"Whatever it Takes (House, M. D.)", 11-06-2007

I would be scared to death to end up at Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital and fall under the care of Gregory House. More than likely, I would get some weird disease, House's team of doctors would spend several days (approximately one hour of screen time) torturing me, and eventually they would come to the conclusion that I made an error of omission -- or worse, commission, deliberately omitting some embarrassing incident -- and I would be face to face with Gregory House, M. D. who would lift his cane, point it at my face, and scream, "J'accuse!"

In "Whatever it Takes", House gets pulled away from the group of candidates for his diagnostic team by a mysterious suit-wearing man who has a badge that has "CIA" on it. (My first thought: why does House even trust the veracity of the man's claims? The CIA could stand for "Culinary Institute of America".) As it turns out, the Central Intelligence Agency needs to borrow House's mind. One of their agents is dying from an undiagnosable illness, and they provide the standard issue black helicopter to take House down to CIA headquarters at Virginia to make his diagnosis.

There, he meets Dr. Terzi, who is the physician working for the CIA. Also chosen by the CIA is Dr. Curtis of the Mayo Clinic. As Terzi is a real looker and Curtis is your standard, button-down doctor, House tries to get into Terzi's panties and puts down Curtis every chance he gets.

Normally, House puts down the concept of a patient history -- "everybody lies" -- but this time, the CIA won't give either House or Curtis any patient history, merely a couple of scraps of information. It seems that the CIA wants to keep this agent's identity completely under wraps. Therefore, House and Curtis must start from Ground Zero. And, oh, there will be conflict, I tells ya!

Meanwhile, House's candidates have been left under the care of Dr. Foreman. Of course, they get an interesting case of their own where a drag racer passed out after a race and quickly declines under the care of the candidates (and Foreman, in particular). Foreman then finds himself in a battle of wills with the candidates -- Foreman feels that his knowledge and experience give him authority, but the candidates feel their key to success is solving the case with their own ideas and by necessity, undermining Foreman's authority. Will Foreman survive with his ego integrity intact?

The first of my comments involves the parallel between the two stories -- as it turns out in both cases, the key to the case is recognizing that someone is lying about something. Isn't that the motto of "House, M. D." -- "everybody lies?" Unfortunately, when so many episodes revolve around this premise, the plots become formulaic like the worst sort of mysteries. In the future, we should just be able to program "House, M. D." episodes by concluding "one of the facts given about this patient is in error", and by a process of elimination solve the case. Hell, in one episode the staff made the "error" that they assumed that the female model was genetically female.

Furthermore, Curtis took a lot of grief in this episode. Granted, House gives everyone grief but the set-up was far too obvious. It reminded me of Animal House. The slovenly rules-breakers vs. the straight-laced dean, and Dr. Curtis's suit threw him into the straight-laced dean category. The premise is that we're supposed to love the rulesbreaker and hate the straight-laced dean. However, Dr. Curtis didn't seem stuffy or particularly full of himself -- maybe the director failed to give him the instruction that he was supposed to be Dean Wormer and instead Holmes Osborne played it like Marcus Welby, M. D. Maybe they should bring Mr. Osborne back in a future episode, so they can get it right. He could become an assistant administrator and put House on double-secret probation.

The case with the "numbers", as my wife calls them, was much more interesting. Foreman makes an obvious diagnosis -- heatstroke -- but the driver has a seizure and everyone falls all over themselves to find some rare, mystery diagnosis while Foreman suggests more mundane solutions like heatstroke, or botulism, or even multiple sclerosis.

As it turns out -- and I must give the plot away to make my point about the episode -- the candidate from Doctors Without Borders suggests polio. As polio has been eradicated almost everywhere in the United States, and as nothing in the racers labs even suggested polio, it becomes a battle of wills between Foreman and our candidate who has experience treating third-world polio. Foreman gets fed up and tosses the guy off the team, but the man does labs behind Foreman's back.

Guess what? Positive for polio. Foreman is humiliated and the other doctors make sure he feels the sting of his defeat. The young doctor suggests an experimental treatment for polio involving high doses of Vitamin C -- this treatment was initially researched in the 1950s but abandoned after the success of the vaccine. Sure enough, after an IV bolus of orange juice or something the racer's paralysis goes away.

It all seems to turn out fine and dancy, until House comes back and immediately diagnosis -- in five minutes -- that the racer's symptoms are indicative of thallium poisoning. He concludes that our young doctor poisoned the patient with thallium, came up with a positive lab test for polio somehow, and then discontinued the thallium after the vitamin C.

Why? The doctor wanted to promote research into third-world diseases, and "mystery polio" seemed to be the way to do it. Foreman's pedestrian diagnosis was the correct one. (Now, the question is who tells the patient that the hospital poisoned her, lest she walk out believing she has polio?)

Dr. Poisoner was clearly at fault, but in a way, aren't all of House's patients victims of malpractice? If malpractice is the failure to follow medical standards in a way that causes the patient harm, shouldn't the entire show be retitled "Malpractice Clinic in Princeton"? (Tonight's episode: "I Lose My Licence".)

The title "Whatever it Takes" is telling. The entire premise of the show is that this patient, and all of House's patients will be abused (the bad thing) in order to save their lives (the good thing). Our young doctor takes this premise a bit further. After all, what is the torture of one patient -- even a healthy patient -- compared to the goal of saving a million third world lives? If "the ends justify the means", then the doctor undoubtedly felt he was doing something good and noble. I suspect the doctor was embarrassed at having been caught, but that if asked, he regretted nothing except the future jail term he is sure to receive.

The other doctors -- even House, a firm believer in "the ends justify the means" -- suffer various degrees of repulsion, and justly so. Which is odd, as you can find millions of Americans that firmly believe the ends justify the means. After all, what's wrong with the torture of Iraqis and other Muslims, if the end results in the safety of millions of Americans? But sooner or later, one can rationalize the most ignoble of acts -- pre-emptive torture, the support of corrupt and reprehensive governments, spreading false intelligence -- if you can claim that the ends are pure enough. Read a newspaper if you don't believe me.

The other comment regards Chase and Cameron, whom the producers feel must be crammed into every episode. Chase's part truly is a bit part, and Cameron could have easily been cut out of the episode. Look, Fox, I know you hired these guys, but in baseball, they call it a "release". If they have no grand role in the drama of "House, M. D.", then pay them half of their remaining salary, bid them a fond farewell and tell them that they should seek other work. Don't just string their careers along in bit parts, and let them go.