The entire thread can be read at Google Groups: Subject: HOUSE, M.D.: 23. "Acceptance" From: MDuPree@theworld.com.snip.to.reply (Micky DuPree) Newsgroups: rec.arts.tv Date: Wed, 14 Sep 2005 17:57:25 +0000 (UTC) Organization: The World : www.TheWorld.com : Since 1989 Message-ID: Lines: 321 Disjoint observations on the 9/13/05 episode. Spoilers abound. I'm going to have to find the strength somewhere to stop watching the _House_ promos. I used to not mind them because I knew they were misleading, and I therefore considered them harmless. The ones for this ep. misled me into unfortunate expectations that were not met, though. They evidently spliced in footage from other, as yet unaired eps. to fool us. Well, it worked, but it also disappointed, because the idea that House would offer to assist in the suicide of a death-row inmate was pretty powerful. Speaking of random shots of adrenaline, this episode felt rushed, like they had too much to say in the allotted time (which made it seem a bit more like conventional network television). They usually have some frenetic moments and some contemplative moments, and I like the mix. This episode seemed a little light on the contemplative moments. It also felt a little bit like a fast-paced second pilot, as if they expected to have to get a lot of new viewers up to speed quickly and remind old viewers with short attention spans of just who these characters are and what their relationships are to one another. I still liked it, but it wasn't really one of their stand-out episodes. It felt like they spent a lot of their time reestablishing things that first-season viewers already knew: House pops pills, mouths off, and disrespects everyone, Cameron can't break bad news, Foreman has a juvie record, Chase is the poor little rich boy, Wilson is House's oncologist buddy, Stacy is House's ex-, and Cuddy is the boss that House has to get around. I hope the strategy works to build the ratings, but I also hope they don't feel they have to restate everything every week. Maybe I'm imagining it, but the photography seemed a bit more like that of conventional network television too, which is a pity. Yet I'm pretty sure I've seen the D.P.'s name before. New writers in the credits. They don't seem to be quite as smart as the characters they're writing, which led to a few "huh?" moments. They're also credited as new co-executive producers, so I guess that means they're "in the room." I'll resist the temptation to dump solely on the new guys, since David Shore et alia had to have read the script and signed off on it. Evidently there's been a major sartorial edict from on high: House has been wearing too many shirts. Or at least, he's down to just one at a time now from last season's typical uniform of two shirts under a jacket. House saw Stacy with Cuddy and immediately reached for the Vicodin. Nice touch. I've wondered for a while now why a department head at Princeton- Plainsboro Teaching Hospital can't get a secretary, or at least can't share a secretary with other departments. HOUSE: J-Date not working out? O.K., had to look it up. Is this confirmation that Cuddy is Jewish? HOUSE: You met me at a strip club. STACY: You are the worst two dollars I've ever spent. And House seemed to watch Stacy appreciatively as she left the room. I can see why those two used to get along. The more people can return House's serve, the better, to my eyes. Half the time it looks like House is playing handball against a curtain. "Partypants"? Seemed a bit, well, dumb, not an obvious choice at all, not even to the discerning mind of House. When House agreed to barter two extra hours of clinic duty for the death-row case, I thought that was a major measure of what it meant to him. I was kind of disappointed that he immediately fobbed them off on Cameron and that he didn't get caught doing it by Cuddy. (Using subordinates to fulfill clinic duty surely would have been one of the first dodges he tried and one of the first things Cuddy expected him to try, the same way he was on the verge of fobbing the lecture off on Cameron in "Three Stories" and Cuddy intervened.) On the other hand, by giving one of the fellows the B plot for a change, maybe they're letting Hugh Laurie get six hours of sleep a night instead of only five, which would be a generally good thing. He was probably in 90% of the shots last season. It would be an imminently practical reason for letting the B plot rotate among all the doctors this season instead of it always being House who fields it. House has a backpack? Foreman and Chase each giving Cameron a pat on the back before clinic duty was a nice touch. Clearing away the staplers just wasn't enough. I really can't buy that a bunch of prison guards that are hyper-worried about a prisoner using anything and everything for a weapon would stick Clarence in a room with methanol-based fluid. If he could have managed just a single spark he could have achieved Sterno inferno. If they couldn't put him in the prison infirmary, then why not just keep him in his regular cell? What advantage was gained by moving him into an office supply room? There seemed to be a movie poster in Wilson's office, but I couldn't make it out. "Novak." "Hitchcock"? Starts with a B? Nothing obvious, though Alfred Hitchcock and Kim Novak did work together. I guess Stacy's Eighth Amendment argument was "cruel and unusual punishment." The speed with which Stacy got the court order for Clarence's treatment just convinces me all the more that she could have gotten one for her husband almost as quickly in "Honeymoon." The Scooby-Doo impersonation was a kick, but given that House has done it once, I'd expect him to do it more often. I am a little surprised that Stacy took House at face value when it came to patient care. From what she said about House lying and browbeating patients in "Honeymoon," I'd have thought that whenever patient care was involved, she'd verify everything House claimed. The strange thing about Cameron's insistence on ignoring the obvious diagnosis in the clinic patient was that she seemed to think that diligent differential diagnostic work could actually change the underlying illness, not just the diagnosis of the illness. If she's going to treat the truth as the enemy, then why not go whole hog and do what they used to do: lie to cancer patients and tell them they have something else? CHASE: How does an inmate on death row get his hands on heroin? Breathes there a 26-year-old who has led that sheltered a life? Maybe, but in this case we're talking about an addict's son who, if anything, is more cynical about addiction than the norm, not less. I couldn't swallow this line. It was as if the object was to contrast street-wise Foreman with naive rich Chase by the most simplistic means available, and the actual substance (and substance abuse) of his backstory didn't matter. The fellows have been fraternizing behind our backs. Cameron somehow knew Chase was an ex-seminary student. Geez, how many patients can extubate themselves? House closing the blinds on Stacy was hilarious, but then he topped himself by explaining, "Mommy and Daddy are having a little fight. It doesn't mean we stopped loving you." Then Stacy topped him by heading him off at the pass. I've never spotted the circular tattoo on the back of Foreman's right wrist before, just the one where the thumb meets the forefinger on his left hand. So Foreman didn't just get a juvenile record. He also spent some time in juvenile detention. Wilson still seems to think that House has some master plan for getting Stacy back. I see House avoiding her a lot (no other reason to hide in the comatose patient's room), which would be a strange way to go about it. House can get away with a lot of things other people can't, but "Bros before hos" sounded a little too "whigger" even from him. (Reminded me of a line from _The Wire_: "Damn, they steal everything.") I can understand Foreman disliking a patient, but refusing to treat him because it will buy him only a few hours was derelict. Strange that Chase didn't pick up on the copier fluid. He piped up with that option in "Poison." In fact, considering that House usually notices every detail around him, it was strange he didn't pick up on it either back when he made his house call. The label on the bottle that House poured for Clarence (as best I could make out): CHASEN'S 150 Not my area of expertise, but if the number refers to the proof, that was a potent binge, especially given what appeared to be the short amount of time the booze was consumed over. CAMERON: I work for one of the top diagnosticians in the country. Only one of the top diagnosticians? It would be fun to see House butt heads with one of his peers. Interesting that the only time we've heard House laugh out loud was when he was drunk with a multiple murderer. His social life really does suck. HOUSE: I could've hit that. CLARENCE: And you didn't? HOUSE: Eh. Don't be so sentimental, House. Tell us how you really feel. Based on visual and verbal indications, House had a bare minimum of six shots of booze. Clarence had at least three. It figured that House in sunglasses signified, not coolness, but hangover. HOUSE: State's paying, so go nuts. That was the second time House told them to soak the government. I thought I was going to be strong and aloof, but curiosity is finally eating away at me. What the hell are those overgrown tennis balls on steroids that House keeps on his desk? HOUSE: Wilson's a fool. I'm an idiot. Wilson's a fool for thinking there was a master plan? And House is an idiot for trusting Stacy? HOUSE: [Pheochromocytoma] explains everything. Not quite. I waited through the whole episode to see how the initial hauntings were going to play out in the diagnosis, but they didn't. I suppose they could be explained as nothing more than guilt, but the way they were staged and filmed strongly implied hallucinations on Clarence's part, even delusions. No one ever tied pheochromocytoma into hallucinations, and House, who made a point in this episode of insisting that everything is done for a motive, never moved beyond Clarence's explanation that he attempted suicide as a control issue, when that seemed for all the world to be a lie to cover for guilt/delusions of being haunted. There seemed to be a continuity hiccup. Cameron's husband previously died of thyroid cancer, not brain cancer. I'm sure a lot of people would prefer a doctor like Cameron, but shit, man, if I'm dying, tell me NOW. I've got plans to make, and they don't include holding my doctor's hand because SHE'S the one with issues. This B plot was the deluxe expanded director's cut version of Cameron being unable to tell the dead baby's parents the bad news in "Maternity." Since she did actually spit out the news in the end this time, I hope this means that we'll all finally be allowed to move on from this tiresome character point. It was a little theatrical, but I liked the shot of House, Foreman, and Chase bathed in green light as Clarence was going into the MRI. I'm a little surprised House didn't slip Clarence a Vicodin before the MRI to make him hold still. Or maybe people would have gotten suspicious if Clarence hadn't been crawling out of his tattooed skin. I can see why House might view Foreman as not thinking outside of his own box in being more forgiving of biological contributions to criminality than of environmental contributions to criminality, but that's not the same thing as hypocrisy as long as Foreman is consistent about where he lays blame. I'd expect House to have a better command of the meaning of the word. HOUSE: It doesn't absolve him. Mitigation/commutation isn't necessarily or even usually absolution, and I'd expect both House and Foreman to know the difference regardless of their positions. Not the series' best writing. I can easily see House disapproving of Clarence's failure of reason to keep biology in check. I was nevertheless expecting House to share more of his opinion on curing someone in order to execute him, if only because House isn't the least bit shy about sharing potentially unpopular opinions. For him to suddenly turn up reticent struck me as strange. I like "Hallelujah," but I think this is the fourth time I've heard it placed in a movie or TV show and I think it's lost a lot of its impact through overexposure. -Micky -- "Crowned With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned." -- Edna St. Vincent Millay