January 30, 2007: One Day, One Room
I tried. I really did try to like this episode. Having narrowly escaped jail time due to Cuddy's perjured testimony, House is on clinic duty big time. He, of course, hates it. After a parade of uninteresting patients, most of which fear they have an STD but don't, House finds himself in close quarters with Eve (Katheryn Winnick), a chlamydia-ridden, pregnant rape victim. Feeling out of his league (and bored by this straightforward case), House tries to remove himself from the situation, but Eve won't let him go. And thus begins our quest to see House find a heart. Others may find it touching. I find it to be trite.
Eve wants to talk. About anything - the weather, maybe. House wants to disappear, as much from clinic duty as from this patient. Hiding out at the jogging park, a place Cuddy would never think to look, or even in an exam room with a paid-off patient, House avoids connecting with Eve - for to connect with Eve is to find oneself.
Gah! I'm not much for cloying melodrama, of which this was textbook. Of course, Eve breaks through the tough exterior and gets just enough truth from the grizzled doc to move on from her own trauma.
But wait, there's more. Cameron's patient (played by Geoffrey Lewis), a homeless man with an inoperable cancerous mass in his lung, wants to be allowed to die as penance for the bad things he has done in his life. But really, he's just hoping someone will remember him. He found the right doctor in Cameron, who sat by his side and watched with puppy-dog eyes as he breathed his last breath. Then,
sans gloves, she bathed his lifeless body in preparation for the afterworld. I can see the heartstrings, but I have no desire to tug at them.
As I said, I tried to enjoy the episode and the show did throw me a few bones. There was the patient (played by Roger Ainslie) whose nose suffered from athlete's foot. There was House trying to pass off his Vicodin as a breath mint. There was Cuddy trying to be tough with her "I kept you out of jail, I can put you back" threat that didn't have quite the effect she anticipated. There was the fact that Tritter was gone. So, yeah, there were some good points. See? I really did try.
