'House' recap: It would never work out

Music nerds have a saying about songs: “Don’t bore us, get to the chorus.” I personally am not a fan of noodling — endless, meandering guitar-noise explorations. And some of these House episodes feel like filler. Like this one. So it took an entire episode to get House back to Cuddy’s door before he walked away to the sounds of Big Star’s “I’m In Love a Girl” (nice music choice here, though). The stunted rapport between House and Cuddy would not have been so awful to witness — real life is often equally slow — if the patient plotline had been more engaging.

So we had an agoraphobic hermit who claimed that he is happy by himself in his house because thanks to the Internet he can have all his food and entertainment needs met. Nobody believes the lonesome guy’s claim of okay-ness, and his plight echoes House’s state as an emotional shut-in. There was lots of activity in hallways these past weeks. House didn’t get past Cuddy’s foyer during their makeout session, and Cameron and her cohorts did a lot of medical work in the patient’s entranceway.

We learned that last night’s patient, who became truly closed off after he and his girlfriend were shot (she was killed, he was wounded), has been afraid of people and the outdoors his whole life. And yet, we never get into the real origin of his dilemma. We don’t get past his biographical front door either. Instead we are left with an incredible plot in which Cameron and company sneak medical equipment into the guy’s house so Chase can fake doing bowel surgery to fix the patient’s constipation.

I would love to try some of these medical adventures (sans illness, natch) and ask my doctor to bring his office to my apartment. How did they move all that stuff? Ambulance? The trunk of Taub’s Beemer? Did Kutner rent a U-Haul? And if a hospital tongue depressor can cost $10, what was the bill for lugging surgical gear? While I am talking unrealities, I must confess to coveting House’s office furniture. He has Noguchi lamps and the Eames lounge chair and ottoman, which had to have set Princeton Plainsboro Teaching Hospital back $3,600. Every time I saw House snoozing away on his plush white corduroy recliner, I thought, “This tedious episode maks me want to take a nap in an expensive room, too!” But alas, I persevered on my cheapee Crate & Barrel love seat.

NEXT: Extreme blockage

Meanwhile, Cameron is back, sort of. House kept saying she was trying to get her old job back, which would be great. Chase was also front and center in this episode. The dynamic duo, with a laid-back Foreman chiming in, still remain the most engaging doctors on Team House. House gleefully noted the specialness of having members of his old team together by chirping “The Formster and the Camster, kicking it old school.” I too would clap and jump up and down to have our original trio back, focusing on solving medical mysteries by deductive reasoning and searching people’s home for toxins. I would also love to have Chase pop by and capture my dust bunnies.

But they’d be welcome back mostly because Cameron gets House. During the differential, she answered House’s impudent queries about her love life, explaining to her dumbfounded newbie cohorts, “It moves things along much faster just to give him the answers.” But Thirteen didn’t seem to be buying it.

The episode did not move along at a nice pace. The doctoring shenanigans felt samey and rote. Even the diagnosis didn’t astound — the phobic shut-in is obstructed because he was poisoned by bullet fragments that were missed when he was originally shot. The patient was constipated and so was this episode. Yes, so is House, emotionally, we get it. Now if only someone would cut his psyche open and get his poisons out — yes, another metaphor. House spent the entire show bugged by a mosquito and kept scratching at the itch, even surgically excising the poison. Hopefully House will be the physician who can heal himself and hear the words he told Cameron about the patient: “He’s also a coward. You want to change your life, do something, but don’t believe your own rationalizations.”

Maybe House, like this ep’s patient, will get past the doorway once he gets the lead out. What did you guys think? Did you really think House would knock on Cuddy’s door? Could Wilson have been covering up the truth when he agreed that he asked Cuddy out to make House jealous?