House - Episode 15 (Season 4): House’s Head
This week’s episode of House had a great set-up and a clever medical mystery. The medicine itself was only so-so, but the rest of the episode mostly made up for it.
The episode starts with House getting a lap dance at a strip club. He soon realizes that he has no recollection of how he got there. Seeing blood on his fingers, he has the stripper look at his head and she sees a scalp laceration. From this, he deduces that he has suffered a concussion with retrograde amnesia (unable to remember what happened before the concussion). Leaving the strip club, he comes across the remnants of a tremendous bus crash and realizes that he must have been on the bus and was injured in the crash. He also has a fleeting memory that he saw something important while on the bus. He remembers that he noticed a symptom in one of the other passengers signifying that he or she had a fatal disease. The trouble is, he can’t remember who it was or the symptom that he saw
He stalks around the emergency room, looking over the other patients, and spots some bruising on the bus driver’s shoulder. He declares it a sign of leukemia, but in reality it is only the bruise left from the seatbelt. Another patient complains of a stiff neck and House immediately announces that he has meningitis and no one is to leave the emergency room (he doesn’t really think the patient has meningitis, he’s just trying to keep all the crash victims where he can find them. 22 of the 30 victims are at Princeton Plainsboro, 8 are across town).
Kutner suggests that House undergo “medical hypnosis” to improve his focus and assist with memory retrieval. Chase just happens to be trained in hypnosis, so he puts House under. Remembering the bus ride, House recalls a punk rocker (or “emo Guitar Hero wannabe”) with a cough and a bad nose picking habit. House figures this must be nasal pruritis (an itchy nose), a sign of a tumor — but the exam is normal.
A short time later, the bus driver discovers that he cannot move his legs. The differential diagnosis of this sudden onset of paralysis includes subdural hematoma, stroke, and subarachnoid hemorrhage — but all were ruled out by CT scan. Guillain Barre is suggested, as is tranverse myelitis based on the patient’s increased white count. Foreman starts him on antibiotics for the tranverse myelitis.
House now begins smelling the clothes of the patients who were involved in the bus accident, reasoning that smell is powerful at evoking memories. He hallucinates that he is back on the bus, talking to the driver, but the driver seems more focused on House than himself. Wilson and the team break his hallucination and order him to undergo an MRI to evaluate his brain. Edema and swelling in the temporal lobe are noted, as well as a fracture of the temporal bone.
The bus driver is able to walk again, but now is now suffering from acute abdominal pain. A peptic ulcer is a possible cause, but House wonders if it might be Addison’s Disease (a condition where the adrenal glands do not make enough steroid hormones) caused by a tumor.
House places himself in a sensory deprivation tank to better remember what he saw on the bus. This time, Cuddy is there with him. They conjecture that he saw something in the bus driver that caught his attention, but it could only be something he saw from behind, possibly a bobbing head or wiggling ear lobes. The differential they concoct includes aortic insufficiency (a leaky aoritc valce in the heart), Marfan’s syndrome (an inherited disease of the connective tissues), syphilis, Ehlers Danlos Syndrome (another inherited connective tissue disease), and Cutis Laxa (still another inherited disease of the connective tissues). There are also suggestions of early Huntington’s or Parkinson’s Disease. House decides it is the latter. He comes out of the deprivation tank and immediately vomits and passes out. When he comes to, he is in his apartment with a nurse to look over him and a security guard to keep him from leaving.
The bus driver is not doing well. He has developed liver failure, jaundice, and has a low albumin. The team suggests Wilson’s Disease (a disease of copper metabolism affecting the liver), hepatitis, hepatic fibrosis, and Thyrotoxic Periodic Paralysis. To rule out the latter, they carbohydrate-load the patient and put him on a treadmill. This should induce the paralysis, but since it doesn’t, the team concludes that the patient does not have the condition. He does become acutely short of breath and hypoxic, however. The team believes the patient has suffered a pulmonary embolus (a clot blocking one of the blood vessels of the lungs), but House deduces that the bus driver developed an air embolism from some recent dental work and as this air bubble has moved throughout his body, it has caused all his symptoms. He positions the patient in such a way that the air is trapped in the heart and has Dr. Thirteen remove it with a syringe. The patient immediately improves.
At home that night, House has a dream featuring a striking woman with a red scarf. The dream convinces him that the bus driver was not the patient he remembered. He reenacts the bus ride, with co-workers playing the role of passengers. He also downs a handful of phisostygmine to help him remember. He flashes back to riding on the bus, and realizes that it was Amber who was on the bus with him, and she is the patient in question. She was critically injured in the crash and hauled off to another hospital as “Jane Doe.” (And we’ll have to wait until next week for the conclusion of the story.)
The medicine was more haphazard than usual tonight, and it’s been very haphazard recently. Of course, part of that could be blamed on House’s own haphazard state tonight.
Hypnosis, even “medical hypnosis” simply doesn’t work like that. If it were that miraculous, it would be used by every police department in the country.
Stroke, subarachnoid hemorrhage, and subdural hematoma aren’t going to cause bilateral leg paralysis and shouldn’t have been so high on the list of possible diagnoses.
Tranverse myelitis is not a bacterial infection, and is not treated with antibiotics. It can be caused by certain viral infections or systemic conditions, but is most often caused by an overactive immune system attacking the spinal cord. Steroids are the treatment of choice.
While physostigmine has been used in cases of Alzheimer’s and other dementias, it has shown at best only minimal improvement. Several decades ago it was tested as a memory aid, but with lackluster results. It is also not available commercially in the U.S. as an oral formulation, unless House has access to a researcher’s stash.
For someone with an open fracture of the skull — indicated by House’s bleeding ear — submerging in a tub full of water is a great way to get an infection straight to the brain.
Nasal pruritis can suggest many things. Seasonal allergies would be at the top of my list. A tumor is a possibility, but a very very remote one. If the concern is that high for a tumor, a quick look up the nose is not going to be enough.
The air embolism from a dental procedure would have been tiny — too tiny to cause all the patient’s symptoms. Once an air embolus gets into the blood vessels, it either rises (going to the brain, since it started in the mouth) or is pushed along the circulation until it reaches the heart and then the lungs (where small ones are absorbed; large ones cause a pulmonary embolus). The air embolus wouldn’t travel elsewhere in the body unless the patient had a severe heart defect with a left-to-right right-to-left shunt.
The medical mystery was very good — one of the best ones yet and easily earns an A. The medicine was very haphazrd, but even so, it was better than it has been the last two weeks so deserves a B-. The final solution (bus driver) didn’t really fit the patient (or the anatomy or the scenario), so is knocked back down to a C. The final solution (Amber), will have to wait until next week, but come on — “resin?” House would have figured it out then and there. The soap opera was minimal, but intriguing, especially the hallucinatory and remembered parts. I give it a B.
The previous House review
A list of all prior House reviews
May 12th, 2008 at 11:34 pm
“The final solution (Amber), will have to wait until next week, but come on — “resin?” House would have figured it out then and there.”
I think he knew it was Amber, but was trying to avoid the answer-as he avoids many things.
May 12th, 2008 at 11:45 pm
I agree with “G”. The whole point, after all, was that he *knew* the answer, but couldn’t remember.
Although I don’t care that much for the overall accuracy of the medicine in the show - as I can’t really tell -, I’d like to think that you can blame Today’s “haphazardry” on House’s literally damaged head.
May 12th, 2008 at 11:49 pm
I wasn’t bothered much by the diagnostic stuff. What had me going WTF! was the apparently lack of attention by the emergency techs to House after the bus crash. I find it hard to believe EMTs would simply allow House to walk away from that or at least ensure he was seen to. Given that they might have higher priority victims, I would have expected at least something more than just a cursory exam.
May 12th, 2008 at 11:50 pm
Correction to above post.
Given=Even given
May 12th, 2008 at 11:59 pm
We have her name… It’s an interesting one… Dr Hadley! (Or how do you spell it?)
May 13th, 2008 at 12:02 am
You forgot something in your tallies:
“Cuddy Schoolgirl Pole Dance easily earns an A+. HDTV, you are my friend.”
May 13th, 2008 at 12:06 am
Actually, an episode a while back revealed her (13) name as Remy Hadley.
See this picture: http://www.watchinghouse.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/11/remy.jpg
Also, it may have been a while since Amber was actually a frequent star on the show, but why was resin such a giveaway? I was left clueless until he said Amber.
May 13th, 2008 at 12:06 am
I too was expecting some kind of distraction taking place for the emt’s to not notice House leaving the scene.
I thought they’d never let House get into that tub with a bleeding ear. That is crazy. So is the dean of medicine sleeping over, highly paid medical personnel on the bus acting like movie extras.
Season 2 finale took place in House’s head, too. Is this formulaic or what.
May 13th, 2008 at 12:07 am
The emergency medicine is seldom good on this show, but I think that there are a couple of explanations for the EMT inattentiveness. Mine is that he was a flight paramedic transporting Amber. Still, given House’s altered mental status, he should have been directly transferred to another provider, not just pointed in the right direction.
I take issue with the CPR in the last scene. The nuts and bolts of resuscitations aren’t shown very often in this show but when they are there are always lots of problems. It appeared that Cuddhy was hyperventilating House (it’s tough to tell, but I’ve seen lots of hyperventilation in this show). Not sure what Wilson was trying to accomplish with the chest blows and his chest compression rate was too slow. Finally, it’s unlikely (though I grant possible) that House would have been successfully resuscitated with only CPR and no advanced interventions (e.g., defibrillation and/or drugs).
May 13th, 2008 at 12:10 am
Amber (the gem) is fossilized tree resin (and sometimes contains trapped insects, which is where I worked out what he was trying to remember).
May 13th, 2008 at 12:22 am
Long time reader, first time poster. I really enjoy these reviews.
I’d like to remind everybody about a detail that seems important to why House couldn’t remember Amber: When Chase hypnotised House and Amber appeared in the bar memory, Chase told House to ignore Amber because they thought she was irrelavent, and she disappeared. House apparently retained the hypnotic suggestion to ignore Amber, but his mind knew she was important and created the mystery woman. I figure that Amber was really in the bar, and that’s why she was on the bus with House. As for why she was in the bar in the first place, I guess we’ll have to wait till next week.
May 13th, 2008 at 12:30 am
For the last few episodes, House’s diagnoses have appeared rather . . . intuitive rather than inductive. Given, he picks up so much information sometimes it may be difficult to articulate the connections, but I think the writers have fallen into the formula of wrong diagnosis, wrong diagnosis, defib, “Ah Hah!” Early on the pathways to the diagnoses were more careful. I have wondered if it is just the show focusing more on the characters than the medicine OR if we had a shift in Season 2’s opener where House became less like Sherlock Holmes and as the pressure and stress build up figuring out the medical puzzles have become the only satisfying thing in his life. Did anyone else see this shift? Which is it? Writers’ fatigue or character development?
BTW, I thought this was a fantastic episode. I loved the hallucinations and fantasy moving right into the surreal. The Cuddy pole dance was very funny — quite enough to push me past my comfort zone and then laugh at myself as they got me once again piece of total outrageousness. I deeply covet Lisa Edelstein’s abs. Can’t you see her reading that script for the first time! One of my fav episodes.
May 13th, 2008 at 12:33 am
Sorry, I meant the Season 3 opener when he diagnoses the guy in the wheel chair based on, according to Wilson and Cuddy, absolutely no evidence.
May 13th, 2008 at 12:46 am
Even though this episode had medical inaccuracies/discreptancies, I thought it was the best one this season. It makes me impatient for the next episode. Why was Amber and the other critically injured passengers sent to a different hospital? I thought PPTH was a level 1 or 2 trauma center so the worst would go there and other hospitals would get passengers with minor/less severe injuries.
Oh btw Scott are you going to make Barolay’s injury on BSG your Psyhic Zen Nosebleed of the week?
May 13th, 2008 at 12:47 am
Psyhic = psychic
May 13th, 2008 at 1:18 am
“The air embolus wouldn’t travel elsewhere in the body unless the patient had a heart defect with a left-to-right shunt.”
Wouldn’t that be a right-to-left shunt, with the embolus entering the heart after wrecking havoc in the peripheral vasculature, then immediately being ejected again, bypassing the respiratory system?
May 13th, 2008 at 1:54 am
The film and editing production of this episode was excellent, probably the best of any House episode. The whole bus crash resolution scene at the end was incredibly well done and very emotional; it almost had me in tears.
I noticed that the part where House was being resuscitated by Cuddy seemed to be edited in such a way to give a clue that maybe House was having a flashback of making out with Amber.
I think that House probably was in the bar with Amber. Whether or not it was a coincidence or a date is up for speculation until next week. Personally I would like to think it was a date as that would increase the intrigue around her involvement in the show.
Awesome episode overall. I really like this review site and the thorough insight into the medicine that is shown (sometimes inaccurately) on the show.
May 13th, 2008 at 2:01 am
One more comment…loved that bit of fan service with Cuddy dancing on the stripper pole helping House with his memory. That was a really hot scene, but at the same time quite unnerving and bizarre. This whole episode was really taught throughout.
May 13th, 2008 at 3:01 am
… oh dog, … I’m sure House did sleep with Amber… and that would be veeeery baaaaad… I wonder how Wilson will react.
This episode was excelent, The best of the season so far.
I really enjoy reading your reviews, even as a french/non med student.
May 13th, 2008 at 3:09 am
TheBigGSN5–LOL, I wish I’d had HDTV.
Schoolgirl Cuddy had me reeling. WOW. I didn’t even pay attention to the diagnoses and got the diagnoses/gist of their talk from this review, LOL!
And now I’m starting to ship Housebitch, even though I still love Huddy. I think Amber is his match. It’s going to be one heck of an episode next week. I*’d stopped watching after Amber left and the show got kind of boring/tiresome for me (I can’t stand the plastic surgeon OR Kumar, and I can barely tolerate Hadley/13…despite her hotness).
May 13th, 2008 at 4:29 am
At first I thought this was going to be too much like the season2 finale where House gets shot and pretty much the whole episode is just a hallucination but this was WAY better…really exciting and the mystery and clues were great. Can’t wait for part 2!!!
May 13th, 2008 at 5:57 am
I thought he would have figured out Amber from resin sooner, but then I guess it would have ended too soon. I liked that someone finally used 13’s name again. I think this episode was better than any of the other ones since the writer’s strike ended. Also, having Amber as a patient could be how they write her character off the show.
May 13th, 2008 at 6:57 am
I have to completely agree with
“Cuddy Schoolgirl Pole Dance easily earns an A+. HDTV, you are my friend”
except for the fact that I don’t have HDTV or a DVR, so I’ll have to rely on my memory.
May 13th, 2008 at 7:04 am
So House was just getting drunk and happened to run into Amber on his way home? Hmmm….
May 13th, 2008 at 7:18 am
Or, Amber wanted to talk to him about the Wilson situation…
As for how hypnosis works, I think they had to use that device to show us something that is kinda hard to understand.
He was, more or less, dreaming while awake, and when you go back to a memory like that, you will recreate it in that way. I really liked the fact that there was barely no people at first, or that they were faceless. House doesn’t see anyone until he wants to.
One of the best episodes, I’d almost put it at the level of Three Stories, simply because you get to see the inner workings of House’s head.
May 13th, 2008 at 7:29 am
I can’t decide if House is becoming a caricature of himself, or if this is really an imaginative episode. At least autoimmune disease wasn’t invoked for the driver–it seems to be the default explanation in so many episodes. Robert West should get an “A” for tying together the unknown woman and “Amber” with the hypnosis. Actually, it could be just like House not to say the word “amber” but insist on “resin” - another case of using a $.50 word where a $.10 word would do!
May 13th, 2008 at 7:48 am
Official Comment
Matt C:
You’re right about the CPR. I was wondering about the multiple precordial thumps as well. One would make sense, as it was a witnessed collapse, but not several in a row. I’ve given up with TV-CPR — the bent elbows always bother me.
B:
Yes, I had the shunt reversed. I had it right at first, then for some reason switched it.
May 13th, 2008 at 7:51 am
Did anybody else pick up on “the whole ER getting meningitis shots”? Last time I looked, meningitis is transmitted by fairly close contact, like sharing drinks, sharing cigarettes, kissing etc - not by being in the same large room with somebody. And what’s the point in giving shots if the strain hasn’t been identified? Does Cuddy just give out expensive quadrivalent vaccine on a whim?
May 13th, 2008 at 8:07 am
Official Comment
If anything, they’d start all the passengers on Rifampin or something similar.
May 13th, 2008 at 8:20 am
Another longtime reader, first time poster. As others have mentioned, my House-watching experience isn’t complete without hitting this website! Scott, thanks for running such a great forum.
It seems that Chase has become the jack-of-all-trades around PPTH - any time the writers need someone to handle a new procedure, they use Chase rather than introduce a new character (even if it’s for only 20 seconds of screen time). He’s been seen doing “medical” hypnosis, more kinds of surgery than I can recall, ICU work, etc. I half wonder if they’ll send him reconstructive work in lieu of giving it to Taub (the breast augmentation for the NASA woman notwithstanding).
I’m annoyed by the lack of lasting consequences shown for House’s cavalier behavior with self-medicating. Sure he passes out or vomits on Cuddy’s shoes, but a splash of fake-o CPR and he’s fine. The one exception to this that I recall is when he was shown having trouble urinating due to his Vicodin habit.
Does anyone else wonder why Amber was admitted as Jane Doe #2 to Princeton General? This means she didn’t have any ID on her, which seems odd. If she was at a bar with House, wouldn’t she have at least her wallet with her? Also (since I’m not an MD), don’t doctors carry some sort of credentials with them at all times?
Another thought: although they’re definitely spinning the Amber-and-House-at-a-bar thing as something tawdry, might it be possible that the reason they were there was that House had already noticed some symptom in her, and was meeting with her to recommend some (radical/amoral/etc.) course of treatment? Or perhaps it was an embarrassing condition (STD, pregnancy?) and he wanted to confront her about it without letting Wilson in on it?
A final thought: did anyone else catch the preview of next week’s episode? There was something about how Wilson wants House to save Amber’s life at the risk of his own. I wasn’t sure if that meant that Wilson wanted House to continue working with his cracked skull, or something more direct like giving Amber a kidney - it would be interesting if they really were that much of a “match” for each other.
May 13th, 2008 at 8:43 am
Just a thought on the meningitis. Since all the passengers were in a fairly bloody accident presumably they could have all been exposed to some airborne blood spatter. (A bit of a stretch, but House was stretching to begin with.)
I did have a question about how the team was trying to pull House of his hallucinations. Is there some sort of standard method for doing that? Obviously they yelled his name and shook him a little. But isn’t there some sort of stimulus protocol? (Getting them to wince or something.)
May 13th, 2008 at 8:58 am
Good episode, though not great. The medical mystery was a great story, but they could have been much more careful with the details. I wish the bus had caught fire or something behind House and distracted the EMT’s, but them pointing him in a direction down the road instead of taking him by the arm and leading him there was silly. The fly-in-resin/Amber analogy harkens back to Jurassic Park, and the analogies to Altered States were nice. I wonder if we’re seeing an effect of the writer’s strike here at the end of this season with the poorer attention to medical detail, but the drama remains good fun. I hope the medical reasoning improves, but I still can’t wait till next week! Thank you for this site, it’s always a pleasure to read.
May 13th, 2008 at 9:03 am
I really liked the feature of the Beer-brand beer (and liquor) in the bar scene, and the faceless people. While still unrealistically detailed, it was nice to acknowledge the fact (which most shows usually wouldn’t) that there are gaps in what people remember or pay attention to - especially the details.
When Amber was hypnositized into the bar, I had an inkling that it would later be discovered that she was actually in the bar, and House had just dismissed an important clue; but I managed to forget about that thought by the end and was still surprised by the necklace; I did realize it before House said it, but it took a bit since I have not quite associated the name Amber with the character (an [intended?] upside to the constant use of CB over her real name)
When House mentioned wanting to see her naked, and had that conversation with Wilson about actually treating her like a person, it should have been a tipoff that House actually liked her and maybe they did go out together.
My issue with all of this is that it seems completely arbitrary. House has been showing contempt for her in the last few episodes, and then to suddenly turn it around seems uncharacteristic, as does the possibility of him trying to steal Wilson’s girlfriend (though I suppose it’s possible they were going out as friends for the sake of both being in Wilson’s life, and House realized she wasn’t so bad… or something?)
We’ll see next episode, whose title is a nice parallel to this week’s.
One last note: Another reason I discounted my thoughts about Amber early on is because my brain had a lot of other blown theories. I thought for a while House was diagnosing himself. Especially with all the self-representing halucination characters, and in the final scene with the brunette. It seemed to fit for a while.
May 13th, 2008 at 9:33 am
In response to EngineeringDr’s question about how Amber ended up as a “Jane Doe” - I believe there was a shot during the bus crash showing her purse being pulled off her shoulder by the force of the crash, and possibly even getting dragged under the bus. I’m presuming all her IDs were in there and thus ended up well separated from her and quite possibly unreadable as well.
May 13th, 2008 at 10:44 am
>>Does anyone else wonder why Amber was admitted as Jane Doe #2 to Princeton General? This means she didn’t have any ID on her, which seems odd. If she was at a bar with House, wouldn’t she have at least her wallet with her? Also (since I’m not an MD), don’t doctors carry some sort of credentials with them at all times?
EngineeringDr: If you watched closely, you would have seen Amber’s purse flung away from her and possibly out of the bus.
May 13th, 2008 at 11:10 am
“Does anyone else wonder why Amber was admitted as Jane Doe #2 to Princeton General? This means she didn’t have any ID on her, which seems odd. If she was at a bar with House, wouldn’t she have at least her wallet with her? Also (since I’m not an MD), don’t doctors carry some sort of credentials with them at all times?”"
Her purse went flying in the crash (which was shown) and they had no time to find it I bet.
One thing I noticed was that Amber’s thigh injury was in the same spot that House’s infarction was.
May 13th, 2008 at 11:36 am
Good catch TomK.
Just like three stories, this episode managed to go beyond simple “From point A to point B” writing. I admit that lots of stuff had to be ignored for the story to work, but that’s the thing with medical dramas, if they were to put the medicine first, you would not get such a compelling show.
Like with Three Stories, you would not expect students to react that way to a teacher behaving like House did. In every show, there are these details that kinda bug you but you have to ignore. With House, I think in early season 3, they lost track of what made the show great and shifted the balance too far. They are getting the show back to a better place with less “on going drama” and more medical episodes (even if it is kinda inaccurate, episodes like last night are much better than say… son of the coma guy).
May 13th, 2008 at 11:42 am
I just wanted to second what was mentioned a couple reviews ago about the lack of the CSI-esque internal body animations….I really didn’t notice they were lacking until you mentioned it in your review, but now that it’s caught my attention, I have been able to confirm that not ONE single animation has been present in the past 3 new episodes!! (and they were fairly sparse even before that!)
However, for now I’m striking (no pun intended) this up to the writer’s strike, which did require a rush on these episode productions (which maybe also explains the particularly sloppy medicine). But it was these little details that made this show such a gem during its 1st and 2nd seasons, and I hope the show’s success does not result in laziness and corner cutting like mad medicine and no animations when it’s back next season!!
May 13th, 2008 at 12:09 pm
Here’s a thought or two:
I think Amber was at the bar. Maybe his saying over and over that he wanted to see her with her clothes off was not because he wants her but because there was some medical issue that he wanted to examine that would require her to take her clothes off. Notice that he first he said it, but didn’t actually say it out loud.
Crash scene was intense. It reminded me of the crash in the movie Adaptation.
So, the medical issue didn’t cause the crash?
As soon as he noticed the bug in the “resin”, I knew it was amber. I didn’t know what that meant, but I knew that the necklace meant amber.
May 13th, 2008 at 12:54 pm
The crash scene caught me way off guard, especially the scene where you’re looking straight at Amber and you see the car coming right at the bus.
I personally think it’ll be revealed that she was coming on to House, and House refuted her because of his friendship with Wilson.
May 13th, 2008 at 1:44 pm
“I personally think it’ll be revealed that she was coming on to House, and House refuted her because of his friendship with Wilson.”
We´re not talking about GREGORY House, MD here, are we?
May 13th, 2008 at 2:15 pm
Love the site. I know f-all about medicine, but I’m curious and I love the process the show had early on. I miss the more detailed medicine, but it was bound to happen as the characters became more interesting than their jobs.
I wouldn’t doubt that Amber was coming on the House. And while I wouldn’t put it past him to “hit that”, in an attempt to show Wilson how unworthy she is for him, I don’t think he’s really built that way. Beside,s we know he left alone and he had been drinking, a lot, before the crash. Why would CB be on the bus with House when, if she had to meet him somewhere, she could have just driven them where ever they were going? The only reason I can imagine she was on the bus with him is House was trying to get away from her and she followed him on to the bus. Just bad lick maybe?
May 13th, 2008 at 2:43 pm
“We´re not talking about GREGORY House, MD here, are we?”
If he’s shown anything in the last few years, it’s that everything with him is not the obvious. ;)
May 13th, 2008 at 2:55 pm
The one thing in this episode, that I think has been missing in a lot of episodes lately, is emotional involvement in the character. House isn’t just acting like an ass, but there is an emotional investment in him, his actions and his well being. It is similar to the season 2 finale, but that is a good thing. The writing was much, much better than anything that has been seen lately. I wasn’t just amused by House, I actually cared.
As far as the resin/amber thing, when he first called it resin, I wondered why the hell he would refer to amber as resin. It didn’t connect in my mind the amber/Amber connection. Maybe that was my lack of imagination, but having the clue be so obvious, yet not getting it, really made me enjoy the ‘ending’. It made perfect logical sense in retrospect, which for me is what matters. House should have gotten that, but he didn’t. I don’t think that’s inconsistent with his character, quite the opposite. He has an amazing capacity for self delusion when he wants to avoid something unpleasant, something like seeing someone whom he actually has feelings for get mangled in a bush crash.
Good job David Shore. Let’s just hope the next episode, and next season continue with this quality.
May 13th, 2008 at 3:55 pm
I absolutely LOVED this episode. The crash scene was well done, and like someone already mentioned I haven’t felt this jarred since the crash scene in “Adaptation.” And the twist ending with Amber being the mystery woman was brilliant! A+
May 13th, 2008 at 4:04 pm
I thought it was interesting that “Mystery Girl wearing Necklace” looked like the spawn of Cuddy, Amber, and 13. That’s what she looked like to me at least.
Is it just me, or is sticking a needle in someone’s heart a bad idea after pushing TPA? Isn’t the main thing to decide before administering TPA that the problem is an actual clot embolus and not anything else?
Very emotion-evoking episode. Bad CPR though, as everyone else has mentioned. Excellent review!
May 13th, 2008 at 5:32 pm
I think House already thought something was wrong with Amber. You see, people don’t change unless something amiss is causing their personality change.
I bet you a dollar she has paraneoplastic syndrome. : )
May 13th, 2008 at 5:37 pm
If you noticed, prior to House’s sensory deprivation bath he adds salt to the water… this would prevent any sort of infection.
May 13th, 2008 at 6:11 pm
D’oh! Unlike everyone else, I never caught the Amber thing. I kept thinking, it’s silver, silver. The good side of this is that I had the enjoyment of total surprise and astonishment. I do know enough to wonder how House could be so active with a concussion and obviously being in shock.
Re soap opera, my money’s on Amber being the one to initiate any kind of devious meeting. But she’s the last person you’d expect to see on a bus. Unlike her, House had an excuse (keys taken by bartender).
May 13th, 2008 at 8:15 pm
was anyone as amused as i was by the MADD (mothers against drunk driving) comment?? “I used to drive drunk but then some moms got mad-d-d.”
May 13th, 2008 at 8:58 pm
I don’t think “resin” was bad; it was House avoiding obvious knowledge (I got it as soon as we saw the necklace, and also that the “fly” trapped in the amber was a HOUSE fly). People do that; it’s a sign of guilt. House is having an affair or fantasizing about having an affair with his best friend’s girlfriend. Or, as we can call her, Jessie’s girl.
I don’t think the paralysis was bilateral.
The medicine may have sucked, but not in a way a layperson could notice, and frankly, it was the best House episode in a year from a writing and drama point of view.
But what the hell with House’s limp? Now he can walk for a block with just a little limp? He used to fall down after a few steps. And now they’re all SURPRISED at him taking Vicodin? WTF?
May 13th, 2008 at 8:59 pm
Oh, I did catch the submerging someone bleeding from the ear thing, though. I mean, they really should avoid mistakes I wouldn’t make.
May 13th, 2008 at 9:53 pm
I loved the exchange about the movie “Altered States”. I totally relate to the fact that my first reaction to the year 1980 is that there is no WAY that 1980 was 28 years ago.
May 13th, 2008 at 9:58 pm
Official Comment
Deborah:
The bus driver said, “My legs aren’t working” so I’m assuming it was bilateral.
May 13th, 2008 at 10:00 pm
Why was Wilson not worried about his serious girlfriend not coming home allllll night and not returning his phone call?
Why did he never mention this during the episode?
Contrived.
May 13th, 2008 at 11:46 pm
I was a bit upset by the whole hypnosis thing, but the ending was so great that by the end I was pretty happy with this episode. The whole writer’s strike puzzles me… I know for sure that if I were a writer and a strike was going on, I’d spend all that time refining the next several episodes and hoarding them for myself. I expected the episodes to be better in the end, but, wow, apparently the writers have much more willpower than myself and managed to stay with the strike! Good for them!
May 13th, 2008 at 11:58 pm
> the “fly” trapped in the amber was a HOUSE fly
I feel as though the only significance of that fly was just as Greggie said, “fly in the ointment”… an indication that not all is well.
May 14th, 2008 at 1:24 am
I must say this episode exceeded my expectations in many ways.
So in conclusion Amber has a “fatal condition” beside the ones caused by the crash. Also House still does not remember what symptom he saw.
May 14th, 2008 at 1:39 am
The only problem that I have with the show is that is too clotted with characters. Compared to the last season we have 4 new characters (Amber, 13, Taub and Kutner also there were speculation that Cate from the episode “Frozen” will become a permanent character) while the structure and length of the show is the same. It seems that killing a bunch of characters will help but the question is how is it going to happen and who will they be?
“EngineeringDr: It seems that Chase has become the jack-of-all-trades around PPTH - any time the writers need someone to handle a new procedure, they use Chase rather than introduce a new character (even if it’s for only 20 seconds of screen time).”
You could argue that with Chase around nobody else will work with House.
May 14th, 2008 at 3:55 am
One thing drove me crazy: the second I saw the goth kid with the itchy nose, I thought heroin. House is perceptive to the point of omniscience, and terminally cynical about human nature, and he never considered that the kid’s nose itched because he was a junkie? If anyone should be familiar with pruritis from opiate use, it’s House.
May 14th, 2008 at 8:35 am
Amber is another term for “resin,” especially the type of resin you saw around the woman’s neck — deep yellow color, sometimes with bugs in it.
May 14th, 2008 at 9:36 am
I’ve stopped thinking of House as a good doctor - he just keeps throwing treatments at people until they either die or get better. He should have a much higher “kill rate”, I think. I really only watch for the soap opera now. What could his interns possibly be learning from him? The shotgun-cure technique?
May 14th, 2008 at 10:27 am
I still don’t buy the inability to identify Amber. Even if her purse were thrown from the bus, it would have been found and she would have been identified from picture ID. Even if her face is mangled, there couldn’t have been so many unidentifiable people in the accident that she couldn’t have been identified by gender, height, weight, and the process of elimination. I suppose her purse may have been taken by a thief before the police arrived to cordon off the area, but now we’re really talking deus ex machina.
May 14th, 2008 at 11:39 am
i loved this episode (and Scott, your website is top notch!). the only thing that bothered me was the fact that the dean of medicine told a concussed/skull fractured patient to go home and get some sleep. i’m no doctor and i know that’s a bad idea. other than that, i loved the entire effed up episode.
May 14th, 2008 at 1:19 pm
really have to begin with the joining in the praise for your website scott-it is amazing!
and for the continuation of the soap..unexpected turn-amber’s not the one to die, but her and wilsons baby is..and house got drunk cause she just told him she’s pregnant..
always go for the wild guesses ; )
..still, would be too much..would it? ; )
but if the show continues to have such bad medical conclusions to its riddles the soap is all that will be left being worth watching..
May 14th, 2008 at 1:38 pm
I really liked this episode but the only thing that really really really annoyed me was, Wilson and Amber are/were living together, and he doesn’t notice she is missing??????????? The Bus reenactment happened the next day and he didn’t mention anything about her sleeping over…
The Cuddy scene was priceless…
May 14th, 2008 at 1:41 pm
My previous post should read “about her not sleeping over”
May 14th, 2008 at 3:08 pm
Anyone who didn’t get ‘Amber’ from the moment she said ‘look at my necklace’ is an idiot.
Great episode but all of the season final episodes involve hallucinations - getting a bit boring now.
Oh, I want to marry Lisa E.
May 14th, 2008 at 3:17 pm
Just to add, the Cuddy hallucination was far from boring however.
Lisa Edelstein over Carmen Electra in a millisecond.
Erm, medicine? What’s that……
May 14th, 2008 at 4:39 pm
I have no idea about the medicine (Oh, except the MRI film of house’s brain they were talking about was a CT film), but the visuals and plot in this episode were fantastic! It was like a one-off directed by David Lynch or something!
Do you reckon House mentions Cuddy’s poledance hallucination to her in the next episode? Is there maybe an extended version planned as an extra for the DVD release? Just asking, y’know….
May 14th, 2008 at 6:09 pm
Thanks to all who mentioned Amber’s purse going out the window - I must have missed that part of the scene.
I agree with Gary that it still stretches imagination a bit that Amber is a Jane Doe more than a day after the fact, but at least they showed how her purse got lost.
May 14th, 2008 at 7:43 pm
Good points regarding Amber.
Some more: Remember how House called/paged her rather than anyone else when he electrocuted himself with the knife? So maybe there was more to that despite the reason he gave (or the reason Amber assumed.) at the time.
House was also absolutely mortified when he found out about Wilson and Amber, although it’s unforeseen in general.
Again, apologies for zero medicine.
May 14th, 2008 at 9:39 pm
“Danomau: Wilson and Amber are/were living together, and he doesn’t notice she is missing??????????? The Bus reenactment happened the next day and he didn’t mention anything about her sleeping over…”
Well the accident happened around 8 PM in the night it is entirely possible that the gap between the accident and the reenactment was less than 12 hours. Also Wilson mentions that Amber was on call last night.
May 14th, 2008 at 9:51 pm
Amber is going to die or be gone from the show.
its obvious there was something inappropriate going on with her and house and it might be my own hopes being implanted in the show but i don’t want to see house trying to make up with Wilson for the 24 episodes next season.
shes got to go.
May 14th, 2008 at 9:52 pm
i want to see House give his seed up to make the Cuddy baby. so Wilson will just take away from that next season.
May 15th, 2008 at 9:58 am
ok this is my second comment on this website… I love your reviews!
Can you imagine if this episode was aired after the superbowl and the strike never took place!!! This season would have been fantastic! Riveting episode for sure.
In terms of medicine, the thing that bothered me the most was the EMT’s complete dismiss of House! That would not be likely to happen especially given his confused and altered state, Scondly, I think stopping his heart was unecessay! Hasn’t this happened enough on the show now? Plus, the CPR wasn’t appropriate as previously mentioned as well making it all the more unnecessary.
Again, thanks for the reviews!
May 15th, 2008 at 7:30 pm
“Does anyone else wonder why Amber was admitted as Jane Doe #2 to Princeton General? This means she didn’t have any ID on her, which seems odd. If she was at a bar with House, wouldn’t she have at least her wallet with her? Also (since I’m not an MD), don’t doctors carry some sort of credentials with them at all times?””
What I am trying to figure out is why no one at Princeton General recognized her. She doesn’t work at PPTH. Are there more than two major hospitals in Princeton? In Living the Dream, Wilson and Amber were at a mattress shop. Amber get’s paged and says to Wilson. Oh hospital 911. That means she works at a hospital. Where?
May 15th, 2008 at 8:54 pm
Re: The EMTs.
When I rewatched it this afternoon the EMT seemed to me to be part of the LifeFlight copter that was taking CTB/Amber to Princeton General, so he did cursory look at House, directed them to their on-site triage/medical area and went to his chopper. The other EMTs were likely pre-occupied with all the other passengers who weren’t up and walking around like House was.
May 15th, 2008 at 10:57 pm
In case anyone is interested, I accidentally stumbled across the name of next week’s episode. I won’t spoil and post it here, but if you go to IMDB and look for House episode lists, it reveals a little bit about the focus of next week’s episode.
Also - regarding the missing identification - there are plenty of things that could have happened - it could have fallen down a storm drain, the license itself could have fallen out of the purse and just not been noticed, or blown away in the wind…I don’t think it’s all that odd for that to happen. There are Jane Does all the time in accidents, and we’re only talking 12 hours that she was not ID’ed.
I guess I also thought maybe Amber had been ID’ed, but no one relayed that information back to House’s hospital. If she hadn’t updated her emergency contact information, it’s possible Wilson wasn’t in the loop at all.
Suspend disbelief, it’s fun.
May 15th, 2008 at 11:50 pm
Eric: “Also - regarding the missing identification - there are plenty of things that could have happened - it could have fallen down a storm drain, the license itself could have fallen out of the purse and just not been noticed, or blown away in the wind…”
Me: Or, the purse and all its contents could have been stolen.
May 16th, 2008 at 9:31 am
…or aliens could have taken the purse. I don’t think the inability to identify Amber is a big deal, but, despite all the possible explanations, its not believable and, as such, a glaring flaw in the story. Perhaps it will be better explained next week.
May 16th, 2008 at 1:38 pm
Next week, if Amber needs medical treatment (for bus crash injuries and/or a pre-existing condition) and is unconscious, I hope that Wilson will not make the decisions without someone checking that he is Amber’s medical proxy. She probably has relatives, and a boyfriend is not an automatic proxy. It’s encouraging (for this hope) that Princeton General is treating Amber and has not called Wilson.
We don’t yet know what aspects of “House’s Head” are real. Possible that it’s all House’s hallucinations, and that no one is sick or hurt except him.
May 16th, 2008 at 3:16 pm
I apologize for all the discussion I stirred up regarding the missing ID - I agree with Gary that it’s an open plot hole, but I also agree with Eric that I’ll enjoy next week’s episode more if I don’t obsess over it. :^)
LabbRatt’s post just gave me the thought that perhaps Amber named House her medical proxy… that could lead to some drama, since House will be busy trying to remember what he figured out was wrong with her before the accident, while she obviously has some pressing issues from the crash. If House is the medical proxy, he can cut Cuddy out of many of the pissing matches they usually get into, but (as the trailer hinted at), Wilson might step into that role.
May 16th, 2008 at 4:05 pm
Does anyone recall what was reported for Jane Doe’s injuries? I thought #13 said she’d been admitted for “kidney damage” - I would have thought the obvious thigh impalement would be mentioned.
Contrary to the other Gary, I think it’s easy to believe Amber wasn’t identified within a day of the crash. Nobody was looking for her, odds are quite high that her ID is still missing or unreadable - and though I expect she works at Princeton General, she may not work with anyone who saw her in emergency or surgery.
May 17th, 2008 at 4:47 am
I don’t think its that unbelievable that Amber wasn’t identified…as people have already said its probably still less than 12 hours after the crash…anything could have happened her ID (use your imagination!)…and Wilson probably thought she was at work. I’ve no problem with that one.
I think that Amber has something wrong with her and followed House to the bar (or arranged to meet him there) because she wanted him to help diagnose/treat her and keep it a secret from Wilson. I wouldn’t put some kind of an affair past either of them but I think a mysterious illness and keeping Wilson out of the loop is far more likely.
May 17th, 2008 at 7:11 am
I really didn’t like the hypnosis bit. Hypnosis may have some good medical effects, but memory recall is not one of them.
This is the same charlatanism that newage and ufo-nuts use. Hypnosis is the yellow brick road to fantasy land, even if new memories are found they are so muddled with the patient’s imagination that they are inseperable.
Some people even live like this. They don’t have actual jobs, they live to pay the enourmous cost of the hypnotist’s salary and the occasional trips to their own imagination.
To see a show like House, which has usually higher standard regarding medicine, to fall into this stupidity is sad.
May 17th, 2008 at 5:49 pm
HP posted, “I thought it was interesting that “Mystery Girl wearing Necklace” looked like the spawn of Cuddy, Amber, and 13″
I thought she looked a LOT like Amber but with dark features, like Stacy Warner, played by Sela Ward. Stacy is the only woman House loves.
I believe Amber is, as Wilson pointed out, the female version of House. She is dating Wilson only for an ulterior motive. She still wants the job on House’s staff. Amber was with House that night for the purpose of trying to seduce him. She hopes that by dating Wilson and then sleeping with House she will have leverage with House to force him to hire her or else she will tell Wilson. She assumes (I believe wrongly) that House would rather be forced into hiring her than hurt his best/only friend.
House sees the mysterious woman in his subconscious as a cross between the one who says she wants him and the one he wishes wanted him.
Now, the question that has been bugging me all week: Is it possible that the actress that played the mysterious woman on the bus is Anne Dudek, who plays Amber, made up to have darker features? Does anyone know for sure who played the mysterious woman?
May 18th, 2008 at 9:35 am
the misterious woman was played by Ivana Milicevic. Check tv.com
May 18th, 2008 at 8:24 pm
Why is Amber a Jane Doe? Didn’t they find her purse?
Her purse goes flying out the window during the crash in a dodgy part of town. There’s a good chance somebody stole it.
Amber is a female version of House, which is probably why House is interested in her. They are both brilliant doctor’s. She’s a manipulative bitch, he’s a manipulative jerk. The trick Amber played while mattress shopping in the previous episode (pretending she was pregnant to get a larger discount) is just the type of trick House would pull (not being pregnant, of course, but some other pathos story). Now Amber has a leg injury in the same location as House’s (same leg also). If she survives I bet she will be using a cane. It’s probably why Wilson likes her so much. He’s found his best friend in female form.
May 18th, 2008 at 11:22 pm
I loved the strip scene with Cuddy, not because she got naked, but because even House’s subconscious would not let him get sidetracked with a naked Cuddy without first finding the answer. To me, it showed a deeper side of House and his complete devotion to solving a puzzle, which seems to be lacking lately. Before, House would do anything and everything to find the answer. Lately, he seems to prefer fishing in the dark and leading his team astray with of the wall diagnosis’s.
Also, The whole necklace thing- he was in a vicodin/head trauma induced stupor. And I think he was reluctant to reveal that Amber was the person in danger because her connection to Wilson. He does not show it often, but he tries to do what (he thinks) is best for his friends. Like saving his ex’s new husband.
Lastly, I hate the fact that the new team doesn’t stand up to House, unless it’s part of some game or manipulation. And Forman is useless. What happened to the guy who had conviction and passion about his job? Now he’s just this shadow of himself, just collecting a paycheck, and stepping in when it serves him best. Throughout the first few sessions, he was so concerned with becoming House, but I think he’s become a whole new (and worse) monster. At least House practices medicine (no matter how haphazard it may be).
May 19th, 2008 at 7:37 am
OK, I liked some of this episode — and some… not so much.
There are plot holes. I agree that there is no way that given Wilson and CTB’s relationship, a day of no communication would have gone by un-noticed by him. They were buying a mattress together, for cryin’ out loud. I had thought they were living together.
House wandered from a bus, with no cell phone and no wallet, but with a twenty for the stripper? (How did he pay the cover charge?)
This whole obsession with CTB is bugging me. I thought she was a bad character from the beginning. I have no idea why the writers can’t seem to let go of her. Though if this is the beginning of the end of the CTB story arc, I am a happy man.
House being on the bus with Amber will only make sense if somehow Amber came down to meet House when the bartender told him he couldn’t drive. Even that is a stretch, since I am going to assume that she owns a car. House was drunk, which is why he was on the bus. Why was CTB? This may be a “mystery” but I am hoping they have something plausible in mind for it.
As for the way the story cut in and out of House’s head — very reminiscent of the “Three Stories” episode, which is still my favorite. They did some very clever things there, and I love the way people come in and out of his “memories.”
Cuddy’s pole dance was one for the ages. I always thought she was heavier than that, to be honest, by the way she dressed. I had no idea the body she was hiding under her Chief-of-Staff suits. Wowser!
This show desperately needs some… um… House cleaning. 13, Kumar, and Jewish Dr need to go, They add nothing. Chase is somewhat amusing in his new role of “I can do anything you need.” Foreman is nothing but a smirk and a glare these days. And
Cameron looks silly as a blonde, and even sillier as an ER nurse (which is all I ever see her doing – things in an ER that a nurse could do…)
They should get rid of the new sheds. Get rid of CTB. Foreman either needs to be involved or go home.
And House needs to get back to being a brilliant doctor, instead of a guy who blunders from diagnosis to diagnosis until Kumar solves the case for him. (What lesson are we to take from that: Weed is a better enhancer than Viccodin?)
May 19th, 2008 at 11:00 am
Well, the reason House reacted differently with CTB when talking about her, at least from my point of view, was only because he unconsciously knew that she was the one who was in trouble and is important to Wilson - and NOT because of whatever other reason (like starting to like her).
I think Kutner is an interesting character, different than all the others. 13 doesn’t bother me but also doesn’t thrill me. Taub sucks. Cameron is irrelevant, apparently. Foreman looks pretty standard now. Chase is the only one of the old team that seems to have gotten better.
Cuddy pole-dancing and House’s unconscious stopping it was great.
May 19th, 2008 at 10:34 pm
“We have her name… It’s an interesting one… Dr Hadley! (Or how do you spell it?)”
You got it right. Turns out her name was on a ballot during the games, it’s Remy Hadley (I wiki’d it).
Personally, I prefer “thirteen”, she really doesn’t look like a “Dr Hadley”.
May 20th, 2008 at 8:23 am
Not going to make specific quotes, since they’re Big Topics:
[resin=Amber]
He saw her in the bar when Chase had him hypnotized, but was given the suggestion to ignore her, thus blocking out the memory he’d already retrieved and refusing to admit it to himself even when his subconscious finally beat him about the head with it. And he may have just not wanted to admit it to himself.
[Wilson doesn’t know she’s missing]
He says at the end that she he was on call, and thus expected to be at work and not answering her phone. He tried to call her once, and . . . she . . . didn’t . . . OHSHI–
[Get some sleep on that concussion and skull fracture]
And popping opiates by the handful, no less! I’m amazed he was still standing after all that and “four Vicodin in 40 seconds” (I mean, he has a tolerance ’cause he’s an addict, but still . . .)
[Cuddy stripping]
I . . . er . . . what were we talking about?
May 20th, 2008 at 8:25 am
Oh, and make a note of his face right before he dives into the pile of clothes. That’s classic Hugh Laurie, right there. As a big fan of pre-House Hugh, I always love it when House makes a goofy face.
May 23rd, 2008 at 1:25 am
Scott, I think your conception is too limited of the damage that can result from a dental drill. See NEJM 356:173 for an impressive case, albeit not one of transverse myelitis.
May 24th, 2008 at 8:22 am
Some replys -
Re: Rob - there’s a difference between getting “amber” and getting “Amber” - making hte connection between the stone “amber” and the character was made a bit trickier by House’s general refusal to use that name and thus, I think, a lot of viewers associating her with the name ‘bitch’ or the like. I knew it was amber from the start, but didn’t connect it to the character (perhaps a POSITIVE result of the writers strike shortnening is that her name never quite became associated with the character - not enough to do word association anyway.
Re: >>I know for sure that if I were a writer and a strike was going on, I’d spend all that time refining the next several episodes and hoarding them for myself.<<
I believe the writers were obligated (or at least expected) to spend their days on the picket lines, and not at home working. Additionally, the writers are the ones striking, not the ones waiting for the strike to be over. If they work the whole time they are off, why strike? What’s the effeciveness of a strike that doesn’t hinder those who you’re trying to get a deal from? I might be thinking of possible future storylines, but certainly not scripting episodes in my head the whole time.
Re: ID - as I mentioned in the finale comments, The purse was shown flying to the bottom step of the bus’s exit, which means it could have been ejected from the bus at any point, could have been smooshed between pieces of the bus as it skidded around on its side and could still be smashed somewhere within the bus wherever it was towed, or it could have been ejected when the bus spun (moving vehicles can eject stuff an awfully long distance. They clearly were primarily interested in getting the people out of the bus and didn’t do any looking around at that point. As someone else suggested, her purse being on the stairs, her purse could have been crushed and her IDs destroyed for all we know. I’m curious what the real policy is in this kind of accident (a bus with lots of injured people - or perhaps a building collapse or some other large accident - do you start looking around for purses everywhere?)
May 24th, 2008 at 2:37 pm
As big House fan, I’m all ways dismayed when the writers lack of homework pushes plausibility and takes me out of the story. They can cheat on a lot of the medical stuff, because I don’t know any better - I’m glad I’m not a doctor or I’d have a seriously hard time with the series.
These two items took me out of the story.
The EMT’s response to House in an obvious stupor as he came out of the bus - I know enough basic first aid to catch that one - “here’s a tissue to wipe the blood off your hands, see ya”
The air embolism - my knowledge base is mechanical and the size of air bubble that could enter the bloodstream from dental work seemed like a stretch, but puncturing the heart to remove the bubble, a tiny bubble, left me scratching my head, trying to imagine the mechanics, competing with my attention on the storyline.
If any of House’s writers are smart enough to read this site - take the trust invested in you seriously, do your home work, and maintain the quality of this rare gem, House.
May 27th, 2008 at 1:05 pm
I was amused by the allusion early on, where (the lines may not be exactly in this order, but they are adjacent), Thirteen describes Jane Doe #2 and House remarks “This would be easier if these came with headshots and resumes.” - obviously if they had come with headshots and resumes, this episode would have been a lot shorter.
May 30th, 2008 at 11:22 pm
Ugh, just ugh. Olivia Wilde can get off my screen already. If they continue to feature schlock like this I might just have to give up on the show altogether.
May 31st, 2008 at 1:24 pm
I have to disagree on the nasal pruritis. While it is true that it can be a symptom of many things, seasonal allergies doesn’t make much sense when combined with the supposed “life threatening” part which had to have had more to it if he saw it on the bus and thought “that kid isn’t just picking his nose.”
As for just checking it out with the otoscope, that was pretty silly. I think the writers were trying to portray that House was grasping at air and realized that he was being crazy the moment he thought about examining the back of the kid’s concha with nothing but loupes and a box of disposable #20s.
June 5th, 2008 at 10:03 am
Did anyone else notice the parallels between this episode and the bus scene (flash backs) series finale of M.A.S.H.?
June 18th, 2008 at 2:17 am
Christine: re.M.A.SH
I remember that episode, where buddy kept “remembering” that the woman killed the chicken in her lap in order to keep it quiet so they wouldn’t be found but actually it was her own crying baby she smothered to protect everyone on the bus, I remember watching M.A.S.H all the time but that is probably the only episode I remember!
There are for sure some parallels like house remembering misleading/irrelevant things rather than the fact that Amber will die.
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