The entire thread can be read at Google Groups: Subject: HOUSE, M.D.: 28. "Spin" From: MDuPree@theworld.com.snip.to.reply (Micky DuPree) Newsgroups: rec.arts.tv,alt.tv.house-md Date: Fri, 18 Nov 2005 03:13:12 +0000 (UTC) Organization: The World : www.TheWorld.com : Since 1989 Message-ID: Lines: 523 Spoilers for "Spin," 11/15/05. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 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.