By Buzz Byrne

As we move slowly to the formation of House’s new team, this week we got three storylines. As much as we may have come to like/love or hate these characters, too many story lines usually means little progress in the overall story arc. One patient suffering from Spinal Muscular Atrophy passes out and can’t eat anymore. Another patient sticks a knife into an electrical outlet because he is addicted to afterlife visions. And we see Dr. Forman leading his own team in a comfy, cuddly Un-House way. Can they all converge and deliver on a theme central to the foundation of what makes HOUSE compelling?

There is plenty of fun with the prospective team members, whether it be their jaunty nicknames House gives them (Fat Twin, Cutthroat Bitch, 13, Grumpy, Big Love), or the mock tribal council with Bunsen burners signifying their life in the game. They are divided along genital lines (“Dangling or attractive”). The diagnoses flow for the SMA patient and none of them stick. His condition has rendered him immobile and dependant on an assist dog, yet he comes off as adjusted to his plight and even a little upbeat. He is the foil to House’s cynical and narcissistic nature especially in relation to physical limitations.

Another patient genuinely surprises House during his rounds in the dreaded clinic. The man is bruised and in a neck-brace and as House starts the witty banter the guy pulls a switch blade and heads for the electricity. When he recovers from being dead, he tells House he was in a car accident and his heart was stopped for quite a while. He saw the after life and it was the most amazing high he has ever felt. There is so much here to pique House’s interest it’s hard to find a starting place but basically House is hooked. Is it because he must disprove this vision to square his own nihilism? Is it tempting and soul filling to embrace the hereafter and does this mean ultimate redemption for House? Could he just be a junkie who was told about the most amazing drug ever?


Dr. Forman is up in New York being kind and reassuring to his underlings. And they are getting their diagnosis wrong, wrong and wrong. His gut is telling him to buck his superior and eventually he succumbs to this and saves the patient’s life. His boss is no Dr. Cuddy though. Forman is fired, setting up the eventual return to work along side House. Will that be two or three episodes down the line? Will it be just when House needs him most? Probably but maybe not.

And that is the thing with this show. I started out hating this episode but they pulled it out. They tied it all together and thematically drew enough pathos from each divergent story to support the whole. The first patient with SMA dies because of doctor error. It is hard to pull off a truly moving and brave performance on network TV but Brian Klugman did. His color, his rasp, his dying embrace of his beloved dog while proclaiming, “I’m not scared…” was tremendous. But aside from the acting, he served as the human factor that House is at war with. The human factor that values emotion over reason, fact over fantasy, faith over reality. He challenged this in such as manner as to push House to stick the exact same knife, used previously, into his own outlet. House was dead for a full minute and when he came out of the coma he asked to see the man who did this first. Of course that patient had died as well and why House needed to see him remains a mystery until he pulls the shroud over the SMA patient with an “I told you so,” referring to the nothingness of death.


This was a good episode, probably even great. One of the keys to that is making House shake. Testing his own limits and theories usually brings out the greatness in this show. Seeing the fragile cocoon House needs to excel at his work is revealing through Forman. House has the trust and the gravitas to buck Cuddy but when he screws up, like he did tonight, she will not let him off the hook and puts the patient’s death squarely on his shoulders because he will do the right thing- hire the doctor (13) who physically screwed up. Forman is too young or raw or inexperienced to lead and not care about being loved. When you are the maverick House is, you need to be your own toughest critic. When he shoved the knife into the outlet he proved he was. Forman couldn’t pass that test. Not yet anyways.