HOUSE, M.D.: 32. "Failure to Communicate"
Micky DuPree
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Let's see, a failure to communicate between Greg and Stacy, Stacy and
Mark, patient and his wife, patient and his doctors, House and his
fellows, fellows and fellows, fellows and Cuddy, Cuddy and House ... did
I hit the high points? And while I'm at it, House really ought to have
call waiting.
As usual, I was impressed by the guest cast. What fun it must have been
to get one real speech at the beginning and then gibberish that you had
to emote your way through for the rest of the episode. The guy who
played Fletch did a great job.
Elapsed time numbers refer to a videotape copy with the commercials left
in.
PROLOGUE
Banner:
Happy Retirement Greta! End of an Era!
Sheesh. Greta didn't look much older than Fletch.
ACT I
6:11
Aerial footage of PPTH with snow on the ground. I guess the money's
going on the screen.
CUDDY: What's the best diagnostics department within sixty
miles of here?
FOREMAN: We are.
CUDDY: "We" aren't here. House is in Baltimore lying to
Medicaid about his billings.
FOREMAN: So? I'm board certified.
In diagnostics??? Wouldn't Foreman have to finish his fellowship first?
CUDDY: You are not House.
FOREMAN: Why'd you put me in charge of the department if you
think I can't handle it?
CUDDY: Because it's temporary, and because I was ordered to.
Cuddy couldn't have sat Foreman down and explained that to him at the
time of the appointment, rather than setting him up for a fall that he
did nothing to deserve? The character who has demonstrated atrocious
leadership skills has been Cuddy, not Foreman. I would have expected
that kind of pit-everyone-against-everyone maneuver from Vogler, not
from Cuddy.
FOREMAN: What are the symptoms?
CUDDY: Oh, come on. You're going to diagnose him without
meeting him? Prove that you're as brilliant as House?
FOREMAN: I need to know the symptoms to know which hospital to
recommend.
Geez Louise, what did Foreman ever do to Cuddy to deserve being cut down
like this? She made it sound like she decided on the temporary
appointment as a punishment for Foreman rather than for House. She put
Foreman in this position. The least she could do is back him up some.
There hasn't been a lot of evidence of Cuddy's supposed brilliance as a
hospital administrator this season, apart from it being shoved down our
throats by fiat that she was the first woman ever to be so appointed and
the second youngest. This used to be a great character. Now if I try
to take Cuddy seriously, I can't help but feel that whoever put her in
charge made a dreadful mistake.
FOREMAN: [To Cuddy] Taylor's pretty good. House was ready to
hire him, till he got my resume.
Except that doctors have CVs. Only the riffraff have resumes.
CUDDY: [To Foreman] God. House is easier.
On which planet?
The fifth time House has worn a tie onscreen.
FOREMAN: Somebody's got to be in charge.
CAMERON: Why?
FOREMAN: W-You think we should all just do whatever we want to
do? Maybe have a race to the diagnosis.
CAMERON: I think it should be a discussion among peers. I think
we're grown up enough to reach a consensus.
The fellows aren't green interns. They've all done residencies. They
all should have known better. You can discuss things as democratically
as you like in the office. The more good ideas the better, and House
himself has encouraged that. He's even encouraged spirited disagreement
when different people all believe they're right. But when it's time to
make a decision, there needs to be one person taking responsibility.
Medical treatment shouldn't be subject to the whipsawing of putting
everything up for a vote.
FOSTER: Patient, sixty-two years old. You prescribed Viagra. I
looked in vain for the words 'erectile dysfunction' in
the notes for Delores Smith?
HOUSE: She had a heart condition.
FOSTER: And you ran out of nitroglycerin?
HOUSE: She also had low blood pressure, so nitro would be
dangerous. Little blue pills improve blood flow.
They're vasodilators. That's why you sometimes get the
headaches.
What did I miss here? Nitroglycerin is also a vasodilator. It opens up
blood vessels, which lowers blood pressure, which reduces the work load
on the heart, and also opens up the blood vessels feeding the heart,
which is a win-win unless you have clinically low blood pressure to
begin with. Why wouldn't a heart patient with low blood pressure have
the same problems with Viagra that she'd have with nitro?
STACY: I think Doctor House understands.
HOUSE: Oh, 'course I do. If a woman has a heart condition,
she's on her own. If a man can't nail his office
assistant, it's national crisis time.
Cynical. :) But there's more than a grain of truth in it.
FOSTER: Are you seriously expecting us to foot the bill for off-
label use of medication?
HOUSE: Fine. I'll pay for it. How much are the pills? She
took how many? [Takes out his wallet.]
STACY: [Slaps House's arm.] Put the money away.
I wish Stacy would stop hitting House. It's uncivilized.
FOSTER: Are you trying to bribe me?
HOUSE: No! I could. There's an ATM in the lobby.
I guess House didn't lose too much at OTB that week.
STACY: My client's an idiot. But is he wrong about the pills?
FOSTER: Off-label use is not sanctioned.
STACY: You're retiring in three weeks. You've been doing this
job nearly twenty years. Aren't you tired of
administering policy you disagree with?
FOSTER: I-I never said I disagreed with --
STACY: What can they do to you?
Foster looked like he had been doing the job longer than twenty years.
Plus, I think he had a picture of LBJ behind his desk.
I was disappointed that House didn't pull his tie off the instant he was
free of the meeting.
HOUSE: You do background checks on Medicaid personnel?
STACY: I do what's necessary for my client.
Stacy and House have a lot in common in re their respect for the law.
It's a little scarier in a lawyer, though. She's not supposed to
encourage others to break the law.
STACY: Wow, new personal record.
HOUSE: Yeah, timing's good for me too. Got a reservation at a
little place in the Inner Harbor.
STACY: You booked us dinner reservation?
HOUSE: Best Maryland crab in ... Maryland.
STACY: Don't you have a plane to catch?
HOUSE: Not for hours.
STACY: Your flight leaves at seven.
HOUSE: You did a background check on me?
STACY: And mine doesn't leave till nine p.m. Looks like you'll
be dining alone.
So Stacy's flight was irrelevant to whether or not House would be dining
alone. She was declining his implied invitation. Why didn't she just
say so? I understand that the writers had to reveal that Stacy was
avoiding House, but this device would have worked better if it had been
Stacy who was confident in her ability to get done quickly, and thus had
booked the earlier flight to avoid House, while House had booked a later
flight hoping to have time for dinner.
FOREMAN: [To Fletch] This will show us if there's a problem
with your carotid artery that might cause a blood clot.
If it went to his brain, it could explain the aphasia
and the falling down.
If the hypothetical clot had already gotten to Fletch's brain, would a
sonogram of his carotid necessarily show anything now?
FOREMAN: [To Cameron & Chase] We need to intubate. He's losing
his respiratory drive.
It was so contrived for all three of the fellows to be reaching for the
intubation kit at the same time. Those three handled a crashing patient
with no problem at all in the pilot the very first time they worked a
case together. Just more artificial stupidity.
ACT II
18:04
CHASE: Urine test is positive for amphetamines.
FOREMAN: Amphetamines don't cause pulmonary edema.
CHASE: They do if you smoke 'em.
FOREMAN: In one of his books, he talked about giving up drugs
and alcohol, how it changed his life.
CHASE: Everybody lies. [Throws ball from hand to hand.]
Oh sure, you guys remembered to taunt one another with House's Law in
*this* episode. Why couldn't you have remembered it when House was
forgetting it last episode? Chase playing with the overgrown tennis
ball was a nice touch, though.
Wilson is the sympathetic philandering ear that chats up women. I think
we got that message now. The coffee shop scene didn't really advance
that subplot much further than did his having lunch with the oncology
nurse having a tough time in "Fidelity," though, except to visually
demonstrate that he does get them alone somewhere. Is the payoff going
to be near the end of the season? Is Wilson going to end up sleeping on
House's sofa?
HOUSE: [Into phone] Hey honey. How are the kids? They miss
me?
WILSON: [To Mary Jean] This may take a minute.
HOUSE: So what's new with Mister Aphasia?
WILSON: [Into phone] Cuddy called you?
HOUSE: Everybody covers their ass.
So 1) why wasn't House calling Cuddy to check up on the kids and
reassure her, and 2) how was it that Wilson was apprised of all the
details of what was going on in the Diagnostics Dept. even though Wilson
wasn't present for any of it, House wasn't there to tell him, and the
"kids" were surprised that House was up to speed when he called them?
HOUSE: O.K., I gotta hang up. They're probably trying to reach
me.
WILSON: You don't have call waiting?
HOUSE: I'm hanging up on you now.
WILSON: It's five dollars a month.
I was surprised House didn't have call waiting. There are times, like
when he has a patient in iffy condition (which usually describes the
zebras), when he definitely wants people to be able to contact him. If
there are exceptions, he can either turn the phone off or turn call
waiting off.
HOUSE: I teach you to lie, cheat, and steal, and as soon as my
back is turned, you wait in line?
Hey, when House gets caught lying, cheating, and stealing, Cuddy
absolves him and runs interference for him. If the fellows did it on
their own initiative and got caught, I wouldn't like their chances with
the backstabbing bitch that the writers have turned Cuddy into.
CAMERON: [To Foreman] So, you're in charge of us because you're
in charge of him?
So says Dr. I'm Above These Pissing Contests? Chase slapping Foreman on
the back was funny, though.
I liked Chase playing 20 Questions with Fletch, trying to get his
medical history with yes-or-no answers, but couldn't Fletch use hand
signals to put a little English on his English? Surely aphasia doesn't
necessarily mean you can't play charades.
CHASE: You've been out of the country in the last five
years?
FLETCH: Yes.
CHASE: Three years?
FLETCH: Yes.
CHASE: Two years? [Fletch shakes his head.]
ELIZABETH: He stopped traveling for work two years ago after we
got serious.
CAMERON: Any vacations?
ELIZABETH: His last one was six months ago. Uh, it was a golf
resort near Key Biscayne.
GRETA: No way it was a golf resort. Knowing Fletch, I
assume he was working his way through every bar in
the Keys. Last hurrah before settling down.
Nice use of concatenated scenes to continue the same basic conversation,
but from different points of view.
ELIZABETH: He doesn't use drugs. I told you. When we got
engaged, we decided we wanted a different kind of
life. And he dropped the macho journalism. No more
taking crazy chances. That includes his health.
Some people manage to leave the substance abuse behind, but that doesn't
necessarily mean that they want to leave all the other thrill-seeking
behind.
Geez, if the Weather Channel predicted snow, I would have thought it a
lot less trouble to take the train for such a short trip down the
northeast corridor.
I almost thought that they had found a little unused corner of LAX to
film the airport scenes at, but the configuration and the "snow" outside
argued for a set. Nice set.
ACT III
28:56
HOUSE: [To Stacy] When people give themselves away, it's by
little things. That woman over there. She's not sneering
at her coffee. She's recovering from Bell's palsy. And
the cashier at the coffee place, she doesn't want anyone to
know that she's dying of ALS. There's a particular sort of
twitchy stiff arm that's characteristic. And then there's
you. Why aren't you wearing your cross?
I liked this trick a lot better when House was *usually* right *most* of
the time, like when he guessed that the litigious clinic patient with a
leg abscess tried to lance it with a steak knife, only to learn that he
had used a nail file instead. Geez, that's not close enough anymore?
In this episode, House was predicting what everyone in both Baltimore
and Princeton was hiding and doing (except the patient until the very
end). Nowadays they portray House as practically omniscient except on
those occasions when they make him unconvincingly stupid enough to keep
from making the right A-plot diagnosis too soon in the hour.
Visual continuity glitch:
Stacy's magically teleporting pen was very distracting in the scene
where House was trying to impress her with his powers of observation.
The custodian at Fletcher's office didn't even blink at two guys
ransacking a cubicle, and neither Foreman nor Chase was disturbed by the
fact that they were witnessed being where they weren't supposed to be.
Is "Don't worry, officer, we're doctors" supposed to bail them out if
they get caught?
FOREMAN: Caffeine pills and amphetamines. Same stuff he told us
he was taking.
CHASE: And Topamax.
FOREMAN: An anticonvulsant? He said there was no history of
prior seizures.
CHASE: It's not even prescribed to him.
FOREMAN: Still doesn't explain his fever. He's probably just
using it for weight loss.
CHASE: Just gives us another lie.
I'm just a lowly layman here, but my first thought upon hearing that
someone's hiding something and that they've been taking an
anticonvulsant is that they're hiding *seizures*, not that they're
trying to lose weight (nor even that they're hiding bipolar disorder).
Why all of them (including House) would assume that Fletch wasn't lying
about having seizures but that he was lying about something as yet to be
discovered was really weird to me. Surely one EEG while Fletch wasn't
seizing wouldn't definitively exclude a seizure disorder? Why couldn't
he have just been trying to keep epilepsy off the books because he was
afraid of the stigma? We saw it once before in "Role Model." I realize
that seizures alone couldn't have explained all the symptoms, but this
season has been full of dual-diagnosis patients (as indeed, this one
turned out to be). Why not one more?
And given that I have heard of someone being prescribed Tegretol
(another anticonvulsant) on-label for bipolar disorder, this lowly
layman had to wonder why, upon learning about the Topamax, the highly
trained doctors, including the great House himself, couldn't have made a
few more differential guesses besides just "weight loss."
FOREMAN: [Lifts back a tarp.] Looks like this stuff's been
sitting here for weeks.
How can you tell day-old sawdust from weeks-old sawdust? If anything,
it's the new sawdust that's less likely to have been cleaned up. And
the tarp itself looked clean, so no external dust had settled on it.
CHASE: What happened to the Foreman who always has an answer?
The guy who practically wears a sign saying, "I'm as
good as House, but I'm nicer."
FOREMAN: I never said that.
CHASE: I guess it's safe to be confident when House is there
to overrule you. Now that it's all on you?
FOREMAN: It's different, yeah.
Yeah, but it's also pretty obvious. The fellows would have found out
that responsibility looks different once you have it when they went from
being interns to residents. And Cuddy and House both made it clear that
it's not all on Foreman. They don't let him have any real power at all,
so he's got nominal responsibility and nothing really to back it up
with. House never agreed to the arrangement, so we might expect him to
pout, but Cuddy ought to be able to appreciate just how untenable a
position she's put Foreman in.
Why has everyone acted like the whole Foreman-in-charge bit was
Foreman's idea? If it was supposed to be a sham, why did Cuddy not make
that clear to everyone at the outset? Why did Cuddy tell Foreman that
if there was a screwup, it would be his screwup, not House's, and then
give Foreman less than zero support to go with that? Why did Cuddy
dangle the possibility of making the appointment permanent in front of
him, only to say, "Psyche!" and jerk it away? This plot twist has been
really really bad fanfic, making every character they've written as
engaging with it look stupid and petty, and the higher up the actual
power hierarchy the character is (worst offenders: Cuddy, followed by
House), the more stupid and immature they've looked doing so. Examined
on its own merits, I don't think Foreman's performance has been too bad
given how much he was undercut from above and below, but the writers
obviously want us to think he's been some kind of power-mad fuck-up.
On the cover of House's paperback:
Classic
LESBIAN
PRISON
STORIES
Funny, but I'm surprised House didn't travel with his Game Boy.
HOUSE: It's an anomaly. Anomalies bug me.
Sing it, brother.
STACY: He's pushing me out of his life.
HOUSE: Maybe you're misinterpreting.
STACY: Did I misinterpret with you? At least this time I
recognize it. That's the benefit of convincing the only
two men you've ever loved they're better off without you.
HOUSE: Yeah, it's all your fault. You know, 'Stacy' in the
original Greek means "relationship killer."
All right in ironic context, but Stacy's Indian name was funnier.
The return of the Greg-&-Stacy piano theme, a great, sad, simple piece
of music.
WILSON: Do you know your phone's dead? Do you ever recharge
your batteries?
HOUSE: They recharge? I just keep buying new phones.
I was surprised that Wilson didn't give House any grief over the fact
that House could be immediately reached via Stacy's phone hours after
they should have parted ways. In a rare display of inter-seasonal
authorial consistency, Wilson has previously given House grief on that
subject ever since Stacy returned (and once even chided Stacy for
showing a little too much interest in House). Why stop now?
WILSON: I thought you should know your aphasia guy's tasting
metal.
HOUSE: Where's his creatinine?
WILSON: Six point eight. He's got kidney failure. Cameron's
got him on dialysis and he's stable, for the moment.
Unlike Cuddy, who's suicidal.
I would say they'd be better off just dumping the character of Cuddy at
this point, except they'd probably write the replacement character to be
just as incapable of keeping a cool head in a crisis.
HOUSE: Either you've decided to do a lumbar puncture, or else
you have to fire me so I can't fire all of you as soon as
I get back in charge.
Yeah, that sounds like someone Foreman can productively supervise.
FOREMAN: [To Elizabeth] If your husband continues to decline ...
CHASE: [To Fletch] ... you'll die. If there's anything you
haven't told us ... [Fletch looks at Elizabeth and
shakes his head.]
This might not have been a bad plot if this supposedly elusive piece of
information hadn't been so achingly obvious almost from the beginning.
If you're going to distrust people out of hand, then you separate them
to question them, because they may tell you different stories. Why?
Because if they're lying to you, then they may have lied to each other
as well. From the first act of this episode, I was muttering, "Get the
wife out of the room." Then they found the amphetamine use, the first
evidence that Fletch was hiding something from his wife. "Get the wife
out of the room." Before the MRI, Fletch was so good at imploring Chase
not to tell his wife about something, that Chase actually understood the
gist of it in spite of the gibberish. "Get the wife out of the room."
Fletch was looking resignedly at his wife and then telling them, no, he
had nothing more to add. "Get the wife out of the room." They've even
run into similar situations before. In "Sports Medicine," the former
addict who lapsed in his recovery was anxious that his wife not know.
In "Cursed," Chase was smart enough to get the boy away from his parents
in order to get a more reliable answer to the question of sexual
activity. In "Babies & Bathwater," House told the husband to leave the
room so that he could get the pregnant woman to tell him the truth. In
"Daddy's Boy," the son held back information that he didn't want his
father to hear.
The genius House would later reveal that he was smart enough to use a
"classic interrogation technique" on Fletch, essentially manipulating
the fellows into playing bad-cop/good-cop on him, but it took all of
them 50 minutes out of the hour to figure out the even more basic
interrogation technique, "Question the witnesses separately." This was
the second A plot in a row that could be made to work only via the
characters developing inexplicable blind spots long enough to allow a
plot complication to do its dirty work.
STACY: Where's your knapsack?
HOUSE: Checked it through.
STACY: Oh, that's right, I forgot. It's hard for you to carry
and walk.
House has never shown any difficulty with bags that have straps in the
past. In fact, armed with a knapsack, House can negotiate most
unexpected articles of reasonable size that he might want to take with
him along the way. Without his knapsack, his options for moving items
around are hamstrung by the cane and the desire to have a hand free. If
an item won't fit in his pocket, he'll have to leave it behind or else
put it down to open doors, etc. Checking his knapsack through made no
sense to me except as a plot device. They should have made it a
briefcase with no shoulder strap if they needed something that House
would want to check.
STACY: I booked a room at the airport hotel when I saw how bad
the weather was. It's the last one available. [Off his
look.] Your leg can't handle a night on a cot.
That line would have been more convincing if House had taken a Vicodin
pill up through this point or seemed the slightest bit in pain. (Also
if he didn't end up spending most of the night sitting on the floor
anyway.)
HOUSE: Thanks.
STACY: I'm ready.
HOUSE: Right.
STACY: Hotel's upstairs.
HOUSE: Does Mark know about this?
STACY: Mark knows when things are bad, I always like to have an
escape route planned.
That was a definition of "for better or for worse" with which I was
unfamiliar. This line would have had greater double entendre force if
the audience didn't already know full well that there haven't been any
plans in the real world to make Stacy a regular character in the show.
I suppose there's no way around that, but that also means that there's
just some wool you can't pull over the audience's eyes.
I've never seen a public airport terminal where the airport hotel was
right upstairs. But I can't claim to have visited every single airport.
ACT IV
43:01
HOUSE: I have to know what's going on here. 'Cause when you
have a fight with Mark and you try to avoid me, I have to
think that --
STACY: -- that I'm feeling vulnerable and I don't want to be
around you because it might lead to something.
HOUSE: Right. But then a hotel room ...
STACY: ... might also lead to something.
HOUSE: Hmm. So, which is it?
STACY: Our relationship's like an addiction. It's ... like ...
HOUSE: ... really good drugs?
STACY: No, it's like vindaloo curry.
HOUSE: O.K., sure.
STACY: Really, really hot Indian curry they make with red chili
peppers.
HOUSE: I know what it is. Didn't think it was addictive.
STACY: You're abrasive and annoying and you come on way too
strong, like ... vindaloo curry, and when you're crazy
about curry, that's fine, but no matter how much you love
curry, you have too much of it, it takes the roof of your
mouth off, and then you never want to see curry for a
really, really long time, but you wake up one day and you
think ... "God, I really miss curry." [House touches her
chin.] You're a jerk.
HOUSE: I know. [Tosses his cane. Kisses her.] If you hadn't
just had a fight with Mark ...
STACY: For once in your life, will you shut up? [Kisses him.]
The B plot was beautifully, even touchingly played, but I still think
the writing for the whole House/Stacy plot line has been a mess this
season. I could buy them writing House as making almost any decision as
to what he wanted from Stacy and what he was going to do about it -- win
her back, push her away to save her marriage, whichever -- except for
not deciding. Unfortunately, not deciding is the best description I can
come up with to cover his all-over-the-map approach to her this season.
And to think I was looking forward to the continuation of that plot line
when the first season ended.
All or nothing would have been the way I'd expect first-season House to
go. Without ever withholding medical treatment on that basis, House has
always seemed to me to disapprove of marital infidelity. He even rides
his only friend about it, despite the second-season aphorism "Bro's
before ho's." Since House seemed to realize, even as Stacy didn't, that
she wasn't a relationship killer after all and that Mark wasn't thinking
straight right now, that seemed to leave only getting a little on the
side as an option for House, which, frankly, doesn't seem like him.
I was even a little surprised at Stacy. She was the one who had the
sense to nail the problem all the way back in "Honeymoon" before Greg "I
figure everything out first" House did. Even if it was an "escape
route" she was looking for, this was the worst way to go about escaping.
After all, it wasn't like House wasn't perennially available anyway.
Stacy had the option of waiting to see how things would turn out with
Mark, and if that were indeed to go sour, she could still divorce Mark
and try her luck with House again, only without the adultery part, which
could still hurt her chances with Mark in the present. I'll grant that
we had a lot less of her behavior last season to establish a pattern
than we had of House's. But it did seem like Stacy was letting the
Fates make up her mind for her, which, unless the writers have forgotten
she's an atheist, shouldn't have been in character for her. She was
doing her best to avoid House until finally, the flight was called on
account of weather. At that point, Stacy seemed to say, "I give up. It
was meant to be. Come on, Greg, there's no use fighting it anymore when
the gods conspire against us."
I guess I'm also disappointed that if they had to portray adultery, they
didn't just go ahead and write House and Stacy as having sex. Kissing
already crosses the line. It's true that there are degrees of adultery,
but for dramatic purposes, if the writers were gonna make the characters
stumble, they might as well have made them trip and fall. The phone
call could have intruded immediately afterwards.
I have to admit, though, Stacy lying on the bed and twirling House's
cane in frustration was a hilarious image, even without resorting to
symbolism.
Since the writers are so damned good with flashbacks, why have they
never bothered to show us even a single flashback to House and Stacy
before the infarction? Why not show us why they both miss curry so
much? Why not show us what House has lost? Do they think it would
spoil the image of the damaged House in the present?
The fellows called House on Stacy's cell phone. Did they get the idea
from Wilson, from Cuddy, or did they just hit redial on the phone in the
office? I guess House checked the caller-ID before answering it, which
was prudent since it would have been awkward if Mark had called Stacy's
phone and House had answered.
HOUSE: [Holds the phone against his chest. To Stacy.] Ah, I'm
gonna take this phone downstairs so I don't disturb you.
Is that O.K.? [Retrieves cane.]
STACY: Sure.
HOUSE: [Into phone] Keep him talking. Write down everything he
says. [To Stacy] Stacy ... that new makeup you bought:
do you mind if I borrow it?
The fellows might easily have been able to hear everything from "Is that
O.K.?" onward. They might well have wondered why House was with Stacy
at that time of night and asking to borrow her makeup.
A rough approximation of House's brainstorming on the airport wall by
the end of the night (at least some of which was not House's
handwriting, but that's understandable since they have better uses for
Hugh Laurie's time):
COOK BRAND/SIGN
THEY TOOK MY STAIN ED GLASS?
UNCLEAN
ABSTAIN GAIN BOOK PLAIN SOIL BRAIN
HONOR
DECAY MAIN LOOK INSANE SHAME SCAR CHURCH
POLLUTION STRAIN EXPLAIN PAIN CATHEDRAL
STAIN REMOVER RESTRAIN MARK
SPOIL STAIN INSANE
SOLVE ASSONANCE/ PAIN SPOIL POISON
| CONSONANCE ^
v |
TACKLE THE | BEAR-CIRCUS
HOOK/LURE | FEAR
SUFFER --| PRAYER-TEAR
TOLERATE TEAR
HONEY ENDURE BEAR MOUNTAIN
GRIZZLY LAST CARE
SMOKEY STARE
BROWN MONSTER
PAW
CLAW
That was a sweet touch, Stacy bringing the AC adapter for her cell phone
downstairs for House.
An approximation of the brainstorming on the Diagnostics Dept.
whiteboard:
TRAIN <-| SPOIL RHYME?
"THEY TOOK MY STAIN"
ROT -DIRTY, SCAR, BRUISE
BLISTER SOILED
GLASS -PAIN, BRAIN, SPRAIN
POISON STIGMA EXPLAIN -INSANE
"TACKLE THE BEAR STOMACH - SUFFER
TEAR, DARE, HAIR
FIRE
ATTACK, ANIMAL STARE/STAIR WOODS
BEAR
HOUSE: You sure you told me everything you found at his home
and office?
So House had already been told about the amphetamines, sleeping pills,
and Topamax at this point.
FOREMAN: Maybe it's not a rhyme or a synonym.
Free association, which House has excelled at.
CAMERON: The more devoted, the more reason to lie.
HOUSE: That's cynical.
CAMERON: You disagree?
HOUSE: No, I'm just kvelling. Our little girl is growing up.
This episode, maybe. Next episode, if it's convenient for the plot,
Cameron may be back to square one. But it was a good line.
CUDDY: Tell me, if it is your aim to sell me the same crazy
ideas that House does, how are you an improvement on
House?
FOREMAN: I brought you a coffee.
Cuddy's not pleased with Foreman when he doesn't act like House, and
she's not pleased when he does act like House. Great.
House took a Vicodin when he was puzzling over his Sheetrock whiteboard.
Since Fletch could understand everyone else, I had to wonder why they
didn't try going back to the office, grabbing a few medical reference
books, handing them to Fletch, and telling him to look up his disorder
in the books and point it out to them.
HOUSE: [To Fletch] Oh please, Mister Sleeping Pills,
Amphetamines. Bring me up, bring me down.
Finally, the "Aha," but House had had that information for a while
before he made the connection. He didn't really need the wife out of
the room to make the connection, but merely to get the confirmation.
The writers held back the "Aha" so that it would come out in House's
confrontation with the patient.
HOUSE: Two people who weren't meant to be together. Maybe
they'll get a happy ending just because they both want it so
much.
STACY: Yeah. That's usually the way it works.
HOUSE: He loved her enough to convince himself he could change.
STACY: But he couldn't, could he?
The parallels between the A and B plots were weak. The B plot
introduced the audience to the idea of off-label medication in time for
it to be a clue to the A plot, but the parallel of Fletch and House
having strained relations with the women they loved didn't walk very far
under its own power. Fletch tried to change for the woman he loved, but
the way he went about it sabotaged him. From what we've heard, House
didn't lift a finger to change, and Stacy seemed to think that was part
of the problem. I think that the convergence of the A and B plots would
have worked better if it had concentrated on two women who had deluded
themselves into thinking that their men would change, rather than
implying it was about two men who had tried to change and couldn't.
There's a lot more wiggle room with Stacy than there is with House, and
Elizabeth sounded unbelievably naive for someone her age when she
confidently declared, "When we got engaged, we decided we wanted a
different kind of life," as if it were perfectly safe to speak for both
herself and for Fletch.
I suppose the only solid parallel we were left with was, "Two people who
weren't meant to be together," which was pretty much what Stacy told
House all the way back in his office at the end of "Honeymoon." It was
really poignant the first time, but how many times does this message
have to be repeated? I could have bought this business of House and
Stacy seesawing with second thoughts a lot better if they had broken up
a year or less ago, not five years ago with a marriage in between.
People do sometimes flip-flop for a while before becoming convinced
beyond a shadow of a doubt that, no indeedy, there's no way to salvage
the relationship. But five years and a marriage are practically an
ocean of water under the bridge.
If "I always hated it when Greg abandoned me for work" was what really
drove Stacy away from House, and not his resentment over his infirmity,
then she certainly didn't have any reason to think that had changed for
the better while they had been apart, nor any reason to think that was
going to change in the future. That pattern should also give her reason
to think that the parallels between House and Mark are ephemeral. There
was always something wrong between her and House, even before the leg
(as she indicated back in "Honeymoon"). Her difficulties with Mark
didn't start until his illness started. As Mark's health improves, she
has every reason to believe that one day their relationship will improve
too, if she doesn't screw it up in the meantime.
Based on dialogue and (lack of) wardrobe changes, the action all took
place within about 24 hours, from around one morning to around the next
morning.
I hope Hugh Laurie got more sleep that week, seeing as how he wasn't in
most of the A plot. Even with a large B plot, that must have been a
comparative rest break for him.
Vicodin count: 1
Medical synopsis
fainting, head injury, conduction aphasia
agraphia
Differential diagnosis (sort of): stroke, traumatic contusion or
seizure, drugs
carotid sonogram, EEG, tox screen
pulmonary edema
IV Lasix, intubation
amphetamine use
fever
CT scan (negative)
Differential diagnosis (sort of): encephalitis or meningitis, autoimmune
disease
broad-spectrum antibiotics, antiviral
sleeping pills
MRI
brain edema, old brain scarring
caffeine pills, Topamax
metallic taste
rising creatinine
kidney failure
dialysis
lumbar puncture
infection
bipolar affective disorder
bilateral cingulotomy
blood examination
Final diagnosis: cerebral malaria
IV quinidine
No clinic patients
Lava
"Micky DuPree" <MDu...@theworld.com.snip.to.reply> wrote in message
news:dqfbrc$mmn$1...@pcls4.std.com...
Absolutely wonderful recap. Thank you so much. I'm going to print this out
and watch again. This is really appreciated.
Lava
Sagittaria
news:dqfbrc$mmn$1...@pcls4.std.com:
> There hasn't been a lot of evidence of
> Cuddy's supposed brilliance as a hospital administrator this
> season, apart from it being shoved down our throats by fiat that
> she was the first woman ever to be so appointed and the second
> youngest. This used to be a great character. Now if I try to
> take Cuddy seriously, I can't help but feel that whoever put her
> in charge made a dreadful mistake.
Agreed.
> HOUSE: She also had low blood pressure, so nitro would be
> dangerous. Little blue pills improve blood flow.
> They're vasodilators. That's why you sometimes get the
> headaches.
>
> What did I miss here? Nitroglycerin is also a vasodilator. It
> opens up blood vessels, which lowers blood pressure, which reduces
> the work load on the heart, and also opens up the blood vessels
> feeding the heart, which is a win-win unless you have clinically
> low blood pressure to begin with. Why wouldn't a heart patient
> with low blood pressure have the same problems with Viagra that
> she'd have with nitro?
Just a guess, nitroglycerin lowers blood pressure more than Viagra
does?
> I was surprised House didn't have call waiting. There are times,
> like when he has a patient in iffy condition (which usually
> describes the zebras), when he definitely wants people to be able
> to contact him.
I think he normally stays at the hospital during those times. We
haven't seen him travel before. I'm more surprised he has a cell
phone at all. :)
> CHASE: And Topamax.
> FOREMAN: An anticonvulsant? He said there was no history of
> prior seizures.
> CHASE: It's not even prescribed to him.
> FOREMAN: Still doesn't explain his fever. He's probably just
> using it for weight loss.
> CHASE: Just gives us another lie.
>
> I'm just a lowly layman here, but my first thought upon hearing
> that someone's hiding something and that they've been taking an
> anticonvulsant is that they're hiding *seizures*, not that they're
> trying to lose weight (nor even that they're hiding bipolar
> disorder). Why all of them (including House) would assume that
> Fletch wasn't lying about having seizures but that he was lying
> about something as yet to be discovered was really weird to me.
Fair bet that his attached-at-the-hip wife would know if he'd ever
had a seizure.
> And given that I have heard of someone being prescribed Tegretol
> (another anticonvulsant) on-label for bipolar disorder, this lowly
> layman had to wonder why, upon learning about the Topamax, the
> highly trained doctors, including the great House himself,
> couldn't have made a few more differential guesses besides just
> "weight loss."
Agreed. I have to wonder, why wasn't it prescribed for him? Where
the hell did he get it, and why did he choose topomax? It would make
more sense to me if the patient had been legitimately prescribed the
drug and just wasn't telling anyone about it.
> The return of the Greg-&-Stacy piano theme, a great, sad, simple
> piece of music.
How the HELL do you notice this stuff? :)
> I was surprised that Wilson didn't give House any grief over the
> fact that House could be immediately reached via Stacy's phone
> hours after they should have parted ways.
Wilson would have assumed they'd be on the same flight - House
seemed to be assuming it, and realized immediately that Stacy made
deliberate efforts to be on a different flight. Wilson didn't know
about that, so he would assume they'd be waiting together at the
airport.
> it took all of them 50 minutes out of the hour to figure out the
> even more basic interrogation technique, "Question the witnesses
> separately." This was the second A plot in a row that could be
> made to work only via the characters developing inexplicable blind
> spots long enough to allow a plot complication to do its dirty
> work.
Amen.
> STACY: I booked a room at the airport hotel when I saw how bad
> the weather was. It's the last one available. [Off his
> look.] Your leg can't handle a night on a cot.
>
> That line would have been more convincing if House had taken a
> Vicodin pill up through this point or seemed the slightest bit in
> pain. (Also if he didn't end up spending most of the night
> sitting on the floor anyway.)
It wasn't meant to be convincing - it was a good-sounding excuse.
Her plan all along was to seduce him. She was fighting it, but
arranging it at the same time.
> That was a definition of "for better or for worse" with which I
> was unfamiliar. This line would have had greater double entendre
> force if the audience didn't already know full well that there
> haven't been any plans in the real world to make Stacy a regular
> character in the show.
Not sure what you mean - I thought she was a regular character at
this point. But I try not to read spoilers too.
> I've never seen a public airport terminal where the airport hotel
> was right upstairs. But I can't claim to have visited every
> single airport.
Me either. We looked up BWI and there isn't really one there. No
reason for the gimmick either, since they could have gotten a cab
easily enough.
> She was doing her best to avoid House until finally, the
> flight was called on account of weather. At that point, Stacy
> seemed to say, "I give up. It was meant to be. Come on, Greg,
> there's no use fighting it anymore when the gods conspire against
> us."
The gods or the fates don't come into it - she was just tired of
fighting and couldn't make the effort anymore. He wore her down with
all the questioning about her necklace too. Once she had admitted
the big fight, and the constant fighting, it seemed more reasonable
for her to go on and see if there was any spark left with Greg.
> Since the writers are so damned good with flashbacks, why have
> they never bothered to show us even a single flashback to House
> and Stacy before the infarction? Why not show us why they both
> miss curry so much? Why not show us what House has lost? Do they
> think it would spoil the image of the damaged House in the
> present?
Oooh, good idea.
> The fellows might easily have been able to hear everything from
> "Is that O.K.?" onward. They might well have wondered why House
> was with Stacy at that time of night and asking to borrow her
> makeup.
No - they also would assume the two were still waiting together in
the terminal. Why not? The makeup would be weird, but then House is
weird a lot. :)
> Since Fletch could understand everyone else, I had to wonder why
> they didn't try going back to the office, grabbing a few medical
> reference books, handing them to Fletch, and telling him to look
> up his disorder in the books and point it out to them.
Worth a shot - but remember he couldn't write, so maybe he was also
unable to read.
> From what we've heard, House didn't lift a finger to change,
> and Stacy seemed to think that was part of the problem.
I may be reading between the lines when nothing is really there, but
I wonder if part of it is House's devotion to his patients. Like
many doctors' wives, maybe Stacy wished that she would come first
rather than the patients - and the phone call which stopped them
from having sex proved that House would always put the patients
first. Maybe that's what all this is about "not being able to
change."
> Elizabeth sounded unbelievably naive for someone her age when she
> confidently declared, "When we got engaged, we decided we wanted a
> different kind of life," as if it were perfectly safe to speak for
> both herself and for Fletch.
She did look quite a bit younger than Fletch.
> If "I always hated it when Greg abandoned me for work" was what
> really drove Stacy away from House, and not his resentment over
> his infirmity, then she certainly didn't have any reason to think
> that had changed for the better while they had been apart, nor any
> reason to think that was going to change in the future.
Whoops, you got there ahead of me. :)
I just discovered this group a little while ago and have only read a
few of your summaries - but I love the way you think things through.
Thanks for posting these.
--
---->Sagittaria<----
I've always thought that an orgy in total darkness, lit only by
luminous green condoms, would be a fantastic thing to experience.
-Norton
Bob
> right upstairs. But I can't claim to have visited every single airport.
Thanks for a great analysis of the plot - i really enjoy your summaries.
I just want to say that Miami International Airport has a hotel above the
terminal so they do exist.
Bob
David Johnston
MDu...@theworld.com.snip.to.reply (Micky DuPree) wrote:
>Spoilers for "Failure to Communicate," 1/10/06.
>
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> HOUSE: [Into phone] Hey honey. How are the kids? They miss
> me?
> WILSON: [To Mary Jean] This may take a minute.
> HOUSE: So what's new with Mister Aphasia?
> WILSON: [Into phone] Cuddy called you?
> HOUSE: Everybody covers their ass.
>
>So 1) why wasn't House calling Cuddy to check up on the kids and
>reassure her, and 2) how was it that Wilson was apprised of all the
>details of what was going on in the Diagnostics Dept. even though Wilson
>wasn't present for any of it, House wasn't there to tell him, and the
>"kids" were surprised that House was up to speed when he called them?
It's the best they could do to give Wilson some face time with House
out of town.
>On the cover of House's paperback:
>
> Classic
>
> LESBIAN
> PRISON
> STORIES
And I'm wondering whether that's a real book.
Lava
news:4317tnF...@individual.net...
This seems to be a plot device. Most people would have just taken the
train. Where in the airport does no one see some writing on the wall like a
tagger?
Lava
Marc Dashevsky
Amazon.com has the following waiting for you:
Locked Down: A Lesbian Life in Prison: The Story of Mary
My name is Rusty: A story of Lesbian life behind prison bars
--
Go to http://MarcDashevsky.com to send me e-mail.
Sagittaria
news:jOKyf.3113$ee6...@newsread3.news.pas.earthlink.net:
What's a tagger?
If you're referring to House's writing on the wall, people did see it
- the next day it was business as usual. But I think he chose a
temporary wall (part of construction) so he wouldn't get in trouble
for defacing the airport.
Default User
> "Lava" <lav...@rocketmail.com> wrote in
> news:jOKyf.3113$ee6...@newsread3.news.pas.earthlink.net:
>
> > "Bob" <chch3...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote in message
> > news:4317tnF...@individual.net...
> >> > I've never seen a public airport terminal where the airport
> >> > hotel was right upstairs. But I can't claim to have visited
> >> > every single airport.
> > >
> >> Thanks for a great analysis of the plot - i really enjoy your
> >> summaries.
> > >
> >> I just want to say that Miami International Airport has a hotel
> >> above the terminal so they do exist.
> > >
> >
> > This seems to be a plot device. Most people would have just taken
> > the train. Where in the airport does no one see some writing on
> > the wall like a tagger?
>
> What's a tagger?
Graffiti artist.
Brian
--
If televison's a babysitter, the Internet is a drunk librarian who
won't shut up.
-- Dorothy Gambrell (http://catandgirl.com)
Jack Bauer's Spunky Sidekick, Ian J. Ball
"Lava" <lav...@rocketmail.com> wrote:
> "Micky DuPree" <MDu...@theworld.com.snip.to.reply> wrote in message
> news:dqfbrc$mmn$1...@pcls4.std.com...
> > Spoilers for "Failure to Communicate," 1/10/06.
> >
> Absolutely wonderful recap. Thank you so much. I'm going to print this out
> and watch again. This is really appreciated.
Yes, but you don't have to repost Micky's entire (long!) review again
just to say that. Please trim next time.
--
"Relax. He's really good at this." - Chloe O'Brian, about Jack Bauer
"24", 01/15/06
Jack Bauer's Spunky Sidekick, Ian J. Ball
"Bob" <chch3...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
Another airport in either Florida or somewhere else in the South has one
too. Orlando? Jacksonville? Savannah? I don't remember which, but I know
I stayed in one once, about 5 years back.
Micky DuPree
: Absolutely wonderful recap.
Thanks, but they're really more like running commentaries and jotted
notes. If a scene doesn't inspire me to comment, I leave it out, so I
don't actually recap the action.
-Micky
Micky DuPree
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Sagittaria <sagitta...@emailias.com> writes:
: "Lava" <lav...@rocketmail.com> wrote in
: news:jOKyf.3113$ee6...@newsread3.news.pas.earthlink.net:
:: Where in the airport does no one see some writing on the wall like a
:: tagger?
: If you're referring to House's writing on the wall, people did see it
: - the next day it was business as usual. But I think he chose a
: temporary wall (part of construction) so he wouldn't get in trouble
: for defacing the airport.
It was a temporary wall, which featured the signage:
[...]ON OUR MESS...
[...]E WE IMPROVE
[...]E TERMINAL
[...]MORE LIBERTY
[...]RNATIONAL
COMING SOON...
ALEXANDER'S
AIRPORT
ACCESSORIES
As I watch the episodes, I jot down things in a master file of raw notes
for possible future reference. Not all of the notes end up being
interesting observations, but that judgment often can't be made until
I've finished the episode. I cut the uninteresting notes out before
posting. Sometimes I guess wrong as to what might be of interest to
others. Some people might be into music, some into trivia, etc. The
above didn't make the cut, but I guess it should have, since it implies
an answer to the question of why House wasn't simply hauled into custody
for defacing airport property.
Don't have time to post more in depth right now.
-Micky
Lava
"Micky DuPree" <MDu...@theworld.com.snip.to.reply> wrote in message
Okay, great commentary!
Lava
Micky DuPree
Sagittaria <sagitta...@emailias.com> writes:
: MDu...@theworld.com.snip.to.reply (Micky DuPree) wrote in
: news:dqfbrc$mmn$1...@pcls4.std.com:
:: HOUSE: She also had low blood pressure, so nitro would be
:: dangerous. Little blue pills improve blood flow.
:: They're vasodilators. That's why you sometimes get the
:: headaches.
::
:: What did I miss here? Nitroglycerin is also a vasodilator. It opens
:: up blood vessels, which lowers blood pressure, which reduces the work
:: load on the heart, and also opens up the blood vessels feeding the
:: heart, which is a win-win unless you have clinically low blood
:: pressure to begin with. Why wouldn't a heart patient with low blood
:: pressure have the same problems with Viagra that she'd have with
:: nitro?
:
: Just a guess, nitroglycerin lowers blood pressure more than Viagra
: does?
Making it a matter of degree would have worked for me, but they had
House say, "They're vasodilators," as if that explained why Viagra was
*good* for someone with low blood pressure, rather than say, "They're
not *as bad as* nitro for someone with low blood pressure."
I know they've always played a little loose with the medical facts. In
both seasons, whenever there's been a conflict between medical accuracy
and drama, the former has been sacrificed for the latter. But you used
to have to be a health care professional to catch most of these fast
ones. Now it seems to be enough to be an educated layman. There have
been some changes in the personnel, though. Somewhere along the line
last season, they dropped one of their medical advisors altogether, and
David Foster, their chief medical advisor in the first season, said in
an interview that he's now devoting himself to scriptwriting. Maybe
they just figure that no one really cares about the medicine anyway.
:: I was surprised House didn't have call waiting. There are times,
:: like when he has a patient in iffy condition (which usually describes
:: the zebras), when he definitely wants people to be able to contact
:: him.
:
: I think he normally stays at the hospital during those times.
But not necessarily around the clock. For example, House went home in
"Paternity" and left instructions to call him if he could do something.
The fellows did call him, but he has to run errands sometime. Most of
the A plots unfold over the course of multiple days, and in the majority
of cases, House is not staying at the hospital the whole time. Episodes
like "Failure to Communicate," where the members of the Diagnostics
Dept. stay at the hospital all night and don't change their clothes, are
the exception, not the rule.
: We haven't seen him travel before.
House seems like the kind of person who would want to goof off as much
as possible, but nevertheless stick close to home in order to be
available when the next really interesting case comes in. As such, I
have difficulty imagining him taking out-of-town vacations.
: I'm more surprised he has a cell phone at all. :)
House has had a cell phone at least as far back as "Sports Medicine,"
when he used one to arrange to buy monster truck passes. There have
been times when, logically, he'd want the flexibility for work as well.
:: I'm just a lowly layman here, but my first thought upon hearing that
:: someone's hiding something and that they've been taking an
:: anticonvulsant is that they're hiding *seizures*, not that they're
:: trying to lose weight (nor even that they're hiding bipolar
:: disorder). Why all of them (including House) would assume that
:: Fletch wasn't lying about having seizures but that he was lying about
:: something as yet to be discovered was really weird to me.
:
: Fair bet that his attached-at-the-hip wife would know if he'd ever had
: a seizure.
But if Fletch had been religious about taking the Topamax, he might have
successfully suppressed any hypothetical seizures. Plus, some types of
seizure are so mild that their true nature goes unrecognized and
therefore undiagnosed for years because they don't involve falling down
or convulsing. Usually, an observer will just chalk the behavior up to
inattentiveness, "spacing out," or just plain rudeness for a few
seconds. The sufferer won't even notice the missing time.
:: And given that I have heard of someone being prescribed Tegretol
:: (another anticonvulsant) on-label for bipolar disorder, this lowly
:: layman had to wonder why, upon learning about the Topamax, the highly
:: trained doctors, including the great House himself, couldn't have
:: made a few more differential guesses besides just "weight loss."
:
: Agreed. I have to wonder, why wasn't it prescribed for him? Where the
: hell did he get it, and why did he choose topomax? It would make more
: sense to me if the patient had been legitimately prescribed the drug
: and just wasn't telling anyone about it.
As much as we'd like to believe in the privacy of our medical records,
they're not that difficult to violate. When I've been in a doctor's
office or at the pharmacy, I've heard and seen other people's names and
medical details discussed in my earshot. With a famous journalist who
has made enemies, all it would take is one person overhearing something,
or one person who wants to make a little money selling a tip to a rival
journalist, or one pharmacist's assistant who's pissed off at something
that Fletch wrote, for his secret to get out. I don't have any trouble
believing that an investigative journalist who knew the ins and outs of
digging up difficult information would know how to cover his tracks when
he had something of his own to hide. He probably managed to get a
prescription from a shady online pharmacy, or even from Mexico. As to
why choose Topamax, perhaps in case the pills did end up being linked to
him, people would nevertheless do what I did and suspect an on-label
disorder like epilepsy, rather than an off-label use like treating
bipolar affective disorder.
:: The return of the Greg-&-Stacy piano theme, a great, sad, simple
:: piece of music.
:
: How the HELL do you notice this stuff? :)
Motivation, mostly. I used to love this series. Once something has
grabbed my attention and impressed me that much, it draws me in. Plus,
I love that bit of music. I think I've seen "Three Stories" something
like a dozen times now, and I'm pretty sure that when Stacy first met up
with House again at the beginning of that episode was also the first
time the Greg-&-Stacy theme was played. I'll have to finish rewatching
the rest of the first season to be absolutely certain of that, but the
same theme was definitely reused for the closer moments between those
two characters in this season.
Just in general, at least in the first season, the more fundamental
human-to-human interactions (which often characterize the dramatic
climaxes) seem to get slow, piano-based musical cues, whereas the
tension-building cues -- well, they're faster and more difficult for me
to describe. I'd hazard a guess that they prominently feature
electronic percussion, electronic chimes, and electronic xylophone. But
I'd be happy to be told something different by someone better versed in
music than I am.
:: I was surprised that Wilson didn't give House any grief over the fact
:: that House could be immediately reached via Stacy's phone hours after
:: they should have parted ways.
:
: Wilson would have assumed they'd be on the same flight - House seemed
: to be assuming it, and realized immediately that Stacy made deliberate
: efforts to be on a different flight. Wilson didn't know about that, so
: he would assume they'd be waiting together at the airport.
Why would House and Stacy necessarily be waiting together? Wilson has
warned each of them away from the other before. Why stop now? Did he,
like Stacy, simply give up?
:: STACY: [To House] Your leg can't handle a night on a cot.
::
:: That line would have been more convincing if House had taken a
:: Vicodin pill up through this point or seemed the slightest bit in
:: pain. (Also if he didn't end up spending most of the night sitting
:: on the floor anyway.)
:
: It wasn't meant to be convincing - it was a good-sounding excuse.
Yeah, except for the "good-sounding" part. In other words, Stacy
sounded as transparent to the audience as she obviously did to House.
: Her plan all along was to seduce him.
I don't think it was.
: She was fighting it, but arranging it at the same time.
Stacy said she didn't reserve the room until she heard about the
weather. I believed her. This was apparently a standard enough habit
for her that she had no fear that Mark would be worried about her
lengthening absence. I believed that too. She seems like the type of
person who would always want safety nets (or "escape routes," as she put
it) in place. She didn't suggest going up to the room until all the
flights were canceled, at which point she just gave up. If she were
seriously concerned about House's leg, she could have offered him the
room and taken a cot herself.
One of the things that seemed off to me was that a better "escape route"
would have been to let Mark's problems play out, sans adultery, to see
how they resolved. If the marriage fell apart, Stacy still had the
option of trying House again if she really needed the curry that badly.
With adultery, she runs a greater risk of ending up with neither man.
:: I've never seen a public airport terminal where the airport hotel was
:: right upstairs.
: Me either.
Evidently there are some, though, as I have been informed.
: We looked up BWI and there isn't really one there.
Signs in the episode identified the airport as a fictitious "Baltimore
Liberty International," so they can make their own rules.
: No reason for the gimmick either, since they could have gotten a cab
: easily enough.
It did simplify the story slightly. A cab would have been just an extra
step that didn't add anything substantive to the story, but if filmed,
would have added to the cost of the episode. And the airport probably
supplied House with a more plausible whiteboard than the hotel would
have.
:: She was doing her best to avoid House until finally, the flight was
:: called on account of weather. At that point, Stacy seemed to say, "I
:: give up. It was meant to be. Come on, Greg, there's no use fighting
:: it anymore when the gods conspire against us."
:
: The gods or the fates don't come into it - she was just tired of
: fighting and couldn't make the effort anymore.
Except that I don't buy the "couldn't" excuse. Adultery is an act of
will, not of inevitability.
: He wore her down with all the questioning about her necklace too.
: Once she had admitted the big fight, and the constant fighting, it
: seemed more reasonable for her to go on and see if there was any spark
: left with Greg.
Except that Stacy had to have known for a while that there was spark
there. That wasn't the issue. She was sure enough about the spark to
take measures to avoid House. If she were actually being reasonable and
true to her safety-net self, she wouldn't indulge in adultery. She
would wait to see if she's still married to Mark in a year, and keep
Greg as the long shot in reserve in case she isn't.
:: Since the writers are so damned good with flashbacks, why have they
:: never bothered to show us even a single flashback to House and Stacy
:: before the infarction? Why not show us why they both miss curry so
:: much? Why not show us what House has lost? Do they think it would
:: spoil the image of the damaged House in the present?
:
: Oooh, good idea.
Instead of trying to draw tenuous parallels between Fletch and House in
the present, they could have used "Failure to Communicate" to draw
parallels between House abandoning Stacy for work in the present and
House doing the same thing to Stacy in the past, before the infarction.
It could have demonstrated why she once told House, "[...] with you I
was lonely, and with Mark there's room for me." The infarction pushed
them over the edge, but there were unresolvable problems between them
even before that.
I really don't get why they haven't used Sela Ward's presence on the
show to do glimpses of House before the infarction. It would have made
a lot more sense than what we've gotten from the Stacy story line this
season.
:: The fellows might easily have been able to hear everything from "Is
:: that O.K.?" onward. They might well have wondered why House was with
:: Stacy at that time of night and asking to borrow her makeup.
:
: No - they also would assume the two were still waiting together in the
: terminal. Why not? The makeup would be weird, but then House is weird
: a lot. :)
I would have wondered in the fellows' shoes. Given Cameron's explicit
nosiness into House's personal life in both seasons, I'd expect her to
wonder at the very least.
:: Since Fletch could understand everyone else, I had to wonder why they
:: didn't try going back to the office, grabbing a few medical reference
:: books, handing them to Fletch, and telling him to look up his
:: disorder in the books and point it out to them.
:
: Worth a shot - but remember he couldn't write, so maybe he was also
: unable to read.
Doctors seem to divide aphasia into two broad categories, interference
with language input and interference with language output. Since Fletch
could understand spoken language but not express it adequately, I had to
wonder if he could understand written language as well, even though he
couldn't write it.
:: From what we've heard, House didn't lift a finger to change, and
:: Stacy seemed to think that was part of the problem.
:
: I may be reading between the lines when nothing is really there, but I
: wonder if part of it is House's devotion to his patients. Like many
: doctors' wives, maybe Stacy wished that she would come first rather
: than the patients - and the phone call which stopped them from having
: sex proved that House would always put the patients first. Maybe
: that's what all this is about "not being able to change."
Yeah, but it's so obvious that I can't imagine it ever being an issue
for House. I can't imagine him ever promising Stacy that he'd change
that. I can't imagine him ever deceiving himself into thinking he'd
change that. It's a given: patient care always comes first. That's why
I think that the attempt to draw parallels between Fletch and House were
weak. Fletch did delude himself. Fletch did take huge steps to try to
change. Fletch sabotaged himself, not primarily by failing to change,
but by deceiving his wife into thinking everything was hunky-dory. I
don't see where House did anything like that, nor can I imagine him
doing so. He knows full well that he's a dedicated doctor who's also a
jerk. He doesn't pretend to himself or to others that he's going to be
anything different tomorrow.
That's why I think that a better parallel would have been between the
two women, evidently falling in love for the first time in middle age
and deluding themselves into thinking that their middle-aged men would
change for them.
:: Elizabeth sounded unbelievably naive for someone her age when she
:: confidently declared, "When we got engaged, we decided we wanted a
:: different kind of life," as if it were perfectly safe to speak for
:: both herself and for Fletch.
:
: She did look quite a bit younger than Fletch.
In the longer shots, Elizabeth looked about 34 to me, but in the closer,
more well-lit shots, she looked around 40. The IMDb says that the
actress turned 41 last June. Fletch was said to be 45 in the episode.
He did look a little older (the actor turned 50 last year), but I guess
we're supposed to chalk that up to Fletch's hard living.
-Micky
Micky DuPree
: Thanks for a great analysis of the plot - i really enjoy your
: summaries.
Thanks.
: I just want to say that Miami International Airport has a hotel above
: the terminal so they do exist.
Thanks for the info.
-Micky