"Ugly (House, M. D.)", 11-13-2007

In this week's episode of "House M. D.", we are introduced to a young man who looks a bit like the Elephant Man, at least from the neck up -- he has a massive lump over his left eye and a deformed nose. The young man and his father are their way to Princeton-Gitmo to have cosmetic surgery to have the mass removed. A further complication is that the operation is being paid for by a documentary film crew, who will follow the progress of the young man -- and the doctors in diagnosing his condition.

However, this being the world of "House, M. D." a complication arises -- the young man has a heart attack on the operating table. Whatever has caused this young man's heart trouble must be diagnosed, or surgery will be an unsafe option. Both the young man and his father want the surgery done, which leaves House and his diagnostic team to have to decipher the problem.

House's group of candidates still remain and they are joined by Dr. Samira Terzi, the doctor House met at the CIA in the episode before, "Whatever it Takes". However, Dr. Terzi might be intelligent, but she doesn't possess the sheer amount of brilliance it takes to be a member of House's team -- that is made clear from the beginning. House quickly comes to rue his decision, and Wilson suggests that House might have been more impressed by her cup size than her intelligence. However, Terzi has left her career at the CIA and picked up to move to Princeton. So what is House to do?

A further complication arises when Dr. Taub, one of the candidates, is convinced that the young man is suffering from liver disease and not rheumatoid arthritis (as House believes). Taub has the trust of the family, and with the cameras rolling, Taub makes a bold power-play move. Determined not to be made a fool of by House in the documentary, Taub undercuts House -- he goes to the father and tells him that House's diagnosis is wrong and that he can get House thrown off the case.

Taub attempts to have House fired. House attempts to have Taub fired. Both firings are reversed, and the two will have to work together.

(* * *)

The Taub subplot is probably the most interesting part of "Ugly". Most of the time, House is never matched against someone who might be his equal, if not in intelligence than in confidence. Taub is a very confident man and doesn't seem to have much fear of going behind House's back. This battle of semi-equals was very interesting to watch, and I really wondered how House was going to get out of it and what House was going to do.

Of course, House's solution was to try to figure out why Dr. Taub left his successful plastic surgery practice and use the information to embarrass Taub. House finds out -- perhaps too easily -- but supposedly, "House cares about results" according to Foreman, so Taub surprisingly remains int the running to be in House's team.

However, this was a flawed episode. "Ugly" is the first episode written by Sean Whitesell, and indeed "Ugly" it was.

We get to see House's sexism on full display during this episode. House's comments towards Cuddy are particularly belittling -- will there ever be a day when Cuddy isn't wearing a low-cut blouse or a tight skirt and when House won't comment on her tits or her ass or her nipples? It seems that some ludicrous remark is the first thing out of House's mouth every time he sees Cuddy.

Undoubtedly, the premise is that House is an "anti-hero" -- he says these things to Cuddy to get a rise out of her, and Cuddy patiently ignores them. However, this "women are sort of inferior to men" meme is repeated many times. Dr. Terzi's intelligence level somehow plummets, and the only thing House and Wilson can talk about is whether or not her blouse is see-through. Cameron, who we would think would be well disabused of House as a romantic partner, turns into a stuttering schoolgirl from anime, letting it slip that she "loves" House. (If she's right, then House's behavior is justified; if she's wrong, then Cameron has no sense.)

Furthermore, Wilson comments on the mysterious candidate Number 13, a candidate so in the mold of Cameron that I often have trouble telling the actresses apart when they're on screen. (Remember: Cameron is now sort of blonde; Number 13 is firmly brunette.) Number 13 remains silent for most of the episode, leading once again to speculation that House has kept her on the committee because she is cute. (Dr. Volakis, the "cutthroat bitch" is clearly not for play.) She suddenly pulls the correct diagnosis out of her fundament at the end of the episode -- however, it doesn't redeem any of the suspicions about why Number 13 is on the team, and House's rampant sexism in this episode is little diminished.

Here's a question: what's the difference between making sexist comments and actually being a sexist? The premise is that House will say just about anything to get a rise out of people, but really -- what's the difference in the effect it has on the individual? We never get an "I was just kidding" from House, not even as a lame excuse.

Racism is seen to be a more serious crime than sexism in America, and House treads his comments with both Dr. Foreman and Dr. Cole very carefully. (It was religion that Cole thought over the line, earning House a punch.) But House's implication that Cuddy is a fine piece of ass is clearly meant to evoke chuckles. I wonder what the reaction would have been if he thought Foreman belonged back in the cotton patch.

There are two kinds of cutting comments one can make about someone. One set of comments are about what a person does -- House seems to limit his crude comments about Wilson to his touchy-feely approach to cancer and his bad luck with women. (Then again, Wilson is a white male who is handsome and rich, so what else can he make fun of?) The other set of nasty remarks one can make about a person regard the things that a person can't change -- about race, sex, religion. Those of the kind of remarks that take you out of the realm of being the next Dorothy Parker and put in you in a group with David Duke and all the other Klansmen.

Once again: what's the difference between making a racist comment to get a rise out of someone and making one because you're actually a racist? (Maybe you should ask Michael Richards about that one.)

I don't think House was any uglier in this episode that he's been in past episodes. Yet this continual theme of putting down Cuddy for her attractiveness has probably worn on my nerves. It's a good thing that House is a crippled genius, because if he weren't the second, he'd be out of Princeton-Gitmo in two seconds -- and if he weren't the first, someone might take his remarks in the wrong spirit and make him so.

"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.

"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.