Overall Rating: 4.5
This is what happens when everyone and his mother tries to work together to write a script. You get a story so discombobulated, off-message and bizarre that it could only be described with one phrase - WTF?
Spoilers below the cut - read on if you want to spare yourself the trouble of watching this episode.
Fifty Billion Plot Synopses:
The Cheap Excuse for a Lockdown: A baby is born in good condition at PPTH, but the father leaves to grab some lunch for the family only to return to find the baby missing. Cuddy locks down the hospital since the baby has not left the grounds and begins a search. Interviews are conducted for all personnel and family members who may have had access. The mother reveals that her adopted stepson has been getting into trouble lately and she's finding it hard to feel the same love for him that she already does for her newborn biological daughter. Cuddy can relate to this, of course, and attempts to ease her mind with a friendly smile. The baby, it turns out, is innocently missing - the mother's attending nurse is having complex absent seizures and going into autopilot. She placed the baby in a towel cart where she is found alive and well (very fortunate that she did not get suffocated by all those towels).
Deplorable Drug Use and Childish Antics: When the lockdown hits, Foreman and Taub are in the hospital basement where the records on patients and personnel are stored. Taub convinces Foreman to snoop around lookiing at House's file, but, sadly, House has already thought of this possibility and his file is a phony plant where every malpractice settlement is relating to a patient named Lisa Cuddy and zany things like botched penis-echtomies are the complaints. Foreman presents Taub with an opportunity to really get into his boss's head - he produces a bottle of Vicodin he confiscated from a drug seeking patient in the clinic. Incredibly, they both take two and spent the next few hours watching the room spin and chasing each other like five year olds.
Taub spots Foreman's personal record in his briefcase and gleefully reads about Foreman's early bad behavior. Foreman retaliates by reading Taub's record, which turns out to be a monument to PERFECTION - Taub published early, finished his residency way early, went to the third world to fix cleft faces for the less fortunate, etc. Taub envy's Foreman's record despite all of this excellence...as he points out, Foreman's life is going upward. When he was Foreman's age, he thought he would be the next House...instead he's a lackey working for people half his age. They both agree that all of us have regrets and Taub, after the lockdown is lifted, shreds the report on Foreman's medical school lab falsification as a favor.
Truth or Dare...Again? Really?: Oh yes...House writers fell for the old TV trope of truth or dare one...more...time. This time, Remy Hadley and James Wilson are the willing participants. They find themselves locked in the cafeteria with time to kill. Wilson asks a number of questions I find personally offensive, including whether Remy has had a threesome (to her credit, Remy balks at the notion that a bisexual person would automatically be into multiple partners) and how her father reacted when she told him she was bisexual. Remy retaliates by asking whether Wilson is currently dating anyone. As it turns out, his first ex-wife has suddenly contacted him out of the blue and he has been considering asking her out again. She encourages him to pursue it (I really think this is horrible advice...but whatever).
They also grow down to about age 13 and dare each other to do silly things like steal money from the cafeteria cash register (which fails miserably and Wilson is caught, much to Remy's delight) and flash boobs at Taub (which Remy is honor bound to do and does at the conclusion of the episode). Yes...the writers really wrote all of this - I swear I am not making this up. In the end, we realize that Remy has been lying in all of the answers to her questions - the master of truth or dare, she did warn Wilson before he started the game. Of course, this means we got ZERO insight into thirteen's real character and she remains a great mystery.
House vs. Dying Man #45 Billion!: House ends up on the wrong side of the door and trapped with a patient with terminal heart failure. They spar for a while - first over House's refusal to take the man's case (at the time, it was mysterious tooth pain - the series of severe heart attacks kind of gave it away, but if House had diagnosed him before that, he might have survived), then over the reason the dying man wound up in a hospital alone - House assumes he's some jilted lover or cheating husband (a miserable bastard as he puts it). As it turns out, he's actually been a deadbeat dad and now regrets abandoning his daughter. Before all of this gets resolved, House tells the story of his fling while at the mental ward and admits the experienced changed him - made him stop worshiping his isolation and crave human contact.
At nine o'clock, House wakes the dying patient to make sure he calls his daughter as he claims to want to speak with her one last time before he goes. But it turns out, he calls her when she's at work just to hear her voice on the answering machine and House does a very Christian thing (rather impressively) and encourages him to tell her what he needs to say before he dies - he says he loves her and then asks for an increased morphine drip so that he can die in peace.
Chase and Cameron's 'Proper Goodbye': Cameron comes to the hospital annoyed with Chase for not having signed the divorce papers. Chase - still fighting for closure after Cameron's unceremonious departure from his life - insists that he will not sign the papers until they have a proper discussion about their marriage. Finally, after waiting in silence for hours, she gives in and Chase cuts right to the quick - he wants to know if she really ever loved him. After some badgering, he forcefully asks again and she blurts out "I don't know!" Feeling vindicated, he signs the divorce papers.
Later, when the subject comes up again, apologizes for saying she wasn't sure - she claims she really did love him, but that their love could never have worked. She was too messed up emotionally. She married a dying man to avoid commitment and then the experience of watching him go left her even more damaged. All of the things she'd done - hanging on to her dead husband's sperm, refusing to let her relationship with Chase expand beyond cheap sex, etc. - were all warning signs that she wasn't emotionally ready for a real relationship. She apologizes for letting things get to this point before realizing her mistake.
They later talk about the good times in their relationship and Cameron says she misses dancing with Chase. He breaks out his iPod and offers her one last dance - which, because this is Hollywood, naturally leads to a 'proper goodbye' round in the sack (technically...the gurney). Again...I am not making this stuff up.
Writing: 2.0
OK, Steph - NOW! you can whine about the increasing frequency of episodes breaking the formula. Because this one didn't break the formula in any kind of useful way. I would like to know who the genius was that thought it would be a good idea to have a FIVE PLOT! episode on a medical drama where NOT ONE of those plots were particularly related to any medical mystery? Oh wait a second...how many writers were there for this script? SIX?? (seriously...check the credit list) *headdesk*
Here's a big shocker...the only plot that was particularly useful to the continuing story arcs that filter through the show was...THE ONE WITH HOUSE IN IT! Yeah...he only appeared in FOUR scenes today...a total of 9:12 worth of air time for the best actor (by far) and the strongest character in the canon. But those were four good scenes. The rest of the episode was on crack...or in one particular plot - Vicodin. Holy crap - I think I understand now...the WRITERS were on Vicodin when they pitched this idea at the brainstorming session! That's gotta be it. Seriously...what the flying frack?? A random jumble of hackneyed Hollywood cliches and goofy antics that did essentially nothing necessary to advance any of the frackin' characters? Why?? Sorry eleventy billion writers who collaborated on this pile of dung...you wrote exactly ONE FIFTH of a good episode...so you get 20% credit. Try again next time.
Acting: 8.5
The acting is kind of saving this episode. Olivia Wilde (Remy) and of course, Hugh Laurie, were particularly strong - Olivia despite being involved in a plot that would, in any other episode be easily the worst of the bunch if it weren't for Foreman and Taub doing hard core drugs and moaning about their past lives while chasing each other around like drunken frat boys. And, to his credit, I was also VERY impressed with Jesse Spencer - more than I have been in quite some time. Even the dying patient was better than average - as, I thought, was the mother of the missing baby. They all did the best they could with a real stinker of a script. And I do admit that some of their reaction takes (Peter Jacobsen's reaction to Remy flashing him her boobs was priceless, for example) brought the funny.
Message: 3.0
Holy crap, I need a calculator and a spreadsheet to keep track of all of this. Let's add up demerits and credits, shall we?
+1.5 - House encouraging a dying man to tell his daughter he loved her, even though he'd never been there for her while he was alive. This was a noble and very humane act by House's standards and demonstrates his capacity to grow and improve himself.
+0.5 - Remy deflecting the obnoxious assumption that bisexual = slut who's cool with multiple sex partners was fun.
+0.5 - Remy manning up and doing her most risque dare...hey, don't play the game if you can't take the responsibility, baby.
-0.5 - Remy advising Wilson to fall back into his old patterns and date an ex wife again? Really, Remy?
-2.0 - Drugs are coooooooolll...and there's like...no side effects from getting high on Vicodin at all...in fact you can use it to expand your mind and get new insight into your character and the character of your colleague!
-3.0 - The proper way to end a relationship...why does everyone in Hollywood keep repeating this unrealistic trope that closure comes from "bonus night" (the night where two people who've broken up have sex with no strings attached)? I saw this happen THREE TIMES on the sitcom "Friends"...even the usually outstanding writers on DS9 fell victim to it. And here we are again...Chase and Cameron are both better off after one last roll in the hay? Really?? Quick...raise your hand if you buy that? Those of you who raised your hands...please slap yourself as hard as you can in the face with it.
So...that's makes -3 total...a 3 sounds about right (3 short of par in my rating spectrum).
Writers...I'm begging you...can we please get back to House...and like...have some patients with diseases that House has to diagnose and interact with? Kthx.
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