Tuesday 1 November 2011

House, M.D. - S8 E4 - Risky Business

House treats a corporate magnate on the verge of moving his company's base of operations from America to China. Park is worried about her forthcoming disciplinary hearing and Adams appears to be holding a secret of some sort.


Spoilers after the jump.

I often accuse How I Met Your Mother and Dexter of having been on the air too long, but this episode really proved to me that this show has overstayed it's welcome, it was really all kinds of awful. The show and all of House's antics were fun when it was all new, but even Foreman knows all his tricks by now. After things got tough for him for a little while with the Cuddy problems, they just fall right into place for him far too easily and conveniently. There's nothing dramatic about the show so far because none of it is surprising and most of it is convoluted.

As a partnership, Park and Adams don't do it for me.  They're hardly Foreman/Taub or Chase/Cameron. No wonder House is so eager to bring back Taub and Chase. I think Adams could mesh well with both, but Park seems like she is from a different show. I'm 97% sure she was spinning a tall tale when claiming her filipina cousin worked in an American factory, at least I hope to God she was, because that would also explain House's fascination with her. She is fairly robotic and deadpan most of the time, but with those elaborate wisecracks and problematic attitude, there's that delicious kernel of himself in there. She's also apparently terrible at lateral thinking, making her easy to prank. I don't think she'd be too good in the clinic. A career in radiology beckons.

Adams presents as a typical deliberately counter-culture yet easily manipulated whackjob liberal that House can easily mold under his thrall. It's something that Foreman picks up on right away and really should do his best to dispel if he is really serious about a career in administration at which he's already off to a bad start with the Park/Andrews brouhaha. While Foreman warns her of the lines she will have to cross for House, I wonder if he knows that bridge has already been crossed. Although... she got fired for him once already. Now that she has a better gig, would she be willing to do it again? What kind of a man was her husband to lead to such repressed rage within her? Was she working in the prison as an escape from him? I do find her a far more interesting character than Park who sets up as a typical westernized Asian-in-name-only.

The story with the patient had a lot of potential but really wasn't well presented. Barton, the CEO seemed to act on pride which upset his daughter to the point where she walked out never to return (at least for now) but none of it was well defined. I still have no idea what was going on there between them. House's bet with Wilson was way too convoluted and tangled to attempt to make sense of. His feud with the orthopedist was simply ridiculous and Adams taking a baseball bat to the office was really unnecessary. A very messy episode that left me with limited hope for the future of the show.


"House" airs Mondays on Fox at 9pm EST.

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