Reviews and More

I’m still steadily working my way through Season One of House. My progress has slowed somewhat in the last week because a bunch of my regular TV shows came out with new episodes that I had to watch and recap, but I should be able to get through a couple more House eps this weekend. Here’s what happened in episode 1×12, which was called “Sports Medicine”.

Mysterious Symptoms of the Week: A professional baseball player comes to PPTH after snapping his arm while throwing a pitch. Wilson found signs of osteopenia, which is unusual in young people. It could indicate cancer, but all those tests came back negative. Other symptoms include shrunken testes, severe respiratory problems, kidney failure, tachycardia, and hallucinations.

Mistaken Diagnoses: Cancer, steroid abuse, and Addison’s disease.

Final Diagnosis: Cadmium poisoning due to smoking contaminated marijuana.

Character development: House and Wilson have a minor falling out because Wilson lied to House about having dinner with some woman. House takes Cameron to a Monster Truck event, but says that it’s not a date (they seemed to have a good time together). Foreman is sleeping with one of the hospital’s drug vendors.

My Reaction: I thought this was an ok episode. The case of the week wasn’t that interesting, but I did like all the interaction between the doctors. It’s nice to get a glimpse into their personal lives every once in a while, and I liked seeing House and Cameron hanging out together away from the hospital. It’s so obvious that she’s way interested in him (romantically). I wonder if they eventually get together later on?

What’s with all the duplicity from Wilson? The writers spent the first part of the season building him up to be a good guy, and now they’re turning him into something else. He lies to House, he’s seeing other women behind his wife’s back, he flirts with co-workers…. what’s going on with this guy?

I hope these questions get answered soon!

I am simply amazed at how many of my friends have huge houses. We’re talking four bedrooms, four baths, and huge backyards here. I’m surprised because they’re all stay-at-home moms like me and their husbands are blue-collar types who aren’t making more than $50,000 or $60,000 per year. I’m not sure what kind of rates they were able to get on their mortgages, but they must have scored some pretty good deals in order to afford these homes.

Personally speaking, my husband and I adhered to very strict guidelines when shopping around for our mortgage. We agreed that we wanted our monthly payments to amount to less than 20 percent of our combined monthly income. To ensure compliance with this goal, we used a mortgage calculator to help us determine exactly what we’d have to pay. While we ended up with a smaller house than most of my friends have, we live comfortably and won’t have to take out any secured loans to help us make ends meet. That peace of mind is worth far more to me than extra square footage!

CSI came at us with a completely new angle last night. Instead of following the CSI team around to their various crime scenes, we stayed in the lab and saw what Hodges, Wendy, Archie, and Henry do when Grissom and Co. aren’t around demanding DNA analyses or whatever. Here’s a closer look at what happened on episode 7×20, which was called “Lab Rats”.

All of the CSIs are out on various cases and Grissom will be spending a few hours in the morgue with Doc Robbins, so that gives Hodges the opening he’s been looking for. He wants to take a look at the miniature crime scenes that Grissom has in his office because he thinks he can help Grissom solve those cases. It’s obvious that there’s plenty of hero worship going on where Hodges and Grissom are concerned, so I can understand how Hodges would be driven by a desire for Grissom’s approval here.

Anyway, Hodges gets his lab rat cronies in on the action too. They all sit and pore over the miniatures, and we the viewers also see several flashback scenes from previous episodes to refresh our memories as to how the victims died. The lab rats talk through this stuff, review the evidence that’s been logged, and admit that they’re stymied.

But Hodges doesn’t give up. He’s convinced there must be a link that the investigators have overlooked. He eventually does find it: all the scenes contain bleach of some sort. There was a big barrel of bleach at the chicken processing factory; there was a bottle of bleach in Izzy Delancy’s kitchen; there was bleach mixed with water in Barbara Tillman’s apartment, and there was a coupon for bleach in Penny Garden’s apartment.

Hodges presents this theory to Grissom, who actually thinks Hodges is on to something. The way Grissom sees it, the killer could be someone who is set off by a certain item (bleach in this case). The phenomenon is not without precedent, so while extremely rare, it is possible. Now the CSIs have a whole new course to pursue, and that’s where we leave off for the time being.

My Reaction: Good lord, the way they keep bringing up this miniature killer, the payoff better be spectactular! That being said, I simply don’t understand the killer’s motivations. First, the CSIs thought the murders were premeditated and meticulously planned (the miniature crime scenes point to this).

But now they’re saying the killer got set off by seeing signs of bleach?! Perhaps I didn’t understand Grissom’s explanation adequately. I thought he was saying that the killer would suddenly be thrown into an uncontrollable homicidal rage if he/she saw bleach. If that’s so, then where do the miniatures fit in? The two conditions seem mutually exclusive.

I kind of liked the idea of giving viewers an episode from the lab rats’ point of view (at first), but I quickly discovered that there’s a reason they’re all secondary characters. None of them are interesting enough or developed enought to carry an episode on their own. So while I appreciated the writers wanting to try something new, this ep dragged for me.

Ok — like I said, there better be one hell of a payoff when the miniature killer is revealed!

I just came across a great resource that I know my readers in the Great White North will find useful. It’s a FREE Canadian Classifieds site called UsedCanada.com, and it’s one of the most popular destinations for people looking to buy or sell goods online. In fact, all the sites in the UsedCanada.com network regularly combine to serve over one million page views per day! That’s pretty amazing, and with that many people checking the ads, you know you’ll be able to buy or sell things very quickly.

I spent some time on UsedCanada to get a feel for how the site works. First of all, I like the way the ads are separated by city because that obviously makes it extremely easy to find local buyers and sellers. For example, if you live in Toronto and want to buy a used dining room set, you wouldn’t want to purchase from someone in Vancouver. Instead, you’d be able to browse through an entire section devoted to Toronto Used Furniture, which is a whole lot more convenient for everyone.

Another thing I like about UsedCanada.com is the sheer number of ads that are posted on the site. I mean, there are 36,000 ads in the Ottawa Classifieds section alone! That’s good for buyers because it gives them real choices. They’ll come flocking to the site because they know there are tons of ads to choose from, and this in turn expands the potential marketplace from the sellers’ perspective. It’s a win-win situation.

Well, don’t just take my word for it. Go check UsedCanada.com out for yourself to see what they have to offer!

Last night’s episode of Grey’s Anatomy was one of those retrospective clip shows that are sometimes used to either catch new viewers up on what’s been happening over the past couple seasons or give regular viewers a glimpse of what’s to come for their favorite characters. “Every Moment Counts” falls into the former category, as there were no new scenes and no clues about the future.

Most of the focus was on the characters and their various sexual relationships with each other. This made the whole thing pretty boring, in my opinion, because these scenes have been freakin’ done to death already. I could have gone without seeing Denny and the whole LVAD wire drama again, and I definitely didn’t need to hear Meredith’s totally pathetic “Pick me, choose me, LOVE me” speech to Derek once more. Ugh. That stuff was craptastic enough the first time around.

Some of the clips did make me a bit nostalgic. I particularly liked the stuff from early Season 1 and Season 2 when the five interns were really interacting with each other and not dealing with their own agendas so much. That’s what first attracted me to this show anyway. It wasn’t McDreamy (or any of the other guys) nor was it the sexual exploits. It was the five interns and their developing friendship as they learned to be great surgeons. That’s the Grey’s Anatomy I want to see again. Will we ever get it back?