By Buzz Byrne
House (Hugh Laurie) and Dr. Foreman (Omar Epps) have their first full episode together since last season and what do they do? Split up. Not like they broke up but rather Foreman stayed with the prospective team to handle the care of a seizing, fainting dragster driver and House jaunted off to cure a CIA agent.
Usually when a TV drama invokes the “CIA” plot line, they are sending up the white flag of “We’ve run out of ideas”-surrender. But this is HOUSE and we give extra leeway. The whole CIA thing just works to get House away from his team and give face time to Foreman so he can establish his hierarchy in the pack. When House leaves he says to Foreman, “You’re in charge.” Foreman replies, “I know.” This specifically male measuring contest will only go on so long. It will work as underlying tension but cannot sustain itself as the continual mode of communication.
House brazenly gets diagnosis after diagnosis wrong while he flirts with the “Company” in-house doctor. The patient is wasting away with blood cancer or radiation poisoning or some other nasty thing but House remains able to chew the scenery and brag about his assignment to Cuddy, Wilson and his team, “I’m on a top secret mission for the CIA.” And everyone rolls their eyes.
Things are much different with Foreman. He has trouble managing the team. They are too caught up in trying to impress House that they overlook the patient. Rats in a cage is how Foreman sees them. However, Foreman is having his own problems diagnosing the racecar driver and he seems to have slipped when it comes to the bedside manner. He assures the driver and her father that it is one wrong thing after another. This serves the parallel action of the plot but raises the question of how he was able to sell House’s ever changing treatments to patients but not his own. That wasn’t explored at all.
Dr. Cameron (Jennifer Morrison) continues to enjoy playing all sides of the House circus. This week she even helps the prospective fellows undermine Foreman. Main squeeze Dr. Chase observes, “For someone who’s not involved with his team, you’re incredibly involved with his team.” What does Cameron miss more? House’s grudging professional approval or his physical presence in her life? Is she really over him?
With lines like, “I have an open position on my penis,” as he says to the CIA doctor, he would be hard to get over. House is resigned to the operative’s death until he discovers that somebody was lying and the whole thing was caused by too many Brazil nuts. Foreman is blown out of the water when his patient tests positive for what Dr. Brennan had been pushing for- polio. He is shaken, unable to deal with his failure and mired in self pity and doubt. House yells at the CIA. They deal with set backs differently.
Cameron comes to Foreman and works to build his confidence back. In a bit of crafty direction, when the scene is shot from Foreman’s point of view, it is skewed, angled awkwardly. Subtle, but appreciated here. The opening sequence of the drag racing was likewise shot well only more overtly crafty. With the fast dialogue and power of Laurie’s acting the visual appeal of the show can easily be overlooked. It shouldn’t be.
As House solved his case, so to does Foreman. It wasn’t polio and it wasn’t cured by vitamin C. Brennan went a little haywire, poisoned the patient and made it seem like she was cured so he could get research funding to explore the vitamin C theorem for third world countries still stricken by polio. He is asked to leave the team. Somehow what he did is a breach of House’s ethics. The logic in that I’m not sure I can break down in the space left. This season of House is going great so far. Soon they shall settle on an actual team and it will be just in time for the writer’s strike. Nothing is perfect. Superman even walks with a cane.