By Buzz Byrne

Want to know when a really lousy time to air your Christmas episode is, even for one of the best scripted TV dramas on air? The end of January. So it went with the return of new episodes of HOUSE M.D. This writer’s strike has to be settled soon. My entertainment digestive system is starting to feel like I’ve been on a three week road trip inhaling diesel fumes for oxygen and burnt coffee for fiber. I’m not working at peak capacity and watching a Christmas miracle is a little tough when the credit card bill rolls in demanding attention for the end of the year follies.

So where does the season of giving bring us with our favorite cranky pill-popping medical Sherlock? Donna from THE WEST WING (Janel Moloney) is this week’s patient with the mystery illness. While holding the safety line for her daughter who is on a rock wall, her hands seize and the girl takes a tumble. There is no medical reason for this so clearly she must have lied when giving her medical history- striking upon a basic tenet of House’s philosophy that everybody lies.

Ah, but the twist is that she lost her own mother at an early age to breast cancer and believes that if her mom had been honest with the doctors back then, they might have saved her life. Therefore she has vowed to be honest with not only her doctors- she had breast cancer too, but her eleven year old daughter as well. The mom and the kid just won’t lie to each other. Believing this to be an utter impossibility, House tests it by asking the girl how mom likes to have sex. The girl doesn’t want to talk about it but then gives in and says mom likes it when she’s on her stomach, that way she doesn’t have to see the men staring at her mastectomy scars.


I don’t know that this exchange shocked me so much as simply gave me pause. This is the Christmas episode, right?

The B and C storylines were a “Secret Santa” fiasco and a prostitute/Virgin Mary twist that lacked the usual ironic, fun twist. So yeah, I guess this is the holiday show.

Mom’s symptoms get worse. She goes blind, her glands swell and choke her, she bleeds from eyes and then her bones turn to stone.

The cause is still unknown and House’s search for the underlying untruth remains elusive until it comes down to testing the daughter for a bone marrow match and mom won’t have any of it. It’s not her real daughter. And in the last clinical test, it is clear mom is dying and doing it quickly. The kid confronts this truth with more directness than mom and this strikes House to the core because it is borne from a place of love whereas his truth-telling comes from disinterested facts. In this moment of emotional revelation House figures out the problem (breast cancer behind her knee- yeah, I know) and solves it and even ties mom and kid together with a freaky moment overdue breast feeding.


I’m willing to chalk this one up to missing the holiday season. Maybe if this was aired in the emotional frenzy of December it would have struck a more emotional chord. It may also have been a miss on the writers’ part. The mom and kid had very few scenes together so their relationship was mostly talked about and not developed in front of us. Whatever the cause this was an episode that didn’t hit the sweet spot. I’m hoping the next few new ones we get will be enough to hold us HOUSE fanatics over till the strike has been settled. If so, they will have to be better.