House Review: Time Well-Spent At Dr. Liberace’s He-Man Quackery Camp

I got really excited at House’s introduction this week, which showed him passed out on a bed with rocket ship sheets. For a second, I thought that House and I shared a love for cool sheets (mine are Batman) that some miscreants might deem juvenile. But then I realized—before House did himself—that House was not sleeping in his room. Actually, he was sleeping in the wrong apartment, in his neighbor’s kid’s bed. Luckily, the kid still preferred to sleep with mom and dad, so House wasn’t accused of being a pedophile by the cops. They did however, grumpily deposit him back at Wilson’s. On the plus side, House did get to interrupt Wilson and Samantha getting it on. Life has its little bonuses.

The patient: Ted, who suddenly became speechless at the altar on his wedding day and passed out. House’s first act of business is to jab the guy with a needle, which makes his voice come back. Needless to say, House thinks the guy was faking it to get out of making the biggest mistake of his life…er, ah, I mean getting married. But as soon as the guy convinces his fiancée that he wasn’t faking and they leave the ER, he starts convulsing again. Uh oh.

Taub and Thirteen are charged by House with the typical duty of breaking into Ted’s house to look for toxins. While there, they are confronted by Cotter, Ted’s former roommate—and boyfriend. Someone has some explaining to do. Ted insists that he isn’t gay and had some conversion therapy to become straight.

In addition to complicating the diagnosing process, this fact opens up all kinds of parallel discussions about human nature, specifically focused on Taub. Is Ted artificially denying his biological imperative for homosexuality, and if so, is that any different than Taub denying his predilection for infidelity?

Wilson, meanwhile, has to face the fact that things are (inexplicably) going well with his ex-wife-turned-current-girlfriend and House is the third wheel. He wants House to move out, and to encourage this process, he starts paying everyone on House’s team to invite House out for social bonding activities. House very quickly becomes aware of the scheme, but after getting Wilson to cop to it—and his selfish motivation for concocting it—he goes out with his team anyway. He goes to dinner with Taub and subverts the situation to force Taub to stop cheating, he goes to a lesbian bar with Thirteen and, most entertaining of all, he goes out for drinks and karaoke with Foreman and Chase.

The episode ends by reinforcing the notion that House is trading his addiction to Vicodin for an addiction to booze. His life is full of pain, thanks to his crappy leg and to his worldview, and he needs some kind of numbing agent. Let’s hope this doesn’t send him back to the looney bin. I love this guy too much to see him go down in flames.

Best line: Ted admits to having had relations with Cotter, but it just happened. House replies: “Sodomy. One of the top ten most common household accidents.”

For another opinion of this episode of House, read Acafellas Part 2, Please! by Stephanie Jaar.

Season 6, Episode 19: The Choice (originally aired May 3, 2010)

For more on House, click here.

Mondays 8/7c on FOX

Photographs courtesy of NBC Universal and IMDbPro.