"House" Rundown: Episode 2, "The Right Stuff"

As much as I loved watching House work alone on last week's "House," it was even better to see him surrounded by new potential team members to torture. I'm not sure if any of these new candidates have (ahem) the right stuff to be House's new lackeys, but it's sure going to be fun to watch them try. To talk about the episode, just read more

Our patient of the week: an Air Force captain who's supposed to start the astronaut training program when she starts having symptoms of synesthesia. She shows up with $50,000 in cash for House to fix her off the books so she can still go into space. This leads to a lot of sneaking around behind Cuddy's back, clever diagnostic procedures, and even elective breast augmentation surgery that would let the surgeons check her lungs without NASA finding out.

Unlike last week, House has a whole room full of eager-beaver fellowship candidates — with numbers instead of names — to do the job for him. When Cuddy gives him guff about the number of people he's interviewing, he fires a whole row; when it's time to split them into teams, he divides them by who likes the designated hitter rule. It's House at his unsentimental best, and if the (temporary?) departure of Foreman, Cameron and Chase leads to more moments like those, I'm all for it.

We got a few insights into the potential new team members, and while I — like House — don't want to get too invested yet, it does seem like a few of them will be around for a while. "Thirteen" (Olivia Wilde) is clearly House's new crush. Kal Penn's character (can we just call him Kumar?) was fired early on but got a second shot when he defiantly switched his "6" to a "9" and re-entered the competition.My favorite was the older man who isn't a doctor at all, and I'm glad he's sticking around as House's assistant; as House said at the end, it's his dream job, just not his dream title.

I loved the appearances/apparitions of Chase and Cameron, especially Wilson trying to convince House he was crazy for seeing them. But those two were there after all: Chase working in surgery, Cameron (newly blonde) working as an attending in the ER. As for House's visions of Foreman, well, those are yet to be explained.

A few other thoughts:

• My favorite one-liner, upon House's learning that his patient was training to be an astronaut: "I discovered salt and created FM radio."
• The job candidate I'm most on the fence about is the blonde snitch who was assigned to wash House's car, led an uprising to get everyone to quit, then came back with House's keys and drove to a car wash. How will House deal with someone who picks on the faults of others rather than standing out on her own?
• I can't believe they set a patient on fire. Even I know not to use anything that could set off a spark in an environment with concentrated oxygen. OK, I learned that from "Grey's Anatomy" last year, but still.
• How many times did a character say something to House about how he's the doctor who breaks all the rules?
• Wilson, upon learning that House was seeing Cameron with blonde hair in his visions: "Why are you merging Cameron and Chase? You should find out before the next time you see her, when she'll be black."
• I'm still not sure I understand the ending. House told the patient he called the NASA doctors, but then he told Cameron it wasn't true and he just needed to shut off "some leaky faucets." Whose dream was House trying to crush?

Your thoughts? Loving any of the new doctors so far? Think the vision of Foreman was real?

Photos courtesy of Fox