Euthanasia. We all do it (on House).
This week’s House is the first episode of the series I’ve enjoyed in a long time. And not just because it hasn’t aired in three weeks because of baseball. “Known Unknowns” was reminiscent of House at its finest, early in the series. Unlike some episodes that seem like filler, this episode moved the characters forward instead of keeping them spinning in the perpetuity of their Princeton Hospital hamster wheel.
There were a lot of beautiful small moments to appreciate: Cameron sitting at House’s desk opening his mail; the jokes about Cuddy’s breasts being like Selma and Patty from the Simpsons.
“Why would you name them after somebody’s aunts?”
“Well, they’re always smoking.” Read the rest of this entry »
House’s sixth season is now cooking with gas
This is why I liked it: Well written! The veritable opposite of last week! Fine. The performances last week were brilliant. But tonight’s episode redeemed a lot of what seemed to be an over-simplification last week. Thank God House is still in therapy [with the great Andre Braugher!].
I have been worried about how the writers would handle the New-and-Improved Gregory House. I am pleased to report that they are handling it with grace and subtlety. House is still acerbic and funny (making balls jokes to Wilson as they attend cooking class), yet smart: figuring out that vinegar would slow the cooking of the outside of the balls while allowing them to cook thoroughly inside.
This thing looks like that thing on the Grey’s Anatomy season finale
After last season and Gizzy-Gate, I had all but given up on Grey’s Anatomy. This season, though, it pulled me back in. So despite my better judgment, I was totally sucked in and looking forward to this season’s finale. I’ve got to say: I wasn’t disappointed.
I’ve long hated the make-up break-up cycle between Meredith and Derek, so it was nice to see them committing themselves to each other. I enjoyed the new turns the Christina/Owen relationship took, and even Izzie’s brain tumor. It was nice to see George actually somewhat back in the story with his big decision. I liked just about everything about the finale, but I couldn’t help but thinking, as I watched it, that it seemed kind of … familiar.
House – Right brains, left hands and hallucinations
What the heck’s wrong with House? We thought we took a trip to hallucination land when he was hanging out with Amber, but he really lost his marbles this week. I’m not sure if this finale blew me away, left me confused or just made me love Carl Reiner more than ever (huge Dick Van Dyke fan here….).
What was successful for me was the way they juxtaposed the patient with the alien hand syndrome with House’s malady. It was all about the right brain, the side that controls our reality, who we are for real. After this episode, we are left with the question, “Who is House really?”
House – Death by paper cut
For a show whose protagonist vehemently claims to be an atheist, House certainly deals with a lot of religious themes and striking coincidences. One of the strong commonalities of the best and most interesting House cases is that the underlying causes are always weird, inconceivable ailments that can only be caused (and discerned) by putting together the most bizarre circumstances.
In Season 2, “Clueless,” a woman is poisoning her husband with gold that she is hiding in a… very intimate place. If House hadn’t spent time living in Egypt and known about a chemical that turns purple when mixed with gold, he wouldn’t have been able to solve the case. In “Insensitive,” in Season 3, he figures out from a Vitamin B deficiency that a patient who can’t feel pain has a tapeworm. So, the case of Lee having a paper cut that got infected with rat urine should have been right up there among the most elegant of diagnoses. So, why do I feel disappointed?
House spoilers abound – if you don’t like spoilers or virgin vampires, skip this
I am not going to post any spoilers in the first paragraph of this post, just in case your eye strays. You’ll have to read the full entry if you want the goods. And if you do read the entire post? Please don’t complain that there are spoilers because THERE ARE SPOILERS ABOUT HOUSE IN THE REMAINDER OF THIS POST!
I can totally understand not wanting to know anything about what happens. Believe me. I am more curious, however, than I am cautious. I know what happens on the last episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and I haven’t seen beyond season shree of the show. Some of us are completely illogical that way. I don’t fully understand it either. But I’ve prattled on enough now. You’ve been warned. Read on for the spoilers. Read the rest of this entry »
House is recycling old themes again with new cats
One of the disadvantages of watching House from the beginning of Season 1, as I have been doing with friends all winter, is that you start to recognize when the storylines are being recycled. In “Here Kitty,” Kutner approaches Taub, who is ill-humored, and says that Taub should confide in him because they are friends. This is a page out of the scene from “Sleeping Dogs” in Season 2 when Cameron tells Foreman that in order to preserve their friendship, they should both apologize and move on (after he stole a medical article from her). Taub, like Foreman, responds by saying that they are colleagues, but they are not friends.
Wilson expresses outrage that House is performing an autopsy on a coma patient who has died after a “magic cat” with powers of diagnosis lies next to it. However, House trying to solve puzzles is the undercurrent of every episode. Sometimes? The moral outrage is a little old. Even when you know the formula and appreciate what the show can do anyway. And what House is doing to this patient is certainly no worse than shooting a body in the morgue in order to see what will happen if a patient with gunshots has an MRI (it will break the machine for two weeks, by the way), as House did in Season 2, “Euphoria, Part 1.” Read the rest of this entry »
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