It’s Cuddy, mainly. I know the premise is that House is this brilliant misanthrope and all, but Cuddy is basically just kind of a jerk to him, and last night she was absolutely horrible.
Cuddy let him go for so long because they thought he was demonstrating “drug seeking behavior.”
And yeah, it’s mostly her. Wilson can be halfway decent but I thought he was an ass in this episode, scheming with Cuddy to keep House away.
It was the two of them in cahoots.
It’s kind of shaky pool to try and manipulate him into doing stuff, but he’s proven repeatedly in the past that that’s the only way you can ever get him to do anything anyway.
Sure. “I only told you I wanted you to come because I wanted to make extra sure that you wouldn’t come, because I hate you that much” is over that line, though.
I was surprised they (the writers) didn’t figure out a way to get Chase more involved in the episode, considering that his character attended seminary and left when he had a ‘crisis of faith’.
Agreed. Cuddy was really mean this week.
Wait, what? I must have missed an episode that featured the attorney, his former flame, because I don’t remember anything about her or Cuddy being involved in House’s condition other than the fact that they knew him at the time of his motorcycle accident.
I think you might need to re-watch Three Stories. The leg injury was the result of a blocked artery that led to death of a large amount of muscle tissue due to an initial misdiagnosis. I want to say that it was Cuddy that missed the real problem in the first place, and she eventually did suggest amputation, which House declined, but he was convinced to enter a medically-induced coma to get through the worst of the pain from the surgical procedure to re-open the artery. As soon as he was down, his girlfriend, who held his power of attorney in that situation, approved sending him to surgery to have the dead muscle mass removed without fully amputating the leg, which is what left him in his current limping-plus-pain state.
So, yeah, I guess that Cuddy participated, but I got the impression she was always in favor of just cutting the damn thing off and being done with it.
Still one of my favorite episodes. They really did a great job on that one.
Yep. I rewatched that one last week. It is the awesome.
Cuddy was the one that initially brought up the idea of removing the dead muscle, if I recall correctly. Stacey made it clear to Cuddy before they put him in the coma that she had the medical PoA and she’d call the shots as soon as he was out - and it was pretty clear she was going to go with Cuddy’s idea. So he has very good reason to be pissed at both of them.
She was absolutely complicit, and she did what she always does, which is second guess him and try to undermine him. As a result he ended up with the worst of both worlds.
Yeah Three Stories won a bunch of awards, one of the best episodes in the whole series, if not the best. Correct me if I’m wrong, but if House was willing to have his leg amputated couldn’t he have that done now to stop the pain? Seems to me the guy was in a no-win situation (leg cut off or hideous debilitating pain for the rest of his life, yeah he’s in pain now but not as much as he was then), and was stubbornly gunning for the worse of the two choices. The fact that he still has the leg even though it causes him so much pain seems to indicate they made the right choice and he just doesn’t want to admit it.
Well, the two binary options were remove the leg (medically the safer bet for his health and possibly a better chance at avoiding some pain, though there’s junk on that I’ll address in a minute) and leave the leg intact and let the body try and “deal with” the dead tissue on the leg. House wanted to keep his leg because it was HIS LEG, but there would be incredible blinding hideous pain after the artery was re-opened, so he was put in a coma, after which is girlfriend went for the compromise procedure, which removed the potentially killacious dead leg material, which left him with a limp.
The pain is another issue - there’s some doubt in the show that House is even IN actual pain, as indicated by the episode where Cuddy gave him a placebo shot in the spine and he got better. The viewer is meant to be unsure as to whether House is in actual significant pain or if he’s just addicted to his painkillers. So the leg may not actually be causing him pain, or if it is, it’s not as big as he’s behaving. The compromise procedure should have left him with pain from muscle atrophy and other medical stuff I don’t understand (I get my medical mubmo jumbo from Polite Dissent, and he hasn’t gone into any depth on those issues), but the risk with leaving the dead matter on was infection and death - not chronic pain. You don’t want dead matter hanging around in your body. It tends to rot and breed stuff.
That makes sense, thanks for the explanation Brian.
Last night I was watching a USA repeat of the episode where the kid takes the gout medication which he was accidentally given in place of cough medicine. There’s a great sequence there where House has his revelation about almost taking the wrong medication, followed by a montage of him sitting staying off into space as he tries putting the pieces together, followed by a night of research, before coming up with the correct answer. It made me wish we saw more of that from House these days.
Damn, I can’t believe I somehow missed this “Three Stories” episode the first season! I even remember the plotline with his ex, but not that particular episode. Of all the episodes to miss…
Thanks for filling in the blanks guys.
Loved the latest episode, it’s probably the best of the season so far. It didn’t follow the House formula 100%, and House got a ‘Peek-A-Boo’ of humanity that he desperately needed.
It probably would have played better as a 3 ep or so story arch, but the show needed a quick 360 to stay interesting. It probably helped that I understood the story ( my mother has RSD and is on Methadone too. Methadone does help in chronic pain, but it does make you…er… less intelligent).
Agreed croman. On both fronts. Great episode, AND it would have been better as a 3 ep arch, damn it. How come we have all these stupid story archs every season that no one likes, and all the best ideas like this one (House’s pain goes away while he’s taking methadone but he’s not as sharp as he used to be) get resolved in only one episode? Damn it, I wanted pain-free-but-less-sharp-House for at least another couple of episodes!
That was a great impression of Foreman on the happiest and saddest days of his life.
I agree, great episode. I laughed out loud more often in this episode than I have in the previous three or four combined. The kid with the broken finger was hilarious. I also agree it would have been fantastic as a multi-episode arc. Guess we go back to asshat House next week.