About Last Night: House Mid-Season Checkup

In Monday's House, a drill sergeant gets stricken with an unknown affliction, House trains Cuddy's daughter, and Chase tries to track down an identity thief, with hijinks aplenty!  Read on for Butler's thoughts!

I have a tumultuous relationship with House.  Try as I might to simply throw up my hands and declare myself done with this show, I simply can't do it.  It might have something to do with the fact that absolutely nothing is on on Monday nights, but hey, what are ya gonna do?  Let's talk turkey.

This episode opened with a drill instructor mysteriously collapsing (shocker) and being rushed in to House's team's care.  They do the usual futzing around, attempting to figure out what's wrong with him when lo and behold, a delinquent from the reform camp that our instructor works at comes in with the exact same symptoms. The team almost kills the patients the requisite 3-4 times, there was a shocking twist when it turned out the white drill instructor is the black delinquent's father, and they all lived happily ever after.  This is a formula that viewers of the show may note to be a teensy bit similar to perhaps every episode of the show ever, but I have given up on the medical plots.  I am convinced they exist because otherwise they wouldn't have 42 minutes of content and for no other reason.

This episode also marks the 5th to feature Amber Tamblyn as Martha Masters, House's replacement for Olivia Wilde and her glorious ass.  And maybe it's simply a fondness for the glorious ass that she's replacing, but I am really not sold on Masters as a character.  Every interaction she has with House is a squabble over people's inherent goodness, and honestly, I feel like we already had that with Cameron.  For three straight seasons.  I shouldn't be surprised that the writers are falling back in to comfortable formulas, I was just hoping their new character would bring something... new to the table.

Though I suppose with time, I could get

...accustomed to Ms. Tamblyn as well.

I think the biggest draw with House of late has been the plots that had nothing to do with medicine.  Wilson and House's odd couple style arrangement was pretty amusing for a stretch, and its nice to see the writers handling House and Cuddy's relationship tastefully, with each of them accepting the other's flaws, making compromises, and not succumbing to juvenile Ross-and-Rachel-style sitcom nonsense.  The best plot line of the night was House attempting to train and condition Cuddy's daughter to get her in to a snobby private preschool because he's worried that she'll fail and Cuddy would be upset.  I guess the bottom line here is that House is more of a fun character when he isn't completely infallible like he is with every single person in the hospital, and scenes where he interacts with Cuddy and her daughter are where he seems the most dynamic in that sense.  All in all though, even I am surprised at how much I've been enjoying the House/Cuddy entanglement.  This episode also featured a pretty amusing plot line involving Chase's unnamed social network profile getting hacked with nude pictures posted of him, and he has to track down the culprit, who he thinks is one of three women he slept with in the same night.  Nothing deep, but I don't think Chase is a character kept around for his depth, and it was still pretty funny to watch unfold.

And really, anything is better than the endless 

parade of Taub's bullshit we WERE getting

All in all, House has succeeded in accomplishing the bare minimum and keeping my opinion of it safe and neutral.  A decent episode of a show that's better than hitting yourself in the head for an hour.