Thursday, November 09, 2006

Stiff arm -- Episode 306, "Que Sera Sera"

Clinic patient:
Guy whose arm hurts only after sleeping on it

Connection:
Ok, so House is an ass. We get that. It's part of his charm. But sometimes we have to be reminded that there are people who deserve to be on the receiving end. To use House's beloved phrase, the patient is an idiot. So much so that House has to state the obvious: Don't sleep on your arm. But when the patient scoffs, what else is there to offer but a cure that matches the ridiculousness of the complaint? Lop the arm off. Problem solved.

Maybe somewhere along the line the patient will get the point. But as it is, he storms out of the clinic and right past Tritter (David Morse) -- and here, my friends, is the connection. Not with the main patient, the A story, but with the former clinic patient out for revenge, the recurring B story. Tritter sees the irate clinic patient, sees House emerge, whistling, moments later, and then immediately sees a connection to the way he was treated. "I see spending a night in jail hasn't humbled you a bit," he says.

Tritter, of course, doesn't see as much as we do. We understand the assiness, we embrace the assiness. This episode's clinic patient is so simple that even we laymans know there's no other explanation for sleeping-induced arm pain. There's no danger in House's flippancy. But what about Tritter's complaint, when he was in the clinic? What do we know about "crotch rot"? It can be any number of things. So just as there are some patients who clearly deserve to be on the receiving end of House's barbs, Tritter is showing us that there are some patients who don't.

Etc.
I have to throw in a little Cameron moment, partly because it relates and partly because I have no idea what she's up to. In the scene before the clinic, Cameron is scoping out the main patient's apartment with the neighbor and is reminded of House, "someone who is unkind." After the neighbor gets done talking about the prostitutes, she says: "There can't be too many women who'd want to be with a guy like that." Focus on Cameron thinking in a double-meaning kind of way about House. And cut to the clinic, where House is being unkind. Someone's beating us over the head with relationship innuendos, but Cameron's demeanor and actions in the rest of the episode make me a little suspicious that something else is brewing. What's going on?!

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