House: Locked In

This is one of the most gimmicky episodes of House yet, but it works. Virtually the entire episode is seen from the point of view of a patient who appears to be brain-dead. He’s at the hospital in Middletown, N.Y., and luckily for him, so is House. House crashed his motorcycle on his way to work and is getting fixed up. But while he’s there, he takes an interest in this patient, Lee, played by Mos Def (what the hell is that name supposed to mean?). And it’s a good thing he does, because another doctor there thinks Lee is a vegetable and wants to farm out his organs, something Lee radically disagrees with.

It’s terrifying to imagine being powerless and watching as a group of people you’ve never met decides the outcome of your life. This episode depends on viewers experiencing Lee’s situation vicariously, and toward that end, almost every shot is from Lee’s point of view-out of focus and bedridden. The only way they get around that motif is when the episode cuts to hallucinations in the patient’s head in which he and House have a philosophical luau on the beach. Now that’s gotta be a rockin’ good time.

House believes that Lee isn’t brain-dead but is in fact suffering from locked-in syndrome. He tells Lee to blink if he can hear him, and Lee does. House smiles-”Aw, this is going to be fun.” Lee was in a bike accident, not unlike House, and while the conventional diagnosis would be that the crash caused brain damage, House is anything but conventional. He believes that the brain damage caused the crash. The other doctor continues to clash with House and puts Lee on some antibiotics. House knows that these antibiotics will almost kill Lee, but he’s okay with that, because then the doctor will know he was wrong and will have to listen to House. You gotta love this guy.

In many ways this is the perfect patient for House because Lee can’t very well challenge House’s diagnoses or lie to him or even talk to him. He gets Lee transferred to Princeton-Plainsboro, where Lee gets to observe House and his world while they try to figure out what’s wrong with him. He quickly picks up on Cuddy’s feelings for House, but unfortunately for him, he also has to listen to Taub and Thirteen and Foreman and even Kutner, who choose to talk to him and pour out their issues because Lee, by circumstance, is the perfect listener. An experience like that would actually make me wish I were brain-dead. But another stroke of House’s genius is revealed: he placed a tape recorder under the patient’s pillow, knowing that his team would come in and spill all kinds of personal goodies to the poor defenseless patient. I suspect House has a very entertaining evening waiting for him.

The B storyline involves House deciding after all to accept Taub’s resignation, which Taub offered the other week…even though Taub no longer wants House to accept his resignation. House thinks that Taub doesn’t care enough about his job, so he’s trying to force Taub to prove him wrong. There’s also a little more Thirteen/Foreman romance crap but thankfully it’s minimal. Also, Wilson bugs House by trying to figure out what House was doing in Middletown.

The case is involving, but again, no one really cares about the medical stuff. It’s all about watching the characters interact. The episode ends with a cliffhanger intimating that House somehow caught Lee’s illness. Yikes. Looks like we have exciting things to look forward to in the remaining episodes of the season we have left.

Season 5, Episode 19: Locked In (originally aired March 30, 2009)

For another take on this episode, check out Dying of a Papercut by Robin Reed.

For more on House, click here.

House, Tuesdays 8/7c on FOX

Photographs courtesy of FOX Broadcasting Company and IMDbPro