Hell House: Trapped With Dr. Cameron
April 14, 2010 by Cameron Cubbison
Filed under Television
Knowing that star Hugh Laurie was directing the show for the first time and that the guest star was David Strathairn, I was very excited to watch the new House. Unfortunately, it dawned on me rather quickly that this was a mediocre episode. Doing double duty, Hugh Laurie does a competent job (though again, I expected more), but he has a weak script to work from.
This is surprising, because the scenario laid out held a lot of promise and offered a welcome opportunity to subvert the procedural formula. House did that once earlier this season in the strong episode that focused on Cuddy, but this week was lame. The premise: a brand spankin’ new father leaves his wife and older son in the recovery room so that he can go get them some food. When he returns fifteen minutes later, his wife and son are asleep but the baby is gone. All the babies in the hospital have a tag with a microchip on them, and since no alarm has sounded, Cuddy knows the baby hasn’t left the hospital. So she locks the whole place down, trapping everyone inside until they find the missing baby. Talk about your worst nightmare.
Actually, my worst nightmare is being trapped in a room with Cameron. Which is exactly what happens to Chase, the poor bastard. Cameron showed up to make him sign divorce papers (apparently he has been taking too long to sign them on his own accord) just before the lockdown occurred. I was ecstatic when she exited the show earlier in the season, because I’ve hated her character for years. When I saw her walk through the hospital doors like a sullen demon from the boiling bogs of hell, I curled up into a fetal position and struggled mightily to hold back tears.
That’s what this episode basically is: everyone in the hospital is trapped in whatever room they happened to be in with whoever happened to be in there with them. Wilson and Thirteen are trapped in the cafeteria, Cameron and Chase are in some back room, Foreman and Taub are in file storage, and House is trapped in a room with a dying academic (Strathairn). Expecting the guy to be comatose, House snuck in to his room to watch his nice tv. But the guy is very much conscious, and House has no choice but to listen to his story.
How are the other medical folks occupying themselves? Wilson and Thirteen play Truth or Dare (yes, Truth or Dare) while Foreman and Taub raid the normally-guarded staff credential files while whacking out on confiscated painkillers. Taub was in the file room because, being the unscrupulous little weasel he is, he wanted to dig up dirt on all of his colleagues. Foreman wanted to shred his own file. But now they’re both too busy riding the freight train to Loon Town while reading the other one’s file.
The episode just cuts back and forth between these different threads, with the search for the baby serving as the connecting tissue. Here are the problems: first off, the segments with Taub/Foreman and Thirteen/Wilson become less amusing each time we cut back to them. They aren’t intricate enough to warrant coming back to them time and time again; they’re only there as placeholders. They get old fast. And the Cameron/Chase Wallowing Melodrama Show is as torturous as it sounds. When Cameron left it was clean and dramatic. Their relationship had dissolved. All of this divorce whining about did you ever love me bla bla bla is just anticlimactic and cloying. Oh yeah, and am I the only person that doesn’t think this is the most ridiculous behavioral act: hey, we just got divorced, I admitted that I never loved you and we’ll never see each other after this…let’s celebrate by having sex in a lockdown? Jesus christ.
The only one of these segments that is involving is the one with Strathairn, because the guy is such an interesting actor, I always want to see more of him. I was a huge fan of his even before he entered the public consciousness with Good Night, And Good Luck. If you were able to land this guy to be a guest star on your show, why the hell would you relegate him to a segment? Why wouldn’t you make the whole episode about him?
The other big problem: the quest for the baby oddly lacks urgency. Sure, the mother is freaking out, and the older son (actually, her stepson) gets interrogated as to whether or not he abducted his sister out of jealousy…but the hospital staff and atmosphere just didn’t seem frantic enough to me. I mean this is a security nightmare! The baby could be drowning or smothering or in the hands of a sociopath. If lost the mother would be suicidal, her family torn apart, and Cuddy’s hospital would be in the toilet. And yet, I never really bought the whole thing in the first place. And the final explanation for what happened to the baby—and the culprit—while unexpected, lacked dramatic punch.
There are a couple of amusing moments early on, and some minor character beats worth remarking upon. But given the pedigree involved with this episode, I expected a lot more. I hope Hugh Laurie gets to direct another episode—one with a better script.
For another take on this week’s episode, check out Lockdown Mode by Stephanie Jaar.
Season 6, Episode 16: Lockdown (originally aired April 12, 2010)
For more on House, click here.
Mondays 8/7c on FOX
Photographs courtesy of NBC Universal and IMDbPro.
Couldn’t agree with you more. I am less inclined all the time to watch House any longer. Whoever decided to give us a gentler House missed what made this show watchable. We loved the snide, sarcastic, mean and lousy House. If I want to watch a medical fluff show, there are plenty of them out there. Oh, that’s right. All those fluffy medical shows are being cancelled. Duh.
First and foremost, this was a kind, gentle episode with the hand of Hugh Laurie all over it: from the birth of the baby to her discovery. He could have taken a harder line with his cast, however. I swore I would turn it off if Omar Epps started to “step ‘n fetch” as he seemed to be just on the verge of doing. I do have to agree on several other points as well. Wasting a talent like Straithaim and a writing staff like Doris Egan, to name just one seemed shameful. The script was extremely weak and I, too, never felt that the baby was in any danger. Mr. Laurie did the best he could with what he had. What he needs is a better job by the writers. Where was the pizzazz? Where was the knock-down-drag-out sniping? Unfortunately, I feel it was just too predictable. Now that House (the character)has become everyone’s psychotherapist, he’s lost his edge. Next time perhaps. And I hope there is a next time!
I thought it was a pretty good episode! Although I do agree with the missing baby part as there wasn’t enough attention paid by the staff members to find the baby. I like the interaction between Chase and Cameron, and I thought that Foreman and Taub stoned was hilarious!
I liked much about this episode, though it was far from perfect. I LOVE Cameron and Chase together and am hoping this means they will eventually get back together. I don’t know why she was written out of the show (cheapness on part of producers?). I thought Hugh Laurie did a pretty good job as director, but the script did lack some pizazz. However, the part where 13 shows T. her breasts after promising to Wilson she would, but without any explanation to him, was funny, I thought!
The baby could easily have been smothered and everyone should have been more worried about that– I agree.
But I love HOUSE and hope it goes on for many years.
Did we watch the same episode? I thought Lockdown was an excellent program, filled with subtle characterizations, some genuinely funny moments (thanks to Foreman and Taub stoned), and a credit to Hugh Laurie as a director. I guess it wasn’t action-packed enough for some viewers, including writer Cameron Cubbison.