By J.E.
Last night’s episode of House was called 97 Seconds, and served to further whittle down the remaining fellowship candidates. The Survivor-like contest for the job openings was fun for a while, but I think it’s starting to get a little old here. We didn’t see how Cameron, Chase, and Foreman earned their jobs, so why do we have to see every step of the interview process for the newbies? Anyway, here’s what happened in 4×02.
Patient of the Week: This week’s mystery centers around a man named Thomas Stark who suffers from SMA (Spinal Muscular Atrophy) and has been wheelchair bound for 20 years. Thomas was being led across the street by his guide dog when he suddenly passed out. The fainting spell, coupled with Thomas’ inability to swallow could be signs that his SMA is worsening — or they could be symptoms of an entirely new problem. It’s up to the fellowship candidates to find out what’s going on.
This week, House decides to split the remaining 10 candidates into two teams. After a bit of debate, he goes with men against women, or, as he so eloquently put it, the “danglers” against the “aesthetically pleasing.” The team that arrives at the correct diagnosis will survive another day; the losers will be fired.
In the ensuing race, the candidates trip all over themselves trying to run different tests and prescribe different meds based on their hunches. The only ones that really distinguished themselves were 13 (we still don’t have a name for her yet) and Amber. They came up with theories, they took chances, they actually did things, while everyone else pretty much sat around and reacted to stuff House told them.
In the end, Stark dies, not because the diagnosis — Strongyloides, a thread worm the patient contracted in Thailand — was wrong (13 nailed it right off the bat), but because the patient didn’t take his meds. The dog somehow got to them first.
13 is crushed by Stark’s death, even though she was right. It was her fault for not watching the patient put the pills in his mouth and swallow. House lectures her at the end, which she doesn’t want to hear. She just wants him to fire her and get it over with. But House looks at her and says that if he wanted to fire her, he wouldn’t bother lecturing her.
Clinic Patient: House’s clinic patient this week was some guy named Mark who was recently in a car accident. When House goes to check on him, Mark whips out a pocket knife and shoves it in an electrical socket, causing heart failure. House can’t figure out why Mark would do that. Surely there are easier ways to commit suicide. He finally confronts Mark who says he did it for the near-death experience. When he was hit by the car, he technically died for 97 seconds, and that was the best time of his life. He wanted to recreate that experience, so he electrocuted himself.
House is so thoroughly intrigued by this line of reasoning that he decides to try the experiment for himself. At least he was smart enough to page Amber first so that he could be resuscitated relatively quickly. He survives, of course, and later admits that he didn’t see anything.
Character Interaction: This ep was dominated by the candidates, so there wasn’t too much interaction between the old guard. House and Wilson had a couple of scenes, and I’m sure a lot of people will be talking about how House said “I love you” in a non-snarky way to his best pal.
There was also a quick scene between House and Chase where House threatens to fire Chase for giving Amber access to the lab when she technically wasn’t even a doctor at PPTH. Chase basically tells House to F off, and Cameron, who was right there, smiles smugly and says, “I like him this way. Don’t you?”
And we also saw Foreman in his new job. He was exactly like House, heading up a team of three diagnosticians, writing on a white board, bouncing theories off them, and taking a big chance with the final diagnosis by following his instincts about the patient. He ends up saving the patient’s life, but because he didn’t do it by the book, the hospital administrator fires him on the spot.
My Reaction: I thought this was just an ok episode. I read some message boards this morning and read a lot of reactions saying that this was one of the best House episodes ever, but I didn’t feel that way. The candidates are still pretty boring, though 13 is suddenly not as annoying as she was during the first two weeks. In fact, I think I liked her at the end of this ep.
The Kal Penn character, Kutner, has now taken the crown as the most annoying newbie. His constant whining and worrying about the scoring system or whatever is just getting old. He was supposedly fired at the end of this ep for being on the losing team (that’s the second time he was told to go home), but I know that he’s back in the next episode, so I wonder what gives?
Hopefully the other danglers will be gone for real, because none of them really brought anything interesting to the table.
I didn’t care for the near-death stuff or for the higher power debate. I think House has had his crisis of faith before, so there’s really no need to revisit it now. Let’s just stick to the medical mysteries, please.
Anyway, there’s no House next week because of baseball, but it’ll be back in two weeks with another brand-new episode. Let’s hope it’s a good one!
