The entire thread can be read at Google Groups: Subject: HOUSE, M.D.: 36. "Sex Kills" From: MDuPree@theworld.com.snip.to.reply (Micky DuPree) Newsgroups: rec.arts.tv,alt.tv.house-md Date: Thu, 9 Mar 2006 09:56:44 +0000 (UTC) Organization: The World : www.TheWorld.com : Since 1989 Message-ID: Lines: 268 Spoilers for "Sex Kills," 3/7/06. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . This episode was reminiscent of episodes earlier in season two: very breezy, brisk pace; sensitive to criticism about the season-one formula, so while there were bouts of differential diagnostics, the overwhelming drive of the plot was not to solve the puzzle before the end of the episode, but to procure a heart transplant. The diagnostics were just to make sure the patient could keep it. Apart from a couple of vestigial reminders (just had to get those in, didn't they), there was no mention of Stacy nor of House making himself miserable, which was an overdue mercy. Evidently, all you need to do to get rid of a conversion disorder is have one incident with a placebo effect revealed to you. I did raise an eyebrow at that, but I'm not going to bother to research it. Apart from that, there wasn't anything so obvious that I could smell something fishy before House did, so I wasn't medically outraged this time. I actually liked the return of the red herring in the prologue, just because it made me laugh to realize that the daughter wasn't going to be the patient after all. I don't feel bad about not realizing the significance of the acid reflux (i.e., its treatment), because it was a plausible symptom in its own right. I do feel bad about missing the significance of the cheese- tasting. If it were going to be insignificant, they would have made it something more common, like wine-tasting. Given the automatic expectation of patient dishonesty, I'm surprised that the Diagnostics Dept. doesn't insist on examining and interviewing all patients alone first. Allowing a loved one in the room instantly kicks up the probability of getting incomplete or false information. In "The Socratic Method," the other doctors were astonished at House's willingness to go see the patient. This season, almost any pretext will do for House to drop in and say hi, and except for Cameron looking suspiciously jealous at House visiting the fashion model, the other doctors have never said boo about this change in M.O. The remodeling of the fourth-floor set continues, and they moved the wings around. (The Cuyler Wing is at the opposite end of the hospital from where it started.) They've diverted so many of the corridors in the sets without once showing a construction crew in the story that PPTH's floor plan is as unpredictable as the school in the Harry Potter movies. I like it when House advocates for his patient, but since they already pointed out that he does this when he lobbied for the heart transplant in "Control" and they did it more subtly and poignantly then, having House unsubtly say it out loud here -- twice -- felt repetitious and artlessly obvious, even leading me to compare "Sex Kills" unfavorably to "Control." Less would have been more. I liked how they touched on the fact that donor organs get tossed because they aren't perfect, while people die for lack of donor organs or lack of perfect qualifications. But it was one of the few times this season when I thought they were being too subtle, because it was one of those issues worth a little rant on House's part. The larger ethical and technical implications of doing imperfect transplantation were sort of steamrolled by the plot about the drive for just this one transplant. Are they going to do this every time a patient goes into organ failure (color me dubious), and if not, why not? I would have liked to hear an iffy percentage prognosis for the patient even if we couldn't stick around long enough to see how well he did. It would have seemed a lot more plausible to me if the docs had said that all they did was buy him a few years, and then House had said something like if a few years are what we can give him, then we've done what we can. As matters stood, it felt like everything was peachy and there was no need to worry about any pesky complications. Considering that House bothered to put on a lab coat to talk to the almost-widower, I had to agree with the latter that House was trying to be deceptive. I wasn't sure why the organ procurement coordinator thought that it was House's job to tell him his wife was dying, though. Ho-kay, I'm gonna hand-wave that they did manage to get the donor's heart started again after it had so obviously foundered in the E.R., but that the brain had been deprived too long. Otherwise, it did look screwy that they were performing furious CPR on a heart that they would later harvest. Interesting shot passing through the wall of the Diagnostics Office as Foreman chased after the exiting House. Odd. I think that in the wide shot of the MRI control room, there was a snippet of Cuddy's reflection walking off to the left (a vertical pinkish blur, which resembled her outfit, for less than a second). There was no reason to have just a snippet of a reflection of a regular character like that, so I'm guessing part of the scene was cut. Continuing in the _Jerry Springer_ vein from last episode, the clinic patient made me think he was going to turn out to be deeply attracted to either other males and he had a strict religion or was homophobic, or else to very young children and he was trying to nip it in the bud. In fact, I would have expected House to go down a mental road like that, since he was obviously surprised that the answer turned out to be merely "stepmother." I would have thought that most guys would be much more embarrassed to admit to cow attraction than to admit to stepmother attraction (particularly if they're adamant about not wanting to follow through on the stepmother attraction). But people are funny that way. That's two out of the three evil nerds from _Buffy_ walking into the clinic now. I'm waiting for Danny Strong to be the next one. I've read that what with new drugs and new techniques, tissue compatibility isn't the huge issue in transplants that it used to be, but given that they've made a big deal about compatibility in previous episodes, it seemed odd that the word wasn't even spoken this time. And don't those powerful new drugs tend to make the recipient less able to fight off infection (like, say, gonorrhea)? Geez, don't they have, like, a billion blood vessels to reconnect when they transplant an organ? It looked like they lucked into one of those newfangled plug-n-play modular hearts that don't need all those old- fashioned connections. I was bothered by the ease with which House could snap his fingers and get a transplant team when by all rights, even based on his behavior in this episode, most of the other staff at PPTH shouldn't be willing to piss on him to put out a fire. By now, the whole hospital probably knows that House blackmailed the transplant surgeon in "The Mistake" to get him to operate. I can well imagine ways by which House could go around trying to convince other doctors to help him out, but given what a HUGE deal they've made all along, in both the first and second seasons, about how House antagonizes every colleague around him except for the other regular characters (and frequently them as well), it really should be part of the onscreen story when House has to make nice (or threaten blackmail) to get recalcitrant colleagues to cooperate with him. Abrasiveness to that degree is a character flaw, and it's organically part of the characterization to show the consequences of that flaw coming home to roost. The thing that bothered me the most, though, was House basically telling Wilson to bug off because he doesn't do the listener bit. First of all, House has historically loved to do the listener bit and has even tried to insinuate himself where he wasn't invited so he could get people to spill what's bothering them. He doesn't give people the usual hand- holding when it's all done or say he's going to kiss it and make it better, but neither does he twist the knife. He got Cameron to spill about her dead husband in "Fidelity." He practically hounded the closed-lipped Wilson in "Histories," even following him at the end to get him to spill about his homeless brother. ("Histories" is going to be on the USA network this Friday at 11 PM Eastern Time if you don't believe me.) He got Chase to spill about his absentee dad in "Cursed." House has picked on Wilson about his infidelities since the middle of the first season. I always got the impression that it was partly because House didn't approve of infidelity, but partly because he didn't see anything good coming out of it for his friend (multiple marriages, multiple affairs, and never seeming to be happy about any of it). Always, I got the impression that it was House who was willing to listen while it was Wilson who refused to open up, going back to House's inquiry at the end of "Damned If You Do": HOUSE: Your wife doesn't mind being alone at Christmas? WILSON: I'm a doctor. She's used to being alone. [Off House's look.] I don't want to talk about it. HOUSE: [Quickly] Neither do I. At which point, House respected Wilson's privacy, but if House hadn't been willing to listen in the first place, he wouldn't have asked the question. Now, you could say that House's motivation to pry into other people's problems has always been his insatiable curiosity rather than any concern for their well-being. That's what House seemed to claim when challenged, anyway. From "Cursed": CHASE: If I tell you my dad left, my mum drank herself to death -- you gonna care about me more? HOUSE: Cameron would. Me, I just like knowing stuff. I don't think that was the whole story, particularly since Cameron has let her personal issues interfere with her work, which made Cameron's issues into House's professional concern, but even if it were the whole story, where did House's defining curiosity suddenly disappear to in "Sex Kills"? Both House and Wilson were different in "Sex Kills." The recently retconned Wilson didn't bother me as much. It was strange that he went from being overly macho about not sharing his feelings to practically begging to unburden himself, but I guess I could buy an argument that he finally asked for help because he had reached some kind of breaking point. He's older now. Maybe he wants more stability now and doesn't know how to get it. He could tell himself that one failed marriage was bad luck and her fault. A second failed marriage could be a coincidence and still her fault. A third failed marriage points the finger at him. Or maybe Wilson finally wanted somewhere to turn to because this was the first time one of his wives had had an affair and it was terra incognita for him. But House's behavior towards Wilson was completely out of the blue and frankly, did not seem like House to me. You could say that House's rebuff of Wilson's plea was *meant* to be something new; that maybe it was payback to Wilson for all of Wilson's recent lecturing about Stacy and being miserable. But if it was consciously intended by the writers to be a new behavior for House, I'd expect Wilson to say something to that effect. I'd also expect Wilson to point out that he was always there listening when House wanted to talk about Stacy or Mark. Even when Wilson didn't approve of what House was getting up to, he always gave complete overriding priority and confidence to House, despite being friends with both House and Stacy. Yeah, I got it pretty early on: House is a jerk. But for his one and only friendship not to be reciprocal? No, I never got that off of him before. He very soberly admitted that their friendship mattered to him when Wilson chewed him out in "Babies & Bathwater." Now all of a sudden House is implying that Wilson chose the wrong friend if he wants someone to listen to him? It's yet another repugnant retcon of the character to me. What female tells her father he's going to have to use a condom the next time he "does" her mother? I think this was the first time they used the same exterior for House's residence from a previous episode, but they changed the interior again. I'm beginning to think that's a running gag with the producers. "Sex Kills" feels like a sweeps title (sex and violence in one pithy market-researched phrase). It's a melodramatic title considering that at most, only one person died of sex in the story. (I've never heard of gonorrhea making you pass out while driving, but fine, whatever.) For that kind of impact, I would have expected House to give a speech about how mortality is the price we pay for sexual reproduction, but he doesn't know many people who turn down sex in protest. Eh. There were a lot of one-liners, but they felt labored to me rather than funny. --