This has been an uncharacteristically uneven season of House. there were episodes of pure brilliance like last weeks, and still other’s that felt stale and repetitive. The formula that has driven the show has become so expected that sometimes it isn’t really important to know much about the illnesses at all. Its Dr House himself (and to a lesser extent the crew) who make the show worth watching. This season-ending episode was proof positive of that. Last week, House kicked his drug habit, stopped hallucinating and finally slept with Cuddy. It was a pretty big week. This week, we’re left to deal with the aftermath.

The patient this week is a man whose left a right brain functions are deviating. So much so that his left arm (operated by the left brain) slaps his girlfriend around while the other hand caresses her. Though it is pretty funny seeing the patient dealing with a sort of tourette’s syndrome for the hand, in reality its a bad metaphor for the conflict that House lives every day.

In typical fashion, he starts by pranking Cuddy and she responds in kind. As their back and forth marches on with eye rolling predictability, the patient and his separated brain illness gets worse. The high point of their pranks is the addition of an elderly patient who the two use as a pawn. The elderly patient is played by TV legend Carl Reiner. There’s no need to go into Mr Reiner’s biography here, but for those who don’t know who he is should check his IMDB profile.

Another left over from last week is the conflict between Chase, Cameron and Cameron’s dead husband’s sperm. Cameron wants to keep it “in case” things don’t work out with Chase. Chase eventually decides that regardless of how strange it may be for his wife to keep her sperm-cicle, its something he can live with. This whole plot just makes no sense to me. Maybe I just don’t get the symbolism of the frozen man mayo, but it feels like a completely unneeded addition.

House and Wilson talk and inexplicably, Wilson suggests that House ramp up the crazy.  Taking his advice to heart, House stands on the balcony of the hospital and makes the grand announcement that he and Cuddy have slept together. Obviously furious, Cuddy fires him while House suggests they move in together. Then seemingly at random, House is approached by the elderly patient. Talking to the patient about his problem somehow triggers his epiphany.

It isn’t pretty.  All the good feelings, all of House’s memories about kicking his drug habit and sleeping with Cuddy where hallucinations. She was never there. He never quit popping pills. It was all in his head. Now, as House realizes how crazy he really is, CTB and Kutner reappear. Now rudderless and terrified, House admits that he needs help. We’re supposed to believe that House spent all day thinking that his bottle of pills was Cuddy’s discarded lipstick. Its a bit more far fetched than usual, but it is a show stopper.

As the season ends, happy scenes of Chase and Cameron being married are intercut with grim shots of Wilson driving House to a dark and creepy psychiatric hospital. There aren’t any answers delivered here, only a cut to black. The patient is simply left without a proper resolution. Sure there is a quick few lines from Taub about their misdiagnosis, but generally this proves my earlier point. The illnesses and the diagnosis of those illnesses is just window dressing.

All season I clamored for change in a show that I love, but found stagnant. In the last several episodes, Kutner has died and House has gone crazy. In taking these risks, House has cracked open a whole new book on how these characters can interact with each other. Who knows how evil a jerk a completely sober Gregory House could be?

House is building toward a climax like many other shows this time of year. Its been a surprisingly rocky season for House. I spent much of the season longing for a shake up, but when one finally came (in the form of Kutner’s suicide), I wished it hadn’t. Network executives always say critics are fickle, I suppose they’re right.

Newlyweds Chase and Cameron are discussing the idea of a prenup. Not a normal prenup though. Cameron kept the frozen sperm of her deceased husband. She tells Chase that she wants to keep it just in case things don’t work out with Chase. Odd to be sure, and I don’t really think this was a good time to add another layer to the episode. It just felt tacked on and out of place. The real meat of the episode, was house and his hallucinations.

With the CTB still trapped in his head, House tries to take some time off but is drug in to deal with a new patient. This week’s insane patient is a ballet dancer. As usual, the cause seems unknowable. Unable to trust his own judgement, House turns to Wilson for help overseeing all of his diagnostic work as well as helping him treat his hallucinations. Even so, he can’t bring himself to tell Wilson that its his dead love Amber who is stuck in his head.

This particular patient has perhaps on of the single grossest symptoms ever. Her skin is coming off. Yikes. House thinks the skin disintegration was his fault and feels guilty about it. House takes this as a symptom of his own sickness (which on second thought is hilarious) and worries about possibly having MS. In an attempt to reconcile that emotion he goes to the patient and apologizes. All the while, the CTB is acting as his subconscious mocking him from inside.

While trying to talk out the diagnosis and his hallucination with Wilson, House lets slip who the real identity of his invisible friend is. Wilson takes it surprisingly well but also decides that House has to detox. Regardless of what the cause is, House’s future as a doctor hangs in the balance.

Because of the icky skin situation, House and the crew elect to stop the patient’s heart in order to get an MRI. Its risky and crazy dangerous, but they can’t figure another way. At the same time, House becomes desperate and tells Wilson he’s going to put himself into insulin shock thinking this will exorcise the CTB demon in his head. Its an excellent back and forth scene with the crew trying to save the patient, while House fades into shock. Its very well done and quite gripping.

House wakes up without his hallucination. Sure that he’s cured, he returns to the patient.  Foreman saw a shadow behind her heart during the MRI andbelieves there was something there. House comes to the psychotic epiphany that her boyfriend gave her gonorrhea and that it has somehow made it to her heart. Huh?

With House now celebrating his victory, Foreman calls and throws a monkey wrench into the whole thing. House guessed right, but it was a lucky guess not an informed one. As this dawns on him, the CTB returns. House immediately calls Wilson and sets out to check himself into rehab. At that moment, Foreman calls to tell him that the patient is spiraling down. Thought the diagnosis may be right, they can’t stabilize her enough to operate. House however is off the case now. The crew is on their own. Eventually they do figure a way, but the drug they give her gives her gangrene in her feet and hands. It requires amputation but as a dancer she’d rather die. Spurned on by Taub, they crew tries an long shot treatment that pays off, curing her black extremities.

House goes to Cuddy to quit his job. In doing so he makes an emotional plea for her help. House begins to withdraw from the Vicodine with Cuddy acting as his nurse. He tells Cuddy where his stashes of drugs are, confounding his hallucination. CTB and House go back and forth arguing over Cuddy and his addiction. Clearly his hallucinations are standing in as a symbol for his addiction. The scene is excellent, cathartic and raw.

As the morning comes, House and Cuddy talk about their past. Suddenly, House realizes CTB is gone. As she’s about to leave, Cuddy and House embrace and we get the moment we’ve been waiting for. The two begin to tear each other’s clothes off and the show cuts to black.

The reappearance of the CTB has been fantastic. Acting as House’s subconscious she added a whole other layer of subtext. It remains to be seen if House’s new found cleanliness will last, or if the romance with Cuddy will see the light of day next episode. Regardless, this episode was rock solid television. The fundamentals of House are strong once again.

Now a few weeks removed from the Kutner suicide, House feels rudderless. Its surprising to see how big an impact Kutner had on the show. Very rarely did a show hinge on Kutner’s personal life, but there’s no doubt now that he was a serious anchor on the show. House as a character has always been about bouncing between the profane and the ridiculous, the serious and the silly. Kutner was a big help in establishing the warmth and humor that House possesses. Much of this episode was meant to be playful, but it couldn’t quiet make it work.

As usual, the tension doesn’t come from the patient but from the group. Most importantly, from House’s new imaginary friend Amber. Fans will remember Amber as both Wilson’s dead love interest and as House’s foil “the cut-throat bitch” or CTB. House plays off the return of CTB as a hallucination brought on by lack of sleep and pills. Regardless of the reason, CTB is ever present in this episode. She questions, complains and even leads House astray a few times while dealing with his patient.

Speaking of the patient, a young deaf high school wrestler suddenly hears the sound of explosions. Deaf since birth, the young man has no idea what is happening to him. Brought in for treatment, House realizes that the kid’s handicap could be overcome with an implant. Though House is annoyed by the kids frustrating attachment to his deafness, he’s distracted. Not only by his new hallucination, but also by Chase’s bachelor party.

Chase and Cameron are getting married and in true House form, he takes the reins of Chase’s bachelor party. House apparently really knows how to throw a party and proceeds to get every stripper and hooker in New Jersey to attend. This is the before-mentioned playful portion on the show. While it was certainly fun to watch Wilson and House try to remember all the strippers from Wilson’s bachelor party, mostly the playful side felt hollow. Maybe its just me, but I kept wanting to see Kutner with a dumb expression of excitement while getting out lap dances.

In typical fashion the patient’s illness is obtuse and masked by a billion other options. The one different aspect of the patient is his deafness and his desire to remain so. Having never been able to hear, the young man clings to the proud identity he has created. House finds this decision to remain handicapped insane and decides (with the assistance of the ghostly CTB) to install a implant allowing the boy to hear without his parent’s permission.The plan seems to backfire when the patient tears them out. Ouch. In the end, after hearing his mother speak his name for the first time, he decides to keep his implants, but not before he is near death twice and misdiagnosed five or six times. Again, pretty standard.

The real star of the episode was CTB. Prowling around House, telling him he’s crazy and watching House try to rationalize her away all made for some fun TV. Good news as well, she’ll be back next week. House’s plan to stay up for several days to attempt to exhaust the hallucination away turned up empty, and thus she’ll be back next week. Still, I couldn’t help but miss Kutner during the bachelor party scenes.

After the stunning loss of Kutner last week, I expected House to take a week and regroup before throwing the character’s back onscreen without the loved anchor of the show. Instead, they pumped Dr Cameron and Chase back into the story making Cameron the de facto replacement this episode.

Cameron brings in a crazy environmentalist with various conflicting ailments. Everything from toxic inhalants to cancer is considered. He even has a scene where he is in so much pain that his screams peel the paint from the walls. I’m surprised we don’t see that more often on this show.

The whole case is a cover for Cameron though. She discovered that Chase was about to propose and though she doesn’t want to reject him, she doesn’t want to accept either.  She claims to worry that Chase is doing it as a misplaced reaction to Kutner’s suicide. She dodges Chase all episode and when he finally confronts her over it, she forced to admit she isn’t ready. Chase ends their relationship on the spot.

House’s reaction to Kutner’s death is to question his deductive abilities. Wilson new eating habits baffle him, he’s unable to see the real reason Cameron is hiding out with him and he can’t seem to get a hold on the patient’s illness. House finds that Wilson has been toying with him this whole time, and as usual the clouds break and the sunshine of diagnosis shines though. A spore infection from evil store-bought roses are to blame for his illness and the obnoxious environmentalist is vindicated and healed.

Cameron returns to Chase, the two reconcile and are now engaged. The show ends with a montage of happy shots of the couple their announcement. Even House looks happy eating french fries in slow motion. As it ends though, we get a big surprise. Amber, who died in House’s arms in season four, is back. This time as a hallucination. I’m not sure if this is their way of replacing Kutner in the cast since it was made clear that Cameron isn’t coming back. It could be a very provocative storytelling device is ghost-Amber is used properly.

If this wasn’t the week after the landmark suicide episode, I would’ve like it a lot. It was as if House was trying to cram happy and restorative moments into a show that should’ve been more introspective. Though the patient’s involvement was particularly shallow, I liked the banter with Wilson and the Chase Cameron conflict seemed believable enough. Overall though, it felt like a wasted opportunity to really see the actor’s portray themselves as grieving friends.

I’ve been clamoring for House to change its direction all season. My dissent has been fairly quiet over the last few weeks as House reminded me that good writing and acting can make a repetitive formula into something worth watching.  This week that was made even more clear.

Kal Penn, who plays Dr. Kutner has taken a job in the Obama White House. That’s not a joke or a typo, he’s joining the Obama administration in the office of public liaison. Thus a speedy exit needed to be made for the loved Dr Kutner. House chose to something messy and unexpected. Dr Kutner commits suicide in the first ten minutes.

At the same time a dieing man (played by Meatloaf *sigh*) and his suddenly dieing wife are admitted. When her condition worsens, his improves. Rather than work on his grief, Taub decides to throw his entire energy into the patient. House, clearly rattled, decides to treat Kutner’s suicide just like he would any other mysterious case. He flails, looking for reasons for the suicide, even going so far as to insinuate that it was a murder. Each of the cast deals with it in their own way.

During all the pain and psychobabble being thrown around, a couple is slowly dieing. The husband has been resigned to his fate for some time. In his last days, it appears as though he regrets all the times he ignored his dutiful wife in their marriage. Her illness is killing her liver and she’ll need a new one to survive. The husband volunteers to donate his liver to save her even though it will certainly kill him. It makes sense until its discovered that the husband isn’t actually terminal. He has a curable illness, but sadly, the wife’s condition is too far gone.

Its never made clear why Kutner kills himself and that’s a powerful message in itself. Suicide is often unclear and it makes sense to throw Kutner’s suicide up as a reminder of the fragility of the psyche. It was terribly sad to see him go, but it could be a catalyst for real change. How the show handles the ripples of the suicide could remake it and remind us why we fell in love to begin with.

House decided to go all “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” on us this week. Rapper/ actor Mos Def guest stars as man who is thought to be brain dead, but due to the good fortune of being in bed next to House in the hospital (House was in a motorcycle accident) his misdiagnosis is turned over to the team.

After determining that his fully paralyzed state wasn’t caused by his accident, the team flails around trying to figure a diagnosis. As usual, the path to treatment is full of twists and turns, false positives and dashed hopes. Eventually, it looks like the patient has had   a complex infection which killed his liver and caused his locked in syndrome. After treatment, he begins to come out of his state and the happy ending is achieved.

While all this is going on with the patient, Taub has a crisis about what he really wants to do and its revealed that House is in therapy. Though there are some interesting details in the revelation that House is in therapy, it generally it feels like another dead end. Taub’s midlife crisis felt propped up as well, though judging from the preview of next week’s episode it could be made much more important.

Much of the episode is shot from the patient’s perspective. Its a gimmick but it works. Mos Def does a fine job of conveying the desperation of the patient trapped inside his own body. The perspective shots are interesting without overwhelming the rest of the story. It really did go a long way in setting the mood.

Despite matching the standard line for the show, this was an excellent episode of House. Fine acting from the guest star and a truly compelling illness made for an episode that showed that House still has a lot of vinegar inside its beaten up premise.

As I’ve mentioned before, Gregory House is perhaps the highest profile atheist in American television. The writers at house love to throw that around. They find it hilarious to put House into situation in which he’s maddened by other’s superstition and faith. On one hand, its interesting to see an atheist articulate his viewpoints. On the other, its generally insulting to both Atheists and the faithful alike. This episode had both of those problems in spades.

A nurse working at an convalescence home comes into the hospital with a set of mix matched symptoms and a cat who can predict the deaths of her elderly patients. House is clearly not impressed by the Cat’s cognitive powers and becomes obsessed with proving the nurse wrong.

Taub is in an extra surly mood and buts heads with House repeatedly. He’s lost a bundle in the falling markets and he misses his status as rich plastic surgeon. Spurred on by a chance meeting with an old high school classmate, Taub begins to reconsider his life.

House is so desperate to prove the cat’s ineffectiveness that he turns the entire hospital inside out. Running useless test on corpses and demanding pointless tests paint him (and by extension atheists in general) as desperate to explain the unexplainable, just to throw it in the faces of the believers. Its shallow. Religious faith (or a lack of it) is an inheirently nuanced part of life, the writer’s attempts to boil it down to a mean and vicious doctor trying to disprove a cat’s ability to predict death should be considered insulting to believers and nonbelievers alike.

Taub decides to leave the hospital and go to work for his new buddy the high school classmate. The classmate claims to be a CEO working in medical technology. Taub is wooed back by promises of wealth and power again. Luckily for him just as he’s about to hand away his future and his cash, the “old friend” is exposed as a con man.

After finally discovering the source of the cat’s magical powers (namely, it likes to sleep on warm stuff) House averts an unneeded surgery to the superstitious nurse. IN a final face to face, House tries to convince her that she’s wasting her life looking for answers from the unseen. Not surprisingly, her answer is simple, you either believe or you don’t. That’s about it. That’s really all there is to it. Despite all the grinding self serving dialogue with Wilson and the useless tests and pranks, nothing really happens. That’s the problem with the obsession between House and and his religious or superstitious patients, the conflict cannot be resolved.

Hoping for some change on House might be a sign of insanity. House teased me last week by suggesting that House might be able to change his ways with the addition of Methadone. I thought the idea, though flawed, showed lots of potential and it got me really excited about possible changes to the core of the show. It was all passing fancy though as by the end, we were left with pretty much the same old show. This week’s episodes makes no such pretensions. Although its in absolute lockstep with the show’s formula, its still funny, harsh and satisfying.

A patient comes to the crew with an illness that oddly makes him act like a huge jerk. He tells Taub he has a giant nose, he tells every woman around him that he’d like to sleep with them and he’s cruel to his own family. Sometimes funny but often painful, the illness is a complete mystery as usual.

House finds Wilson’s lack of enthusiasm about going to a monster truck rally suspicious and begins snooping. After some sad sad subterfuge involving Taub and a Racquetball, House discovers Wilson’s secret. Wilson has found his long lost mentally ill brother. After Dr House drags the truth out of Wilson, the two share a close friendly moment. House obviously cares about Wilson even with his constant pestering and posing.

The patient who acts like House decides to undergo brain surgery in order to get rid of his sickening attitude. He is willing to risk death rather than drive away the people he loves with his angry sarcastic new attitude. Not surprisingly (mostly because the show still had 15 minutes left) the operation fails and Mr. Grumpypants is left with a big hole in his head and his crappy personality. Right on cue, House has his breakthrough. Some small cyst is the unlikely candidate for the illness and it isn’t long before the patient is back to his home and loving family.

Thankfully, House makes some nearly human moves in this episode. He allows a patient to make a call based strictly on his quality of life rather than the life itself. He also steadfastly stands by Wilson in a moment of need. Despite all the trappings of the character, Laurie continues to shine. He’s been boxed in as an actor to this role in which he can do little but be an ass but when given the opportunity he can expressed with fleeting glances and half intended faces. When given the room, Laurie is simply a good actor.

I’ve been clamoring for some action from House for a few weeks now. The formula is tried and true, but is also becoming more stale as the episodes roll on. I had high hopes for the relationship between Foreman and Thirteen, but that just turned into a game of hide and seek with House. I had similarly high hopes for the relationship between Cuddy and House, but that too has stalled. This week though an even deeper relationship was held up for examination. The love affair between House, his drugs and his pain.

A thirteen year old boy passes out at his basketball game. He is no ordinary child. Due to a birth defect, parents had to decide if the baby would be a boy or a girl. They’ve agonized over the decision for years and have kept it from their child.

House takes on the child’s case with surprising ease and positivity. He’s acting like a normal human being rather than the obnoxious ass we’ve come to love. He even humors the patient’s parents by allowing an MRI that he knows is unneeded. The strange behavior culminates when House passes out in his office and stops breathing. Using the classic “purple-nurple” resuscitation technique, Foreman revives House who claims that he just took too much Vicadin. Unconvinced, Cuddy and Wilson believe that heroin is the reason for all this. After prodding, Wilson discovers that it isn’t heroin but methadone, heroin’s no-fun cousin. Apparently, Methadone has finally freed House from his pain even allowing him to walk without the cane. Cuddy isn’t going to stand for him to be on methadone for fear that he’ll kill himself, and he quits the hospital.

Now without even the upbeat and positive House, the crew’s diagnosis of the worsening patient is flailing. His parents are intent that their son not find out about his medical issue. After discovering what she thinks is a suicidal poem by the boy, Thirteen spills the beans starting a huge uproar with the kid and the parents. Regardless of the emotional damage, the boy’s symptoms swing wildly and the crew seem unable to get a handle on it. Finally out of options, they decide that his condition is terminal.

After his first full shave in five seasons, House sets out to find a new job. Cuddy can’t let him leave and decides to have House back as long as she is able to administer his Methadone. He accepts and for just a moment, we get the feeling that we could see a whole new Dr. House.

The idea of watching House wrestle with his insane personality minus the crutch of drug use and constant pain is tantalizing and could have been invigorating for the series. Sadly, the producers of House didn’t agree.

After being caught up on the patient’s progress by the team, House has the epiphany. The child has little more than significant dehydration. Because of the parents insistence on an MRI, and House’s  nice guy attitude in allowing it caused the child’s simple condition to continually worsen. Happily, the boy’s illness will be solved by just a few dialysis treatments. House realizes that the new happy House also had a hand in the child’s sickness. Despite all the positives that could come from staying on methadone, House decides to return to the cane and his misery.
I feel a lost opportunity here. There’s no doubt in my mind that a newer, happier House would not play well with his core audience. It might have been able to send the show into a new direction. A real several episode arc of House trying to find a balance between his drug use and humanity could’ve propelled the general story arc for a good while. It could have been compelling. This episode sure was.

In my view, House has been in a bit of a slump. I expected it to come bursting out last week as several character driven plots where being forced into the open. Sadly,last episode was better than some this season but was still a disappointment. It remains to be seen how long the House formula can stand up. Without something important happening, viewers are having a hard time to find a reason to tune in. Hugh Laurie can carry a scene, but the writers simply have to make waves or his talents may be wasted.

A drunk possible pedophile priest is brought to the hospital after having a hallucination of Christ on his church’s steps. His illness is chalked up to his drinking and is set to get released, but House needs a phony case and picks him up. He needs the case to give him time to sort out his problem with Thirteen and Foreman. He gives the new couple a choice, end your relationship or end your employment. Assuming he’s playing a game, Thirteen and Foreman refuse and House fires Foreman. Its hard to swallow as permanent, but at least there is an attempt at development.

The priest is no simple case. When the crew is just about to release him, his toe falls off.  Later he has what looks to be a heart attack, and his right eye goes blind. All the while the young priest, whose life and faith was wrecked with an accusation of pedophilia, sounds more like House than a man of the cloth. The crew begins to settle on a diagnosis of AIDS, but the priest refuses an HIV test. Taub understandably has little sympathy for the accused priest and seeks the victim out to warn him of possible infection.

After being fired Foreman visits Cuddy asking for a letter of recommendation. Because of Forman’s problems she refuses, essentially preventing him from finding another job at all. Thirteen suggests that she sacrifice herself, giving Foreman his old job back in exchange for hers. Somehow the whole thing backfires and Thirteen and Foreman are at each other’s throats, much to House’s delight.

After the priest exhibits yet another symptom. They decide it may not be AIDS at all. In a moment full of revelations, the accuser who Taub sought out comes to the hospital asking the ill priest for forgiveness. The priest is innocent. House then has his epiphany as well. After eliminating the hallucination of Jesus as a symptom, House finds that the priest has a genetic disease which suppresses the immune system. As the priest and House discuss the ramifications of the day’s events, it gives the producers a chance to harass TV’s most famous atheist for his beliefs.

In the final sequence we see Thirteen and Foreman back at home, snuggled up as before and celebrating their victory over House. They’ve convinced everyone that they’ve broken up, allowing them to both keep their jobs.

Once again the plot this week seemed full of potential, but its just inconceivable that Forman could actually leave the show. Because of that, it was just too hard to swallow and buy into. Also, I continually find the attempts to give Dr House religion phony and lame. Would writers feel this comfortable questioning any other belief system this way? Can you imagine a moment in which a Hindu Doctor’s faith was shaken by the power of a Christ hallucination on TV? It would never happen. It would be considered offensive. House has the only recognizable atheist on television. He stands mostly alone as a mainstream character who does not believe in God. Yet the writers continue to find crippled children and jaded priests to test House’s belief over and over again. Its as if he simply MUST believe a little bit, just to keep the audience feeling good about him. Honestly, any other faith or belief system would find this insulting, and more importantly its really beginning to get boring.