|
| |
“House” Season 5, Episode 22 Perplexes but Is Rich
17-May-2009
Written by: Megan Tinsley
Dr. Gregory House’s team is determined to get to the heart of their deaf patient’s problem, while he’s busy entertaining his hallucination.
Before every episode, and before each cast member's name comes into view on screen, there's an introduction scene. House, Season 5, Episode 22, titled "House Divided," is no different. It opens with a deaf male competing in a wrestling championship, while a crowd, of about 500, cheers and applauds. He signs to a girl who's also deaf, before the game. She tells him he looks like superman. He tells her he's nervous. She says don't worry about it. And after five minutes into their conversation, the referee calls him in, so the
game could start. He tells her he has to go. She wishes him good luck. The referee blows the whistle. Shortly after attempting to pin his opponent, he hears imaginary explosions. Suddenly, he hollers out in the middle of
wrestling. Dressed in red and black wrestling gear, he rolls on the mat due to discomfort. Bystanders rush to his aid.
This would be the brink of a team of doctors, including a schizophrenic insomniac, incorrectly diagnosing their patient's condition. And frequently
at that.
Dr. Gregory House (Hugh Laurie), who has only half a muscle in his right leg, hasn't slept in weeks. And, boy did it show. The physician's figment of his imagination, according to him, has contributed to his lack of rest. A provocative seductress in which she terms his "hallucination," House's
conscience appears in the image of Dr. Amber Volakis, Wilson's dead girlfriend. House is the type of person with a chip on his shoulder; egotistical and hesitant to listen to his team's suggestions and recommendations. The only thing on which Drs. Eric Foreman (Omar Epps), Hadley (Olivia Wilde), and Chris Taub (Peter Jacobson) concur about their patient, who went deaf at age four due to complications of meningitis, is that he has exploding head syndrome, in which a person experiences tremendously loud noises.
All the while, House's conscience pops up empirically to manipulate his way of thinking, as he tries to figure out the core of the kid's problem.
Towards the end, he finds out, however, that his problem-solving mind does more damage than good. After a number of exhausting T scans, brain biopsies, MRIs, a look at the fourth ventricle and increasing ICP in his head, House and his team come up clueless. So a day's worth of treatment for the deaf teen ends up becoming more than an overnighter. X-rays are taken. Then, the
boy's head is surgically exposed for Dr. Robert Chase (Jesse Spencer) to get a closer look.
House, whose only concern is throwing an upcoming bachelor party, brainstorms and converses with his colleagues very briefly. The
scraggily-bearded and droopy-eyed House leaves Foreman, Hadley and Taub often wondering, but not for long. For the 45 minutes the episode is
running, House, who was initially put in charge of the case by the big cheese, Dr. Lisa Cuddy (Lisa Edelstein), was incredulous in believing that
Foreman was capable of handling such a complex issue.
But, without the anti-social, pain killer addict (Laurie), Drs. Foreman, Hadley and Taub ultimately solved their patient's illness after a number of
misdiagnoses including NF-2 and Uthoff's phenomenon.
A drawn-out-anxiously-anticipating-scene-after-scene episode. For medical terminology lovers, this will be a pleaser. Important: Up the volume and be
prepared to smile at House's witty humor and scratch your head at medicinal jargon. It is available for viewing at Hulu.com.
Talk to other readers about this story on our Facebook page.
|
|
|
|
|
