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TV Tidbits: Black, Morton, Dudek Nab New Roles

BuzzSugar — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 10:30:06 PDT

Fall TV is almost here, and I'm pumped to greet my favorite shows again. Part of the fun is seeing the new faces that come along, and today there's a batch of newcomers to meet.

The Daily Show's Lewis Black will make an appearance on The Big Bang Theory as a professor who's down on his luck. He'll only be on one episode - the second of the season - but I'm guessing it will be a memorable moment for the CBS sitcom.
Joe Morton will also be playing a professor next season, but he'll be heading to Brothers & Sisters. Morton has signed on for a recurring role as Justin Walker's anatomy teacher in med school. It sounds like he'll be a mentor type, but friendships don't stay scandal-free for long when it comes to the Walkers.
Anne Dudek will play Piper Perabo's sister on the new USA spy series Covert Affairs.Yay! I've been rooting for her for what feels like forever, since I still think she deserves an Emmy and completely made some of my favorite TV episodes. I'm glad to see she's found a new TV home, though I still would love to see her get a lead role.

House Rundown: Episode 23, "Under My Skin"

BuzzSugar — Tue, 05 May 2009 09:30:49 PDT

This week's House finds House still struggling with his hallucinations of Amber and wanting to get them out of his head for good. That sends him to his friends for help - with intriguing consequences. Meanwhile, Cameron asks Chase a potentially relationship-changing favor, and House's team works on a case alone. To chat about it, just

read more. The big thing about "Under My Skin," of course, is the House/Cuddy kiss, the kiss that - according to the promos and the show's cast itself - apparently turns into something more. But it's the culmination of a million smaller moments in the episode that find House truly taking comfort in his friends. He knows he can't go on without help, with Amber's voice in his head. It's throwing him off, making his medical decisions worse. So he confesses everything to Wilson - whose reaction to the hallucination being Amber is pretty mild, I think, all things considered - and starts an episode-long quest to figure out his affliction. House really only sees two options, so kindly spelled out for him by Amber: one, he's crazy, which means no more medical practice; two, he's hallucinating from Vicodin, which means detox, which means pain, which means no more medical practice. Either way, the biggest thing haunting House (besides Amber, of course) is the thought that when he comes out on the other side of this, he won't have his identity as a doctor anymore. But he thinks he might be losing that anyway; on the phone with Foreman, he realizes he's made a lucky - not brilliant - call in diagnosing the dancer. So what else is there to do? Wilson offers to take him to a clinic, but House wants to be with people who know him. Specifically, he wants to be with Cuddy. It's interesting that the two of them can only really connect when one or the other is incredibly vulnerable. They've kissed twice now this season, and both times, one has been helping the other through crushing pain. She's good to him in the detox scenes; she brings him ginger tea and flushes his one last pill down the toilet before he can take it. I loved watching Amber slowly realize that House isn't kidding around this time; when he confesses the locations of all his secret stashes, she responds with an indignant "I don't even know who you are anymore!" And when he starts to come out of withdrawal, Amber's gone. Some other thoughts:

I hope that, were Anne Dudek to somehow read this, she'd take it as a compliment: she does creepy better than any other actress I can think of.
House may have solved the case, but the team manages to pull out a way to save the patient's life even after he quits. Good for Taub, especially.
What do you make of Cameron and Chase? I understand where she's coming from, but I also understand why Chase is hesitant. It seems like "Oh, I have my dead ex's sperm, and by the way, I want yours, too" is a conversation they should have had pre-engagement.
So Cuddy and House's story goes back even a little further than we thought: Cuddy audited the class where they met purely because she thought House was "an interesting lunatic."

We've asked this question before: can House still be House without Vicodin? This time, he seems a little more committed to finding out the answer, and I'm curious to see what happens next week. Are you? Photos courtesy of Fox

House Rundown: Episode 22, "House Divided"

BuzzSugar — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 15:15:00 PDT

Back when Amber was competing for a job as one of House's fellows, I sometimes thought of her as House's perfect counterpart - his mirror image. Well, I didn't mean it literally! But in this week's House, Amber is essentially haunting our cranky doctor, showing up as a hallucination and speaking his thoughts. What does it all mean? Help me figure it out when you

read more. Everywhere House turns these days, Amber is there. He assumes it's just an effect of insomnia: he hasn't been sleeping much since Kutner died. But as we see at the end of the episode, even a well-rested House still sees Amber. She's in his brain, in his thoughts. And for all her wry smiles and clever banter, she's kind of an evil little friend, isn't she? Had this been anyone but Amber, I probably would have rolled my eyes and assumed that Grey's Anatomy had forever ruined any plotline involving the return of a dead character. But I absolutely love watching Anne Dudek and Hugh Laurie play off each other. It's this great mix of flirting and fighting, and it kept me laughing even as House sets up Chase to go into allergic shock at the bachelor party. Whatever part of House's brain Amber's inhabiting is clearly the part that enjoys scheming; House even looks a little shocked when he realizes he knew about Chase's strawberry allergy. I loved the way Amber calls out House's thoughts in Wilson's office, urging him to knock over a pencil cup so he could get a clean shot at the file they were reading. Is this what it's like inside House's head all the time? Between Amber's appearance and the story of the deaf teenager, this could have easily been a very serious episode. (And speaking of the teenager, his story is one of the few medical stories in House recently that's truly held my attention. Everything about it seemed to work well, from the mom's conflicted reaction about the cochlear implant to the sweet interactions between the boy and his girlfriend.) But I was surprised at how many times I laughed. I loved House striding down the hall with his ridiculous old boom box and Kanye shades; I loved the idea of throwing the bachelor party at Wilson's place so he couldn't escape it. (Might I suggest to Wilson that if he wants to get away from House's over-the-top bachelor parties, he marry a woman he won't divorce?) I especially loved Taub awkwardly grinding with a couple of the "dancers" at the party. But what happens now? Amber's still there, and House knows she can do bad things - or that his brain wants him to do bad things, though I imagine Amber makes them even more enticing. Whatever comes next, I feel more invested in House than I have since the last time Amber showed up. What about you? Some other thoughts:

Foreman's never been my favorite, but it's still nice to see him solve a case.
That's not the only great Foreman moment: He and Thirteen get some of the best stuff in this episode. I love their stripper research - and it doesn't surprise me that Foreman would pay $50 to watch his bisexual girlfriend do a body shot.
Even at his worst, would House really try to kill Chase just to prevent someone else's happiness?
I'm also not convinced that Chase would really give a patient a cochlear implant on only House's orders with no paperwork to support it. You know how much he lies!
Love Cuddy trying to sober up all the fellows so they can go solve their case (and sending them off with breath mints, to boot).

So, what's Amber doing in House's brain? And what will it take to get her out? Photos courtesy of Fox

House Rundown: Episode 16, "Wilson's Heart"

BuzzSugar — Tue, 20 May 2008 09:28:51 PDT

Hang on, I have to go find some tissue before I can start this recap. If you weren't a bit teary-eyed at last night's season finale of House, then your heart is as cold as a heart that's been put into arrested hypothermia.
Last week, House took us on an interesting bus ride, and while I didn't know where it was going, I certainly wasn't expecting an ending like this. Especially considering how light-hearted, and goofy this season has been. We started off with a Survivor-like hunt for a new team, and ended up with a bus crash and a case of tragic timing. To check out all of my thoughts on the House season finale (spoilers ahead), just

read more. After the sort of eerie feel to last week's episode, it was nice to see that this week's was back on track. If it hadn't been that Amber was the patient, it could have been almost like any other episode of House. The gang gathers around the white board and tries to figure out what's going on. House sends Thirteen and Kutner off to ransack the house, Taub runs some more tests, Foreman - who has fully embraced his inner House, don't you think? - complains, and so on. Only it's not like any other episode of House. Amber - the newly found love of Wilson's life - is barely hanging on to her life, House is coming off of a heart attack and head injury, and the team is dealing with helping one of their own. Meanwhile, Wilson is a mess and wants to know exactly why House was hanging out with Amber to begin with. Everything else was fascinating, but that's really what I wanted to know, too. We eventually learn that Amber was with House because she was supposed to pick him up when he was too drunk to drive home. And House - being the stubborn and unruly man that he is - forced a drink on her and then decided to take the bus home. For some reason, Amber followed him onto the bus where she popped a few flu meds right before the crash. The crash caused her kidneys to fail, which led to the medication becoming stuck in her system, causing irreparable damage to the rest of her organs. Talk about a tragic series of events. You can't help but feel miserable for everyone involved. Also, seeing House cry when he remembered what had happened was rather touching, don't you think? Some other thoughts:

When House asks Wilson, "You think I should risk my life to save Amber's?" and Wilson just sort of nods at him, didn't you think it was his way of saying, "Dude, you seriously owe me"? Also, why do Chase and Wilson perform House's operation? Couldn't they have used doctors who have slept within the last 36 hours?
Four words: Amber Wilson sex video.
"You are the champion of not dealing with your problems." "My grandson gave me a mug that says that."
How does Kutner have such a positive outlook on life despite a sad family tragedy in his childhood?
Did you notice how Cameron received all of, oh I don't know, 30 seconds of speechless screen time? I wonder what her role will be like next season.
How do you think Thirteen's positive Huntington's test result will change her character?
Did you notice it was Fred Durst playing the bartender?
Were you shocked that they killed Amber off? Her face when she learns that she's going to die had me in tears. So did the part when she and Wilson are lying on the hospital bed.
I love the way the all-white ethereal bus looked, and it was interesting to hear House talk about how he doesn't want to be in pain or have Wilson hate him. Also, did you see the way Cuddy's hand was holding House's at the end?

So what did you think? Did you love the episode or hate it? How about the season as a whole? What do you think this is going to do to the Wilson/House relationship? And how are you going to spend your time waiting for the Fall premiere?! Photos courtesy of Fox

House Rundown: Episode 15, "House's Head"

BuzzSugar — Tue, 13 May 2008 10:39:37 PDT

Wow. I have no idea where House is taking us in its two-hour finale that started this week, but so far at least, I'm enjoying the ride.

What we know, or think we know: House was in a bus crash. He saw someone dying. But who it was, and what was hurting that person, is locked somewhere in his drug-addled brain (inside his cracked skull, to boot). The episode was spent in a frantic search for what House saw, with hypnosis, reenactments, and some kind of creepy dark bath all playing a part - and in the end, we finally learned who was dying. Or at least who might be dying, if the writers aren't pulling an elaborate "but it was all a dream!" scam on us. To check out my thoughts, just

read more. I'm mad at myself for taking so long to figure out the big twist that Amber was on the bus with House. Between Amber showing up in House's very first attempt at hypnosis and the woman saying "What is my necklace made of?" I should have had it way sooner. On the other hand, though, I loved the chilling feeling I got in the pit of my stomach when the mystery woman's face faded away to reveal Amber's. House hasn't had an outright creepy episode in a while, but the writers do it so well. Meanwhile: What was Amber doing on the bus with House? Was he wooing Amber from Wilson? Or is there some more complicated explanation for what was going on? I rarely think of House as a cool show to actually look at - other than the occasional animated foray into someone's bloodstream, every episode mostly looks the same. But the cleverness of the cinematography in this episode wowed me, from the Beer-brand beer in House's recollections to the faceless people on the bus (so eerie!) to the way the scenes kept fading in and out of different layers of House's memory. If the point was to throw us off-track so we could no longer tell what was real and what was a hallucination, well, it worked. I found myself looking for subtle clues - did House have blood on his shirt there? a limp? his cane? - to try to pinpoint where we were in time. Some other thoughts:

Thirteen = Hadley? Did you hope her name would be cooler?
I know, intellectually, that there was no point to House's fantasy with Cuddy as a schoolgirl stripper besides giving Fox something for a salacious promo bit. I do know that. And yet, it still made me chuckle. Now I guess we know what House would want to see in his dying moments.
Who was the mystery woman House saw instead of Amber? A real person? His fantasy of a beautiful woman?
"I'm not a lesbian." "I was rounding up from 50 percent."
Was anyone else surprised how flippant House's team seemed at the beginning? Sure, he was drugged and/or under the influence of his cracked skull, but if my boss insisted someone was dying and only I could help him save that person, I'm not sure my reaction would be "yeah, whatever, page me" – even if my boss were a pathological liar.
On a similar note, not sure why everyone seemed so shocked that House would put his own life in danger to solve a mystery. Wasn't it just earlier this season that he tried to electrocute himself?
Best Wilson line in a long time: "The penis-size cortex is set to pathetic."

What did you think? Did you love the episode, or did it frustrate you? What do you think is true, and what's a hallucination? And do you think this is going to come down to some big "House vs. Amber, and only one can live" thing? Cause I'm pretty sure I know who would win that one. Photos courtesy of Fox

TV Tonight: House

BuzzSugar — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 07:30:58 PDT

Over the past couple of weeks, we've seen incompetent bosses, self-absorbed medical residents, sex-crazed high schoolers, and even some devil's bounty hunters return to the small screen. But if there's one character whose return I've been anticipating most eagerly, it's the crankypants Dr. House. Tonight, House returns - now in its new Monday night slot - to deliver his standard dose of bitter sarcasm.

House went through a pretty radical transformation in the Fall, so just to make sure we're all on the same page, here's a quick rundown of what's going on. House's old team is no more; they're all still at PPH, but only Foreman is working directly with House. The new team consists of plastic surgeon Taub, bumbling fool Kutner, and mysterious Thirteen. The runner-up for making the team was Amber, aka Cutthroat B*tch, who managed to get the better of House anyway by dating Wilson. When we last left things, House was trying to figure out whether Amber was looking for romance, a job, or both.

And that's where things pick up tonight, with House and Amber each vying for a little bit of Wilson's time. The three of them have some of the best chemistry on the show right now, so I'm eager to see them all sharing the screen again. Meanwhile, the patient of the week is a guy House thinks is just too nice for his own good, which should be fun; after all, is there a personality trait House likes less than niceness? To check out a couple of clips from the episode, just

House Rundown: Episode 12, "Don't Ever Change"

BuzzSugar — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 09:30:51 PST

First off, a bit of business. If you missed the Super Bowl episode and haven't already found it elsewhere, Fox will be replaying the episode Friday at 9 p.m. Go set that TiVo.

On to this episode, which might serve as our season finale depending on the writers' strike. It's somehow appropriate that it and last season's finale both were all about change. This time, House suspected that his patient made a radical change in her life - converting to Hasidic Judiasm - because there was something psychologically wrong with her. Meanwhile, he also starts to wonder if there's something psychologically wrong with either Wilson or Amber. To talk more about the episode, just

read more. Why would Wilson date Amber? It does seem outside the bounds of Wilson's usual relationships - though if they really did start dating right after House fired her, she would have been at least a little closer to Wilson's damsel in distress. And maybe getting fired from House's team really was a force that caused her to change. She even looked different in this episode - I never realized how pretty she was because her appearance throughout the competition was so severe. House offered her a job if she solved the case, and she offered one wrong diagnosis and then left without it becoming an all-consuming part of her life. I loved House's long glance from Amber to the words "altered sense of reality" on his whiteboard when she said some things were more important than a fellowship. That was not our same Cutthroat B*tch. Could she be lying? Sure. She could realize that dating Wilson is a way to stay in House's orbit, and the snippets we saw of her personal life did have a lot of the old cutthroat-b*tchiness in them (causing a fuss about the wait at the restaurant, etc.). Plus, Wilson is such a puppy dog; there might be some truth to House's plea to Cuddy that "he's combined two of his worst qualities: his love for me, his love for need." I'm inclined to believe that she has changed, but then again, this is House, where "everybody lies" is practically a commandment. Meanwhile, I liked the way the "opposites day" metaphor extended to the patient as well: She got cold when she was supposed to sweat, she passed out when her heart should have been racing. I couldn't tell what exactly sparked House to figure out he had to make his diagnosis backwards, too - that he needed to look for the absence of something (in this case, a kidney) rather than the presence of it - but it was a good reveal. I was also pretty impressed with the patient herself; being a religious person around a skeptic like House isn't easy. Some other thoughts:

Apparently, Kutner's personality quirks are going to be 1) that he's a geek, and 2) that he makes crazy metaphors. He got some good Star Wars and Planet of the Apes references in this time.
Loved this exchange: "And I call you Greg because we are now social equals." "And I speak in Latin because I don't try to hide what an ass I am."
And this one: "People who have a problem with boxes are people who don't fit in them." "You've been working for House for a long time."
I feel like now that they've had a patient with lupus, they can never use the lupus diagnosis again.

Your thoughts? And since we might not be back for a while, what have you thought about this season of House overall? Photos courtesy of Fox

House Rundown: Episode 9, "Games"

BuzzSugar — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 09:36:47 PST

Every House episode is really just a series of games House plays - with Cuddy, with Foreman, with his patients' lives - but this week's episode took things one step further. For the final challenge before picking his new team, House set the final four candidates loose on an aging punk rocker with symptoms that were either drug abuse or something more. In the end, he did actually buckle down and choose a team, but of course I'm not going to reveal the names up here. For that you'll have to

read more This episode was all about being right - the risks you take (or don't), the consequences, the reasons it might be OK to be wrong sometimes. We've seen in other episodes how much Amber thrives on being right - you don't get the nickname Cutthroat B*tch for nothing - but this episode made it clear that she not only requires perfection of herself but also asks for it in others. She couldn't deal with the rock star who didn't care about things; she thought he was wasting his life, and for whatever reason, being anything less than 100 percent right would be a waste of hers. But that was her downfall: Striving to be right all the time is the enemy of what House does. His process requires numerous guesses and tests and trials, and he's always wrong at least once, but he uses those wrong answers to find the right one. Amber's mistakes, and her unwillingness to admit them and move on, got her cut from the team. That leaves Taub, Kutner, and Thirteen as House's new staff. Their hiring - Thirteen's in particular - came from yet another of House's games with Cuddy. She recommended candidates to him because she thought he'd do the opposite; he hired two men, knowing she'd be angry there wasn't a woman in the mix. He ended up with three out of the final four - not the 3.5 he'd hoped for, but close enough. I wonder how they'll be able to work together now that they're not competing anymore. Meanwhile, Wilson actually had a subplot! And it fit quite nicely into the overall theme of the episode, too: He told a patient he had six months to live, then learned three months later that the test results had been false and there was nothing wrong with the patient at all. It was pretty similar to a recent Grey's Anatomy story, right down to both patients wanting to sue the hospital for giving them their lives back, but this one worked better for me on the strength of the House/Wilson interplay. Their screaming match was a highlight for me: "Dying's easy. Living's hard." "That can't possibly be as poignant as it sounds." Some other thoughts:

I loved the reminder that money's not a big deal to House, but threatening to move his parking space? That's serious stuff.
Chase pointed out a nice truth about the Foreman/House relationship: Foreman trying to stop the game is his role in the game.
House on how he knew Wilson was going to pay off his patient: "You usually keep your checkbook at home. It's your go-to excuse for why you can't lend me money."
Great description of Cuddy: "the face that launched a thousand long faces."

So, did the final episode play out the way you were expecting? What do you think will happen to Chase and Cameron now? And how upset are you that this was the final House till 2008? Photos courtesy of Fox

TV Tonight: House and Bones

BuzzSugar — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 12:31:19 PST

It's a big night on Fox tonight, as each of the network's dramas pulls out all the stops for the final Tuesday of sweeps. House puts the Survivor-style plot line to rest when Dr. House announces his hiring decision, and Bones takes romantic tension to a new level with a kiss between Bones and Booth.

That Bones kiss has been so heavily promoted at this point, I have to assume it's not a spoiler. The episode has a Christmas theme - the two find themselves investigating the death of Kristopher Kringle, a Santa impersonator - so naturally, there's mistletoe involved. Do you think this is a good move for the show, or would a romance between those two be icky?

House, meanwhile, finally chooses which job candidates will get his fellowships - or at least that's what we're told. Yes, there were rumors long ago about which doctors would win, but wouldn't it be great if that were all made up? Frankly, I wouldn't be shocked if he fired all the newbies and brought the old team back, though that would be a bit of a ripoff. If I could keep just one of them, it would be Kutner; sure, he may be inept, but Kal Penn makes me laugh.

To watch a preview for both shows, just

read more Photos courtesy of Fox But for

House Rundown: Episode 5, "Mirror Mirror"

BuzzSugar — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 09:42:08 PDT

Every so often, House will break out a theme episode where the cases and the doctors' lives intertwine. Those episodes often seem contrived, but they do have a purpose: They give us a window into the characters that we couldn't get from the typical House formula. "Mirror, Mirror" was one of those episodes, and it gave us some insight into the doc-testants still in the running for a job on House's team. To read my thoughts on the episode, just

read more The vehicle for this insight was the patient of the week, who was diagnosed early on with Mirror Syndrome, a condition that makes the patient mimic the person he's with - or, as Wilson pointed out, whichever person in a group he perceives to be the most dominant. Each time a doctor interacted with him, he would quickly take on their personality. As I was watching, though, I didn't think the patient revealed all that much about the characters; the revelations came more from their reactions to what the patient had to say. Some of the discoveries weren't shocking: Amber knows people don't like her (how could she not?), Thirteen is afraid of screwing up, House thinks Thirteen is hot and Cuddy has nice breasts. Others were more interesting: Taub's kinda crushing on Amber, and Kutner is a masochist (though we learned that more from the way he gave himself a shock with the electric paddles than from anything the patient said). Oh, and there was some stuff with Never Talking Guy, otherwise known as Brennan; he wants to go back to saving lives in Third World countries but is stuck duking it out for a job with House because of his fiancee. I hope they break up, because Brennan is terribly dull. Also, no Cole this week? There was another level of mirroring going on in the episode, as Foreman returned to work again with House, the former mentor whom everyone thought he was becoming. Thirteen, meanwhile, saw in Foreman someone who had accidentally killed a patient, just like she had - her own mirror. Has Foreman really changed? He's more compassionate than House, I suppose, but that's not saying much. Some other thoughts:

I'm still not sure I get how Chase and Cameron will be used every week, but for now, I like them on the edges. Chase taking bets on who would be the next doc-testant eliminated - and then cutting a deal with House for half the profit - was hysterical.
Cuddy got some good lines tonight, finally, and it was good to see her and House pranking each other again. I liked the overflowing clinic better than the pill switching, though; Wilson is immature enough to switch House's painkillers for laxatives, but Cuddy?

In terms of one-liners, it was one of House's better nights in a while. Some favorites:
"Just in case I need them, where exactly will Dr. Foreman be keeping my balls?" "Mind if we play through?" "Mail order. Seen the diploma. Two N's in University."
The revelation that House was dominant over Cuddy was about as shocking as the one that House thinks Thirteen is hot - but it meant getting to see House's funny dance at the end, so I'll take it.

Your thoughts? Too many mirror metaphors for you? Or are you glad to get a deeper glimpse into some of these new characters? Photos courtesy of Fox