House: Saving Osama

So I’m watching TV last weekend and I see Hugh Laurie, and he’s speaking with his British accent, so I’m interested. I remember hearing that he’s actually a great comic actor, and he was on a hilarious British series a while ago. But he was also kind of playing a bad ass character in this movie, so I though, ok, I’m hooked. So as I continue watching, I see a simple, pratfall-type joke, and I die a little inside. But oh if that were the end of the story. The movie he was in? 101 Dalmatians. Ugh.

That made me really sad. So I decided to look through his IMDb profile, and the first thing I see is that he’s in this new movie called The Night Watchman, which sounds interesting enough. And he was also in Spice World, which, if memory serves, is one of the top two or three movies all time according to whoever ranks movies. But, he was also a voice on an episode of Family Guy. And now he’s House. So I will give him a pass, reluctantly, for those two appearances. Oh, and, uh, on House this week, we learn that it’s actually cool to share hypodermic needles because it’s both a time-saver and makes you feel closer to your friends. (We did learn that, right?)

First this week we see a woman pilot “flying” some sort of jet. Of course, what we see from her view looks really fake. And we’re supposed to believe a woman is capable of flying one of these highly sophisticated machines? Please. Anyways, all of a sudden this woman sees some sort of lightning bolt, which is bizarre because it’s a sunny day. She sees another one and it turns her view red for a second. Then I think we see a third, and the camera zooms in on her eye and those goes to one of those special effects things where we see her rods and cones doing crazy things. Except it probably wasn’t her rods and cones at all, but I refuse to actually look up anything about eyes, so we’ll go with rods and cones. Suddenly, we see all sorts of crazy images, and it’s hard to tell what’s going on. I think what they were trying to get across is that this woman’s seeing all kinds of crazy things that don’t really look like anything that’s in front of her. But perhaps I’m wrong, because shortly after that, you can see what’s in front of her, but it’s all different colors, and the colors keep changing. Drop acid much? Suddenly the warning goes off in her plane and she crashes. Eject! It’s there for a reason!

All I could see was a lava lamp from Spencer Gifts! What’s happening to me?!?!

Suddenly the screen goes black and I wait for the intro music to start. But wait! Whew, a door opens behind her, and it was just a flight simulator. The nerd patrol character comes in and asks what’s wrong, but just before he does, she unplugs a cord. He asks why she wasn’t responding, and then she goes into this long complaint about cords not being unplugged, and the controls should do this, I’m an inadequate pilot, and all the nerd patrol guy can do is apologize for the malfunctions. As he walks away, pilot woman starts breathing heavily, like she’s just narrowly escaped being fired or something. And that’s the intro. Not really suspenseful, and also not too life-threatening, so I don’t think it was that great. Oh, and there was no projectile vomit.

In some sort of classroom, House is spinning his cane in front of a screen with some guy’s picture on it. Also, there are like 40 people in the room. Ah yes, the group job interview. Who hasn’t been through one of these? House asks who the man is, but no one answers. He says a wrong answer won’t get anyone fired, and, of course, the woman, who I think was cute Cameron’s replacement doctor from last week, answers wrong and is fired and leaves. Some old man in back says it’s the man who was the original Tin Man in the Wizard of Oz. It turns out he had some sort of reaction to the Tin Man wardrobe or something and died mysteriously, and because no one is sick in an interesting way, they’re going to find out what really happened to Buddy Ebsen.

Because there are so many potential employees, I’m hoping that many of them get weeded out quickly. Looking around the room, no one looks too interesting, and then, bam: our old friend Taj from Van Wilder, or perhaps known better as Harold or Kumar (never saw it), also known as Kal Penn. Thank God he’s around to fulfill the ethnic quota. Make that two(? are there more?) Fox shows (24) that he’s successfully done so in. But I digress.

What ever happened to Harold, anyway?

House is interrupted by Cuddy, though, and she’s looking great again. She asks if he’s forgotten how to count to three, since I’m guessing there are slightly more than three people in the “interview.” They have a discussion about how he’s only going to arbitrarily weed out candidates, and he agrees, and arbitrarily weeds out candidates. He fires row D, sees a hot chick, so changes his mind and fires row C. He says he’d love to continue the conversation with Cuddy, and I would love for her to stay on camera, but he’s being paged, interestingly enough, by himself. Sidenote: remember when pagers were cool? And, now, the only profession where they won’t make you look like a turd is a doctor. Unless of course you don’t want people to call you or have your phone number. So, maybe if you’re on the run from the Feds (or an aggressive bookie) you could also be considered cool. Anyways, again I digress.

House goes to his office and inside is woman pilot. She unloads some money out of an envelope onto his desk, and I assume she’s going to offer him a lot of money for sexual favors. Was that not what she was going for? Apparently, no it wasn’t. It’s for her medical bills, and everything needs to be done under the table. It turns out she’s training to become an astronaut. The NASA doctors could make her better, but they would pass her over for someone who’s actually healthy. So House asks what’s in it for him. She tells him that she hears with her eyes, and that sold him.

All this will be yours AFTER you do the pratfall from 101 Dalmations.

House goes back to the classroom, and he doesn’t care what they have to say about Aluminum Man. Or Tin Man sick from aluminum. He tells them there’s a new patient suffering from synesthesia. Also, they are to leave any notes, records or anything of the work they’ve done on this patient. He tells them to consider the patient Osama Bin Laden, and anyone not in the room is in Delta Force. Wheelchair doctor asks if they’re treating Osama Bin Laden, and House says “It’s a metaphor. Get used to it.” Seriously dude, this must be a case of book-smart but not common sense-smart. Or understands-metaphors-smart. Or maybe he’s not even book-smart and he’s just a shitty doctor. Or he’s just some dude who found a lab coat and rolled on into that class.

House brings woman pilot into the room, and she answers their questions. House picks three people to find out what’s wrong with her. The first two don’t get anywhere, and the third, who we’ll call cute brunette doctor with eyes possibly too far apart, asks if the woman spends much time above 20,000 feet. She follows it up with a question about the mile-high club, and I don’t even know what that means. But I bet it’s got quite the members benefits. If you consider sex a benefit. And I do. Well, she actually does spend time above 20,000 feet, so we have a lead. House directs 3 doctors to go run some tests on her. Then he asks who thinks Oswald acted alone. It’s our boy Kal who raises his hand and asks a question, getting a “Shut up” back from House. Oh Taj! When will you ever get laid!?

House tells them to divide into two groups, and do some tests. Then he asks who likes the designated hitter. He says they’re wrong, and they have to run other tests and they’re lucky they’re not fired. And he’s right. The DH sucks. Finally he asks who doesn’t know what a designated hitter is. Kind of strange looking woman doctor and old dude in the back raise their hand. I find it hard to believe that old dude doesn’t know what it is, but regardless, their job is to break into her house and find out what she’s hiding. Kind of strange looking woman doctor, who has a Russianish accent (making her woman doctor with accent) asks why they don’t just get her keys. Silly woman, go back to Russiaishland. The rest of them? They get to wash House’s car!

Wheelchair doctor is pissed about having to do it, but he’s not even doing anything. He’s just sitting there bitching. Black doctor (I think he was the only one of the group) says it’s 30 minutes of work, not a big deal. Then weird-looking blond doctor says nobody went to med school to do an honest day’s labor. She ends up organizing a workers’ union, and they walk out on washing the car (and ride their wheelchair scooter out), leaving black doctor to do it himself.

So young doctor dude, old dude, and woman doctor with accent are at woman pilot’s apartment, outside her window. All of these generic names are getting old already. Somebody please fire a lot of people. They’re all arguing about breaking into the woman’s place, and young doctor dude said he wouldn’t let old dude in if he managed to get inside because it’s a competition.

We’re back with black doctor washing the car, and weird-looking blond doctor is back. She says she didn’t ever plan on leaving, she just wanted to get all the other people out of there. Not really a bad move, but she could have been a little more useful for me. The only person in the group who had a nickname was wheelchair doctor. (Also, upon second glance, there were a few ethnic doctors in the group who walked out. Good work this week extras!) On top of that, she stole House’s keys. She says they can take the car to a carwash, and she makes a good point that House really isn’t into respecting personal property. God House is an awesome character.

Back at woman pilot’s apartment, guess who opens the window from the inside? Old dude. He told the super a story that he was worried about his niece or something. So maybe old people aren’t totally useless. In addition to that, he didn’t have to let the other two in, but he did anyways. So he appears to be some kind of nice guy. Whatever that means. Perhaps old dude and his old duding ways can be of some help.

Take that, you whippersnappers!

The first three doctors who ran tests are now in House’s office, and woman pilot’s bloodwork was unremarkable. As is her ability to fly a plane. That rules out bloodclots. One of the women is staring at House’s monitor, where he’s got a picture of a naked woman spooning a dolphin. Get used to it lady. I’ve heard one of the worst things to get addicted to, and one of the easiest things to get addicted to, is woman on dolphin porn. Must…resist…urge…

House says it’s not a dolphin, it’s a porpoise. Well porpoise-woman porn isn’t addictive at all. As they’re discussing the finer points of internet pornography, House sees Chase walk by in the hallway. The other doctors continue to talk about symptoms as House looks out in the hallway, incredibly confused. Then weird-looking blond doctor walks up, and House asks if she saw a blond doctor with a pretentious accent. Then he asks her for his car keys back, and tells her to put the patient in a hyperbaric chamber. So she gives him her keys, and she adopts the confused look that House just had as he was looking for Chase.

And it’s our boy Kal Penn! He explains to woman pilot that the hyperbaric chamber will flush out the carbon monoxide they believe is causing a high red blood cell count. Oh Taj, you’re so crazy, when will you get laid!? Well black doctor pulls weird-looking blond doctor aside; apparently she’s still checking in on her own patients until she finds out if she’ll get this job. As they’re discussing it, Kal says he thinks the patient is having a heart attack. But he says it confused, and not, you know, worried. Woman pilot says she just feels funny, the passes out. Kal gets the defibrillator charged, and black doctor says you can’t use that in a hyperbaric chamber. Well, you can’t talk sense into Kal. He uses it, and she catches fire. So then he gets the fire extinguisher and he puts her out. But guess what, her heart is beating again. Then the sprinklers come on in the chamber.

NASA never said you had to have perfect boobies. Did they? Cuz that would be so wrong. Anyway, welcome back to life!

House now wants to know what causes all of these symptoms woman pilot is experiencing, and weird-looking blond doctor wants to discuss the appearance of charred flesh. Mmm, charred flesh. Wait, I mean, uh. This woman should focus more on doing her own work than getting everyone else fired. That said, she should continue to weed out more people so I don’t have to use so many generic nicknames. Anyways, House says she didn’t try to stop Kal, so it must have been a risk worth taking. Then identical twins get into an argument before House tells them to shut up and they’re both wrong. Old dude then chimes in with cardiomyopathy. House asks how old he is, and old dude says he’s 21 unless it’s relevant. He looks like shit for 21.

House sends a few of the doctors to run more tests, and he sends the rest to the cafeteria to document 10 kinds of infections each. And that’s where House sits down with Wilson. House asks him what Chase is doing at the hospital, and Wilson thinks it’s because House feels guilty for firing him. And his repressed guilt is manifesting itself in the form of Chase hallucinations, the worst kind of hallucinations. And it can’t be Chase because he’s working at the Mayo Clinic in Arizona. I find it a little hard to believe that Chase would keep in touch with Wilson, whom he didn’t even work for, but that’s neither here nor there. House says bollocks to the repressed guilt theory and throws a piece of bagel in Wilson’s coffee.

Old dude and cute woman doctor and woman with accent doctor are about to feed an endoscope down woman pilot’s mouth. Once the patient is prepped, old dude tells woman with accent doctor to insert the endoscope. She won’t do it because she doesn’t want to get fired if they don’t find anything. Then cute woman doctor asks why old dude doesn’t want to do it, and he says House won’t be impressed by an old dude doing his 1000th endoscope insertion or whatever. I call shenanigans. He obviously doesn’t want to do it. And he’s being a wiener about it. But luckily, cute woman doctor steps up to the plate.

Next we see House walking through the hallway with a herd of white coats following him. Accent woman is explaining what was found from the endoscope examination, and she’s walking backwards in front of House, while no one in back can hear what’s going on. She falls into a wheelchair, and House asks who’s next. Then cute woman doctor gets in front of him and starts talking. He explains that he leads and they draft when doing moving diagnoses. Then he asks why cute woman doctor did the tests when he gave it to old dude, whom House lovingly refers to as Scooter. “Bullshit bullshit bullshit blah blah blah.” I can’t believe they got away saying bullshit on Fox. So House orders another test to be done to test her thyroid, and he gets on the elevator. Everyone, all 20 or so doctors following, are about to jam in as well, but House tells them he rides alone.

With the patient, creepy doctor dude explains the hormone is to test the thyroid, and then he says he’s a plastic surgeon and he can remove a mole she has. She declines, and then he says that she’s not telling them why she’s actually sick. I think he’s mainly concerned with them having to hide everything they’re doing, but he really has no say in the situation. It’s House’s job to accuse people of things, not creepy doctor’s. Weird-looking blond doctor asks young doctor dude what they found in her home, and woman pilot is surprised they were there. Then as they’re talking, she starts seeing weird colors again. Then she gets out of bed and she does her best impression of a junkie needing a fix before she runs out of the room.

Ms. Houston, we’ve got a problem.

Well House shows up, and he’s been paged. The woman has run into the hospital chapel and locked herself in after her latest psychotic attack. House asks why he was called, since he’s only got one good leg, so he can’t possibly break the door down. He starts walking away until creepy doctor reminds him if they break the door down, security gets involved and they have to file her name. So House tells them to extort her to get her out. Young dude can’t do it, and he makes some pretty weak attempts to do so. However, creepy doctor is up to the task. While he’s doing that, House sees Cameron (yes!) downstairs. His staring is interrupted as the woman comes out, and she’s freaking out. They sedate her, but as soon as they do, buzzkill Cuddy shows up asking who the patient is.

I thought I banned Whitney Houston from this hospital!

So now Cuddy walks into the classroom and asks who the patient is. No one will talk because no one knows. But young doctor dude was in her house, and he can’t wait to tattle. Cuddy then goes to lecture House about the situation, but she won’t tell him who told. She does tell him however that they have to do everything on record now. Then House makes a comment about staring at her boobs. Apparently that still doesn’t need to be documented. Which is good because I don’t have time for that kind of paperwork either.

House walks back into the classrom and young doctor dude is fired. He asks if Cuddy told on him, and House says he knows it’s him because old dude is asleep, and accent woman isn’t going to risk her visa. Also weird-looking blond woman has been pointing at him. So out goes young doctor dude. They discuss symptoms, and Kal says that weird-looking blond has patient data on her PDA, which is against the rules. House then fires Kal for tattling. Sad trombone! Out goes Kal, and House tells the doctors that they need to keep doing tests without charting anything. He gives them an hour to figure out how to get that done.

He goes into Wilson’s office, this time asking him what Cameron is doing at the hospital. He’s also pretending like he’s after information on how to test for liver cancer without consent. Wilson still thinks it’s repressed guilt causing the visions. House asks why he would hallucinate Cameron having blond hair, and Wilson says he’s obviously merging Cameron and Chase together. Of course, she’ll be black the next time House sees her, still with blond hair though I think. Wilson says it can’t be her because she followed Chase to Arizona, they’re engaged, and they put an offer on a place. He knows because he just got a call from her, and her Arizona area code, and as he dials the number, House ends the call. Ok, enough proof, he gets it. Wilson then goes on to psychoanalyze House a little, saying that he thinks House will only hire people he doesn’t like so he won’t get too attached to them. He also uses the word stress, which gives House an idea. Back to the classroom!

House asks how they can stress the liver, and one of the identical twins is asking if there is an ethics board they can ask. She’ll be fired soon. But guess who is sitting behind them, avoiding eye contact? Our boy Kal, still chasing that American poon! He turned his number upside down, so now he’s number 9, not 6. House approves of his methods, but he’s still fired. As he’s walking out, everyone discusses how to test the liver, but there are no answers. Then Kal says that they could get her wasted. Just give her some tequila, and if she passes out too fast, her liver isn’t functioning properly. House likes Kal’s style a lot, so I’m assuming he can stay now. Also, it’s a strange coincidence that my best method of getting girls is also a great way to test liver function without actually having to get consent for liver testing.

Black doctor walks into House’s office, and House asks if he’s a Mormon. They need a non-drinker as a control for the alcohol test. Black Mormon doctor doesn’t want to do it, so he tells House to do an MRI. Then there’s a small discussion about religion and finally black doctor decides he’ll do it to help this woman live. Didn’t take too long for him to compromise his values. He could last a long time in this if he’s willing to compromise them often.

Time for shot one, and woman pilot asks why they chose tequila. I concur, as tequila is disgusting. Then House gets a little confrontational with black doctor, harassing him about why he was so easily manipulated into compromising his religious beliefs. Also, I should point out that House is the big drinker of the group, and cute woman doctor is the medium drinker. Nice choice by House in picking her to get drunk. But I digress again.

Beats Match.com.

While House and black doctor are having their discussion that’s not going to lend itself towards any resolution anytime soon, House sees Foreman walk past in the hallway. He runs out into the hallway trying to follow him. It just so happens that woman pilot is suddenly short of breath. They can’t do anything without documenting it, and House isn’t there to offer guidance, so what are they supposed to do?

As House is following Foreman, Cuddy steps out and starts harassing him. The list of tests that he gave her is bunk and she knows it. House is baffled that she didn’t just walk past Foreman though. Foreman works at New York Mercy now, so there’s no way that that was him. Then Cuddy smells the tequila on House and asks if he’s been drinking. He then stumbles back into the patient’s room, but she’s gone. He finds them by a treadmill, and woman pilot is getting oxygen. They put her on a treadmill to show that they gave her oxygen as part of a routine stress test, or something of that nature. House asks whose decision it was, and cute woman doctor says it was a joint decision. Nice teamwork. You know weird-looking blond doctor would have taken all the credit had she been there. Because she’s a bitch you see.

House then starts prying into cute woman doctor’s life, and she doesn’t want to get personal. House really does have a lot of interest in other people’s lives, especially of those who he may not even hire. If he doesn’t want to get attached, he should stop prying. Anyways, he examines the woman’s chest (ow!) and discovers that she’s either got lung cancer or tuberous sclerosis. But either way, they’re going to have to cut her open and biopsy. In between gasps, woman pilot is adamant that she is not going to be opened up, so House needs to find some other way to fix her. Woman pilot is a bitch too.

Back in the classroom House asks the doctors how they can force a patient into surgery against their will. Black doctor says the problem is the scar and they have a plastic surgeon (creepy doctor) who can fix it. That’s when creepy says he can’t fix it well enough that NASA won’t find it. So he sucks. Good luck finding a new job creepy. But wait. Creepy doctor says they don’t need to hide it. He can just give her a breast augmentation, and then when she’s open they can fix her up. See, larger breasts are a great way to save a life. And my National Institute of Health laughed at my dissertation.

Woman doctor is resilient to it, saying it will make her a joke. Not anymore of a joke than her giant fivehead though. Creepy doctor says people will take her more seriously, which I believe, unless they’re not trying to sleep with her. But he makes some point about heroes not caring what other people think, and suddenly she can’t wait to get some giant cans. And I can’t wait for her.

House is prepping for surgery and in storms Cuddy. She wants answers and she wants them sometime. House gives her some terrible reason for rushing this woman into surgery, and she buys it and says she’ll cancel surgery. As she starts to walk out, House explains himself. He gave a bad answer because she doesn’t want to know. If she knows, she’ll have to explain to the board when it’s called into question. And everything with this patient is pretty unethical, so it’s probably not a good idea for her to know anymore than she needs to. House will take the fall for his actions, if he needs to. So Cuddy accepts, and it’s time to throw some D’s on woman pilot. Oh, and save her life or whatever.

House inserts a camera into woman pilot’s chest and they find whatever’s wrong with her. So House asks the doctors to name what’s wrong with her and they get immunity into the next round. Cute woman doctor is wrong, creepy doctor is wrong; House still needs an answer. As he’s trying to help them, a pretentious accent comes over the intercom. It’s Chase, and he’s observing the surgery. House checks to make sure that other people see Chase as well and it’s not a hallucination, and creepy doctor asks if he’s going to hire that guy instead of them. “Not a chance, I love you guys.” I don’t buy that, but he definitely won’t hire Chase. Oh, and we find out he’s on the surgical staff.

Now House has to call out Wilson for lying to him. House discovers that Cameron has been a senior tending in surgical, and it seems as though Chase followed Cameron back to the surgical staff. Then House asks about Foreman. Bad news though, he actually has been working at New York Mercy for a month. So maybe House was just drunk when he saw Foreman earlier. Or maybe he saw a doctor uglier than Foreman, but through the beer (tequila) goggles it looked like Foreman.

As woman pilot is recovering, Kal tells her that the disease is hereditary and can’t be cured (and that her boobs look bangin! Taj is crazy!), and it could also reemerge at any time, so weird-looking blond doctor thinks woman pilot should come clean to NASA. House comes in and tells them that no one has to tell, and that the NASA doctors know where the hyphen goes in whatever disease she has. The woman can’t believe House called them, and House says he’s not an idiot because those shuttles fly over New Jersey. I know she’s probably upset, but if she just sets lower goals, they’ll be much more attainable.

Could you SuperSize that, hon?

At the end of the day, House has all the doctors in the classroom. He rattles off a number of people who get to count being fired as character-building, and the rest of the doctors have survived another day. Of those who were fired, woman with accent doctor says she did nothing wrong, and House says other people at least took chances, whereas she did not. So off she goes, and House wants to talk to old dude. Again House asks how old he is, and he again says 21. Then House calls him out for not going to med school. That’s ballsy. House is one of the premiere diagnosticians in the world, and this dude thinks he can just walk in and get the job without having done any work? He says he worked at Columbia med school admissions, and he audited every class, most more than once, he just never got a diploma. And he just wanted a shot. He tries to appeal to House’s human side, which we all know is useless, but House has a proposition for him. House will let him be his assistant, i.e. bitch, and in return House will ask him for his opinion. Old dude says that’s not his ideal job, but House says it’s just not his ideal title. So it looks like perhaps old dude will live another day. But do we really think it’s going to matter? He’s going to get tired before the end of the day, and I think he’s just too old to keep up with the kids House will no doubt hire.

Shortly after that, House goes to watch him a sweet piece of Cameron. She is surprised it took him three weeks to figure out she was on staff, but I refuse to see why that’s a big deal. House says she’s an idiot because the job is more than one step down from where she was, but the blond hair makes her look like a hooker, which I think we can all approve of. She asks why House told NASA about his patient, and House says he didn’t. He lied to “stop some leaky faucets.” Cameron doesn’t buy it though; and here we go with the House psychoanalysis: she doesn’t think House could kill the woman’s dream. Bahhhh. Yeah right.

That’s where the episode ended. So does House really have a human side? There were actually multiple signs of him supposedly having feelings this week, but I like to think that he’s about as close to a robot as you can get. What did you think about the episode? Do you like the hiring process? Think it’s going to be too drawn out? Will Cameron and Chase have more significant roles now that House knows they’re around, or is this just closing the book on the mystery of where they went?