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House Rundown: Episode 24, "Both Sides Now"

BuzzSugar — Tue, 12 May 2009 09:30:30 -0700

After last week's episode of House, I wondered how House would cope in a world where he was no longer on drugs. I was also curious to see what would happen to the sexual tension between House and Cuddy now that they've apparently done the deed. How did it all go down in Monday's season finale? If you're ready to talk about it, just read more.

Well, that explains a lot. A few things about last week's resolution seemed too good to be true: Do you really detox from Vicodin in less than 12 hours? And would Cuddy really choose to make out and even have sex with a man she'd been watching sweat and vomit all night? It turns out those things were too good to be true. Instead of coming home with him, Cuddy walked out after House insulted her. Instead of detoxing, House kept right on taking pills. Instead of twirling Cuddy's lipstick all day, House has been playing with a pill bottle. It was all - as the visions of Amber and Kutner tell House - the story he made up about himself. "Too bad it isn't true," Kutner adds. So while the rest of PPH is celebrating Chase and Cameron's wedding, Wilson's driving House to a mental hospital.

I'm not quite sure yet how I feel about this bait-and-switch. I'm not one of the Huddy worshipers who's sad the two of them didn't actually have sex; I figure that'll happen in due time. But I do have some questions about why the House writers used this twist - questions I'll have to wait till at least next season to have answered. These hallucinations are different than the others; why doesn't House just keep seeing Amber? (Is it because he was taking oxycodone instead of Vicodin? That's what I thought, but Fox's official recap says otherwise.) And what does it mean that in House's little fantasy, he is the good guy who detoxes and woos the woman he loves? By being in a mental hospital, it seems like House is serious about getting help and getting clean, and that leaves me wondering the same thing I asked last week: will House without pills still be the same crotchety, brilliant doctor we've come to love?

Meanwhile, Chase and Cameron start out this episode virtually broken up; Chase wants her to destroy her ex's sperm, and she can't do it. I like that it's House who finally convinces her just to take the leap - and that Chase tells her not to. He realizes now that she's not insecure about their relationship; she just can't get rid of the last part of someone she loves. Luckily, Cameron hadn't canceled the wedding plans, and now the two of them are actually (and finally) married. Which probably would have been a lot sweeter if I could have turned off the part of my brain that was thinking about the pair's real-life canceled wedding, but oh well.

Some other thoughts:

Some of my favorite moments in this episode were basically wordless: the patient's wayward hand stroking his girlfriend's cheek; House looking bedraggled and a little bewildered when Cuddy leads him to Wilson's office; Cameron and Chase mouthing "I do." The director of this episode has done some of the coolest House moments (this season's "Locked In" and last year's "House's Head," among others), and I really like his style.
Speaking of the patient, I loved that case. What a fascinating and creepy idea that part of your body could just disobey the rest of it! Not only did it work well as a parallel to House's story, it also included a few great medical moments, including that test with the words popping up on the screens.
Carl Reiner! Man. He's amusing as a pest who won't leave House alone because of his squawking problem (funny that we never actually hear him squawk) and then so, so sad when House realizes he probably has a tumor.
Is that a naked pirate House uses to torment Cuddy?

So: what a rollercoaster! Was this a suitable finale? Are you intrigued to see where the show goes next?

Photos courtesy of Fox

House Rundown: Episode 23, "Under My Skin"

BuzzSugar — Tue, 05 May 2009 09:30:49 -0700

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

TV Tonight: House

BuzzSugar — Mon, 04 May 2009 07:30:21 -0700

For the second year in a row, House seems to have really kicked it up a notch at the end of its season. Last year, the fantastic plotline was the death of Amber and the way it disrupted the bromance of House and Wilson. This year's killer story once again involves Amber - but now, she's back as some kind of apparition, haunting House and giving voice to some of his meanest and most devious thoughts.

It's in that environment that we get tonight's episode, "Under My Skin." It contains some pretty big developments for House personally and for his relationship with Cuddy. Lisa Edelstein recently chatted with reporters about the episode, and while the details are fairly spoilery, I'll be happy to spill and share some video of the episode when you read more.

Word is this is the episode when House and Cuddy finally do the deed. Could it just be a hallucination brought on by House's pills (or lack thereof)? "There's a chance for anything, isn't there?" Edelstein said.

But while she wouldn't say what the latest twist in House and Cuddy's relationship might mean going forward, she was happy to talk about the scene itself. "I wouldn't complain," she said wryly. "We did probably about five takes - we didn't really do it for that long. . . . I have a great friendship with Hugh, and he's super sexy, so who could complain about kissing him?"

These moments with House and Cuddy aren't necessarily just a fleeting moment of passion - but nor does Edelstein expect that Cuddy and House will be the love story of the century: "I don't think it'll necessarily ever be a satisfying relationship in terms of both of them settling in and saying, 'This is what we're doing,' she said. 'She has a complicated relationship with men, it seems. She likes the screwed-up ones."

And if they do get together, it won't exactly rock the PPH world, she said. "I think that the rest of the staff is pretty much waiting fo them to get together. I dont' think it's a secret," she said. "It's not like he doesn't talk about it! He's constantly talking about her body. . . . It might as well be schoolyard banter with him chasing her and pulling her braids."

Curious to see how everything goes down tonight? Here's one clip to whet your appetite:

Photo courtesy of Fox

House Rundown: Episode 16, "The Softer Side"

BuzzSugar — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 09:30:23 -0800

Only when you're dealing with someone as crotchety as Dr. Gregory House could a good mood be a sign of major trouble. But that's exactly what happens on this week's House, when House's heart suddenly grows a couple of sizes and he starts being . . . well, I wouldn't go so far as "nice," but maybe "less mean." Finding out why House is acting civilized becomes a major focus of the team, which is otherwise working on a medical case that's reminiscent of last week's Private Practice. Ready to chat about it? Just read more.

It's interesting to see the way a small change in House's behavior affects his relationships with his colleagues. Kutner is the first to spot it after House appeases his patient's parents; he tells Wilson, who thinks House must have had sex with Cuddy; when the answer to that is no, he realizes that House must be keeping something from both of them. Each person tries to come up with a rational reason House is acting polite - "Maybe he had a great cup of coffee. Or a tremendous bowel movement." - but when House stops breathing at work, they know there's a real problem. So, of course, they make the logical leap to House being on heroin. Heh. At least they got the drug part right: House has switched to methadone, which makes his pain go away so completely that he tosses his cane into a dumpster in a particularly amusing "Tiny Tim can walk!" scene. It's so good that when Cuddy tells him it's the drug or the job, he chooses the job. Of course, she'd rather have him ("if he buys a new pair of shoes, should we let him smoke crack?"), so she draws up a list of rules - but it doesn't matter. In the end, House realizes he needs his bad mood to be an effective doctor.

About the case: Take last week's Private Practice, age the kid a few years, and you have this week's House patient, born part male and part female. His mom's been pushing him to be all boy, and the kid has been kept in the dark - until Thirteen finds a suicidal-sounding poem and tells him he should ask his parents what his "vitamins" really are. Yeah, turns out that poem was part of an assignment to write like Sylvia Plath (which cannot possibly exist, or every parent in that school would think their kids were suicidal), and Thirteen has just destroyed the kid's relationship with his parents unnecessarily. It's interesting to watch her with this kid: She sees connections to the way her father handled the possibility of her having Huntington's, and she clearly thinks she's doing the right thing by intervening.

Meanwhile, Thirteen and Foreman's attempts to keep their relationship a secret aren't going so well, but I confess: I'm bored again.Kutner and Taub badmouthing one of them to the other made me chuckle, though, with Taub doing his robotic Foreman face face and Kutner telling Foreman at least he won't be dumped for a girl.

Some other thoughts:

Signs that House is happy: He shaves, he wears a tie (he owns a tie!), he doesn't make a patient in pain be more in pain.
House to Cuddy after Foreman's nipple-twist shocks House's heart back to normal: "I think my penis stopped breathing. Do you know CPR?"
I cracked up at Wilson trying to have a phone call about House while House was right there: "Well, that would certainly explain the inappropriate responses."

So: Do you prefer mean Vicodin House or slightly less mean methadone House? Are you still on board with, er, Foreteen? Sound off below.

Photos courtesy of Fox

House Rundown: Episode 15, "Unfaithful"

BuzzSugar — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 11:35:28 -0800

This week's episode of House deals with one of the show's old favorite themes: faith in religion/the unknown vs. a steadfast belief in science and clinical evidence. House and the team treat a young priest who shows up in the ER with a variety of symptoms - including a hallucination of Jesus. Meanwhile, House gives Foreman and Thirteen an ultimatum: Break up, or quit their jobs. And there's a whole lot of passive-aggressive posturing around whether House should go to the naming ceremony for Cuddy's daughter. To talk about it, just read more.

The religion vs. science seems like one we've seen pretty frequently on House in the past, and it never really seems to go anywhere. That's not entirely surprising: House is pretty set in his science-first ways; it's what makes him such a brilliant doctor. But it was interesting to see him make a little concession in this episode - not to religion, per se, but to the idea that sometimes, coincidences do happen. The most unbelievable part of Daniel's symptoms - the levitating Jesus - turned out to have the most rational explanation: scotch. It wasn't medical at all, which House eventually accepted; it just happened at the same time an actual disease was manifesting itself.

Meanwhile, House gives Thirteen and Foreman a "split or quit" ultimatum: He doesn't want them working together and impairing each other's good judgment. Foreman quits first, but it's not like we've never seen that before, and now he's even more dependent on House: Cuddy doesn't want to write him a recommendation letter based on the fact that he should have been fired for monkeying with the clinical trial. So Thirteen goes and gets a job offer, which just makes Foreman whiny because he said he'd handle it and he doesn't want to be beholden to House. Of course, like so many of House's little games, it's not about what actually happens but the appearance of it: It doesn't look like Foreman's chased after Thirteen, but at the end of the episode he's there waiting for her.

And speaking of games, the back-and-forth between House, Cuddy, and Wilson over whether House should attend the naming ceremony is just short of epic. She invites him so he'll decline; he realizes that's what she wants, so he accepts; she yells at Wilson for making House want to go; Wilson makes the ceremony sound miserable so House won't show, etc. etc. etc. Not till the end does someone finally say something honest, when Cameron figures out that Cuddy really does want House to be there, for better or worse. Too bad he's spending the night playing piano instead.

Some other thoughts:

Taub's moralizing can wear on my last nerve, so it figures he'd take on the case of the possibly molested youth group member all by himself. I'm not sure what to make of the moment with the kid's apology; do you think Taub feels that what he did was wrong in any way?
That fallen-off toe was just nasty.
Chase and Cameron's banter about office romances being a very bad idea made me chuckle a little. I wonder if it's hard for them to play those scenes given their real-life ups and downs.
House to Cuddy: "Hey! I was just talking about you. Not you specifically. Whores and hypocrisy."

Are you tired of House taking on issues of religion, or does that story still work for you? Do you buy the Thirteen/Foreman relationship any more now? And do you think it's time for some more movement on the House/Cuddy flirtation?

Photos courtesy of Fox

House Rundown: Episode 14, "The Greater Good"

BuzzSugar — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 07:30:00 -0800

House episode No. 100 is all about happiness: who has it, who wants it, who will probably never find it. It starts with a patient of the week who's had some controversial revelations about what makes life worth living and ends with Wilson finding a way to let go of his pain. In the middle, there's a lot of drama with Foreman and Thirteen, so to chat about the hundredth House, just read more.

I'll get to Foreman and Thirteen in a second, because the story I liked most is that of Wilson and the patient of the week, a cancer researcher who was seemingly one experiment away from a cure when she had a health scare and decided to leave the profession in favor of activities that made her feel free and happy. Many of the doctors can't understand this (Kutner suggests that not helping people when you have the skills to do so is selfish), but Wilson has the hardest time of all. That's partially because, as an oncologist, he treats people this cure could help - but mostly because he's stuck. He's unfulfilled without Amber. He's living among her things, with books still open to the last page she read and coffee cups stained with her lipstick. So yeah, I'm a sap, but I'll admit it: Watching him wash off that mug is moving, darnit.

Meanwhile, the saga of Foreman and Thirteen reaches its fever pitch when Thirteen starts to suffer side effects from the switch to the new drug - serious ones, like a brain tumor that causes her to lose her sight. Foreman's torn: Does he admit he messed with the trial to get advice on how to treat Thirteen, or does he stay quiet and let the woman he may (or may not) love suffer? House actually covers for Foreman a lot, which is interesting to see; they've had their differences, but House doesn't want to see one of his ducklings go astray. Ultimately, the situation resolves itself: Thirteen gets her sight back, and Foreman doesn't lose his medical license. I am a little surprised that Thirteen takes Foreman back; she seems genuinely freaked out when she realizes a man she'd been dating for two weeks would risk his career for her. But I guess near-death experiences cause all sorts of revelations.

This episode also shows us Cuddy at her most malicious. She's out to physically hurt House, making him climb stairs and walk cane-free (or, rather, using the janitor's bucket). She blames him for taking her away from her daughter right when she was starting to feel a connection - but in the end, he points out that she's making a choice to work with him. She could leave and let a new boss take over. But for whatever reason, she won't go.

Some other thoughts:

I wonder if Jennifer Morrison and Jesse Spencer cared that Cameron and Chase were nowhere to be found.
It's oddly fitting that an off-color comment about Cuddy's "Aunt Flo" leads House to a diagnosis.
I find interludes with Taub and his wife a little distracting, because it's been so long since I last had to care about his personal life.
My favorite line of the night is what Cuddy says to House when he comes in with the janitor's bucket: "I don't remember demoting you."
My second-favorite: "It involves House, Foreman, and Thirteen, which means it's either dumb, dangerous, or tragic."
House calls his cane "little Little Greg."

Were you satisfied with this as episode No. 100? And if you were House's boss, would you have quit by now?

Photos courtesy of Fox

House Rundown: Episode 13, "Big Baby"

BuzzSugar — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 09:30:00 -0800

Hey, it's Cameron! Fresh off her job offer last week, the long-neglected Allison Cameron gets some time in the spotlight on this week's episode of House, filling in for Cuddy while she stays home to be a mother to Rachel - a process that's not going all that well, as it happens. Meanwhile, Foreman considers stepping over a major ethical line and switching Thirteen's medicine in the clinical trial. To chat about it, just read more.

As good as it was to see Cameron back - as the boss of House, no less - it was a situation that seemed doomed from the start. She knows House too well, and House knows her too well; the temptation to play games with each other, asking for and approving inappropriate things, is just too high when lives are at stake. Cameron realizes this in the end and tells Cuddy she won't be going back to the job, but in some ways, that's a shame: Cameron's instincts actually are right in this episode, and House manages to only perform procedures that help him get to a diagnosis. (Sure, one of them meant lopping off the patient's skull for a few particularly gruesome moments - but who's counting?) In the end, though, Cuddy's a better gatekeeper, and so it's back to babysitting House for her.

At least her time at home seems to have paid off: Stressed and sullen for much of the episode, she's not feeling like much of a mother to Rachel. In fact, she's not feeling much of anything at all; she feels lost without work and with this new, little person who can't communicate with her. House's words of comfort are typically, well, House-ian: He suggests that since she hasn't formally adopted the baby yet, she just return it, like an unwanted video game. Wilson, on the other hand, tries to push Cuddy to recognize her mothering instincts, even making up a long story about how he took a photo of Rachel to one of those digital aging places to see what she'd look like when she was 18. (I was pretty relieved to find out he'd actually just brought over the same picture that came with the frame.) In the end, in the midst of a particularly difficult moment of balancing work and family, Cuddy and Rachel finally connect - just in time for her to puke all over House, a move that I'm sure made her mother very proud.

Foreman, meanwhile, is ready to go off the ethical deep end, contemplating switching Thirteen from the placebo to the active drug in the clinical trial. Everyone thinks he's nuts, of course, from Chase to House himself, who actually gives a surprisingly well-reasoned explanation for why it's the wrong move. Until, that is, House adds a caveat: If Foreman loves Thirteen, he'll do stupid things. So I guess he loves her - fatal disease, sudden desire for children, and all - because we see him switching the drugs. I can't imagine he won't be found out almost immediately, so here's the question: Is there any way he's not insane?

Some other thoughts:

For some reason it's weird for me to hear Foreman call Thirteen "Thirteen." For some reason, I figured that now that they're in a relationship, he'd use her actual name. (Granted, he did call her "Remy" to House, who of course pretended to have no idea what he was talking about.)
House's response to Thirteen's suggestion that he judge their ideas on their merits: "Oh, you really don't want that."
The diagnosis in this episode is pretty fascinating: There's a way you can be physically unannoyed by annoying things?
I'm a little surprised Kutner's the one to call Cuddy. I thought Taub was supposed to be the moral center of this team.

Your thoughts? And ready for the big 100th episode next week?

Photos courtesy of Fox

House Fans: Do You Want House and Cuddy to Be Together?

BuzzSugar — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 14:30:18 -0800

House and Cuddy on House have long had the kind of sexual tension that TV legends are made of. But now it seems like that tension might be thawing just a bit. Earlier this season, we saw House and Cuddy kiss, and now there are hints that there's another big moment coming up for them (seriously, if you want to avoid spoilers, don't click that link). We've seen a lot of will-they-or-won't-they couples get together in the past couple of TV seasons - Jim and Pam on The Office and Meredith and Derek on Grey's Anatomy both come to mind - so tell me: Should House and Cuddy be one of them?

Photo courtesy of Fox

Link Time! 1/20

BuzzSugar — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 13:30:29 -0800

Sony has moved the release date for the Katherine Heigl-Gerard Butler comedy The Ugly Truth almost four months to July 24. - Cinematical
Check out Band From TV's TV debut! - TV Squad
I'm really, really loving this song "So Far Around the Bend" by National, which is only streaming on MySpace today. - Stereogum
I'm also loving these Obama poster-fied movie posters. - FilmExperience
An attempt to rank the best and worst TV presidents. - Clique Clack TV
Michael Cera on the Arrested Development movie: "More hypothetical than people think." - MTV Movies Blog
Wow, MTV's 120 Minutes was so awesome. - Monitor Mix
Buy your very own piece of Battlestar Galactica! - geeksugar
Lisa Edelstein on playing a mom and stripping for House. - The TV Addict

Photo courtesy of Sony Pictures

House Rundown: Episode 12, "Painless"

BuzzSugar — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 09:30:06 -0800

In this year's first new episode of House, House takes a case that hits a little close to home: The team treats a man with chronic pain who had tried to kill himself to get away from it. Meanwhile, Cuddy struggles to balance her job, her new duties as a foster mother, and her wrangling of House, and Thirteen and Foreman get all awkward with each other following their big kiss. To chat about it all, just read more.

Even though House's cane and Vicodin are a constant presence on House, it's still somehow easy to forget that House is actually in real, constant pain that nobody's ever been able to solve. He's functional, he's brilliant, and he never complains - other than the occasional sarcastic comment about being a cripple. So it was interesting in this episode to get a glimpse of what life is really like for House - and it's not easy. Taking a bath is a horrible, painful experience; he needs so much help lowering himself down that he's snapped a pipe in his ceiling, ringing up a $2,200 plumbing bill.

So taking Jeff's case is a little like looking in a mirror. The major difference, of course, is that Jeff can't handle his pain, to the point that he'd leave his wife and child to get away from it. But it's true that House is a little more - well, "sensitive" is probably the wrong word. But he's a little more aware of what his patient is going through. Normally if House considered taking a patient off the medication that made him functional, I'd think he was just being nasty and uncaring; when he suggests taking Jeff off his painkillers, he actually knows how awful that might feel. Of course, at the end, House's pain persists while Jeff's is treatable. He's done what Cameron hoped for, "curing a guy who has even less to look forward to," but getting himself into the bathtub is still a nightmare.

Meanwhile, Cuddy's dealing with a mini domestic nightmare of her own. She's officially taken over as foster mother for the baby she named Rachel, and she looks like she's adapted well to being a mom. But to being a working mom? As the family inspector tells her, she's better than most foster moms he sees, ants in the living room and diapers in her briefcase notwithstanding. But that's not enough for Cuddy; she "passed by their meager standards" but failed by hers. And after talking with Cameron, she has a solution: It looks like Cameron will be taking over some of Cuddy's responsibilities from here on out.

Some other key moments:

Is Foreman monkeying with his clinical trial just so he can sleep with Thirteen? She doesn't want to get into a relationship because she cares about him and she knows what she'll be going through in a few years; Foreman doesn't want to give up. Switching the appointments seems pretty harmless, but now he knows Thirteen is on the placebo drub, and I can't imagine he'll be letting that stand.
Wilson showing up at Cuddy's place with a giant stuffed duck is pretty amazing.
Was there a giant, fancy water fountain-thing in PPH? Has it always been there? I was so distracted by it that I could barely pay attention to Taub's pain profile interviews.
Love this exchange: "You hang laundry in there?" "I'm about to hang a plumber in there."

Your thoughts? Can you still work House into your schedule now that it's on Mondays? Can you see Cameron rising to power? What is Foreman going to do? Discuss!

Photos courtesy of Fox