Wednesday, February 8, 2012

House: Nobody Meant for Chase to Get Hurt

by Amy K. Bredemeyer

Let's start out with pointing out that House has been canceled. The releases are all over the internet. The final episode will air on May 21st, and eight of the remaining eleven episodes will air over back-to-back Mondays starting April 2nd. Now, I've been having trouble with this show all season... it's just been going downhill. So, I wasn't too upset about the cancellation - after all, eight years is a respectable life for a series! But I am a bit sad that the announcement came after such an interesting episode. It wasn't as amazing as I had hoped (there was quite the buzz on twitter about it being a remarkable episode), but it was still fairly intriguing and rather amusing. I mean, it's the classic flashback episode, and they had plenty of good transition techniques and different characters' points of view woven into the story. Plus, it proved once again how how well-read Dr. House is, which is a fact that I love and believe makes his character a little more respectable. I mean, if he just came up with all of his crazy ideas with nothing to base them on, that's much more insane that claiming that he read animal trials or journals published in foreign languages and whatnot! I'm not thrilled that Chase is going to have a rough time for while, and I still can't wrap my mind around the idea that the guys spend time together outside of work, but the show was trying something... guess it just wasn't enough. 

House "Nobody's Fault" (S08E11): Patient is a 32-year-old high school chemistry teacher. His limbs become paralyzed and he goes into a coma. After several hours, he awakens, and we learn that there was an explosion in his chemistry class that was student-induced. [I can't believe that little punk would do something to endanger his teacher just in hopes of making a video go viral!] The patient coughs up blood because his lungs were burned in the explosion. Healing the lungs is a difficult process, but House has an experimental idea. Park is concerned, so she takes it to Foreman, who lets house go through with the plan. But, just before treatment, they bathe the patient and discover that he has a rash. The patient then has a psychotic episode of sorts. The team regroups, but Chase takes it upon himself to do a biopsy of the rash, with Adams present. The patient freaks out again and stabs Chase with a scalpel, nicking the heart. Because of the incident, the patient is transferred to another hospital, though House tells the patient's wife what his suspicions are - a tumor in the lymph nodes. [don't doctors check lymph nodes all the time? wouldn't they feel a tumor?]

Meanwhile, Taub performs surgery on Chase with Adams and Park assisting. [really? we could get someone with expertise in cardiac surgery? at a large teaching hospital like this? instead we have a plastic surgeon operate?] When Chase awakens, he can't feel his legs, but some feeling and movement returns after a while. It seems that there was a blood clot and now there's nerve damage which will force Chase into painful physical therapy. 

Now, the bulk of that information was told through flashback, since three days after it happened, House is in a disciplinary hearing over what happened to Chase. [interesting that they decided to stick with the real dates and act like the hearing really was on February 6th.] The hearing officer (a former mentor of Foreman's) wants to hear more from House than what is in the file. He's also concerned about House being on Vicodin, that House doesn't take medical histories himself, and that House used a stink bomb to force the team to come up with ideas under pressure. [between the clever way that House put hair dye in Adams' shampoo bottle to color Chase's hair and the stink bomb that House intercepted and used to his advantage, the practical jokes were pretty good this episode, especially for Wilson not being involved. The pill bottle opening with confetti was only slightly funny, tho.] In order to piece everything together, Adams, Taub, and Park also all give statements, plus he goes to the hospital to ask Chase a few questions (like why did you choose to disobey House, knowing that you endangered yourself and Adams?). The judge-of-sorts decides that House's past behavior really has created an environment where it's okay to be reckless, and that's a problem. Then we find out that Foreman likely asked him to take this case so that it would be brushed under the rug, since Foreman was banking on the fact that the guy wouldn't want to see Foreman be ousted from his position as Dean of Medicine. [yet another example of Foreman's conniving ways!] Well, House has his trademark medical epiphany during the final round of questioning and rushes out to warn the patient's wife. The next day,
Cr: Adam Taylor/FOX
House is joined by the others (seen to the right) and is told that he's brilliant and a fiasco. Just before the hearing officer launches into a long and involved speech (it seems he has about twenty pages of notes ready), the patient's wife shows up, saying that the final diagnosis was correct, thus saving her husband's life. It is determined that the fault is given to no one, so House is absolved... but House realizes that he was thisclose to being sent back to prison, so while it's a good thing that she showed up to give a final plea of sorts, his days really are numbered. [I'm curious as to whether we'll learn more about the intended proceedings in the future...]
Share to Facebook Share to Twitter Email This Pin This

No comments: