, then he's the least reliable witness to that fact.
Also, acting the part of the obsessed stalker ex- seems like an
unnecessarily Rube Goldberg-ish way to go about driving Stacy away. Why
not just tell her it was nice while it lasted, but he no longer feels
the same way about her (even if it's not true)? That would close the
door to the possibility of House ever taking her back, and without
1) tainting her memories of the time she spent with the great love of
her life or 2) risking his career and what would probably be a pretty
serious felony charge of reading her confidential records.
Contra-contra: See contra-contra above. Despite any real-world doubts
we may have, it's usually a given that House reads people accurately.
They can angle the medical plots to back up his professional judgment,
but the evidence to back up his judgment of people is more tenuous. The
writers might actually like that in this case, though, since it would
make stalker-House into a plausible red herring (well, as plausible as
anything else).
Also, House might be using the view of female attachment that Foreman
shared with him in "Love Hurts": the nicer the man is about rejecting
the woman, the more the woman blames herself and falls for him even
more. Ergo the kind thing is to use reverse psychology and be a jerk.
This hypothesis would have the added bonus of explaining why House
appeared to impede Mark's therapy: like the "medical screwing" he did in
"Honeymoon," House screwed with Mark this time to diagnose whether there
was a problem in his marriage. If House succeeded in strengthening that
marriage by driving Stacy away from him and towards her husband, that
would be far better therapy for Mark than talking to a bunch of
strangers. (It doesn't explain House being willing to let the A-patient
sustain a head injury from fainting, but I can compartmentalize that as
a separate complaint.)
Contra-contra-contra: I've never seen Stacy accept any blame or guilt
for either House's leg or the breakup of their relationship. House
claimed she had guilt over the leg in "Humpty Dumpty," but he might have
been just trying to embarrass her in front of Cuddy. Plus, Stacy
already knew he was a jerk when she fell for him, and yet she lived with
him for five years anyway. As House touched on to Mark, why would House
being a bigger jerk necessarily stop her from wanting him?
Contra x 4: Stacy's guilt, like Cuddy's guilt in the same episode, might
be a "Wouldn't it be cool" latter-day development. Bleh. And since
House is supposed to be that good and then some at reading people, they
could just write him as already knowing exactly where Stacy draws the
line between jerkiness she tolerates and jerkiness she doesn't.
Hypothesis 3: House is being unintentionally written as going off the
rails. The writers don't see much wrong in what he's doing. They see
no difference between committing a felony to save a life and committing
a felony to manipulate your ex- into taking you back.
Contra: Well, the writers *used* to know the difference. That's the
problem with getting sloppy. It makes it hard to distinguish between
the character screwing up and the writers screwing up.
Hypothesis 4: House is being unintentionally written as knowing what
he's doing.
Contra: Nah. I can't make this one work even to get it started.
-Micky