Season 3 Premiere of House, as reviewed by a Valley Girl
Saturday, September 9th, 2006This is part one in a theoretically ongoing series in which I post my initial reactions to new House episodes, adopting the persona of a “Valley Girl”… or maybe I’ll branch out later. Like, who knows and stuff?
WARNING: There are, like, totally, like, spoilers ahead and stuff.
I thought that at least the first half of this episode was pretty weak. They were trying to hit a few too many bases at the same time, they had two different cases going on, and I didn’t feel like they went deep enough into any one thing to really get the viewer involved. I felt that they way they dealt with his leg being better was kind of simplistic. In the beginning of the episode he was just “Hi, I’m better, I feel great” and Cuddy and Wilson were all “Are you sure??” and House was like “Yep.” and I felt like that was just it for a while.
Also, an article in TV Guide a few weeks ago said that Cameron would be all freaked out by House being healthy (because she likes him because he’s damaged, and now he’s not damaged, so now he doesn’t need her to be all, well, you know, Cameron with him anymore), and then in the episode House was like “Cameron, you’re all freaked out by me being healthy because you liked me because I was damaged and now I’m not damaged, so Idon’t need you to be all, well, you know, Cameron with me anymore.” And that was the end of that plot development.
I felt like Wilson was being way, waay too psychoanalytical, especially at the beginning of the episode. WTF was up with that “6 stages of happiness” thing that he was droning on about. It was so boring and unnecessary that they even cut out stages 2 through 5. Why even bother? I know they were getting at something, I think Wilson’s point was that House gone beyond the “I need to solve the mystery” stage and now he’s in an “I need to make a difference” thing… but he should have skipped all the psychobabble and just said that.
They totally lost me when they started re-examining every symptom the old guy had ever had. Did I miss something? House’s methodology usually makes more sense than that.
And what was the point of that secondary case with the girl who hurt herself doing yoga and House thought she was faking it until he figured out that she had scurvy (arrrr, matey!), except to give House a couple of opportunities to act like a jerk? They could just as easily have accomplished that with a clinic patient or two.
Also, Did House pull a Cameron when he was talking to the old guy’s wife and he was being all reassuring and optimistic and Cameron was being the realistic one?
Next week’s episode looks like it’s going to be totally awesome, though, with the little boy who thinks he’s being abducted by aliens and he’s got this metal chip in his neck and House says in this really ominous voice, “The lab cannot identify the metal.” and Foreman is like, “Really?!” And House is like, “No, you idiot! It’s titanium!” I hope they do lots more of that. 
