House: I’m not jealous of Cuddy’s pistons

Over the weekend, I was talking about House with some non-viewers. And I swear, three of them said, unprompted by me, “House? Is that that show with that guy who was the main guy in Dead Poets Society?”  Which made me feel a lot better about that RSL rant I went off on a while back. (Especially in the context of this week’s episode, in which RSL actually performed quite well.)

Also this week, for the first time in recent memory, I found the patient story genuinely interesting. I think it’s because the writers cheated. Not just because they borrowed the story of this week’s patient from Phineas Gage, some 19^th-century dude Kutner calls “the most famous case study in medical history,” and from that Jim Carrey movie I didn’t see, but because they created a character who is basically House. Only all he has to do is insult people and be funny for an entire episode, with none of that pesky doctoring or psychoanalyzing.

But he’s also House with a real life, including responsibilities, and a wife and daughter and colleagues who all expect him to behave like a human being. So this episode illustrates, in a way that the one with the suicidal pain guy failed to do, House’s isolation. Not exactly new territory for this show, which has spent about 51.5 of its 103 episodes exploring House’s psyche and the implications thereof. But when it does that well, it reminds me why I’ve happily watched 102 of those 103 episodes. (And yes, the remaining episode is in my Netflix queue.)

Our patient is Nick, a nice-guy book editor who suddenly loses the filter between his brain and his mouth. He has some neurological thing called “frontal lobe disinhibition,” which leaves him with no choice but to say everything he thinks out loud. We get to see him make a scene at a book launch party, where he denounces his star author as destined for lousy sales, and then at the hospital, where he mocks Taub’s big nose, fantasizes aloud about hooking up with Cuddy (and Thirteen, preferably simultaneously), tells his daughter he doesn’t want her around, and tells his wife she’s dumb and useless. It gets progressively harder and harder to watch, until finally he begs House to operate on him to repair the brain damage, even though the particular brand of brain surgery he requires carries a high risk of death and/or vegetation. And then, once he’s survived the surgery, it doesn’t even work. Turns out there’s some benign fibroma that his immune system is overreacting to that’s causing his personality changes, or something. So they fix that. And then he goes home to his wife, but it’s obvious that they’re going to be having some major problems from here on out.

Anyway, back to the Wilson subplot. Earlier episodes, which I had forgotten, had established that Wilson has a homeless, schizophrenic brother, Daniel, whose whereabouts Wilson didn’t know. This week, Daniel turns up in a psych ward at a New York hospital. Wilson attempts to hide this from House, and even makes Taub complicit in his cover story, but House deduces that Wilson is lying. For once, I find House’s analysis of Wilson genuinely interesting, although during all those scenes where he was trying to solve the mystery I had to wonder why we were never led to believe Wilson was on heroin, or at least methadone.  But once House uncovers the truth, he goes with Wilson to visit Daniel on the psych ward. While they’re in the waiting room, Wilson offers us more back story about growing up with Daniel. Basically, it’s the Laura Linney story in Love Actually, except one time, Daniel called Wilson and Wilson hung up on him, and then the next day Daniel ran away, never to be seen again, until now. That’s why Wilson’s so nice – because after that, he resolved to never do anything bad to anyone again.

Also, Peter Jacobson is hilarious in this episode. First he (well, Taub) keeps staring into his reflection in spoons and asking everyone what they think about his nose. Then House makes him play racquetball in the morgue to prove Wilson’s cover story false (and I really shouldn’t make fun of the House writers as much as I do when they’re the only people in TV coming up with morgue-racquetball sequences) and it’s even funnier than the premise would lead you to expect. And stuff like that is why I think Taub is such an excellent addition to this show. They could never have done that scene with Chase or Cameron or Foreman.

Speaking of whom, Chase gets a semi-meaty scene this week, and even though his hair and stubble are looking worse than ever, the fact remains that I love Chase. House asks him to perform the super-risky surgery on Nick – that is, he asks Chase to ask his boss, who’s conveniently a neurosurgeon. Chase stands around in his unattractive casual wear (and man, how much do I miss those striped shirts and skinny ties), listens to House, and agrees to do the surgery without even asking for anything in return. What happened to the guy who took bets on which of the new fellowship candidates would get fired and then split the return with House? Tell me Cameron isn’t rubbing off on him so much that he actually cares about House’s feelings. He should know better. (By the way, Cameron gets name-dropped early on but doesn’t make an appearance this week.)

I’ve always found the House/Chase dynamic interesting to watch, and that’s one of the reasons I feel Chase’s absence (or his being stuck in throwaway scenes where he only interacts with Cameron) has hurt the show. Whereas House still gets to have his little flirty moments with Cameron, or simply re-enact them with Thirteen, House seems mostly indifferent to the new Chase, aka Kutner. We don’t get to see House talking much to people he genuinely hates anymore. For a guy whose whole thing is that he’s unlikeable, lately the show keeps surrounding House with people he likes (Cuddy, Wilson), or at least has some grudging respect for (Foreman, Taub), or couldn’t care less about (Thirteen, Kutner). Having Chase around in the olden days provided House with a cute, pathetic little puppy to kick around. I think House needs that outlet to be interesting. Bring back puppy Chase!

Meanwhile, the real Kutner makes a detailed Harry Potter reference in this episode, because he wants me to like him this week. Except, two episodes ago it was Duran Duran references. I can definitely buy Kutner as a geek, but I’ve known many geeks in my time and I’ve yet to meet one who could easily reference the nitty-gritty of both Harry Potter and Duran Duran. In my experience, those two fandoms do not converge. I, for example, am a Harry Potter geek, but I’m about the same age as Kutner and I only know about Duran Duran because my older sister used to be obsessed with them. Although I suppose Kutner could’ve had an older foster sister. Perhaps it will be revealed in some shocking upcoming episode that, aside from the bullying and the orphanhood and the med school and all that, Kutner and I have in fact had the same life up to this point.

Overall, it was a good, watchable episode. Nothing earth-shattering, but the Wilson storyline added interesting new dimensions to a character I still feel like I don’t know very well after five seasons, and the story with Nick and his family was affecting. Thirteen and Foreman were barely in it, which is always good, and Chase had a strong if brief scene, and we got to see Robert Sean Leonard acting his little dead poet heart out. I’d have liked more Cuddy, and some Cameron, and a less-overdone closing sequence, but in a season as weak as this one, I’ll take what I can get.

Season 5, Episode 17: The Social Contract (originally aired March 9, 2009)

For another take on this episode, check out Cameron Cubbison‘s review here.

For more on House, click here.

House, Tuesdays 8/7c on FOX

Photographs courtesy of FOX Broadcasting Company and IMDbPro