bironic | House 4.2, "The Right Stuff"

The Right Stuff: Does the roomful of team candidates have what it takes to work for one of the best diagnosticians in the world when he's not even sure what he's looking for? Does the patient have what it takes to fly space shuttles when she's driven by her lifelong dream but also suffering from a recurrent genetic disease that distorts her senses and happens to be triggered by stress (surely a constant companion for astronauts) ~~not to mention that she'll need regular follow-up exams on the shiny new implants she didn't even want~~?

- I was very disappointed when House said he called NASA to inform them about -- Greta, was it? Especially after he made such a fuss about tattlers and went through so much trouble to keep her case off the record and has this long history of circumventing rules and undermining authority for the sake of the individual. To think that he kept up the pretense all episode just so he could solve his little puzzle and then ditch her because she got boring was horrible -- as horrible as the fact that it wouldn't have been the most awful thing he's done to a patient (or underling, or friend, or boss, or girlfriend, or himself) before. What a relief when he revealed that he hadn't actually done it! It confirmed that this season bears a closer resemblance to Season One than to Season Three, when House might well have sold his patient down the proverbial river (chucked her out the airlock?) when she ceased to interest him. We're back to the guy who'll risk his job and allow people to think badly of him for something he didn't do, all for the sake of his patient's health as well as her dreams; it reminded me of the risks he took for Carly in "Control" and the fall he took for the mother in "Socratic Method."

- Remind me how non-cancerous lung tumors led to synaesthesia?

- Happily, I won a bet with my coworker tonight. It had two parts: (a) the fellows really were back in the hospital and House wasn't hallucinating them, and (b) for at least a few episodes, they'll be on staff at PPTH but not in the capacity of House's team. Hooray! At least two out of three of our lovelies are back and helping out, and the class of 2011 has to keep fighting for a spot on House's Team, Round II, so we get the best of both possibilities.

- I can't picture Foreman running a Diagnostics department. His thinking is too rigid. Either he's going to screw up and kill someone and totally lose it, or he's going to call House for consults (after trying Cameron and Chase and Cuddy and maybe even Wilson first), or he's going to give it up and come crawling back to PPTH because he secretly likes it there, or he's not actually running a Diagnostics department at all.

- Chase was kinda smokin' when he stared at House from the observation room. Also, I quite enjoyed the transition from looking at woman/porpoise porn (for shock value rather than personal titillation, I'd guess) to seeing Chase in the hall.

- Wilson: flippy hair and babble and sarcasm and silly jokes and metaphor-following and psychoanalysis, yay. Well, not so much yay on that last, but it wasn't too bad tonight. He said what we were all thinking at several points, and it was good to have that out in the open. The only line I can remember right now went something like, "I love when repressed guilt unrepresses." Also: physics joke, double yay! Between Wilson's joke (and House getting it) and the Air Force/NASA pilot!patient, I was in my happy SGA crossover place for a few minutes.

- Also FTW was House having those clamps and all that specialized equipment so he could detail his Wilson-ravished guitar.

- But speaking of science (which we were a moment ago): What was with the Tesla references? First on the blackboard, and then didn't the patient say something about him when she was doubled over with the oxygen mask? Was there meant to be some thematic connection between someone having his work stolen, the group of candidates being eliminated, and the patient plot? Am I missing something very obvious? ETA: Yes: House called out the fellows-to-be on several occasions regarding who made decisions, who performed procedures, who let whom do what, who ratted out who else, who cheated, etc. I.e. fellows-to-be concerned with who gets credit for doing (what House thinks is) the right thing. Thanks,

elynittria!

- I don't know about you guys, but I'm liking the PPTH's Next Top Fellow competition. Had some trouble keeping track of who was who, but most of the really confusing ones ended up cut by the end anyway, which is how it should be. Everyone looked familiar, too, which didn't help (blue-eyed young man? Parker Posey-esque brunette? plastic surgeon?). I liked the aforementioned blue-eyed young man (Chase 2.0) and Parker Posey-esque brunette (pretty too!) as well as the older man whose dreams House also couldn't bring himself to crush. The Mormon channeled Foreman and personified a religious/ethical dilemma a little too much for him to feel like a person to me in his own right; we'll see if he comes back in subsequent weeks and distinguishes himself. The Russian (?) wasn't bad, either, nor was Kal-Penn-whom-everyone's-been-going-crazy-about-but-who-didn't-do-anything-special-really, and the curly blonde twins provided unexpected comic relief. I do have to say, though, that the "cutthroat pixie" (the show's embodiment of the majority of fandom's characterization of Cameron?) is one of my least favorite characters of the entire series, and I hope that either she goes away soon or there's some development that makes her interesting instead of totally annoying, even if "interesting" means "what she brings out in the characters around her."

- I really liked the patient and wish she'd had more screen time. She won me over in the teaser when, instead of falling unconscious or breaking down in the cockpit, she not only held it together despite being clearly spooked but also berated the guy running the simulator on two counts. Tables turned, expectant viewers! Her behavior there also neatly set up her episode-long (life-long, probably) desire to hide anything that would get her tossed out of the space program. I thought the lying would manifest as her hiding symptoms from House, but the direction they took it was much more entertaining. This time, "everybody lies" didn't (just) refer to the patient but to House (who lied to his students, to Cuddy, and to the patient), Wilson (who told House the fellows were in Arizona) and the fellows-in-training (who held out on Cuddy for the most part and eluded Security and double-crossed each other and performed one surgery to cover for another and had that quick but fun debate about whether they could believe anyone when House first brought in "Osama bin Laden" for her interrogation/history-taking), as well as Cuddy and the older fellow-in-training both lying by omission (Cuddy knowing House is performing tests he's not telling her about but letting him do it so she won't have to testify later [and perjure herself again], and of course the ?Columbia admissions department guy pretending he went to med school).

Hm. I'm sure there's more, but I didn't take any notes tonight so I can't remember. The end!

ETA: Now I have that stupid New Kids On The Block song stuck in my head. Thank you, episode title.

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From:

elynittria.livejournal.com

Definitely yay for physics joke! (And did you notice what was written on the blackboard in the classroom? "Tesla was robbed." Hee!)

Frankly, I wish the old fellows really were in Arizona and New York. It really doesn't make sense to have them all back at PPTH. They're history. Let's meet some new fellows!

From:

House 4.2, "The Right Stuff"

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