Overall Rating: 6.5
This one was a bit of a mixed bag for me when it comes to critiquing the Huddy (and the patient of the week was...well...kind of boring). On the bright side...it was fun watching Dr. Cheng kick Taub in the butt. He surely needed it.
Plot Synopsis:
PotW: While giving birth to her second child (a child we later learn she conceived through sperm donation), complications arise with the baby. She's hypoxic and losing a lot of blood. House's team (with significant help from House to spot the inconsistencies in each apparently correct diagnosis) tracks a series of possible causes of blood loss and liver failure. A regular in the NICU, Dr. Cheng, notices an arterial malformation and the team fixes that, resulting in temporary improvement. Then, when this proves not to be a final cure, House recommends they try hooking the baby up to the Mom's blood and this appears to work as well. House realizes that this implies some kind of underlying condition which the Mom's blood is somehow treating. When they attempt to harvest blood from the baby, however, it looks horribly blackened and this leads to a correct diagnosis of melanoma. That means the mother has a melanoma too, which they find under her fingernail. The problem is that if a melanoma is able to spread to a baby through the uterus, it must be metastatic and near-terminal, yet the Mom seems relatively healthy. Dr. Cheng suggests that it's either an auto-immune condition or an infection causing granulomas that explains how the Mom has been fighting her cancer and how her blood has been helping the baby. She's almost right...as it turns out, the Mom has a lower grade lung cancer and her body's immune response to this is helping to fight off the melanoma. When they present the standard treatment options, however, the mother decides to wait however long it takes for her miracle blood to completed eradicate her baby's liver cancer (over her first daughter's reasonable objection). This decision leads to her untimely death, though her blood is able to cure her baby.
The Huddy: Cuddy asks House to babysit - and basically threatens to withhold sex from him if he doesn't help her out with her kid from time to time (or hire a female for his team). House tries to exorcise the latter problem by ordering Foreman to hire someone (and then firing that person without even meeting her to prove a point to Foreman about his ego) and then ordering Taub to hire someone else. Meanwhile, he reluctantly agrees to babysit, but when Rachel wakes up asking for juice, he calls Wilson over to pinch hit (Wilson doesn't know this of course). When he arrives (20 dollars poorer for having to pay for House's Chinese food), House tries to bail and Wilson eventually blackmails him into staying...but when they go back inside, they find Rachel has trashed the living room, gotten into their Chinese bag and possibly eaten a dime. Smart kid that Rachel. :)
House then ropes Wilson into assisting in his cover-up of this lapse in parental oversight and they spend the next day trying to get her to poop out the dime, unsuccessfully. Only when they realize that House ordered something he hadn't specified and thus that their accounting of the change was wrong do they get to relax, confident that there is no dime to pass. House, finding that his brush with parental failure has been averted, stops helping Cuddy with Rachel at night (lovely, House). Of course, then Rachel manages to poop out the dime...should we call this plot "the Telltale Dime?"
Group Politics: Taub, saddled with the responsibility of picking the next team member, is certain that this is a game with House and, although he finds a very skilled talent in his own hospital who is interested in the job, he withholds offering it to her to protect her from getting unceremoniously fired and to protect himself from House's gotcha games. Of course, House actually LIKES Dr. Cheng and has no intention of firing her. Too bad Taub is such a wussy, because it ticks off Dr. Cheng and she refuses the job when he belatedly offers it to her, saying he needs to man up and run with the big dogs or go back to preschool. Ouch. Still no sign of Thirteen...I share my co-author's annoyance at this.
The Skinny:
I have two problems with this one. First of all, we just took a tiny step forward with House last week as my co-author pointed out. He gave up his hooker masseuse rather than stand on principal because it mattered to Cuddy, and he even expressed interest in being involved with Rachel (who, incidentally, is RIDICULOUSLY cute...LOL) because he knew it couldn't work if he was unable to do that much. But this week, we see him doing everything in his power to AVOID just that...being involved with Rachel. On the one hand, I should be glad that he wants to work so hard to keep Cuddy from being disappointed with him...he does care about her quite a lot as that's more than he'd normally do for sex alone. But I really would have liked to have seen some turning point in this plot where he demonstrate one ounce of care for the child herself or learns from from his experience...at least a little...about the value of hard work in parenting.
Second, I feel that the decision the mother made in the PotW storyline was forced...I don't think nearly enough effort was put into making us understand why the daughter felt so jealous/neglected, why the mother suddenly had a change of attitude with this second child, or why she was so desperate to martyr herself for her baby that she wouldn't accept the significantly less risky path. Here's a news flash...you saved your baby's life (the other way could have as well)...but at what cost? Kids need their mothers. And, oh BTW, you really screwed up your other daughter's life in the process. Maybe it will work out alright in the end, but it feels like a deeply selfish and unnecessary decision to me, not something worthy of a hero's praise.
There were some mildly amusing interactions between House and Wilson, but...I'm a little tired of the game where House and Wilson play chicken and Wilson caves in like a coal mine in West Virginny, so those moments aren't doing anything for me anymore. Nor are House's desperate efforts to avoid responsibility. I know it's within his character...but...we are at the point now where I want to see growth...even if it has to come in two steps forward, one step back fashion. I also think the acting was hit or miss...and I'd kind of liked to have seen Cuddy outsmart House...she looked a bit stupid in this episode, which is unfortunate and out of character for her.
Writing: 6.0
This one was...par...not all that interesting, nothing important happened, and I don't feel progress was made for any of the characters with the possible exception of Taub.
Acting: 7.5
Dr. Cheng was awesome...the rest...merely par. Even Hugh Laurie wasn't bringing his A game this week.
Message: 6.0
I'm ambivalent at best about the message that comes from the PotW story line, and mildly disappointed with the message coming out of the Huddy this week. They can't all be groundbreaking, I guess.
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