‘House’: He’s back!
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The season premiere of “House” opened big — with a guy talking to his girlfriend on the cellphone just as the building she’s in collapses right before his very eyes. But for some of us, the opening credits were a much bigger source of tension. So it is with great pleasure that I can report that while last season ended with Drs. Foreman (Omar Epps), Cameron (Jennifer Morrison) and Chase (Jesse Spencer) being fired, there they are cycling through the opening credits and scuttling along House’s peripheral vision like so many ghosts of cases past.
House (Hugh Laurie, in case you have forgotten, which really isn’t possible since he has been on the cover of every magazine in America lately), meanwhile, is determined that he will not hire another team. He won’t, He Won’t, HE WON’T, not if he has to hold his breath ’til he turns blue or use a passing janitor as a sounding board. Wilson (Robert Sean Leonard) reacts the way he always does, by fondly psychoanalyzing House. (Really, either Wilson is in the wrong profession or he’s in lurve — and wouldn’t that be a great very special episode?) He diagnoses abandonment issues — House cared about his people, they left, so House will never put himself in that position again. Sniff.
Wilson also kidnaps House’s guitar, the ransom being that House start looking for a team. Cuddy, also in a desperate attempt to prove that he needs a team, issues a memo instructing hospital personnel not to enable House by offering their opinions on the case, never mind that a woman’s life hangs in the balance.
When you look at it that way, it seems kind of silly, but it’s not, it’s terrific because it’s “House” and we missed it terribly. The woman in question is, of course, Megan, the gal from the exploding building. Her boyfriend, Ben, heroically rescued her, only on top of a million broken bones, lacerations and general battering, she has a strange fever. Enter House.
Moving sans team through the show’s template of home invasions, MRIs, false diagnoses and moral dilemmas, House improvises, using the above-mentioned janitor and pretty much anyone else who will listen. The result? He is able to identify each and every tree but completely misses the forest. Discovering that, utterly unbeknownst to the devoted Ben, Megan is an alcoholic on antidepressants who recently had an abortion, House merely considers his world view — everyone lies but the body can’t — confirmed. Until it is revealed that the broken woman on the bed is not Megan but her co-worker. Megan, in fact, survived the accident but died hours earlier.
Cameron, Cuddy tells House later, would have figured it out in a trice.
Beyond the silliness of whether House should get a team, the episode is haunting in its exploration of identity — the body will reveal all the secrets that we keep — and the nature of love. Would you rather find out your loved one lied to you and lived or that they were true and died?
Frankly, it doesn’t matter whether House has a team or not. He’s got the cane, he’s got the Vicodin, he’s got the irony of deep inner pain. He’s good to go.
--Mary McNamara
