Was that or was that not a killer episode? (get it? har har) One of the best, IMO. And I still can’t believe that Chase actually did what he did.
The only thing that bothered me was that they used a metal clamp to bolt the girl’s head to the table. While they did an MRI. Which stands for Magnetic Resonance Image. Anyone else seeing the problem here?
Anyway. Other thoughts on this week’s installment?
I was also a bit appalled at Chase’s action.
I was intrigued by the end. Do you think they are going to do a major move on House’s personality this season?
I need to watch it again. I wasn’t super impressed with it to be honest. My favorite remains the one where he teaches the class. We’ll see where this season goes though…
Keep in mind I know practically nothing about MRIs, but “metal” does not always equal “magnetic”. It could have been aluminum.
Why? He’s himoring a dying girl and there was nothing sexual about it.
I have to say that the thing with Chase really shocked me. He made it as innocent as he could, but the fact that he would go through with it got me pretty oogie. I thought that Cameron and Foreman’s reaction when he told them what happened was perfect.
I liked the thread about coincidences that ran through the episode, and Wilson and House’s discussions about it.
The look on House’s face when the little girl hugged him at the end was priceless.
I love House, but last night’s installment felt a little too “Very Special Episode” to me. I like that House misjudged a symptom based on his misanthropic nature - and got called on it by his friend - but that little girl was was too little perfect terminal cancer patient for my taste.
Add me to the list of people appalled by Chase’s kiss. We, the viewers, saw that it really was a non-sexual kiss given at the request of a dying girl, but think of the lawsuit possibilities for the undoubtedly cash-strapped mother. Dumb move, Chase, even in a universe where House’s actions on the job have yet to result in his being stripped of his license or sued into insolvency.
My reaction to Chase’s kiss was solely emotional. Afterward, when reason kicked in, I didn’t really have a problem with it, but at the time it was happening, my gut reaction was very strong and very negative. Whether it’s cultural conditioning or instinctive, the thought of a grown man kissing a little girl on the mouth, in a pseudo-romantic manner, just feels wrong.
I was not in the least surprised that Chase kissed her, and I think Cameron was being pretty hypocritical in her reaction… I can’t help but think that if she was in Chase’s shoes, she would have kissed her, too…
We all loved the Nano product placement, too, right after the commercial break which featured… the nano!
I have to be honest and I think, were I in his shoes, I’d probably have done the same thing. She’s a dying girl and her wish is to kiss a guy. He obviously did not slip any tongue or anything along those lines.
I thought the scene with Chase kissing the girl was fantastic. Really, really, heart-wrenching. What a conundrum!
Really, what are you going to do? What’s the right thing?
On the one hand, he could have reasoned her out of it. “Look, sweetie-- there’s more to a kiss than a little lip-to-lip contact. Even if I did kiss you, you still wouldn’t know what a real kiss felt like, so there’s no point.”
On the other hand, you have this remarkable little girl, aware of her mortality, grieving that she’ll probably never be kissed. She’s got a lot of emotion wrapped up in this prospect. You can’t talk her out of it without saying, “Yeah, that’s an experience that you’re never going to have, because you’re too young and you’re about to die. Sucks to be you.” Is it so wrong to give her this tiny little comfort? It’s a counterfeit kiss – there’s no eros in it, no exploitation. So she thinks “Is that all there is to a kiss?” and keeps dancing, instead of fixating on something that’s never going to happen for her.
It was very sweet, and an act of selflessness on Chase’s part. He exposed himself to a huge liability in order to give this little bit of comfort to a dying kid. It would have been nice if he could honestly say, “Don’t worry about it, kid – in two or three years you can get a kiss from someone more appropriate.”
Now, if he’d really kissed her, and tried to let her know what a kiss actually felt like, then yeah, that would be pretty awful.
You’re as bad as Chase is. Mind you, I say that while simultaneously acknowledging that my objection stems from my purely cultural indoctrination that Grown Man + Little Girl = Bad Idea.
On an only somewhat related note, I agree with Selkie – she was too perfect.
It’s not like Chase slipped her the tongue or something. I thought it was incredibly sweet. He was uncomfortable kissing her but did it to make her happy. I saw no squick factor in it at all.
I just had a thought… if they have a “How I spent my Summer Vacation” assignment in school, she’s gonna win…
Damned satellite TV. First rain we’ve had in 6 weeks, and it had to be during House.
I made it just to the scene where Chase kissed her when the satellite went out.
I thought it was a very well-played scene. At first, the request seemed very oogie, and you could see that Chase was made very uncomfortable by it. But, in the end, he saw it as a request he could grant to a dying girl. I thought it was very sweet. Very well done — it forced me to look at something that I think of as wrong, and change my mind and agree that Chase did the right, and compassionate, thing.
At that point, I lost the satellite for 5 minutes or so, and that pattern repeated through the end of the episode, damn it. I did see in the next-to-last minute or so that House had found out that Chase had kissed her, and I saw her go to hug House, but I missed what happened after that.
Grrrrrrr.
I am incredibly conflicted by the kiss.
When I was watching it, I thought it was risky on Chase’s part, but I understood why he might do it. In thinking about it more, though, his profession has rules of conduct and ethics, and those rules exist for a reason. Yes, the girl was dying, and yes, it’s incredibly sad that she won’t likely experience a real kiss before she dies. But that’s how it is. It’s not for her doctor to indulge any aspect of that desire, no matter how non-sexual and motivated by simple caring it was.
The episode was incredibly strong. This show is really amazing.
Great episode, although Andy was just a bit too good to be true, it was all still very moving.
As for the kiss – well, it was pretty oogie. However, I think the guy who played Chase did a great job of conveying that Chase was ooged out by it as well. Because Andy was so young, it was possible for me to see the kiss as a nice, but uncomfortable, thing that Chase did for her, entirely against his own inclination. The dude was clearly sporting an anti-stiffy afterwards, if you know what I mean. If she’d been 16 years old and wanting her first kiss the scene would have been more comfortable for us in some ways (lacking the child-molester vibe), but a lot worse in others – it wouldnt have been a sacrifice for Chase to kiss a pretty 16 year old, after all. This way, it was all for her – a Disney-version first kiss from a cute young doctor. So despite the oogie-ness I ended by thinking the scene was incredibly sweet.
I saw about half of the episode, including the kiss being referenced. I was pretty appalled at the doctor’s behavior. I’m not familiar enough to know what their positions are (are they a superhero team of doctors that get called in on the difficult cases?) but for someone who is professionally allowed to be around someone else’s children to not know what is and isn’t acceptable behavior is inexcusable.
It seemed pretty obvious to me when she first asked for the kiss that he might suspect sexual abuse (and there’d be something to explain her medical condition in that). But instead he listened to her and went through with the kiss. There’s a further problem - either he had to not really kiss her ‘properly’, thus creating a false impression of what a real kiss is like, or he had to act like he was, which is pretty disgusting, or he wasn’t acting (equally disgusting).
I suppose it was done that way so that House could have the smart line (about abusers being manipulative). That’s about the time I stopped paying attention; pretty much the same thing happened that made me stop watching another episode. It seems he’s only intelligent compared to the complete imbeciles around him.
note : The iPod shown wasn’t a Nano; the Nano’s only been out for two weeks. The ad was an interesting coincidence, though.
Wasn’t a Nano. It wasn’t even a current generation Ipod. It was a 3rd Gen Ipod (looked like the 30 GB model). Sorry to nitpick.
Aluminum isn’t ferromagnetic, true, but all metals have a sea of free-flowing electrons that respond to a strong magnetic field such as an MRI.