House 1/24

A military trainee and his drill sgt. exhibit the same weird symptoms. Also, House “helps” Rachel get ready for preschool.

Fun episode, but a little on the light-hearted side. Especially House. He seemed quite out of character.

Why do I get this funny feeling that the whole House/Cuddy relationship is going to end up being a vicodin-fueled hallucination, and he is going to wake up in a cold sweat in the season finale, chained to his bunk next to Alvey?

I doubt it. But I think everything is going to come crashing down soon.

I was rather hoping for a pregnancy and a wedding. Really.

Anyone know where to find a complete guest cast for this episode? The one on IMDB is incomplete.

I think so, too. I think House has an “out” - little Rachel. He’s tolerant, but hasn’t warmed up to her and I think Cuddy is going to say “it’s me AND my kid, House”…I also think there will be just one more season, next year.

What’s going on next week on Fox, that House is pre-empted, and we don’t get to see Cuddy’s mom at death’s door for two more weeks?

Well, the promos gave away the twist, but I did like the episode. Chase’s look for the woman who pranked him was a fun subplot.

Although the House/Cuddy relationship hasn’t been as bad as I’d expected, I think the series is on its last legs. It seems to not have the same vicious bite that it once did. Maybe I’ve just grown tired of the basic theme of wrong/wrong/breakin/wrong/almost dead/wrong/right.

Just an intuition, but I think Amber Tamblyn is being set up for a spin-off and I’m thinking it includes Taub.

I loved the episode. The jokes about Chase were priceless and Chase’s womanizing ways are good fun. Glad to see he’s bounced back from Cameron. I wasn’t expecting the underage High School girl at all, and it was a laugh. The snark between him and Taub and their relative whoriness made the episode.

I couldn’t really care less about House’s relationship with Cuddy. It might not be as much fun as when he was hiring prostitutes to his office and going on benders, but that was starting to get a little repetitive and derivative. Him using his manipulative and dishonest ways for relative good is still plenty of fun. It’s House being House.

Taub continues to be the most interesting character on the show (after House, of course). He can convey more emotion with one lifted eyebrow than the rest of the cast does with their entire bodies! He is the Burton Guster of House.

Why is Olivia Wilde’s name still in the opening credits?

Often, a lead actor has a contract clause saying their name will be on the credits that season. If they are written out, they can block removal of the name.

Or, she’s eventually coming back.

You want another look at those hot chicks Chase got with, right?

The third one was pretty special.

She’s coming back. She took a leave of absence to devote time to her budding film career. She’s been shooting a movie with Harrison Ford, Cowboys and Aliens, which overlapped shooting of the current season by a couple of months, but her House bosses have been supportive of her taking time off. Thirteen will be back this season.

Well that sucks. I dig Amber Tamblyn, can’t remember the last time I liked a House character this much. She gets some terrible lines, but her delivery makes them sound… not terrible, which is starting to be as good as it gets on House.

Making up for those seasons when it should have been, but wasn’t?

Don’t forget the plaintive indie song that kicks in at the 52- 53 minute mark to accompany the montage. I can set my watch by the first tinkling piano or guitar notes.

“You got to have a montage. Even ‘Rocky’ had a montage.” Hey, even the “The King’s Speech” had a montage and yeah, I started singing the montage song from “Team America” during it.

The “plaintive indie montage” thing is hardly exclusive to House. Seems like every hour-long drama wraps up every episode like that these days, as well as a few half-hour dromedies (*Scrubs *used it all the time).

You forgot the intro patient fakeout, and the Hugh Laurie thousand-yard stare of realization!

Character development on a medical/legal procedural is never good. Look at dearly departed Law and Order - enough personal background to make characters interesting and their actions logical to what we knew of them, not so much character developing that the show changed much when the lawyers or cops were replaced or that you’d have to watch every episode to keep up.

There’s currently so much character stuff in House that there’s barely time for the patient, and it always seems so thrown together. I just don’t care about whether House and Cuddy can make it work, or when the girl that fixes Chase will come along, or how Taub will deal with the breakup of his marriage.