House: House Divided

House sees dead people. See House see dead people. Specifically, House is hallucinating Amber a.k.a. Cutthroat Bitch because he hasn’t slept since Kutner inexplicably killed himself. I’ve gone days without sleep and I haven’t hallucinated dead people, but then again I’m not the star of a top-rated television show. Well not yet anyway. We open on a high school wrestling match. Seth, a 14-year-old deaf wrestler, begins a match only to start grabbing his ears and screaming. Looks like Princeton-Plainsboro has a new case.

House wakes up. Next to Amber. Dead Amber. The horror…the horror. She says she’s a hallucination. House says it’s because of the insomnia. She thinks his guilt over missing Kutner’s suicide (which I’ve actually come around on and now recognize to be a brave, interesting creative writing choice) has retriggered his guilt over her death. And this back and forth is pretty much what the whole episode is about. The episode is lit in such a way that House and Amber always have this ethereal glow about them that separates them from the ordinariness of everyone else.

Upon arriving at the hospital, House’s first course of action is to barge into Wilson’s office and get him to write out a prescription for sleeping pills. When he gets there, he find Cameron. There is a file on the table and they’re clearly discussing something they don’t want House to know about. Cameron says it’s a case. House procures the file through his trademark sneaky ways and sees that it’s not a case. Actually, Cameron wants Wilson to plan Chase’s bachelor party so that Chase won’t get into too much trouble. Yeah, like House is going to let that happen.

Seth’s mother (played by Clare Carey of Jericho), a single parent, has refused to let her son get cochlear implants that would allow him to hear. Foreman doesn’t understand why she would do this. Thirteen says that it is admirable that Seth likes who he is without hearing and doesn’t want the implants. Foreman says that being deaf is a disability, not an identity. Thirteen points out that deafness is also a culture. House sides with Foreman. He thinks that Seth being handicapped when he doesn’t have to be is “an insult to gimps everywhere.” So in addition to saving Seth’s life, part of House’s agenda becomes improving Seth’s life by adding the cochlear implants-whether Seth or his mother want them or not. This is the interesting strand of the episode: examining the notion of choosing to live with a handicap because it is the only way of life you’ve ever known.

We get the usual formula, with House making diagnoses, the team running tests, the tests failing, House getting eureka moments and trying more things until they finally solve the sucker. Only this time we see Amber solve everything as a figment of House’s imagination. Speaking of figments, does anyone remember Figment, the bitchin’ dragon from Epcot center? Sorry.

As for the bachelor party-which House holds in Wilson’s apartment, unbeknownst to him-it’s everything you would expect from House: strippers, booze, vodka-flavored ice cream, strobe lights, Chase going into anaphylactic shock after licking strawberry body butter off a stripper because House subconsciously wanted to kill him for a reason he doesn’t understand, Wilson getting plastered and walking around on the streets with no pants, etc. Other highlights of the episode include House wearing bling shades and jamming to Public Enemy in front of Seth, and tapping on the glass of Seth’s hospital room incessantly, saying it’s like being at the zoo except here you can tap the glass all you want.

Hugh Laurie continues to execute the role perfectly, but although the Amber hallucination thing is fairly entertaining, it seems a little inane and overused. Didn’t I just read something about how that Gray’s Anatomy show I happily don’t watch had somebody seeing dead people and sleeping with them or something? Personally, I think the only show that gets hallucinations right is Rescue Me.

Season 5, Episode 22: House Divided (originally aired April 27, 2009)

For another take on this episode, check out When in Doubt, Bring Back the Cool Dead Chick by Robin Reed.

For more on House, click here.

House, Tuesdays 8/7c on FOX

Photographs courtesy of NBC Universal, Chris Haston