House: Wilson Has Very Girly Handwriting

I don’t watch Fox promos, so this week’s episode title, “Joy to the World,” made me assume Cuddy was getting her wannabe adoptive baby back.  And then the show opened to a school pageant chorus singing “Joy to the World,” and I figured the episode would therefore have nothing to do with Joy the baby.  So, I was adequately misdirected.  Good job, show.

This week’s patient, an overweight teenage girl named Natalie, has a hard, hard life.  The episode opens with some mean girls (total Slytherins despite their Hufflepuff scarves) pulling a mean prank on her.  The same kids don’t seem to care when she pukes and passes out at the assembly in front of her entire school and assembled parents and teachers.

Cuddy, who has a new, unflattering hairstyle, takes the lead on Natalie’s case, and proceeds to be cold and professional to House throughout. (Go Cuddy!) House hates this, and tries to antagonize her, but she’s not biting anymore.  He tries to get the minions to care about this non-romance, but even they aren’t playing.  As Taub says, while watching House snipe at Cuddy, “This is a good experience for me, as my parents never got divorced.”

Also, Wilson tells House to stop being such a jerk so he can get Christmas presents.  House then does an awesome Wilson impersonation that includes the lines “Of course I’ll sleep with you” and “I’m so sorry you’re dying, Mrs. Moron.”

Sometimes I like Wilson.  In this episode I did.  For the most part, though, Wilson makes me roll my eyes higher and higher every week.  The fact that he’s even still a character on this show, 5 seasons in, cracks me up.  Although I guess it’s better than the alternative, which would be to give House a voice-over or a Doogie-Howser-like secret computer diary.  But I know that I’m in the minority of House viewers on this, because Wilson always features prominently in the show’s promo materials and media coverage, so I guess there are people out there who tune in to Fox on Tuesday nights thinking, “I can’t wait to see more of the antics of this Wilson guy!”

(Also, it’s still very hard for me to look at Robert Sean Leonard without picturing him in his suicidal Puck outfit from Dead Poets Society and giggling for a while.  I once tried to cure this by checking out his IMDB profile for other roles of his that I’ve seen, but all that did was remind me of Swing Kids, which did nothing to control the giggling; in fact, it made it worse.  In my head, RSL = late-80s/early-90s teen period movie characters whom I adored when I was in middle school but have since grown to mock.  I just bet he auditioned for the Christian Bale role in Newsies, too.)

(I guess he’s a good actor.  I don’t know.  He and Hugh Laurie have chemistry, so that part’s good.  But then, Hugh Laurie has chemistry with house plants, so whatever.  Props to you, RSL.)

Anyway, to fulfill Wilson’s dare, House puts on a white coat, goes to the clinic, introduces himself to a patient as “Greg,” and pretends to sympathize with her.  It’s pretty cool.  But he can’t keep it up through even this one interaction, because he immediately diagnoses the young woman as being pregnant based on her having a headache, and she asks if she could’ve gotten pregnant from sitting on a toilet seat, and there’s only so much of that kind of thing that House can handle.  But then the woman comes back with her fiancé, insisting that they’re both virgins, and even though House knows she’s lying and has the lab tests to prove it, he tells them it was a miracle of science and that she got pregnant without ever having sex.  And they believe him, because they’re dumb, and because House is actually very convincing as he delivers this news.  We even get one of those explanatory cartoons that shows animated eggs floating around in an animated virginal uterus. (Whenever they show these things I always think of the THIS IS WHAT SCIENTOLOGISTS ACTUALLY BELIEVE sketch from South Park.)

Also, in the other subplot, Thirteen and Foreman make out.  Okay, some other stuff happens first involving the clinical trial and whatever, but that was just to set up the making out, so I’m not going to bother with the details.  But it was weird, and nice, to see these two characters acting genuinely happy for an entire scene.  They’re lit with a nice warm glow, and sappy Christmas music is playing, and honestly, after all the other depressing stuff that happens in this episode, I kind of even liked the sap.

But back to Natalie, our poor pranked teen.  The episode spends some time exploring the evils of bullying.  The minions, aided by Chase, interrogate Natalie’s bullies about what drugs they gave her (‘shrooms, cause that’s what all the cool kids do) and what secrets she’s hiding (she used to pound back two bottles of vodka a week).  Chase is really stern with the kids, and I’m glad to see that Chase no longer hates overweight children, since that season 1 episode where he was really mean to that poor little girl has always been the biggest obstacle I’ve faced in justifying the fact that I love Chase. (And yes, I am giving the writers the benefit of the doubt in assuming that Chase’s behavior here represents true character growth, rather than representing the writers’ having forgotten about that season 1 episode.)

Also, Kutner yells a lot at one of Natalie’s bullies.  Taub therefore assumes Kutner was bullied for having seen his parents get shot.  Really?  Making fun of the overweight girl I get, but making fun of orphans seems so 1800s.  But it turns out Kutner was a bully himself in high school, and at the close of the episode he goes to some former victim’s house to apologize.  Do people who were bullied really appreciate visits like that?

Anyway, after a series of misdiagnoses that include tuberculosis and severe alcoholism, Natalie turns out to be suffering from eclampsia, which means she’s dying from heart and liver failure.  It also means she’s either pregnant or has recently given birth.  It’s the latter.  She hid the entire pregnancy from her parents and everyone else, then gave birth alone in an abandoned building.  The baby was premature and stillborn, and Natalie left it there, covered in her coat.  Wow.  That’s really sad.  And, it turns out Natalie’s heart and liver damage are permanent – so she’s going to die.  Wow, again.  Talk about your depressing Christmas episode.

Then, Cuddy goes to the scary abandoned house to find the baby’s body.  Alone.  Watching this the first time, I was like, Duuuuuude.  Just go to a therapist.  Or at least start hanging out more with Wilson.  And then the house turned out to be some guy’s crack den, and he started menacing Cuddy, and for a second I was really really really worried for Cuddy’s safety (because honestly, the gloomy way the episode had gone so far it seemed entirely possible that Cuddy would’ve gotten shot right there, and that would’ve resolved the House/Cuddy storyline).  But then the crackhead’s girlfriend shows up with Natalie’s baby, who is in fact alive.  Cuddy convinces the woman to give up the baby.  She brings it back to the hospital and gives it to Natalie and her parents.  Even Natalie’s baby daddy (one of her former bullies, who is a total Chase-in-training) comes to the hospital and gets in on the happy ending.

Except it’s not that happy, because Natalie’s still dying, and neither her parents nor the baby daddy’s parents want to keep the kid.  Really?  That seems far-fetched to me.  But I’ll let it go, now that Cuddy is going to try to adopt this kid.  We get a lovely, quiet scene between House and Cuddy wherein it’s made clear that House understands that he’s now out of the picture, and is nice to Cuddy despite this.  Poor House.  I was so mad at him last week.  Damn these well-written, well-acted characters.  They make it so hard to maintain consistent opinions.

Wow.  That was a good episode.

Season 5, Episode 11: Joy to the World (originally aired December 9, 2008)

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