House: I’m a doctor! And I need a doctor!

First, let us have a moment of silence for the dearly departed Dr. Chase: Miami.  I’ll miss you, with your perfect hair and your arrogant, I’m-too-good-to-do-front-of-the-house ways.

Now, since this week’s House episode features a prominent Thirteen/Foreman plot, this seems like a good time to go off on that rant that’s been building up in my head.

Because I was holding out hope for this storyline.  In the Christmas episode, sure, it felt a little forced, but I really thought the writers and actors were going to give it their all.  I mean, in season 3, when Cameron and Chase (neither of whom appeared this week) first started getting together, Jennifer Morrison and Jesse Spencer had zero onscreen chemistry (which is ironic, given how they were, you know, engaged back then).   But, thanks to good pacing, charming performances, and subtle, realistic characterization, they still managed to make their romance watchable and compelling.

But now, we’re supposed to believe Foreman and Thirteen have a great eternal love or something, and it’s just tedious watching their scenes.  And I’m not even sure why.  Omar Epps is a good actor, and Olivia Wilde, well… I liked her on The O.C., at least.  But this romance feels as painful as it used to on ER when they’d bring on a new cast member solely to give one of the leads someone to hook up with. (Remember Benton and Cleo?  No?  Well, trust me, it was about the same level of tedium that is Foreman and Thirteen, only with mercifully less screentime.)

Not to mention that neither Foreman nor Thirteen is even a little bit likeable.  No one cares if they hook up or not.  No one would care if they left the show entirely.  They could turn this show into Law & Order and give House a new set of fellows every season and hang onto Cuddy and, I guess, Wilson, and that would be cool with most of us. (Sure, I love Chase, but I’d totally give him up if that meant we got rid of Thirteen and Kutner.)

Anyway, I guess I should talk about the episode itself for a while, huh?

This week marked the show’s 100th episode.  Traditionally, that means something special.  In this case, it does not.  That did not stop the Fox people from promoting it as if it would be, though.

This week’s patient is herself a doctor.  We find this out in the teaser, when she collapses while chopping onions, crying out, “I’m a doctor!  And I need a doctor!”  It would have taken a superb actress to pull off that terrible, terrible line.  Unfortunately, though I’m sure the guest star did her very best, she did not pull off that line.

The character, Dr. Miller, is a cancer researcher who was recently on the verge of curing something very bad and hard to cure.  But eight months ago, she had a personal health crisis that made her realize medicine didn’t make her happy.  Smashing garlic made her happy, so she abandoned her research and became an apprentice chef instead.  This appalls most of the House characters, who think she should’ve put the greater good of cancer-curing above the personal joys of being an apprentice chef. (I’m with them.)

But her personal choice is mostly just in the script to help us get to know Taub a little better, and that’s fine with me.  All this talk from Dr. Miller about the importance of being happy prompts him to go home and talk to his way-hotter-than-him wife about having kids.  He thinks kids would make him happy.  His wife has never wanted kids, and still does not.  Taub decides he’s okay with that, which is just as well.  Can you imagine if Taub was your dad?  Ugh.  I like that he got a storyline though.  And I like that he’s an actual grown-up with grown-up problems, since no one else on this show appears to have made it past tenth grade.

Meanwhile, Dr. Miller has lots of problems herself, as per tradition for this show.  At one point, her scalp itches, and while sleeping, she scratches through her skull, and part of her brain leaks out.  I watched that scene through my fingers but dialogue was still disturbing enough that it didn’t really help.  Just typing about it freaks me out.  I read about the scratching-through-your-skull-to-your-brain-in-your-sleep thing happening for real once, in an article about chronic itching that I refuse to look up again because it freaked me out so much.

Then, toward the end of the ep, blood starts gushing out of Dr. Miller’s ears, eyes, and nose, because there wasn’t enough freaky stuff happening in this episode.  It turns out she has endometriosis, which is a disease I’ve actually heard of before.  But she has it all over her body, and so she’s basically getting her period from every orifice.  Lovely.  Also, this gives House an opportunity to make menstruation jokes, which is an opportunity I’m sure he wishes he had more often.

But back to that prominent Foreman/Thirteen storyline.  As you’ll recall, last week Foreman found out she was on the placebo in their Huntington’s drug trial, and he switched her to the real drug without telling her.  This week she’s suffering side effects – headaches; loss of peripheral vision; perfect eye makeup at all times, even when sleeping; that kind of thing.  So Foreman tells Thirteen about the stunt he pulled.  She leaves the trial and breaks up with Foreman.  Good for her.  If only it could’ve lasted through the end of the episode.

Then, they discover that Thirteen has a tumor.  She got a tumor from the Huntington’s drug?  Duuude.  Maybe it wasn’t ready to go to human trials yet.  Then, halfway through the episode, she goes blind, and Olivia Wilde plays her terror pretty convincingly, and it was right about here that I started caring about this storyline for the first time in the 7 episodes or however long it’s been going on.  I don’t know, that José Saramago book made a big impression on me back in college.

It’s all kind of weird.  No one else on the drug trial was having these side effects, Foreman says, and I’m not clear on how they’re so positive it’s the drug causing this, but they’re the doctors, not me.  Foreman wants to tell the drug company what he did to see if they can help Thirteen.  House talks him out of it, and he and Foreman give Thirteen radiation for her tumor on the sly.  House is kinda-sorta mentoring Foreman throughout this ep, giving him sincere advice and genuinely trying to help him (which means that House repeatedly recommends saving Foreman’s career even though it may mean risking Thirteen’s life.  Which, to be fair, is probably the same thing he’d be doing if it were Cuddy who was going blind.) But Foreman hasn’t turned completely into House quite yet, so he finally ‘fesses up to the drug company.  They agree not to pull his license, but he’s not allowed to do any more trials.  And Thirteen’s side effects won’t be included in analysis of the trial, since Foreman broke protocol.  Man, this is not a show to watch if you’re concerned about the state of the health care industry.

Then, Thirteen regains her sight, which I guess means she’s all better.  Oh, come on.  That was the payoff for this storyline?  Half an episode of Thirteen being sick?  When Foreman almost died he at least got a two-parter.

Plus, Foreman and Thirteen get back together.  Oh, come on.  I get that he made a sacrifice and blah blah blah, but there was no reason he couldn’t tell her before he put her on the drug.  Or, you know, asked her what she thought, seeing as how she’s a doctor too.  But no, he was trying to make a big romantic gesture.  That was beyond misguided – it was stupid, and it could’ve killed her.  And probably would’ve if she hadn’t been under his constant paranoid supervision.

What with all this drama, House and Cuddy get relegated to the C plot this time.  Cuddy is back on the job and is wreaking her vengeance against House by playing such pranks as forcing the janitors to pretend the elevators are down and stringing up trip wires on his office door.  She also steals his cane and has the heat cut off in his apartment.  House decides not to prank Cuddy back, for reasons I didn’t follow. (Wilson diagnoses him as feeling guilty, which seems more likely).  So House hobbles around with a mop instead of a cane for a while, because he will do anything, anything, to prove a point to Cuddy.  Also, we learn that House calls his cane “Little Little Greg,” which I’m not going to analyze.

This plotline is stupid.  Cuddy seriously came back to work just because Cameron thought she couldn’t deal with House?  Cuddy is Cameron’s boss.  She should just make her do it.  Or, like I suggested last week, fire House.  Then we could all tune in every week to watch a show about Hugh Laurie going to monster truck demos and playing poker with his mail carrier.

Also mixed in this week, rather clunkily, is a Wilson subplot.  At the show’s opening, we see a mug in Wilson’s apartment with a lipstick stain on it, leading us to believe Wilson got some.  But later, Wilson goes to guilt Dr. Miller for quitting her research and she replies by psychoanalyzing him, because that’s what people do on this show, and he reveals that the mug was Amber’s, from last year.  Awww.  But at the end, having been persuaded by Dr. Miller’s astute 30-second assessment of his life, he washes the mug.

I guess I’m glad they stretched out the Wilson-mourning-Amber thing as far as they did, since it’s somewhat realistic this way.  But that bit with the mug wrapped it up a little too neatly for me.  And I hope this newfound resolution isn’t leading us to another romantic story for Wilson.  Remember how they had Willow hook up with Kennedy just a couple of months after Tara died, and Joss went all over the interwebs saying it was Amber Benson’s fault?

Well, if we have to suffer through a Wilson/Cuddy/House triangle for the rest of the season I’m totally blaming that on Amber Benson, too.

Season 5, Episode 14: The Greater Good (originally aired February 2, 2009)

For another take on this episode, check out Whinefest ’09 by Cameron Cubbison.

For more on House, click here.

House, Tuesdays 8/7c on FOX

Photographs courtesy of FOX Broadcasting Company and IMDbPro