April 10, 2007: Airborne
Tonight House and Cuddy are trapped on an 18-hour flight when a mysterious illness breaks out and passengers start up-chucking their dinner and breaking out in curiously artistic rashes. Even Cuddy succumbs and if her worst fears are correct it's bacterial meningitis and they'll all be dead by the time the plane lands. Thank goodness there's a board certified infectious disease specialist on the plane who can save the day or at least declare that there's nothing really wrong.
And that was my problem with tonight's eagerly anticipated episode. Conversion sickness or mass hysteria as House explained sparked by the onset of the bends from one scuba-diving passenger (who apparently spoke no known language). To sum up: There was no airborne virus as the episode's title would have us believe. No need to turn back as Cuddy would have the pilot do and no real need for House to do anything more than toss off some snarky one-liners. Aside from those, I was wildly disappointed.
Luckily the B-storyline, featuring a great performance from
Jenny O'Hara, helped keep the episode afloat.. Fran is a woman nearly 60 who steps out of her safe life and ends up fearing that her adventures snorting coke off the belly of a homosexual man and having sex with Gordo, a large Mexican man may have ushered her to death's door. We first meet Fran when passes out as she's about to pay for yet another new experience, this time with Robin (
Meta Golding), a call girl. Robin takes her to the hospital and ends up way more involved in Fran's life than she expected. With Wilson at the helm House's team runs through their usual list of possible diagnoses. Chase solves the mystery when he discovers Fran has been accidentally poisoned by fumigation from a neighbor's house with which her home shares piping. Overall it was a rather unexciting diagnosis.
That's not to say that there weren't some good tidbits. The writers crammed many character points in between the big storylines. We learned that House really needs his ducklings. So much so that when stuck at cruising altitude with a medical mystery on his hands he had to assemble a makeshift Chase, Cameron and Foreman from the plane's passengers in order to focus. We also received further confirmation that Cuddy does not handle pressure well as evidenced by her susceptibility to the it's-all-in-your-mind disease on the plane. Back in Princeton, Foreman's constant comments on Cameron and Chase's all frills relationship seems to indicate that he cares a lot more for Cameron than he's been letting on. The normally make-no-waves Chase is bothered by his surface only relationship but when he says that he wants more Cameron leaves him on the spot. Maybe Chase should have waited for House's return to give Cameron some incentive to continue using him. Then there's the lonely Wilson, who after a long day managing the ducklings makes one last call to Robin. Sure, he's just updating her on Fran's condition but let's say we'll probably be seeing more of this Good Samaritan.
Sometimes a change of place is good for a show, but if it is not going to pay off in a great way then I say, we keep
House
in the house.
