‘House’: The Differential Diagnosis

Each week in Differential Diagnosis, we’ll recap last night’s episode of House the way the good doctor and his team would do it. This time we’re holding the Sharpie.

The Situation:
A young scam artist loses the ability to make decisions, a condition which quickly escalates to brain, lung, and liver shutdowns. Foreman’s parents visit, House obsesses over Wilson and Cuddy dating, Chase continues to pursue Cameron … and the team screws up big-time.

Symptoms:
• Foreman is smug, unsympathetic, and rash (isn’t that House’s job?).
• It’s toxins! No, it’s autoimmune! No, it’s cancer!
• Requisite breaking and entering and nasty bodily fluid eruption.
• Patient is hypersensitive to touch — how will she withstand House’s piercing blue eyes?

Preliminary Diagnosis:
Alexander Graham Bell Disease (a.k.a. phoning it in). Totally standard House fare. It’s like these characters have been watching their own TV program.

Secondary Symptoms:
• Wilson gives a master class in telling someone they’re dying.
• The dangerous, maverick procedure actually backfires for once.
• Foreman gets House to put the patient before the puzzle.

Final Diagnosis:
Paradigmatic Subversion Syndrome. No epiphanies, no last-minute saves, no medical marvels — just compassion, humanity, and atonement. Who are you, and what have you done with our show? —Jordana and Sean Williams