Review di Mirror Mirror e a seguire, le altre recensioni di Mary McNamara sugli episodi precedenti.
linkNew men (and woman) of the House
And then there were none. Well, two. Okay, actually three. The point is, the Great Race to reconfigure the diagnostics team on "House" is over and the winners are Dr. Kutner (Kal Penn), Dr. Straub (Peter Jacobson) and the mysterious Thirteen (Olivia Penn). How precisely the writers are going to keep them all busy while still throwing the old team enough work is a mystery, but one that will keep Avid Viewers like me tuned in.
In last night's episode, Dr. Lisa Cuddy finally drew herself to full administrative height and told House (Hugh Laurie) to pick two candidates and let the remaining two go. So when a punk rock musician with many addictions and few redeeming virtues pulls the typical "House" collapse -- sudden bout of coughing turns into bloody spew -- the case becomes make-or-break.
Now, the competition wasn't quite as intense as it seems, at least from the living room view. Kal Penn is a movie star, most recently seen in "The Namesake." So clearly he was staying. Jacobson has an IMDB list as long as your arm, and though some of the entries are along the lines of "man with the telephone," he was just seen in "Transformers" and did a very funny turn as the hateful ex-husband in "The Starter Wife." So smart money on him. The choice came down to the two women: the steely Amber (Anne Dudek) and the softer Thirteen (Olivia Penn). Both actors have done good work -- Dudek in high-profile shows like "Mad Men" and "Big Love," Penn in the unfortunate "Black Donnelly's" and, more successfully, "The O.C." But really there was no choice. Amber was too rough even for House, and romantic tension has been in short supply for a while, so the winner was Thirteen.
Yes, yes, there was a lot of cool medicine performed, tests and tubes and seizures, etc., and Drs. Wilson and Formen weighed in on how ridiculous House was to be caught up in his little games, but all of that was so much white noise as we waited to see why he would finally fire Amber and how he was going to keep three instead of two.
Amber revealed her near-pathological fear of losing anything, especially control, by her hatred of the druggie patient, and House finally had to concede that winning wasn't everything if fear of losing kept you hostage. Then he hired the two guys, knowing that that would never fly. Which it didn't; Cuddy told him to hire Thirteen (though why she didn't make him sacrifice one of the men is essentially what separates television from the reality of our lives).
And so the original team is nicely mirrored, two guys and a girl, though with Foreman, it's three guys and a girl. But hey, Amber's the sort who might just figure out a way to return.
Meanwhile, we can all get back to business: figuring out how to give all the old cast members a bit more screen time. I mean, they can't have colored Jennifer Morrison's hair for nothing, right?
-- Mary McNamara
*****
'House': Whole lot of shakin' goin' on!
I just have to say it out loud: "House" just keeps getting better and better. What at first seemed like a pretty silly idea -- to passive-aggressively keep from hiring a new team, House has a group of doctors competing like they're in a reality show -- has turned out to be brilliant. Not only do we get all sorts of great new characters, we also get to see House at his best, trying to figure out, and neutralize, each one. Gone are all the boring concerns about his Vicodin addiction, gone is the irritating model of House declaiming and everyone else denying (even though he's always right), gone is the increasingly dull and unbelievable tension between him and Cuddy. (As subordinate/boss, that is. The sexual tension, one hopes, is still in there somewhere.) Cuddy is done trying to squelch him; now she is just shooting for managed chaos. Which is so much more fun because it revolves more around the medicine and less around all the personal pathos of the staff.
Last night's case was a screenwriter's dream. A man comes in with no memory but a very strange disorder -- Giovanni's Mirror Syndrome (where do they come up with these things?), which causes him to unconsciously mimic those around them. So all of the characters were subjected to a vision of their own selves, and we got to watch them react to it. How great a dramatic idea is that? Although it must be conceded that while Patient X managed to delve into the psyches of all the contestants, he stayed on the surface when mirroring House, revealing only his lust for doctor 13 and admiration for Cuddy's breasts. Too bad; it would have been interesting to get a peep into House's interior, and even more interesting to see what he thought of the image.
But the quibble is so minor, I'm ashamed to have made it. This season of "House" should be handed out as Christmas gifts to every writers' room in America to serve as a template for really shaking up a show in danger of bogging down in its own conceit. Mercifully, House didn't kick anyone off the island last night; the loss of any of the new characters will lead only to heartbreak for me. I miss the old guy already and don't care that he wasn't a doctor. Indeed, I was just as uneasy when Cuddy announced she had hired Foreman back. I love Omar Epps, but I hope this doesn't mean a return to the old "House." As good as it was, the new "House" is better.
****
'House': More extremities
So here's a question: What exactly constitutes a fireable offense at Princeton Plainsboro? Well, now we can take "sticking a knife in an electrical outlet in order to have a near-death experience" off the list. Because that's what Dr. Gregory House did on last night's episode of "House," in a weird and obsessive attempt to prove there is no afterlife. (This from a man who underwent semi-successful medical treatment that came to him in a dream after being shot two seasons ago.)
Also, "allowing a patient to die through negligence" can be struck, since he had one of the 10 applicants competing to be on his team dose a young man in a less-than-rigorous way -- anyone who's ever been in hospital knows that the nurses deliver the meds and stand there like grim death until they see you take it. Anyone but this young doctor apparently.
House felt bad about the second offense, if not the first, though the only consequence of either was a gentle remonstration from Dr. Cuddy, who, we are hoping, has other things on her mind that will be resolved soon. Otherwise, House might just have to burn the hospital down to get a little decent banter.
Every week, "House" tests the ascendancy of drama over common sense, and every week, at least thus far, drama wins. The show's writers pepper the script with a barrage of symptoms, conditions, tests and treatments, creating a narcotic rue of medicine that, once ingested, allows the Avid Viewer to overlook the most ridiculous things -- all those same-day MRIs, for instance, or Dr. Wilson's strange lack of patients. The knife in the electric socket may have been pushing it -- I'm pretty sure any sort of suicide attempt requires a visit to the psych ward. At least that's what happens on "ER."
Fortunately, the rest of the show was so good that even exploratory electrocution gets a pass. House's need to see if there is an afterlife revealed a hope not usually seen in his crusty, cynical character, as did the fact that he paged the least likeable candidate to revive him -- House may have met his match in the cutthroat pixie (now upgraded to bitch). She is just as cold and calculating as he is, and that would be interesting.
The 10 doctors, well, nine and one impostor, left vying for the team are becoming such good characters that the sight of House, bunsen burners ablaze, about to vote a bunch of them off the island struck fear into the viewers' hearts. It seems clear the twins are going to go, also the boring white guy with no back story, leaving the plastic surgeon, the cutthroat bitch, the lovely doctor who flubbed the medication, the old guy, the Mormon and the mouthy young man played by Kai Penn who we love so much. Wait, that's six, and the website says five will remain. I hope the old guy goes because I really love the plastic surgeon and the old guy isn't even a doctor.
Not that a detail like that really matters at ol' Princeton Plainsboro.
-- Mary McNamara
****
House': The new faces are welcome
At first glance, it would seem that the creators of “House” are trying to get a toehold in the reality TV audience. On this season's second episode of the medical drama, the canny and conniving Dr. House capitulates to the general demand that he create a new diagnostics team by assembling all the likely applicants, 40 to be precise, and pitting them against each other.
Their first case is, of course, extra-special difficult: An Air Force officer wants to know why she is “hearing colors,” but she doesn’t want the tests to be on the books because that would squash her chance to work for NASA. She comes to House, as so many of us do, because he breaks the rules.
Off the 40, arbitrarily cut down to 30, winsome young people go on assorted House-directed missions, from searching the officer’s home to washing House’s car. It quickly becomes apparent that “House” is not just tapping into the success of reality TV, it’s taking a page out of “Grey’s Anatomy.” These docs may not be interns, but they are just as ripe for competitive plots and steamy romance, if not spin-offs, as any of the folks at Seattle Grace.
There’s the earnest, hard-working Mormon, the pretty, ringleted twins, the clever, House-like rebel, the ruthlessly ambitious blond, the cosmetic surgeon, the old guy, the mysterious, possibly brilliant brunette. No need giving them names; House doesn’t. He sticks to numbers, firing them coldheartedly for snitching or just sitting in the wrong row. Watching them bond and compete for House’s attention is a good reminder that for all his flaws, House remains, at least in TV Land, a world-class doctor. It also gives Hugh Laurie the chance to use the term “cutthroat little pixie,” which is not something you get to hear every day.
The on-the-q.t. nature of the case allows House to pull a MacGyver, creating diagnostic tests out of everything from breast implants to several shots of tequila. Meanwhile, glimpses of Drs. Chase, Cameron and Foreman moving through the halls like so many phantoms of House’s tortured psyche.
While it’s good to see our old friends back, one hopes that at least some of these new doctors can stick around for a while. It opens up narrative possibilities beyond the romantic machinations of Cameron and Chase (now engaged on the show, while the actors broke up in real life) and creates new possibilities for House, who is always at his best when someone smart is pushing back.
If nothing else, House can “read” each and every one of them — “when did your brother leave home?” he asks the mysterious brunette — which will be good for a few choice B-plots. And as he whittles down his new pool of doctors, perhaps Fox will allow us to call in and vote, “American Idol”-style.
Either way, it’s always good to have some new faces, not to mention a cosmetic surgeon, on hand.
-- Mary McNamara
*****
'House': He's back!
The season premiere of “House” opened big — with a guy talking to his girlfriend on the cellphone just as the building she’s in collapses right before his very eyes. But for some of us, the opening credits were a much bigger source of tension. So it is with great pleasure that I can report that while last season ended with Drs. Foreman (Omar Epps), Cameron (Jennifer Morrison) and Chase (Jesse Spencer) being fired, there they are cycling through the opening credits and scuttling along House’s peripheral vision like so many ghosts of cases past.
House (Hugh Laurie, in case you have forgotten, which really isn’t possible since he has been on the cover of every magazine in America lately), meanwhile, is determined that he will not hire another team. He won’t, He Won’t, HE WON’T, not if he has to hold his breath ’til he turns blue or use a passing janitor as a sounding board. Wilson (Robert Sean Leonard) reacts the way he always does, by fondly psychoanalyzing House. (Really, either Wilson is in the wrong profession or he’s in lurve — and wouldn’t that be a great very special episode?) He diagnoses abandonment issues — House cared about his people, they left, so House will never put himself in that position again. Sniff.
Wilson also kidnaps House’s guitar, the ransom being that House start looking for a team. Cuddy, also in a desperate attempt to prove that he needs a team, issues a memo instructing hospital personnel not to enable House by offering their opinions on the case, never mind that a woman’s life hangs in the balance.
When you look at it that way, it seems kind of silly, but it’s not, it’s terrific because it’s “House” and we missed it terribly. The woman in question is, of course, Megan, the gal from the exploding building. Her boyfriend, Ben, heroically rescued her, only on top of a million broken bones, lacerations and general battering, she has a strange fever. Enter House.
Moving sans team through the show’s template of home invasions, MRIs, false diagnoses and moral dilemmas, House improvises, using the above-mentioned janitor and pretty much anyone else who will listen. The result? He is able to identify each and every tree but completely misses the forest. Discovering that, utterly unbeknownst to the devoted Ben, Megan is an alcoholic on antidepressants who recently had an abortion, House merely considers his world view — everyone lies but the body can’t — confirmed. Until it is revealed that the broken woman on the bed is not Megan but her co-worker. Megan, in fact, survived the accident but died hours earlier.
Cameron, Cuddy tells House later, would have figured it out in a trice.
Beyond the silliness of whether House should get a team, the episode is haunting in its exploration of identity — the body will reveal all the secrets that we keep — and the nature of love. Would you rather find out your loved one lied to you and lived or that they were true and died?
Frankly, it doesn’t matter whether House has a team or not. He’s got the cane, he’s got the Vicodin, he’s got the irony of deep inner pain. He’s good to go.
--Mary McNamara
*****
