I hate faith healers.
I really, really, really hate faith healers.
That’s why I’m looking forward to tonight’s show with great anticipation. I’m hoping a few folks will get an education as to how phony faith healing actually works–or, rather, doesn’t work–and I’m expecting my favorite cynic and misanthrope, House, to say some things that I’ve always wanted to say to a faith healer’s face but never had the chance.
I’m as giddy as a school girl. Anybody else?
I’m not looking forward to it because I figure the ending is gonna be ambiguous. We (and House) are gonna be left not knowing whether the faith healer really helped or not. There is also gonna be some mystery as to why the patient got better. These endings always piss me off but this is always how episodes like this one ends.
You may be right, but I’ve got my fingers crossed anyway.
I’m looking forward to it because it’s House, regardless of the weirdo involved. I agree that we will be given some form of object lesson, but I anticipate its outcome being as gray and fuzzy as the ethics issue last week.
But it could be about the morality of trout fishing and I would want to see it.
Yeah, me too!
I’ve got to chuckle, though, as House seems to be the only program on this forum where somebody starts a post before the program even is close to running. :eek:
Just can wait, huh, guys? 
I stopped watching House a few episodes into season one (Hugh Laurie = fantastic, show formula = not so much) but I’d watch this if I knew faith healers and their bullshit were going to get a high-profile and utterly merciless logical ventilation. Alas, I suspect drm is correct, and the show will pull its punches lest soft-minded viewers be alienated.
I’ll TiVo it, but I’ll check this thread tomorrow to see whether or not it’s worth watching.
Won’t someone think of the fry?
American Idol “love songs” and then our favorite cynical doc! Woot!
I don’t care if the person turns out to have a mild rash. I need that snarkiness to keep me going. House is worth it even if just for one or two lines an episode, plus Dr. Cuddy is a babe.
I’ve just got to share something with you House fans, okay?
My wife and I watched Yanks on cable On Demand this past weekend and I asked her if she recognized the actress from House playing Richard Gere’s love interest. Of course she thought I was referring to the one who plays Cameron and she said that the actress was too old for that, but that the resemblance was pretty strong. Maybe they were related?
But when I had read the blurb for the movie and saw that Lisa Eichhorn was in it, somehow I mentally adjusted that to Lisa Edelstein (Cuddy) and kept looking hard to see the way time had preserved Cuddy. Yeah, I saw the Cameron resemblance and found very little Cuddy features in common, age aside. When the movie was over, I checked IMDB to see how foolish I had been.
Please laugh at me. My wife did.
I laugh in your general direction, Zeldar. 
I look forward to House, period.
See you later.
Dr. Wilson was wearing a McGill sweatshirt tonight. Hiding it under a jacket, but still! Woo!
That, my friends, is what they call Irony…
Broke from formula (a bit) and gave reasonable thought answers to the way things were played.
I liked it.
Also, did not quite see the ending the way they played it… really liked that.
And you got your rash! Too bad it was from the clap 
Well I guess I started my second redundant thread in two days but to reiterate what I said in the other one, I really liked that they didn’t have a cop out ending leaving some kind of unexplained mystery, or give House a lot of strawman “skeptic” arguments, or [shudder] a final scene of Hose kneeling in prayer in the chapel.
A couple of good lines
“Why are people ‘proud’ to believe in something without any evidence? Like that’s some kind of accomplishment.”
“I understand that people are filling holes but I think they WANT the holes…and they get mad if anybody throws dirt in them.”
“Isn’t it finny that religion and craziness look so much apart that it’s hard to tell them apart.”
I really liked seeing a skeptic be vindicated with a natural explanation.
Liked the scoreboard as well.
“There’s nothing worth stealing, so don’t bother looking.”
Hey, is it true that certain viruses can attack cancerous tumors? Never heard that one before.
Great conflict between Wilson and House.
Hey, there were a couple of clear shots of it in there too. Cool stuff.
Vivalostwages, that was a new one to me too. A quick search turned up this, and this, but they both involves herpes viruses that have been deliberately modified, rather than something that’s just out there. If I have time tomorrow, I’ll do a more thorough search on PubMed, but I’d be willing to bet that someone else will have come up with something better by then.
Very good episode. At the end, House actually asked Wilson, “So, we’re okay?” He’s never worried before about Wilson being mad at him.
I was wondering who was going to show up at the poker game, seeing as House doesn’t have any friends except Wilson. “Tell them my name isn’t Wilson!”
Although House found an explanation for the “miracle”, they couldn’t resist having Chase propose that the unlikely scenario that bought the woman a few more months of life could be seen as miraculous.
Well, I’m somewhat disappointed. Of course, it was House, so it was well worth watching.
But the faith healer should have been portrayed as a sociopath in the making, not a naive and idealistic young man. Let’s not mince words. The vast majority of faith healers are crooks who exploit ignorant or desperate people and often endanger their lives. I was hoping for something much more frank and confrontational.
But I’m still happy with what I got.
Hmmm, are you personally acquainted with “the vast majority of faith healers?” Amazing. Perhaps you meant those that are on TV or radio? Not knowing that many myself, I can’t judge.
All right, all right, everybody play nice. This isn’t GD.
I think the episode was excellently done. As was mentioned, it did in fact break from the formula, in that they figured out very early on (at least mostly) what was wrong with the kid, and spent the rest of the time in a House vs. god grudge match. The kid was portrayed accurately. Having studied the sociology of religion for some time now, I know that the single most predominant feature of people like this kid is that they really honestly do believe, with all their hearts. They are their faith, and they live and die by it, as Boyd almost did.
So it really was a fair fight, and House won. Why? Because he was fifteen years old. I don’t care how pious they are, they’re still teenagers in American society, and thus subject to all the vagaries of adolescence. Had god-boy won this one, he wouldn’t have gotten what he had in the first place, and would never have shown up on House’s doorstep. House won right from the get-go, it just took everyone a while to realize it.
And the reason Chase pointed out the potential miraculousness of what happened to the cancer patient is the same reason that he started the scoreboard in the first place - he was a seminary student before becoming a doctor.