Originally written on November 1, 2006.

The Lead In:  A young, mixed race, married couple are finishing up dinner in a diner when the diner is robbed.  Playing the hero, the young man attacks the robbers and wins only to find his wife lying on the floor unable to breathe.

The Plot:  Thinking the wife, Tracy (Jurnee Smolett) could be having an infection that only shows up when she is active; Foreman puts her on the treadmill.  Even though she complains of abdominal pains, and the husband, Bobby (Scott Rinker) screams, Foreman makes her continue running.  Soon the husband has similar pains and, as it turns out, has the same illness.

Tracy later has a hallucination that Bobby’s pill-popping racist father is in the hospital telling her to leave Bobby alone, and for Bobby to not touch the girl as he begins to break his arm.  From the hallucination, she goes into a coma.

The team eventually decides that they need to do a biopsy of Tracy’s brain stem, but they need Bobby’s permission to do so.  There is much discussion of the ethics behind this, because Bobby may grant permission to do so simply because it could help cure him.  It is decided that Wilson may do the asking as he has a way with people.  Bobby refuses the biopsy, afraid of the risks, and decides that they should do it on him.  The problem is that he does not yet have those symptoms and would have to go off meds to do so.

A biopsy isn’t needed as Bobby’s intestines begin to rot and a new diagnosis is given.  It turns out that the two lovers are related and Bobby’s dad isn’t so racist after all.  In fact, he is Tracy’s father as well and the illness is related to the incest.

Oooh.

The subplot:  On one of his clinic stints, House ticks off a patient (David Morse) who calls House on his perpetual rudeness.  In retribution, House gives the patient a rectal thermometer and leaves work before it is extracted.

The patient raises crap with Cuddy who tries to make House apologize.  House refuses and ticks the patient off even more.  Turns out the patient is actually Detective Tritter who nails House for speeding at the end of the episode.  Well, speeding and drug possession, for carrying his pills without a prescription.  The episode ends with House being arrested.

The Subplot Part II:  House notices Wilson chatting up a pretty nurse and automatically suspects they are dating.  This irritates House because a) House is alarmed that Wilson will screw up another relationship or b) House fears Wilson will wind up in a happy relationship and not need him anymore.

Much betting goes on between House and Foreman as to the actual nature between Wilson and the nurse until it is disclosed that it is Foreman who is dating the woman.

The rating:  ***
This episode seemed a little off to me.  The actual patients seemed to take a bigger back seat to the internal bickering and subplots.  The incest conclusion seemed more tabloid than usually allowed on the show, and in the end, I didn’t particularly care about the patients at all.

The whole Detective Tritter arrests House plot should prove very interesting though.

The excuse:  I watched the episode after having driven some 600 miles to my parent’s house.  Watching with them is an interesting experience as they tend to talk loudly through the proceedings.  That and the exhaustion made my viewing experience a little lax and most assuredly has an effect on this review.

Originally posted on September 27, 2006.

I keep adding shows to my list of reviews to write which, at some point is going to bite me on the buttocks. And that right hard. But for now, I don’t mind doing little reviews of the shows I watch, when I watch them.

House is a show I started watching late last season. And for most of that, it was more filler than anything I was particularly interested in. If it was on and I was bored I watched it with detached interest, but if I missed it, I didn’t really miss it. As per usual with my writings on television these days, it was the summer that made me a fan.

I was anxious for this season to start and then I became nervous after the preview for last week’s episode thinking House had already jumped the shark and landed in X-files territory. It didn’t and we all were relieved.

What I like about House is that it is a mystery that pretends to be a medical drama (or is that a medical drama pretending to be a mystery?) Each episode brings us a patient with unexplained symptoms. House and his team spend the episode trying every test imaginable to figure out the problem. Hugh Laurie, as House does a magnificent job playing the cantankerous doctor who just happens to be brilliant. Truly he is the reason to watch.

Tonight’s mysterious illness lies in a young autistic boy who suddenly begins screaming and is seemingly in pain.

The pain isn’t related to the autism, but the team run a series of tests anyway. The tests come back negative, but the kid coughs up fluid.

In a very enjoyable sub-plot, Cuddy replaces House’s blood-stained carpet to which House complains and promises to never enter his office again until the blood carpet is returned. It is a great showdown between the two and one that seems so silly and petty in its foolishness it would be hilarious were they both not so serious about it all.

Also, the young jail-bait hottie from last week is back. She pretended to have the same chest symptoms as her father so that House would examine her (naked) chest. House plays along in his own little way and the girl continues to come to the hospital and call him repeatedly until Cuddy is forced to issue a restraining order.

In a nice, intimate, and helpful moment, House, to get the autistic lad to breathe in a sleeping agent, begins sucking on the tube himself and then putting it to the boy’s face. By doing this, the boy learns to trust House, and House gets high. But in his usual manner, House destroys the moment by telling the boy’s parents that it is a case of monkey see/monkey do, relating their son to nothing more than a primate.

Throughout the episode, House and his team set up shop in a variety of places including the main ward of the hospital, Dr. Wilson’s office, a conference room reserved by Cuddy, and eventually Cuddy’s office. All of this is part of House’s plot to make Cuddy give in and give him his carpet back.

We discover that House has an affinity for the child for he never has to deal with all of the social niceties that House deplores so much.

During a basic biopsy of the autistic child’s underarm, they discover that the cells located there are in fact liver cells. This brings up many other issues such as the possibility of cancer and more tests being run.

The tests lead the team to believe the kid may have ingested something harmful. House immediately suspects the parents of poisoning, but this is ruled out through some tests. This leads to accidental ingestion and the team scours the house to see what may be a threat without anyone knowing it.

Sure enough, there is jimson weed on location and House takes pictures of it and various other items in the yard to the boy. Without treating him like a sick kid, House demands the boy show him what he has been eating, but the boy only points at the sandbox.

Finally having enough of the Lolita, House breaks up with her using lines from Casablanca. Looking into her eyes while doing his best Bogart impression, House notices her milky tears – a symptom of some type of simple disease – to which he subscribes to a drug and leaves her alone. As often happens this small symptom leads to House discovering the large problem in the main patient. After looking into the autistic boy’s eyes, House discovers small worms. Worms that would be received through eating sand could have caused all of his other symptoms.

The worms are removed and the boy is well again.

The bloody carpet is returned.

Man, House is a difficult show to cover. It has so many complexities that a plot analysis gets tedious, and I’m still unsure how to cover it critically. We’ll see if I can keep it up.