The entire thread can be read at Google Groups: Subject: HOUSE, M.D.: 32. "Failure to Communicate" From: MDuPree@theworld.com.snip.to.reply (Micky DuPree) Newsgroups: rec.arts.tv,alt.tv.house-md Date: Mon, 16 Jan 2006 05:44:12 +0000 (UTC) Organization: The World : www.TheWorld.com : Since 1989 Message-ID: Lines: 894 Spoilers for "Failure to Communicate," 1/10/06. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 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