"97 Seconds (House)", 10-09-2007

I'll admit I fell off the "House, M. D." bandwagon sometime during the second season, during one of the dumbest plots ever -- House's persecution by a drug-cop-with-a-vengeance named Tritter.

I had been slightly unhappy with House for some time. It appeared that every episode fell into the same pattern: the mystery patient would be introduced. We'd get more than enough samples of House's obnoxious, over-the-top behavior. There would be some sort of "B" plot involving Cuddy or Wilson. House's crew would make a tenative stab at a diagnosis, think they had figured it out, but the patient would get progressively worse to the point of undertakers drawing out their measuring tape. Then, when all hope was lost, House would pull a cure out of his talented ass.

In all, "House, M. D." is a medical mystery, and as such, it shares the same faults of any other mystery: there is a murder. Who done it? That's the plot of every murder mystery, and for medical dramas, just substitute "there is an illness: what done it?" Like it or not, a lot of time is spent jumping through the requisite hoops, and after a while, all of the episodes blend together. The lack of character development -- House was designed to be the obnoxious character who doesn't have the Scrooge-like change of heart - made every episode seem like even more of the same.

However, at the end of Season Two, they decided to shake things up a bit. House's team of Foreman, Chase and Cameron fell apart, due to quittings, firings and the like. House tried to function as a one-man team at the beginning of Season Three, but that wasn't working. Therefore, House has been compelled to create a new diagnosis team, with several young doctors vying for a chance to work with the genius.

After the mystery patient is introduced -- a wheelchair-bound man suffering from paralysis faints in his wheelchair while crossing a street -- House is playing mind games with the ten doctors who, for reasons known only to House, have remained. He decides to split them up into two diagnostic teams, one all-male and one all-female. One of the female doctors -- known as "the Bitch" -- wants to be on the all-male team. It isn't that she believes that the females are the weaker team. Rather, she claims, she believes the males are the weaker team, and when the female loses, the major competition will be thinned out.

Meanwhile, at Mercy Hospital, Foreman is in charge of a House-like diagnostic team. Eventually, he concludes that his patient needs a risky treatment. However, the administrator at Mercy Hospital forbids the treatment. It's a House-like situation, so what is Foreman to do?

I can't give away too much of the plot, because if you give away too much of a mystery, it destroys the bloom of watching. However, there were a few points that I particularly liked:

* the set of ten remaining doctors attempting to figure out House -- I hate to tell them, but if House is the genius the show claims he is, then his mind is probably a level above theirs and they won't be able to figure him out
* the "macguffin" involved a mistake that nurses are taught never to make -- I used to be a nurse, and it wasn't the kind of mistake I would make. I wonder if medical school interns are taught the same thing
* House's interaction with Chase. Chase was the former House "gosling" who was fired. Now, Chase can tell House exactly what he thinks, with little fear of retribution.

But probably the best part of the episode was Foreman's dilemma, which cuts right to the heart of what I find so hard to believe about House and the way he works. Foreman decides to use the risky treatment on his patient, against the wishes of the administrator. The patient actually recovers with the risky treatment. (Oddly enough, he used a similar treatment in an earlier episode, and the patient died, leading Foreman to quit.)

Does the administrator thank Foreman for his obvious brilliance? No. The procedures are in place for a reason. Despite his success, Foreman is handed a pink slip. He just smarted himself out of a job.

In the initial episodes of "House", we learned that Cuddy hired House despite the fact that House was virtually unemployable. However, we get no wind of this "unemployability" of House. House abuses his privileges, abuses his staff, even abuses the administrator, and because of his diagnostic brilliance, gets away with it.

House is a saint. I don't use that word lightly. A real saint is a religious mystic, a person who follows a higher path wherever it leads, even if that path upsets the social order. And it is guaranteed that the path will upset the social order. Saints don't ask for permission, and they don't follow orders. Which is why most saints end up beheaded or crucified -- soon or later, they piss off the guardians of the social order who see saints as disruptive influences. Sooner or later, there is a showdown.

House has already had a few "showdowns" on his own show. A new board member named Vogler who wants to run the hospital like a business. Tritter, the John Wayne cop who can do things that no cop should be able to do (except in China). House versus a hospital review board. Through wit and/or circumstances, the saint has managed to stay on top.

However, we've never seen the path that House walked to get where he is. It was undoubtedly a very lonely path, and House doesn't even try to make himself likeable. The likeable, polished Foreman takes the first steps down House's Path of Sainthood -- and gets beheaded at Mercy Hospital. The question then becomes, "will Foreman confirm, or will he persist?"

The "B" plot is also interesting: House, while performing clinic duty, is faced with a clinic visitor who shoves a knife in an electrical socket -- while House is in the same room with him. The patient is revived, and tells House that when he had been hit by a car, his heart stopped for the 97 seconds of the title. He had some sort of wonderful experience while dead. What happens next is quite in character. After all, House is Sherlock Holmes, and Holmes never shied away from a mystery.