Placeholder Post: This Week's Episode of House

Time got scrunched and I won't be able to immediatly post my thoughts on tonight's episode of FOX's House, M.D.: "97 Seconds." That said, you're more than welcome to post your comments. I found it rather lacking.

The Moralities of House: Season 4, Episodes 1 & 2

House M.D. is back! And with it's return, I'm resuming my series on "The Moralities of House." I'm not the only Catholic who thinks that House M.D. is good television. Recently a member of the Pontifical Academy for Life praised the show in an interview with Zenit.

House is not only good television, it's becoming a phenomenon:

The return of the charmingly arrogant Dr. Gregory House on primetime television was a rousing success for the FOX network. House ran away with the highest ratings Tuesday night with its fourth season premiere.

House came away with 18.1 million viewers and a 7.7 rating/19 share in the 18-49 adult demographic for the 9pm to 10 pm time slot. The Hugh Laurie-led ensemble medical dramedy surged on despite competition from ABC's Dancing with the Stars and NBC's Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, which opened its ninth season.

House's impressive numbers made it the highest-rated premiere in the pivotal age bracket, for any network thus far in the 2007 fall season. It was FOX's highest rated drama series premiere in almost seven years. [- House M.D. Fan Blog.]

With so many folks watching House, it's important that someone, somewhere on the internet take a look at its content from a Catholic ethical and artistic perspective. And until someone better comes along, I'm filling in. You can read my own essays from last season here. Needless to say, spoilers ahead - so be careful!

Season premier - Alone - 9/25/07:

Last season ended with House losing or firing his three staff doctors. Each of them decided, in their own way, that the medical knowledge and experience they gained by working with House did not outweigh the personal cost they were incurred in terms of their psychological and ethical well-being.

More importantly, they felt themselves beginning to approximate House's own standards in disconcerting ways. They were each becoming more like House, and that's the last thing they wanted to happen. Given this situation, they chose to pursue other paths in the medical profession.

(quicky: the humorous subplot of Wilson's abduction of House's guitar was brilliant. Resuming:)

House, the title character, is now "going it alone" in this first episode of the season. And deny it as he may, he isn't doing very well. His self-sustained solipsism won't allow him to admit to Cuddy or Wilson that he misses his old team, to whom he had unknowingly become attached. More importantly to his medical decision-making process, he now lacks the balancing factors that used to be provided by his more altruistic staff. As a result, his cynicism about the young lady he is trying to treat receives no questioning and it takes him far longer to discover his mistake. He presumes the worse, and has no one around him to presume the best. The ultimate solution to the dilemma - a non-medical one, in this case - is beyond his impressive empirical ability.

The main ethical question in this premier episode of the fourth season is a continuation of the first season's primary theme: "everyone lies." House's primary insight into fallen human nature, however, serves him in good stead only when it operates within the backdrop of his support staff that can reply to him: "no one likes to lie; everyone prefers truth." House is a master of the counter-intuitive, especially when he can prove his ideology through medical facts. At the same time, he is often a slave to the medical findings, and when given a choice, he prefers a medical finding that condemns the patient's virtue rathen than trusting in human goodness.

The boyfriend, for his part, does a good job standing by his girlfriend. He does waver from time to time, but on the whole he trusts the intuitions he has gained from his relationship more than the accusations that House brings into the situation as the case progresses. The mother, on the other hand, is not nearly so trusting. And it's clear from the drama why she isn't: she's had a falling-out with her daughter and no longer knows her well enough to trust her character. Of course, one has to think that a husband probably would have had more confidence in his wife. The boyriend and mother are both, in some sense, guilty of not being close enough to the young women. Her death is somewhat caused by her isolation from a true human community. This fact is dramatically brought out when the audience learns the boyfriend misidentified his own girlfriend when he was trying to rescue her. Neither did her mother notice the mistake.

The final scenes of the medical drama are quite poetic, with the mother and boyfriend tragically discovering that in the midst of their distrust in their daughter/girlfriend, that she had in fact died in another part of the hospital - alone. And in an instance of "The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away," simultaneously a previously-forgotten character is given back the girl he thought had died. That's good writing.

Second episode - The Right Stuff - 10/2/07

This episode is split between two overlapping narratives - House trying to hire a new team (and weeding-out the applicants "American Idol-style") and the medical drama of a future NASA pilot with a rare disease that involves her suffering from synesthesia.

I found the applicant review process very witty because it showcases House at his controlling, arbitrary best. His applicant pool is a microcosm of Darwinian selection, ruthless backstabbing and intellectual jousting. But while House does act "outrageously" at times, the general criterion for whether an applicant survives or gets the boot is again ... objective medical fact. Your best chance for success, in the end, is being right. Everything else is a matter of taste. And those with inferior knowledge (who are also less qualified for the job) are forced to compensate for that defect with verbal games and clever trickery (good lucks don't hurt either). I don't think it's too much to claim that this is how much of the world operates, generally speaking.

House does, I think, seriously compromise the best medical interest of his patient. For once he seems to respect his patient's autonomy - and I'm sure the $50k helped. His final defense for not turning her into the NASA medical authorities is I think defensible, but hardly prudent. But more on that soon.

I'm not sure what to make of Wilson's attempts to trick House into thinking he's having visions of his old team, as if that will somehow convince House that he misses his team and had, despite all his claims to the contrary, established a human connection with them. Frankly, I don't think more trickery will help. Reality, not manipulation, is what will get to House in the end. And after all, if it's a game, he'll win it. He's good at every puzzle except his own life.

Speaking of human attachment, House displays a rare moment of kindness at the end of the episode when he allows the older gentleman to stay on as his assistant - even though he is not a licensed doctor. Though House has do to it in his own way, he helps the man fulfill his dream of working with doctors. Similarly, in his encounter with Cameron, House cannot avoid the fact that his primary purpose in hiding the pilot's illness from NASA was his desire to preserve the young woman's dreams. Embarrassed as he may be, House finds fulfillment in good acts. He still tries his best to cover them up, and rationalize his motives as utilitarian and "rational", but there it is.

There's always hope, even for House. He can't help being human, and humans like acting well.

Praise for Fox's "House M.D." from a (perhaps) surprising source

Imagine my surprise at seeing my favorite (and sole) TV addiction, House M.D., praised by a member of the Pontifical Academy for Life in a recent Zenit interview:

The Fox Broadcasting Company's series titled "House: M.D." reflects the existence of good and evil and the need to choose between the two, says a member of the Pontifical Academy for Life.

Dr. Carlo Valerio Bellieni is director of the Department of Newborn Intensive Therapy of the University Polyclinic Le Scotte in Siena, Italy. He told ZENIT that the series "shows something interesting."

He explained: "The show seems to be an apology for separation and absence: It tells the story of a misanthrope and harsh doctor, Gregory House, who doesn't want any contact with patients.

"This separation, however, caused by his existential and physical suffering, is only apparent. While remaining surly and anti-social, each time he insistently tries to understand the depths of the person he is caring for.

"He is able to recognize suffering in others because of his own suffering and it is because of this that he can see things that may escape others.

"It is even more strange, and interesting, that the 'non-politically correct' actions and judgments, with some exceptions, come from a character who is in constant struggle with the world."

[more astute observations.]

I posted summaries and reactions to three House episodes last season, entitling them "The Moralities of House":

• 3x21 "Family"
• 3x20 "House Training"
• 3x19 "Act Your Age"

The season four premier will be on Fox this September 25th. Time permitting, I hope to continue my series.

Update: Here's a short preview for the new season:

This week's episide of House...

... is showing some promise:

Can I just add that I was an addictive chess player in high school? 9/8 Central!

The Moralities of House (3x21, "Family")

"Nothing like a dead patient to send you back to your choir boy roots." - House to Foreman

A few days late with this week's House M.D. review. Sorry, some other topics crowded this one out!

As I explained a couple weeks ago, I intend to write a short summary of the moral issues in House, M.D. for the remaining episodes in the season. Last week I did 3x20 "House Training" and the week before that, 3x19 "Act Your Age."

First things first - *spoiler warning*. I'm writing with the presumption that readers are either familiar with the show, have seen the episode in question, or are not worried about having plot arc points given away. Also, House treats of fairly explicit themes often ("viewer discretion advised"), so be warned. Enough said ...

3x21, "Family"

Here's the TV preview spot for this episode:


PoliteDissent provides a weekly plot recap of each episode, and then (helpfully) evaluates the medical claims made by the show.

The Moralities:

This week's episode was, as PoliteDissent notes, much more an episode about ethical dilemmas rather than interesting medicine, playing upon the fact that House's team is trying to save a boy by operating and experimenting on his brother (and vice versa).

House: Is back to his regular abuse of patients and especially their parents, who he tries to browbeat into giving him the permission slips he needs. Again, “giving parents the option of making a bad choice is a bad choice.” House believes its better to circumvent their consent and go for what he sees as objectively the best medical course of action. His blowup with Wilson in the hallway is uncalled for, and completely typical. He does apologize, but in his own way. He also orchestrates a one-on-one conversation with a the leukemia brother, in order to convince him to give up his life for his brother.

Chase: “And it’s Tuesday. It’s the day I remind you I like you and I want us to be together.”

Cameron: *sputter*

Foreman: Is having a tough time getting over the patient he lost in last week’s episode. The main thing that irks him is how he lost the patient by, in his mind, acting like House would have, coldly calculating the odds. His worry about the possibility of losing another patient prompts him to go behind everyone’s back and talk to the parents about the option – a very irresponsible action. And of course, the most shocking moment of the episode, where Foreman plunges a needle into the healthier brother’s bone marrow without anesthesia, is a show-stopper. But morally? I guess you can weigh on the one hand the incredible pain of being stabbed against saving the life of that person’s brother. But what is most troubling is that as Foreman is doing this the boy is screaming for him to stop! I can’t help but think this is poor writing and that in real life such an action would result in the immediate suspension and criminal prosecution of Foreman. At any rate, the way the episode treats it is that Foreman is becoming more and more like House, and is so scared of becoming him that he’d rather submit his resignation. We’ll see if he goes through with it by season end, but of course, it’s very doubtful.

Wilson: I think House’s withering criticism of Wilson has some foundation, namely, that Wilson believes so much in patient autonomy because he’s unwilling to live with the guilt of advising someone wrongly. He councils the family to “protect themselves as a whole” and choose a surgery that hurts one brother but saves the other simultaneously. Wilson continues to demonstrate his effective way of dealing with House’s pathological social problems. “You’re Pathetic, I didn’t mean that.” “Yes you did.” “Times infinity.” “Yes you did… you’re pathetic.”

The Parents: Come across very well in this episode. They do defer very often to Wilson when the situation quickly becomes tangled. The hardest choice they face is whether to intentionally infect one son with a disease in order to discover how to heal the other before he dies of it. House puts it this way: “you either leave with one dead son or two.” The parents simply refuse this option. They won’t give up on either son, especially if saving one means intentionally destroying the (admittedly slim) chances of one.

The Patients: The brothers are good figures, who, at 10 and 14, are willing to sacrifice their lives for one another, with the stated reason that “you’d do the same for me.” I appreciate that leukemia brother reaches a point where he starts talking about “it’s my time to go”, and then has his life saved at the 11th hour. It’s not over till it’s over, especially for a fourteen-year-old.

The Big Morality: The main question in this episode is to what degree you can intentionally sicken one patient in order to derive benefits for another person. It starts with intentionally weakening the immune system of one brother to more quickly ferret-out his illness (with the intention of curing it). The second major stage comes when they consider open heart surgery on the healthier brother to (it gets complicated) provide healthy bone marrow to the one with leukemia. “Either we cripple one son or kill the other.” Matters reach a fever pitch when House suggests transplanting the sickness from the healthier brother to the sick one, effectively using him as a live Petri dish to quickly discover what is killing the healthier brother. The moral question becomes to what degree, and for what foreseeable benefits, one can intentionally sicken someone for another person’s benefit? Clearly the brother with leukemia was not “doomed” to dying, because he in fact survives, and therefore the argument for making him worse (that he could not get better anyway) evaporates. There’s much to consider here.

Oh, and … the dog?!

Next Week:

Here's the TV preview spot for next week's episode:

More House resources:

• If you want to catch up on House, Amazon has the First and Second seasons on DVD.
• The official House website at Fox.
• Wikipedia page for House, with brief episode summaries.

Legalize: All pictures copyright FOX and found here.

The Moralities of House (3x20, "House Training")

"Loss of free will. I like it. Maybe we can get Thomas Aquinas in for a consult."

Seriously, can a character have a better opening line than that? House opened with this zinger last night ... on the Fox network! Sometimes I feel like I'm taking crazy pills.

Anyway, I explained last week that I intend to write a short summary of the moral issues in House, M.D. for the remaining episodes in the season. Last week I did 3x19 "Act Your Age."

First things first - *spoiler warning*. I'm writing with the presumption that readers are either familiar with the show, have seen the episode in question, or are not worried about having plot arc points given away. Also, House treats of fairly explicit themes often ("viewer discretion advised"), so be warned. Enough said ...

3x20, "House Training"

Here's the TV preview spot for this episode:



PoliteDissent provides a weekly plot recap of each episode, and then (helpfully) evaluates the medical claims made by the show. Too bad they didn't do the bubble test!

The Moralities:

This week's episode was rather disappointing. Certainly below-par for what I've come to expect from the House writers. It focused on Foreman, and his personal drama, leaving pretty much everything else on hold, except for a little development on the Wilson/Cuddy unfolding saga. My random thoughts on a fairly random episode:

1) Cuddy and Wilson continue to play their little game. It's inconceivable that they both don't realize on some level that they're relationship together has no future. Simultaneous self-denial is a dangerous thing.

2) Chase continues his slow approach with Cameron, who seems unable to handle Chase's more mature, even chivalrous manner. Good on ya, Chase! This situation better get some closure by season end, I must say.

3) House seemed oddly caring, oddly involved and oddly unworried about losing a patient this week. This is distressing since so much of his character integrity involves these exact traits. Is he slipping? The show can't really tolerate him changing because his antagonism provides much of the show's drama!

4) Foreman showed some good human development this episode, especially with regard to the relationship he has with his mother. I think the show leaves us with an inkling that he has discovered how a true exchange of love can exist between him and his alzheimers-stricken mother, even with her mental impairment.

5) Sadly, I think the patient of the week (POTW) only served the purpose of bringing some emotional/personal revelations out of Foreman. Even her death just served the purpose of developing his character. Sorry, potw, we never loved you like we should. Perhaps that consult with Thomas Aquinas shouldn't have been dismissed so quickly.

All in all, this was a very promising episode, with the coolest House opening line to date, that really failed to deliver. Oh well, it makes sense to air a weak episode now before the four week countdown to season finale begins.

Here's what some other blogs are saying about this week's episode:

• Cinemablend
• TV Fodder
• BuzzSugar

Here's the TV preview spot for next week's episode:


More House resources:

• If you want to catch up on House, Amazon has the First and Second seasons on DVD.
• The official House website at Fox.
• Wikipedia page for House, with brief episode summaries.

Papist nod this week goes to The Whapsters, whose schedule for "Holy Whapping Television Network (HWTN)" this week includes ... *drumroll*:

8:00 PM. House, O.P. - Mangy maverick novice-master Fr. Gregory House, embittered from years of suspicion from his superiors (“never trust a skinny Dominican”), ferrets out obscure heresies on the campus of the Catholic University of America. This week: fears of an outbreak of Montanism paralyze the Dominican House of Studies after unaccounted-for stockpiles of cheese are discovered in the basement by Sister Allison.

Tres clever. I hope the department of diagnostic medicine at Plainsboro hospital got a kick out of it as well:

Well, give them some time to work it out. :P

Legalize: All pictures copyright FOX and found here.

The Moralities of House (3x19, "Act Your Age")

I've noticed that several members of the Catholic blogosphere will often post reflections on their favorite primetime shows each week (here I'm thinking of Julie D. in particular, though Amy Welborn will do so as well for a noteworthy episode).

Well, I've noticed that no one seems to be talking about House M.D., with the exception of the "Fetal Position" episode that I briefly posted about last week, which garnered some scattered attention for its pro-life elements.

As I've admitted before, I'm fairly addicted to House. It's the only television show I currently make time for, and I've managed to see the entirety of its previous seasons over the past couple months. So I think I'm fairly well situated to start commenting on it. The show is primarily about medical, interpersonal and business-place ethics - prime fodder for discussion. From what I've heard, House has been renewed for a fourth season (in its 3rd now) and is currently Fox's top-rated scripted drama. This means that it will probably be around for awhile longer, and in the meantime, plenty of people (almost 20m) will be watching it each week. Finally, the title character of Dr. House is played by Hugh Laurie, one of my all-time favorite British actors, ever since he was the Bertie Wooster of Jeeves & Wooster. I hope that's a satisfactory account of the contributing factors to my addiction.

First things first - *spoiler warning*. I'm writing with the presumption that readers are either familiar with the show, have scene the episode in question, or are not worried about having plot arc points given away. Also, House treats of fairly explicit themes often ("viewer discretion advised"), so be warned. Enough said....

3x19 - "Act Your Age"

Here's the TV preview spot for this episode:



PoliteDissent provides a weekly plot recap of each episode, and then (helpfully) evaluates the medical claims made by the show. They actually gave this week's episode a failing grade, which I'd agree with given even I found the final diagnosis to be contradictory with the preceding symptoms. Oh well, you can't win them all.

The Moralities:

This week focused less on Dr. House and allowed some of the secondary characters to develop.

Chase and Cameron remain tense after breaking off their inane "friends-with-benefits/sex-without-strings" relationship. At least the writers of House are willing to show that such an arrangement is foolish and unnatural between humans. Interestingly, Chase is coming off the better of the two in this situation. Typically he is the office playboy, and its good to see him being given some credit (i.e., being unsatisfied with Cameron's desire to keep their relationship only physical). His gift of flowers to her in the end at least has the surface plausibility of being disinterested, and that's more than we'd expect from him given his past tendency to self-serve.

Cameron's decision to enter the "relationship" (and end it when Chase voices his dissatisfaction) remains unintelligible to me. It doesn't make sense objectively, or even within the context of the show where Cameron is normally the most "moral" of the four doctors. Classically she's the one pointing out how a physical procedure has emotional, psychological and moral dimensions that can't be ignored for the sake of utility. And yet, she initiates this deal with Chase which positively reeks of physical utility at the expense and danger of emotional, psychological and moral considerations. I guess that is probably the irony of her choice, but we'll see where the writers take it.

The emerging love triangle between Wilson, Cuddy and House has nothing except disaster written all over it. Sure, it might keep people interested, but the pathological inability to maintain relationships evidenced by Wilson and House's personal demons aren't going to be overcome by Cuddy's late-middle-age-professional-style desperation to find a partner. At least it won't be overcome for longer than an awkward one-night-stand or two somewhere near the end of this season to keep the ratings up. Which, I'd imagine, is the same reason the Chase/Cameron relationship started-up early season - following the disappointing trend in almost every major TV drama where most of the main characters need to be sleeping with each other by the end of the second season (early third if you're lucky, never if you're Mulder and Scully).

In terms of the episode-specific character, I think the lesson taught was good. The father's decision to begin a relationship with the caretaker of his children, so soon after his wife's death, is definitely given a critical treatment. The fact that this caretaker is much younger than him, and that his third-party solution to his impotence problems are the direct cause of his children's sufferings only highlight the inappropriateness of his choice. The four doctors even suspect him of child abuse for a good portion of the episode because of his failures in duty. If I could put the message to the father curtly: "Keep it in your pants, and take care of your kids, dude." Or as House puts it: "A guy gets a little somethin'-somethin' and a couple of kids have to die... it's the circle of life."

More House resources:

• If you want to catch up on House, Amazon has the First and Second seasons on DVD.
• The official House website at Fox.
• Wikipedia page for House, with brief episode summaries.

Conclusion:

I've penned this rather hastily rather than waiting to give it more attention, and subsequently having it slip through the cracks. I'd be he happy to hear your thoughts in the combox below or via email. Hopefully I will have time next week (around finals!) to pen another review if this sort of thing is useful and/or interesting to folks.

Here is the preview for next episode, 3x20 - "House Training." House airs Tuesdays, 9/8 central.

Legalize: pictures (except for top) ©2007 FOX BROADCASTING COMPANY Credit: Isabella Vosmikova/FOX.