When a man (Wentworth Miller) collapses after making a generous donation, House and Dr. Chi Park try to identify his medical disorder; Thirteen's pursuit of happiness is hampered by feelings of guilt.
8-3: "Charity Case" 2011.10.17
#1
Posted Oct 16, 2011 @ 2:53 PM
#2
Posted Oct 17, 2011 @ 9:11 PM
Wentworth Miller was good, but I would've expected House to get his infusion of cash if only for the show's "status quo" to get more re-established.
It really does feel like the show is "back" to it's -I'm going with- season Four and back days.
#3
Posted Oct 17, 2011 @ 9:39 PM
#4
Posted Oct 17, 2011 @ 9:42 PM
I was thrilled with the return of a scene with a clinic patient, and it was just as amusing as it used to be. Felt a little like the old days.
#5
Posted Oct 17, 2011 @ 9:54 PM
#6
Posted Oct 17, 2011 @ 10:17 PM
#7
Posted Oct 17, 2011 @ 10:57 PM
Was she the doctor from the prison in the premiere? I only saw the promo for that.
Yes.
Edited by tacitus, Oct 17, 2011 @ 11:08 PM.
#8
Posted Oct 17, 2011 @ 11:37 PM
#9
Posted Oct 17, 2011 @ 11:44 PM
There's a fundamental difference between the process that went into creating Cameron, Chase and Foreman versus the process that went into creating Thirteen, Taub and Kutner. Cameron, Chase and Foreman were designed to help us get inside House. They each represented a different way of dealing with him. Their back stories could be summed up in a phrase: martyr/widow; get-along-go-along; chip-on-shoulder.
By contrast Thirteen, Taub and Kutner were part of an elimination contest. They were designed let House get inside them. They have much more fleshed out personal back stories, and the show explores their personal lives in way that -- with the exception of Kutner's suicide -- don't have an direct tie to House's psyche at all. Basically none of Thirteen nor Taub's side stories ever had any relevance to anything else. They still provided opportunies for the show to pay with psychology and human nature, but it came from a place external to House's own experience.
Dr. Park and Dr. Adams get back to the original model: characters designed to get us inside House. Neither are what you would call normal, and each embodies aspects of House's own characteristics.
Dr. Park captures the anti-social side of House. She cares about solving the case, she cares absolutely squat about the patients, and her cynicism with regards to the remainder of the human race borders on grim. She's fiercely self-reliant, and looks at any attempts to get close to her with suspicion. She recognizes House's mind games but is not interested in them, viewing them as irrelevancies. Her arrogance is a shield.
For a while, the episode seemed to be making Dr. Adams out to be Cameron 2.0, even though her prison scenes would have seemed to discount that. But then she's revealed to be the other side of House, the more self-destructive side of House that loves the mind games and seems to look at the whole rest of the world as if it were inside a petri-dish. Unlike Dr. Park, she's not really outcome-oriented. She didn't throw away her career to save the inmate's life; she did it because she couldn't leave things no knowing if House's theory was right or wrong. Just about everything comes in secondary to her curiosity.
Like the original team, their back stories can be summed up in a phrase: overachiever with parent issues; bored trust fund baby. Their back stories aren't important. They're engaging characters because their conception allows them to reflect aspects of House in new and interesting ways.
I can't wait to see how Taub and Chase react to the two newbies that have come into the picture more like House in different ways than they ever were.
#10
Posted Oct 18, 2011 @ 12:50 AM
And it shows. Their "date" in "The Choice". All of "The Dig"*. All those moments in "Changes". Hell, with what other character has House actually offered to share his food? And part of it is because House actually realises Thirteen has it even worse than House does. After all, she's beautiful, brilliant, and from a fairly stable upbringing, but God still decided to take an enormous dump on her life. House figures that if she can be happy, with all that is wrong with her, so can he (and this is something he tries to effect in "Changes", before he goes off the deep end).
I'm going to miss Thirteen. She's arguably the most enjoyable (and best written) recurring female character on House to date. (Although when your only competition there is annoying, judgmental, hypocritical Cameron and her moral code, you don't exactly have much competition.) And her relationship with House was incredibly enjoyable due to the fact that it was a) completely platonic, as opposed to Cameron or *shudder* Cuddy, b) on a fairly equal footing, in that the mental boxing match that is House's interactions with anybody, she manages to land more punches than most, and c) hadn't resulted in her fading into the background, ie Chase. Poor Chase. Late Season 5 was all Foreman (NOT Thirteen, since she served pretty much as a plot device during the drug trial arc), his Season 6 arc with Dibala ended with him divorced from a woman who never really loved him and drifting from bar girl to bar girl, and... what exactly did he do in Season 7?
Okay. And the flames are coming... now.
Of the New Girls, I've felt largely underwhelmed. Park has potential but right now is just a one trick pony. Adams is just... boring. It's almost as if they're trying to recreate House and Thirteen's familiar friendship, only without the, you know, shared life experiences. And her hair is distractingly shiny and made up. Adams probably spends a fortune in posh hair product each month. God knows she can afford it.
*Speaking of "The Dig", Best. Cold open. Ever. Period. From an artistic standpoint at least. Sure, OW's hair was far too well styled for being right out of prison, but daaamn, that was pretty. And almost made me forget about the utter shit that was Huddy. Jesus, whoever thought that was a good idea?
Edited by Maca254, Oct 18, 2011 @ 12:53 AM.
#11
Posted Oct 18, 2011 @ 2:53 AM
Edited by QueenofCups, Oct 18, 2011 @ 3:02 AM.
#12
Posted Oct 18, 2011 @ 2:53 AM
Edited by QueenofCups, Oct 18, 2011 @ 3:01 AM.
#13
Posted Oct 18, 2011 @ 2:54 AM
Dr. Adams seems to have had an intelligence upgrade since she appeared in the premiere, but the actress who plays her doesn't have any spark. She's very bland indeed. So far, IMO, she's panning out as about as interesting to watch as Thirteen, and that isn't good. Seeing them together, it seemed clear that the writers were replacing one young, long haired leggy brunette with another. Interchangeable Emmas.
I liked Dr. Park and her refusal to be beholden to little miss rich doctor. She's shaping up to be an interesting addition to the team and I like her comic touch. Seeing her makes me a little more resigned to the eventual return of loathesome lothario Taub, since I'm wondering whether Christine Yi and Peter Jacobsen might be a good comic pairing - the way that he and Kal Penn were.
I would also have liked to see a bit more emotional distance between House and Wilson. I think it would be more interesting for me if Wilson were still wary of House - if he wanted to be able to forgive him whole-heartedly and unreservedly but couldn't. Forgiving someone who has wronged you isn't easy, and there would be more dramatic interest if Wilson had to struggle a bit to get past his fear, anger and disapproval. It just seems to me to be resolved much too easily when there could be a bigger dramatic payoff.
For me, House/Wilson is the emotional centre of the show, and the writers refusal to explore the changing dynamics of their relationship for more than one episode is kind of frustrating. After three years of Huddy, I don't think it's unreasonable to demand more than fifteen minutes to devote to House's friendship with Wilson.
On a totally superficial note, House seemed to have very prominent nicotine yellow circles under his eyes. I'm wondering whether they were making him look haggard to show how much prison has aged him, whether they have bad makeup artists, or whether the colour on my screen was just off.
Edited because of my continuing problem with homonyms.
Edited by QueenofCups, Oct 18, 2011 @ 2:58 AM.
#14
Posted Oct 18, 2011 @ 6:41 AM
I liked Thirteen in this episode, and we have House here doing something nice for someone... has he changed? Maybe a little bit. I also liked that Foreman suspected he gave the guy with Plummer's disease something so the kidney removal operation wouldn't happen. And House admitted to his crew that this was true. That was cute.
So way better than last week IMO.
Oh, it was House's car that was being fixed? I missed that entirely.
Thought it was Dr. Park's.
#15
Posted Oct 18, 2011 @ 7:25 AM
#16
Posted Oct 18, 2011 @ 7:54 AM
Dr. Park is interesting to me -- a very different sort of character than we've seen before. She has trouble accepting charity, which I can understand, given her upbringing, so her interaction with a trust fund baby like Adams underscored the whole theme of the episode (about a very wealthy man giving away everything, and whether that's healthy or normal). I thought it was cute that House scammed Adams into paying to repair his car (when she thought it was part of her testing of Park), but I find it hard to believe that his old clunker was reparable for under $5,000 after crashing into Cuddy's house. And wouldn't the cops have just hauled it away when House left, leaving it to rust further in an impound area for a year? But I guess after not working all that time, he probably can't afford a new car, and now he'll get a repaired one back for free. He hasn't lost his moxie, that's for sure.
#17
Posted Oct 18, 2011 @ 8:15 AM
As for the new doctors, I like Park, she definitely not Masters. She's not social but she's not awkward about it she doesn't care if other people like her. She may say something about House breaking the rules but she'll go along with it if it solves the case. The other new girl is boring, it's either her personality or the actress I can't tell which yet.
#18
Posted Oct 18, 2011 @ 8:51 AM
#19
Posted Oct 18, 2011 @ 8:54 AM
House and Park conspired to get Park's car fixed.
No, I don't think so. At the end Park came to House's office and told him their plan had worked and Adams had paid to fix House's car. Park didn't want Adams paying to fix her car, which is why House offered her a ride.
#20
Posted Oct 18, 2011 @ 9:26 AM
#21
Posted Oct 18, 2011 @ 9:34 AM
Was never a big Thirteen fan, but my opinion of her (and OW's acting) had improved in the last year or so. I thought she had a nice sendoff. I like Dr. Park reasonably well, but not an Adams fan so far--just another in a long line of similar types on this show.
#22
Posted Oct 18, 2011 @ 9:58 AM
#23
Posted Oct 18, 2011 @ 11:17 AM
I like OW but I'm one of the few viewers who preferred Cameron to Thirteen mainly because I didn't hate what others seemed to hate about Cameron. Now what I am not looking foward to see is how the newbies and Taub/Chase get along - including a Chase/Adams hookup that I can see miles away - the problem is we will be stuck with those guys' back-stories, which are kind of stale at this point. Good episode, with a vibe similar to early House, so I'm in for now.
#24
Posted Oct 18, 2011 @ 12:58 PM
#25
Posted Oct 18, 2011 @ 1:06 PM
Good episode, with a vibe similar to early House, so I'm in for now.
I agree-I loved the vibe. Much lighter feel than the last few seasons and he seemed to take everything much less seriously. I enjoy Taub and Chase as characters, but I am not sure I really want them back since they will bring up a lot of old baggage in their relationship with House and will not let him run quite as roughshod over them. They know what to expect right off the bat and it was more fun watching these newbies experience him for the first time.
I think having Foreman in the Cuddy role is great-he knows what House's skills will allow him to do and knows what his lack of ...... morals, protocol, concern for the law etc.. will lead to and I loved how he knew that House gave the patient something to screw up the surgery.
So, I'm confused-whose car got fixed with the $4,000? I thought it was Park's car since we knew it was in the shop and that House had showed Park how to get the upper hand, but others seem to feel it was House's car. I guess I'll need to rewatch tonite.
#26
Posted Oct 18, 2011 @ 1:32 PM
I won't be missing Thirteen though. While I didn't think that her acting skills were as bad as some fans thought they were, I didn't think that she really contributed much to the show either. I think this was the only episode where I really felt for her.
#27
Posted Oct 18, 2011 @ 1:36 PM
Is it just me or were Taub and Chase no longer in the opening credits? Does that mean they are off the show?
I think they're reintroducing the names to the credits as they reintroduce the characters -- e.g. Epps and Leonard weren't listed in the prison episode credits, just in the second episode when their characters returned. I'm sure in the episodes where Taub and Chase come back, Spencer and Jacobson will be back in the credits.
#28
Posted Oct 18, 2011 @ 1:45 PM
Edited by sordidheart88, Oct 18, 2011 @ 1:46 PM.
#29
Posted Oct 18, 2011 @ 2:06 PM
I am surprised though that 13/Chase never happened. It felt like that's where they were headed.
Even if that was where they were headed (and I felt that, too), all plans may have had to be abandoned in the face of OW's movie career.
#30
Posted Oct 18, 2011 @ 3:10 PM
I kinda wish I had had the chance to witness Thirteen's reaction, as a woman, to House's crime. All I can imagine is her telling him, "You're an idiot." (But it is known she didn't greet him with a martini.)









