House, M.D. Episode Review

At least I think it's good. It's interesting anyway to see Cameron not being the lovesick puppy that she was in the first and second seasons. And it's a hats-off to the writers that we're seeing her do what people do all the time-try to be something she's not. I think Chase is right. She's trying to be a hardass. And she used him in order to try for some sort of hardass rite of passage. (That last one's me, not Chase.) She tried to get involved with a coworker in a fun-only, sordid, giggling affair and then dumped him when he tried to take it further. If she'd really been a hardass, she would have led him on in the interest of fun and let it end naturally. Or unnaturally. But she not only ended it as soon as emotions were brought up, she became alternately distant and hostile.

First Cameron tried changing her little corner of the world by trying to get House to be soft and gooey and shielding her patients from unpleasantness-now she's trying to change herself into someone who doesn't want to do that. She's trying to adopt the very thing she sought to change in House-his callousness.

Chase, on the other hand, would like very much to be like House. He admires him, emulates him. Sometimes it's subtle, like the episode in which he popped a breath mint when House popped a Vicodin, and sometimes it's blatant, like the way he's begun analyzing people's motives out loud. He's learned a skill from House and he's practicing, amazed and delighted that he can make these brilliant deductions about why Foreman decided to resign and why neither he nor House wants to talk about it.

Then there's Foreman. The doctor who is most like House is the one who least wants to be. He's said openly that he doesn't like House. That's because House scares him. He isn't afraid of House himself, but what House represents. He's afraid of the House inside himself. It drives him nuts when he finds himself doing something like wearing the same kind of shoe, because he doesn't like what that may mean. He's afraid of losing his humanity the way he thinks House has. He doesn't understand that House hasn't lost his humanity-he's hiding it. He does nice things when people aren't looking, and cloaks them in antisocial remarks.

Foreman can't see beyond the mask, but that makes him a very realistic character. Most people can't see beyond the masks that people wear, mainly because they're much too wrapped up in their own problems to be actually interested in seeing.

Now things have reached a boiling point with Foreman. He's lost a patient with a simple condition because of a simple misdiagnosis. It was him, not House. Foreman did it, and Foreman can't handle it. In another case, he used extreme measures to save a kid's life. Of course, those extreme measures included tying another kid down and taking marrow from him while he couldn't be sedated. It was torture at the time, but in the end it saved the brother's life. I'm sure the kid is glad Foreman forced the issue at the time.

But Foreman isn't. He doesn't want to make the hard decisions and take the consequences to save lives. He's willing to let someone suffer so he won't be a bad guy, and he can tell himself it's not his fault, but he's not willing to make them suffer in the moment to curtail worse suffering later on. That makes him feel like a monster.

He can make the hard decisions, and that scares him. It will be interesting to see how it plays out over the last three weeks of the season, if he really leaves. If House winds up romancing the nutritionist. If they get back to Cuddy and Wilson seeing each other. And if Chase keeps up his Tuesday ritual. ###