Overall Rating: 1.0
Sorry folks, nothing of value to see here. Unless you enjoy watching Chase worry that he's too pretty to be taken seriously and then acting like a complete jerk to House after they discover that he's reading a book of sermons - oh, and Wilson is a jerk, too, in this episode. I'll talk more about that shortly. Basically...I detest almost everything this episode communicated, and my faith in the overall direction of the franchise has been shaken rather badly.
Spoilers after the jump.
Plot Synopsis:
Patient of the Week: A popular blogger who reveals every detail of her personal life to strangers online suddenly develops a massive bleeding problem and gets carted off to PPTH, where she captures House's attention. She consults with her readers on the web on just about every major decision she makes - from whether it's OK for a vegetarian to eat fish to whether she should get a plastic heart valve or a pig valve when it turns out that she's got a blown mitral valve. The team passes through several potential diagnoses, from exposure to rat poison to Chaugrins Disease to Lymphoma (at which point she is told she's got a year to live) to the final brilliant diagnoses of Wipples Disease - a rare condition caused by a gastrointestinal infection that leads to trouble absorbing nutrients.
The medical case is secondary to her neurosis. As her (almost as crazy) boyfriend accurately points out, she may have started her online journal in the search for connections with people from around the world, but her elevation of her readers to the status of voters in a choose-your-own-adventure book with her as the centerpiece shows (a) a severe lack of self-esteem (b) some deeply misguided internal values possibly connected to an addiction to the high she gets from the external validation of her readers (as measured in hit counts and poll results) and (c) the inherent flaw in her stated philosophy creeping into her own decision-making process (by allowing members to dictate the outcome of her life, she is automatically creating distance...the person she is online is just for entertainment purposes, not who she'd really be if left to her own devices...therefore there is no intimacy and no risk). We'll talk about the show's utter failure to address any of this seriously further down.
House/Wilson: Wilson convinces House to go speed dating - unfortunately House turns the whole thing into a game (and still manages to get some numbers from the ladies!)...he figures out the lies and cover stories of a few of the participants, bets Chase that he'll get lots of numbers even if he acts like an ignorant jerk because of his pretty face (and wins the bet..*sigh*) and generally has a good time. Wilson, meanwhile, tells everyone he meets that he's an oncologist and causes two dozen women to cry over various dead family members, friends, and pets. Later, House complains that Wilson has returned his porno movies without asking and, in retribution, reveals that Wilson was IN one of them (!)...to everyone at PPTH.
Wilson is then determined to get even...he enlists Chase's aid in finding some dirt on House and in the process, they discover that he's been reading a book of sermons written by a Unitarian minister who turns out (after some investigation by Wilson) to be House's biological father. House spends the whole episode curtly dismissing the significance of the book and dumbfounding Wilson, and Wilson spends the whole time accusing House of either losing his mind or getting back on the Vicodin (because lord knows...no ardent atheist has ever been even remotely curious about how the other side thinks, let alone CONVERTED...oh wait...I know at least two people among my friends who have found religion after many years spent as atheists). He finally concludes (after realizing the author is House's real father) that House was hoping their genetic similarities would help explain why he thinks the way he does - that he'd find some mental connection out there to compliment his maverick personality and make him feel less alone.
Douchebag: Chase hasn't earned the right to be called by his actual name in the subtitle. He spends the whole episode whining that he's too pretty to make real connections with people and the rest of the staff (especially Thirteen) spend the whole episode patiently repeating the same crap I hear every day (and it is crap...I'll get to that later) - we're physical beings and driven by physical impulses almost exclusively. Thirteen, at the very least, manages to say something mildly optimistic regarding her desire not to assume ulterior physical motives attached to every nice gesture. And later, she encourages Chase to look past the first moments of his interaction with Cameron (when he may have been influenced by physical motives) and to realize the real feelings they had when their relationship evolved - perhaps the one redeeming moment in the whole show. "Oh, woe is me, I'm too pretty to be taken seriously. Boo hoo." Yeah...I think I'll be moving on now.
Writing: 0.1
The tenth of a point is for making me chuckle a few times with wise-crack remarks about Wilson's porn career. "Be not afraid - it's exact change." I admit...that was funny. The rest of the episode oscillates between potential opportunities to make real statements - all of which get passed over in one haphazard way or another - and characters acting in out of character ways (ways which turn out to be almost unilaterally cruel and senseless).
Let's ignore for a second my ethical problem with Chase's subplot. Even if we accept that Chase's beauty (oh brother) could be the source of his trouble making real connections with people...CHASE KNOWS THIS ALREADY! LOL. There've been at least two other early-franchise episodes in which Chase has made remarks about how superficial people can sometimes be. I encourage anyone reading this to watch the first few seasons of House and count the number of times Chase acknowledges that beauty brings certain advantages with it.
Let's give the authors the benefit of the doubt and assume that Wilson is so boggled by the discovery of a religious book in House's possession that he might be a bit insensitive in his questions to House about. Why would this discovery lead Wilson to assume that House has fallen off the wagon? Why would his questions be so aggressive and antagonistic. Wilson, himself, has some mixed beliefs religiously, so I don't see what would motivate him to lambaste the book and its message as "crap" and "irrationality" without context (even though he's attempting to speak for House here...usually, he takes things like this and tries to rationalize them with an optimistic spin). This week didn't fit his pattern. And for that matter...if House was reading his biological father's book to see if the man thought even a little like he did...why would he be ashamed of that? Why would he need to hide it? Until someone comes up with answers to those questions that make any sense to me...I'm not going to give the writers credit here.
So...character assassination, plots that didn't really compliment each other (one of which was downright annoying), and the worst sin of all...another boring episode. A few chuckles, but the dialogue was otherwise uninspiring, and the plots were basically irrelevant to the larger story. Nice work, guys. Awesome.
Acting: 5.5
No one stood out...except the PotW, who was, unfortunately, HORRIBLE. No emotion, no variability in her delivery of lines, no pulse to speak of. One of the flattest guest actors the I can remember in a House episode. It's not like Hugh Laurie and company did poorly...but nothing really jumped out at me here either - which is rather unusual for this cast.
Message: -2.5
Regarding our very public patient, they do take her one small step away from the brink of sideshow delirium at the last minute, but no one ever calls her on her BS about the web being a place where you can really get to know people (perhaps even better than in person)...in fact the staff takes some of her philosophy seriously and Chase and Thirteen wonder if there's anything to the idea of enhanced intimacy through blogging. I can tell you from experience (both personal and related through friends) that the web is no less prone to "filling in the gaps with whatever we want" after some attraction is formed than face to face encounters. It doesn't come from superficial physical motivations in either case - it comes from all of our desperate need to feel connected to other people. We are designed to need intimacy and a sense of belonging. While it may be true that pretty people get better treatment than mugs like me (LOL), it is NOT because (as Thirteen wrongly put it), "we're physical beings"...quite the contrary. It's because we're SPIRITUAL beings. Many of us cling to physical characteristics that we find immediately appealing because they're there on the surface and ignite our desire for intimacy in the most immediate ways, but the source is not some simplistic biological thrust toward physical needs. We're much more complicated than a physicalist would have you believe. It would have been nice to hear someone raise a real issue about the patient. They all more or less accepted her lifestyle as valid and potentially rewarding, and the conclusion did nothing to address it either. Physicalism and moral relativism in a neat little package.
No Highlights - not enough to grab my attention.
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