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bironicI was thinking yesterday about two House-related things:
1. This came after reading a fic in which Wilson narrates that "House had been an exceptional athlete in his time." (I've unfortunately forgotten which story it was, which is a hazard of reading a dozen a day.) We haven't seen much of House's implied former athleticism since "Paternity" when he mimed throwing a lacrosse ball with all his blue-eyed tweed-hat-clad pathos. I was delighted, therefore, when we got to see House play a shadow of lacrosse in his two new cane tricks; it's like he's regaining some of the things he used to enjoy pre-infarction, like his motorcycle, however much they may pale in comparison. I wonder if it has anything to do with his sudden caution in treating Foreman, if it's making him "soft" in some way.
2. This is doubtless of less interest to most of you, but I'm going to say it anyway: I realized that I'd never dreamt about House even though I've had several with Wilson and two now with Chase/Jesse Spencer (for no discernible reason). I was ambivalently thrilled to have had not one but two dreams last night featuring House himself -- "ambivalently" only because the second woke me up at 4:45 a.m. and that was it for the night. He did something interesting in it that's got me tempted to consider his interaction with Cameron in yesterday's ep at a new angle.
The other thing I've decided is that we are going to have a scene on the show where House -- and if we're really lucky Wilson will be with him -- is bowling. I'm waiting, writers....
Okay, on to the juicy stuff. The sad thing about most two-part episodes is the writers stretch things out, so intead of getting two regular episodes' worth of goodies, you have one and a half. Seems to be the case with this pair. It'd've been better if they'd just done a two-hour airing, because Part I wasn't tight or suspenseful enough to warrant an entire day's wait or analysis. It was slow -- you know how some episodes you're shocked that so much has happened and it's only the second commercial break, whereas in others the action has hardly started and yet you're already halfway through? Well, it was the latter. It was somewhat predictable -- my dad came in at about a quarter to ten and I said "Hi, the patient's going to die in about 12-13 minutes, with just enough time afterwards for us to go 'Oh no, Foreman!'" And the thing with the pigeons pissed me off -- they clearly meant the bird to be a clue when Foreman passed it by, but then they didn't address it till near the end, and then it wasn't the answer anyway, so we spent all that time going "Noooo, you idiots, it's to do with the pigeon!" instead of paying attention to what was going on, and then we weren't even right. Waste of time. The only way for the writers to weasel out of this is to say we're supposed to sympathize with the treatment team and their wasted time on false diagnoses. Bleh. And losing a patient, finally, without first having figured out the cause? Such a cop-out (ha ha, cop), because the real patient is Foreman, and Foreman sure ain't gonna kick it.
Nonetheless. We did get to see House be all stern-sexy again, lording it over Cameron (who looked adorable in the blue hazmat suit; almost as adorable as Chase looked goofy in his white one) in the hallway outside the cop's apartment. When he stuck out his cane to stop her and it pressed against her hips, he so got her back for her folded-bills-in-the-pants move. And then she rattled off possible diagnoses as he held up contaminated items from her bag and he negated them as quickly. It reminded me of that scene many months ago when Wilson presented a case to House at the whiteboard and batted away every dismissal House tossed at him. I was impressed, because it had looked a heck of a lot like she'd been panicking and haphazardly grabbing objects all over the apartment in a desperate attempt to get a useful sample, yet the interchange with House suggested otherwise, or at least proved that she's a very quick thinker and is learning to play House's game. "What does a man have to do to get you to hate him?" House muses, asking half for himself and half for Foreman. And their Burning Locked Gazes topped the earlier scene where she impressed him by volunteering to go back to the condemned apartment, even if he never actually intended to send her or Chase. As![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bethbethbeth said, "that was an eyefucking between them if I've ever seen an eye-fucking." Not a H/C shipper really, but... homina homina homina.
Not going to complain about lack of Wilson because we've been treated to so much of him lately and because he had such a nice suit to follow up last week's HELLO I WENT TO MCGILL! MCGILL!!! MCGILL, DAMMIT! sweatshirt. No, seriously, because his one scene with House addressed more of what was going on than the rest of the ep. "You're being cautious," Wilson noted (so astute), remarking on House's uncharacteristic reticence now that his own Fellow is involved. "Common." Ouch. That earned Wilson the dig about how none of his staff are likely to catch cancer from their patients or even herpes encephalitis after having unprotected sex with them. His flat, vicious tone betrayed exactly how invested he is in this case. But really, that wasn't much of a revelation -- of course House cares more about this case. Foreman could die. He cares about all his ducklings; he's spent nearly two seasons now trying to strengthen them in his own Housean way.
For me, the more interesting question Wilson's comment raised was, how effective a doctor would House be without/if he reigned in his genius, his incredibly intuitive leaps, his readiness to treat without evidence and switch to a completely different track at a moment's notice with each new symptom? He might have been wrong less often, but he certainly wouldn't have saved as many people in the end if he'd been conservative in his hypotheses and treatments. Now with the death of the cop he's lost his human guinea pig, and his hesitance to treat Foreman like any other patient may backfire on both of them. Well, could have backfired, if we weren't talking about a show that isn't going to kill off any of its major characters anytime soon.
We ought to mention Omar Epps, since these are really his episodes. He got in some good scenes and... some not so good scenes. He's much better at fighting tears and panic than at hysteria (though his amused chair-tipping was pretty funny).
Was kinda disappointed at the context for House wielding a smoking pistol. I'd been hoping for some major drama, perhaps an attempted breakout when PPTH was locked down in quarantine. It ended up being really funny though. And the morgue -- pretty!
Hilarious when they broke the MRI, even though you could practically hear the entire country crying "OMG ew!" when the dead guy's head lifted. However. Is anyone else skeptical that MRI machines break that spectacularly from a few bits of metal? I was under the impression that the danger was more to the patient than to the equipment, and that it would take something like, oh, say, a metal floor buffer to cause so much damage. (Connection #78 between House & Boston Legal: earlier this season, Denny got an MRI to check the progress of his Alzheimer's, and an empty metal folding chair beside the one in which Alan was sitting flew across the room and stuck to the outside of the machine. Nothing more happened.) All the flashing lights and crashing noises seemed excessive -- but funny. As was House's "oops" face afterwards. Cuddy is so very superhumanly tolerant.
Other quibbles: Why hasn't anyone else been put on the case? Not only is there an unknown, contagious, and now terminal disease on the grounds, one of the hospital's own doctors is infected. And House, Chase and Cameron are the only ones working on it? I know this show abhors featuring other physicians if their names aren't "Wilson" or "Cuddy" or "pissed-off transplant committee members/foiled surgeons/grim board members/other people House somehow sabotages or proves incompetent," but really.
Other funny moments:
- Foreman's awesome little speech about how the bullet fragments in the cop's brain had to be ferrous metal, and House's pleased stare and admission: "It's just so cool that you know that."
- What was the line? "His name is Baby Shoes, how bad can he be?" Something like that. Priceless, and reminiscent of the season premiere when he worked as hard as ever to treat a convict.
- Playing the pity card to get the policewoman to clear a sizeable stack of speeding tickets. (You *knew* he had speeding tickets. And that if anyone paid them, it'd be Wilson.) He won't take that kind of crap from anyone around him, and he wouldn't tolerate anyone treating him differently because of his disability, but when it serves his purpose, it seems he doesn't hesitate to use his leg as an excuse. You know that's what he did to get the handicapped parking spot for his bike too.
P.S. I didn't realize that was a transvestite at the station, I thought she was just a prostitute. Does that make me stupid or just so accepting it didn't even register?
When drafting this post last night while LJ was down, I wrote: "I wasn't impressed overall, especially not if this is supposed to be a 'Three Stories'-type knock-your-socks-off Special Episode." Yet there is a very long post here that suggests there was more going on than it seemed at first. Hm.
A few exchanges from "Boston Legal" that require sharing. Namely:
Scene one: The courtroom, replying to the judge's remark that last week, Alan and Denny's positions as lawyer and defendant had been switched.
Denny: "I get him off, he gets me off."
Alan: [something that was possibly "Flamingoes."]
Denny: "Don't ask, don't tell."
Scene two: Denny's balcony, nighttime.
Denny: "I'm unfaithful."
Alan: "Not to me."
Denny: "Never to you."
Denny has been married more times than Wilson. Both Alan and Denny and House and Wilson have stuck it out longer as friends than any of their romantic relationships have lasted.
Note to self: Add to things these shows have in common: Both Alan/Denny and House/Wilson share an office balcony and (only occasionally for the latter) have wind-down episode codas. Denny and House keep guns in their offices. There are an implausible number of cases Alan Shore and House don't lose, which really kills the suspense. The same actor plays Mark and Alan's politicking opposing counsel.
1. This came after reading a fic in which Wilson narrates that "House had been an exceptional athlete in his time." (I've unfortunately forgotten which story it was, which is a hazard of reading a dozen a day.) We haven't seen much of House's implied former athleticism since "Paternity" when he mimed throwing a lacrosse ball with all his blue-eyed tweed-hat-clad pathos. I was delighted, therefore, when we got to see House play a shadow of lacrosse in his two new cane tricks; it's like he's regaining some of the things he used to enjoy pre-infarction, like his motorcycle, however much they may pale in comparison. I wonder if it has anything to do with his sudden caution in treating Foreman, if it's making him "soft" in some way.
2. This is doubtless of less interest to most of you, but I'm going to say it anyway: I realized that I'd never dreamt about House even though I've had several with Wilson and two now with Chase/Jesse Spencer (for no discernible reason). I was ambivalently thrilled to have had not one but two dreams last night featuring House himself -- "ambivalently" only because the second woke me up at 4:45 a.m. and that was it for the night. He did something interesting in it that's got me tempted to consider his interaction with Cameron in yesterday's ep at a new angle.
The other thing I've decided is that we are going to have a scene on the show where House -- and if we're really lucky Wilson will be with him -- is bowling. I'm waiting, writers....
Okay, on to the juicy stuff. The sad thing about most two-part episodes is the writers stretch things out, so intead of getting two regular episodes' worth of goodies, you have one and a half. Seems to be the case with this pair. It'd've been better if they'd just done a two-hour airing, because Part I wasn't tight or suspenseful enough to warrant an entire day's wait or analysis. It was slow -- you know how some episodes you're shocked that so much has happened and it's only the second commercial break, whereas in others the action has hardly started and yet you're already halfway through? Well, it was the latter. It was somewhat predictable -- my dad came in at about a quarter to ten and I said "Hi, the patient's going to die in about 12-13 minutes, with just enough time afterwards for us to go 'Oh no, Foreman!'" And the thing with the pigeons pissed me off -- they clearly meant the bird to be a clue when Foreman passed it by, but then they didn't address it till near the end, and then it wasn't the answer anyway, so we spent all that time going "Noooo, you idiots, it's to do with the pigeon!" instead of paying attention to what was going on, and then we weren't even right. Waste of time. The only way for the writers to weasel out of this is to say we're supposed to sympathize with the treatment team and their wasted time on false diagnoses. Bleh. And losing a patient, finally, without first having figured out the cause? Such a cop-out (ha ha, cop), because the real patient is Foreman, and Foreman sure ain't gonna kick it.
Nonetheless. We did get to see House be all stern-sexy again, lording it over Cameron (who looked adorable in the blue hazmat suit; almost as adorable as Chase looked goofy in his white one) in the hallway outside the cop's apartment. When he stuck out his cane to stop her and it pressed against her hips, he so got her back for her folded-bills-in-the-pants move. And then she rattled off possible diagnoses as he held up contaminated items from her bag and he negated them as quickly. It reminded me of that scene many months ago when Wilson presented a case to House at the whiteboard and batted away every dismissal House tossed at him. I was impressed, because it had looked a heck of a lot like she'd been panicking and haphazardly grabbing objects all over the apartment in a desperate attempt to get a useful sample, yet the interchange with House suggested otherwise, or at least proved that she's a very quick thinker and is learning to play House's game. "What does a man have to do to get you to hate him?" House muses, asking half for himself and half for Foreman. And their Burning Locked Gazes topped the earlier scene where she impressed him by volunteering to go back to the condemned apartment, even if he never actually intended to send her or Chase. As
bethbethbeth said, "that was an eyefucking between them if I've ever seen an eye-fucking." Not a H/C shipper really, but... homina homina homina.Not going to complain about lack of Wilson because we've been treated to so much of him lately and because he had such a nice suit to follow up last week's HELLO I WENT TO MCGILL! MCGILL!!! MCGILL, DAMMIT! sweatshirt. No, seriously, because his one scene with House addressed more of what was going on than the rest of the ep. "You're being cautious," Wilson noted (so astute), remarking on House's uncharacteristic reticence now that his own Fellow is involved. "Common." Ouch. That earned Wilson the dig about how none of his staff are likely to catch cancer from their patients or even herpes encephalitis after having unprotected sex with them. His flat, vicious tone betrayed exactly how invested he is in this case. But really, that wasn't much of a revelation -- of course House cares more about this case. Foreman could die. He cares about all his ducklings; he's spent nearly two seasons now trying to strengthen them in his own Housean way.
For me, the more interesting question Wilson's comment raised was, how effective a doctor would House be without/if he reigned in his genius, his incredibly intuitive leaps, his readiness to treat without evidence and switch to a completely different track at a moment's notice with each new symptom? He might have been wrong less often, but he certainly wouldn't have saved as many people in the end if he'd been conservative in his hypotheses and treatments. Now with the death of the cop he's lost his human guinea pig, and his hesitance to treat Foreman like any other patient may backfire on both of them. Well, could have backfired, if we weren't talking about a show that isn't going to kill off any of its major characters anytime soon.
We ought to mention Omar Epps, since these are really his episodes. He got in some good scenes and... some not so good scenes. He's much better at fighting tears and panic than at hysteria (though his amused chair-tipping was pretty funny).
Was kinda disappointed at the context for House wielding a smoking pistol. I'd been hoping for some major drama, perhaps an attempted breakout when PPTH was locked down in quarantine. It ended up being really funny though. And the morgue -- pretty!
Hilarious when they broke the MRI, even though you could practically hear the entire country crying "OMG ew!" when the dead guy's head lifted. However. Is anyone else skeptical that MRI machines break that spectacularly from a few bits of metal? I was under the impression that the danger was more to the patient than to the equipment, and that it would take something like, oh, say, a metal floor buffer to cause so much damage. (Connection #78 between House & Boston Legal: earlier this season, Denny got an MRI to check the progress of his Alzheimer's, and an empty metal folding chair beside the one in which Alan was sitting flew across the room and stuck to the outside of the machine. Nothing more happened.) All the flashing lights and crashing noises seemed excessive -- but funny. As was House's "oops" face afterwards. Cuddy is so very superhumanly tolerant.
Other quibbles: Why hasn't anyone else been put on the case? Not only is there an unknown, contagious, and now terminal disease on the grounds, one of the hospital's own doctors is infected. And House, Chase and Cameron are the only ones working on it? I know this show abhors featuring other physicians if their names aren't "Wilson" or "Cuddy" or "pissed-off transplant committee members/foiled surgeons/grim board members/other people House somehow sabotages or proves incompetent," but really.
Other funny moments:
- Foreman's awesome little speech about how the bullet fragments in the cop's brain had to be ferrous metal, and House's pleased stare and admission: "It's just so cool that you know that."
- What was the line? "His name is Baby Shoes, how bad can he be?" Something like that. Priceless, and reminiscent of the season premiere when he worked as hard as ever to treat a convict.
- Playing the pity card to get the policewoman to clear a sizeable stack of speeding tickets. (You *knew* he had speeding tickets. And that if anyone paid them, it'd be Wilson.) He won't take that kind of crap from anyone around him, and he wouldn't tolerate anyone treating him differently because of his disability, but when it serves his purpose, it seems he doesn't hesitate to use his leg as an excuse. You know that's what he did to get the handicapped parking spot for his bike too.
P.S. I didn't realize that was a transvestite at the station, I thought she was just a prostitute. Does that make me stupid or just so accepting it didn't even register?
When drafting this post last night while LJ was down, I wrote: "I wasn't impressed overall, especially not if this is supposed to be a 'Three Stories'-type knock-your-socks-off Special Episode." Yet there is a very long post here that suggests there was more going on than it seemed at first. Hm.
A few exchanges from "Boston Legal" that require sharing. Namely:
Scene one: The courtroom, replying to the judge's remark that last week, Alan and Denny's positions as lawyer and defendant had been switched.
Denny: "I get him off, he gets me off."
Alan: [something that was possibly "Flamingoes."]
Denny: "Don't ask, don't tell."
Scene two: Denny's balcony, nighttime.
Denny: "I'm unfaithful."
Alan: "Not to me."
Denny: "Never to you."
Denny has been married more times than Wilson. Both Alan and Denny and House and Wilson have stuck it out longer as friends than any of their romantic relationships have lasted.
Note to self: Add to things these shows have in common: Both Alan/Denny and House/Wilson share an office balcony and (only occasionally for the latter) have wind-down episode codas. Denny and House keep guns in their offices. There are an implausible number of cases Alan Shore and House don't lose, which really kills the suspense. The same actor plays Mark and Alan's politicking opposing counsel.
