House's Head Trip Is Must-See
House is never better than when it breaks formula- which the show does brilliantly this week, in the first of a two-part season finale that may blow your mind as you go inside Dr. Gregory House's (a tour-de-force performance by Hugh Laurie). For an entire hour of surreal entertainment, House himself is at the core of the medical mystery: concussed in the wake of a bus accident, plagued with retrograde amnesia, and desperate to piece together his memory of what happened on the bus and during the four hours he can't remember. "Someone is going to die," he insists, if he doesn't.
Visions, seizures, hallucinations (many in eerie black and white), and of course the random naughty fantasy (involving Cuddy, naturally, in a schoolgirl costume) all play into this dazzling episode, as House self-medicates even more than usual as he sets his crew, old and new, on a search for answers. "What's going on in there?" Wilson wonders, and so will you.
This hasn't been my favorite season of
House- still having trouble adjusting to this new team that marginalized so many of the original core cast- but I've loved the episodes that went beyond the norm, most notably the post-Super Bowl episode featuring Mira Sorvino as a South Pole scientist House diagnoses (and is drawn to) from afar. "House's Head" (originally conceived for the Super Bowl weekend, but shelved because of the strike) is even better, with sequences as mystifying as they can be hilarious, including amusing but appropriate references to
Altered States- which Thirteen is too young to remember- and, in one barroom flashback, House griping, "God, I hate Beer brand beer," tweaking a classic generic TV staple.
It builds to a spectacular finish that recreates the crash and presents a stunning revelation and cliffhanger that will make all
House fans madly impatient for next week's episode. If you have yet to rediscover
House on its new night (in an insanely crowded time period), now's the time.
