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House: Guardian Angels

House Episode 4-04C : Guardian Angels

Airdate Oct 23, 2007

This is a capsule review : it will be supplemented soon by a full review.

The Hook:

A young girl is chatting with a client as she cuts his hair. The client doesn't chat back. As the camera draws back, we see why : erk : he's a corpse! And she works in a mortuary! (Is this the Halloween show? It's early.) The girl goes to get a cup of coffee, only to be confronted by a young man who grabs her and begins to cut her blouse of with a pair of scissors. She struggles and calls for the mortician. Her struggles become frantic when she sees the wound on her assailant's head : he's one of the bodies in the mortuary! Her hair customer has also risen and advances on her. She screams. The mortician rushes into the room, finding no animated corpses, but the young girl is collapsed and convulsing on the floor.


Act 1

The proto-Hice relax in the lecture hall waiting for an assignment from House, amusing themselves in various ways. A phone rings, and Young Guy doctor answers it to find House on the line. He puts House on the speaker, and House tells the assembled that the new patient is a 24 year old woman who says she was assaulted by dead people in a mortuary. Plastic Surgeon Guy immediately suggests that the strong chemicals used in embalming may have something to do with the hallucinations. House mocks him for not figuring that House would already have eliminated that possibility with the ER crew who treated her.

House and Cameron discuss the case. Cameron urges House to cut BL (the young black Mormon House refers to as Big Love) some slack and not push so hard. The discussion ends up in a $100 bet that BL will pop House in the snoot, or the equivalent. House says it's a sucker bet, the guy is too much of a wuss.

CB (Cutthroat Bitch) and Plastic Surgeon Guy set the young woman up for an MRI. We learn her name is Irene. Her mother is standing by offering her comfort and reassurance as the tests begin. CB and PSG discuss whether they can really stand to work for House, whether they should get out now before House fires them, and which would look better on a resume : quitting or getting fired. PSG concludes firing would look better.

Foreman is interviewing for a new job. His interviewer already knows the details of Foreman's firing, and congratulates Foreman for not sharing House's work ethic, but when he hears Foreman is still adamant that he did the right thing in irradiating his cancer patient, contrary to Boston Mercy policy, concludes that Foreman didn't leave House soon enough, and terminates the interview.

House questions the team over the phone in the lecture hall. They've ruled out embalming fluid as a cause. Someone suggests "mad cow". But the patient is a vegetarian and eats only organic food. Still, House thinks is a ‘cool' possibility, and so orders the team to do a brain biopsy : not on the 28 year old patient, but on the 48 year old corpse which is two-days buried. They all resist, but BL is the only one allowed off graves detail : he's a single dad who has to get back to his child.

CB approaches Cuddy volunteering for extra clinic duty, but Cuddy, although not knowing and not wanting to know what House is planning, tells her to cooperate with House if she wants the job. So hi-ho, hi-ho, it's off to the grave we go : 3 hours late in CB's case, but she brings coffee and doughnuts for the team (who are not impressed).

Cuddy finds House in the cafeteria to ask why the doctor's lounge is full of dirt and pickaxes, and more importantly, to get it cleaned up. Cuddy also wants to know how many went along with the grave robbing. Six, House tells her, but even the odd man out wasn't standing on principle - just had a diaper to change. "You know," House muses, "I think there are no bad choices in this group."

The next day, the candidates pore over various tests in the lab, as House enters and hands PSG a mop to go clean up the doctors' lounge. YG reports the sample came back negative for Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease. Damn, another cool possibility discarded. House presses them to continue. BL, CB and 13 interview the patient, who protests she feels fine now. He mother urges her to cooperate. As their dialogue continues the doctors notice Irene is talking to someone not in the room. When they ask her about it, she explains it's her mother. Wide eyes abound. New symptom : hallucinations!


Act 2

Back in the lecture room, House chides the team for missing that the patient was still hallucinating. We learn Irene's mother died twenty years ago in the Ukraine. House orders tests for every possible genetic condition.

CB and 13 interview the patient, but when the ask about her mother's death, she protest that her mother is not dead, she's "sitting right there". CB take a tough love approach to the questioning but 13 wants her to back off, prompting more psychoanalysis (of 13) by CB. Irene talks to her mother some more, protesting that she'd been warned by "the guy in the wheel chair" about how the doctors wasted time on irrelevancies (that would be Stark, last week's patient.) She knows about the dog, too.

Cuddy and Foreman have lunch in a restaurant picked by Cuddy to be far enough away to have no possibility of House dropping in. She offers Foreman a job, and sweetens the deal by offering to cut everyone else's salary 15% (including House?) and give it to him so he'll be the highest paid. She thinks he's the only one that could control House. (As if.) But Foreman has no desire to work under, with, or over (or any other relational preposition you can think of) House, ever again, and turns her down.

House is in his office playing Operation (but prominently retitled "Surgeon" for what I presume are product placement reasons), and the team comes in to report Irene is now channeling previous patients. 13 says "She probably just heard someone talking about it..." and House jumps on that "probably", wondering if she thinks there's some possibility that she really is seeing Stark. House uses the situation as another opportunity to bait BL on being a black Mormon. OG come up with the novel solution of asking the mother what she died of. House likes that idea and leads the team from the room.

House introduces himself to the patient and asks to talk to her mom. There's another old man in the room (to Irene) who she says looks like House. She says his name is Walter. House says that's his grandpa.

House barges in on Wilson, slouches on Wilson's couch, and says he's hanging low for a while to convince the patient that he's spooked by her seeing his "Grandpa Walt", and figures he can convince her he believes her hallucination and get her to talk to him about her mother's cause of death.

It works. He asks her if her mother was sick when she was little, and we ‘see' the patient's interior dialogue as she questions her mother and elicits symptoms of falling down, walking stooped over, shivering hands.

House prescribes L-dopa and Bromocriptine : he suspects Parkinson's disease

Cameron ‘encounters' BL in the hall, sympathizes with him about House's bullying, and tries to stack the deck in her own favor by telling him to ‘push back' and confront House : if he wants the job.

Dr. Foreign Guy and 13 are attempting to put a tube in Irene's arm for the medications, but she struggles against them seeing (in her mind) 13 repeatedly and sadistically punching holes in her arm as FG holds her down. Then 13 wakes her up, and Irene accuses 13 of stabbing her. 13 assures her it was all a dream, but when 13 pulls back the sheet, Irene's arm is covered with bleeding puncture wounds.


Act 3

Back to the lecture room and House is asking for theories. PSG and OG argue whether vasculitis could explain the symptoms, PSG claiming the hallucinations are an electrical issue, not vascular. Unless it's optical vasculitis, OG responds. Restricting blood flow to the optic system could produce visual phenomena. The clincher is that treating vasculitis is less risky than PSG's favored acute porphyria, so House says start the treatment for vasculitis, while testing for both : point OG. House can't resist a parting shot at BL.

Cameron finds House in the cafeteria and asks for a potential-violence progress report. House sticks her with the check, telling her to "Take it out of the hundred you're going to owe me."

Foreman interviews with another hospital. The interviewer is complimentary of House, and comments on Foreman's short stint at Mercy. He admires Foreman's defying the authorities at Mercy, but doesn't think he can get Foreman's hiring past his hospital's board. Another turn-down.

13 and CB are using a machine to examine Irene's eyes, and explaining how misfiring optical nerves could be causing the mother she sees and hears right beside them. They discover the dog's collar from last week sitting in the room, and 13 is a little freaked. Irene says the machine isn't working. Mom tells her the doctors know what they're doing. Irene want to know "If they know what they're doing, how'd they kill that poor man's dog." Now Irene is hysterical and spitting up blood.

BL and Chase operate on Irene for the internal bleeding. BL used the friendly around-the-critical-patient doctor chat to pump Chase for ideas for dealing with House. Chase tells him to watch what he says because House is watching : really, not metaphorically. House, from the balcony intercom, chides them for yakking when they should be stopping the bleeding. The bleeding is coming from the liver : which BL says us necrotic. "She's dying from the inside out" Chase says.


Act 4

More conferencing around the White Board o' Symptoms. OG and PSG feud over the diagnosis. House compliments them for the passion he says is generated by their hate for each other. "I hate 13!" CB pipes up like the goody two-shoes everybody hates in fourth grade, but it gains her no points with House : not passionate enough. House agrees enough with OG to order a vascular angiogram, which pushes PSG over the edge and he accuses House of feeding non-doctor OG the answers just to embarrass them. House says no, if he wanted to embarrass them, he'd have them, say, mop out the doctors' lounge.

As mom wrings her hands nearby, BL starts the angiogram. As he does so, he leans over Irene and prays for her healing and her salvation. At first we thought she was unconscious, but her hand feels for BL's crotch. He jerks back in surprise and she screams "No, give it to me : I want to touch it." Then goes into hysterics when restrained.

All the candidate Hice file into House's office. "Convulsing, salivating, and delirious : we had to knock her out with diazepam" YG announces. Definitely not vascular, then House concludes, and proceeds to mock BL a little more "Questions is, what would Joseph Smith do?" (BTW House, Mormons don't worship Joseph Smith.) BL reasonably requests that they try to treat the patient today and then House can mock him tomorrow. (Oh, if reasonable requests to postpone mockery worked, how much simpler my high school career would have been.) But House, like all bullies, won't be postponed, and continues pushing about the inconsistencies between science and religious faith, as if no one with the one could be the other. He accuses religion of stoning people who accidentally ingested the wrong mushrooms. Finally he pushes a little too far "Either prescribe for me an exorcism (wrong faith, House) or admit that Smith was a horny fraud." KAPOW! BL wins the bet for Cameron, with a good one to House's kisser. In the embarrassed silence that follows - House reeling, BL mentally updating his resume : suddenly CB pipes up "I know what she has!". People, she says, were stoned for strange behavior after ingesting all manner of things : including moldy bread!" It's ergot poisoning from the organic rye she eats. As further evidence she points out Irene has cravings for milk, which ameliorates the symptoms of ergot poisoning : an evolutionarily evolved response, not a conscious one. BL wants to know if he should be packing. House asks him it he's OK with an answer based on evolution. "Yeah," he replies. "Hypocrite," House responds.

CB and 13 explain the diagnosis and the treatment to Irene as her mother holds her hand on the other side of the bed. It explains everything, the hallucinations, the seizures, the necrosis. Irene glances at her mom, realizing sadly that being cured includes being cured of mom. Momma takes off her cross and places it around Irene's neck, where we see it is the cross Irene is already wearing, and the two merge. Rain streaks the windows of the room as they exchange tender farewells and momma fades away.

It's back to the lecture room, as House enters carrying a bouquet of flowers. "As you know, there are seven of you and only... six roses," House says, discarding the extra six. "Those are peonies," FG interjects, drawing a stern look from House. Not the time to be picking nits, I'd think. "But I'm sure they're part of the rose family", FG nervously adds. "Actually, I'm surprised there are seven of you," House says, looking at BL, "You punch your boss and stick around?" "Give me the flower and shut up", BL responds, and House does. House tells them that according to his totally arbitrary schedule one of them has to go. He's looking at CB and she begins to sputter defenses, but he silences the sputtering by handing her a rose. 13 figures this means she's gone, but gets a flower as well. YG and FG are sweating down at the other end of row, but he quickly hands both of them a flower. Now there's one left, between OG and PSG. PSG, grimaces, sensing what he thinks is coming, but House says "Sorry, Henry", to OG and passes the flower to PSG. Henry understands - House didn't need someone who thinks just like him.

Cameron meets House in the hall and says "Cash will be fine."

Foreman meets with Cuddy as darkness falls. He says he's thought it over and will come back for the raise she promised plus five percent, his own office, and a personal assistant. Cuddy acts like a real boss, for once, and tells him he gets nada, zip, bupkis. In fact, if he wants to come back, it's at his original salary : she knows he's been black-balled and is desperate. Now you're "House Lite", she says, and the only administrator that will touch you is the one who hired "House Classic". Foreman sucks in his pride and says he can start Monday.


- Cecil

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Next week:

Cuddy announces hiring Foreman. The question seems to be "Who humiliates who, faster." Meanwhile a patient has a disease that makes him mimic others (Little brother's disease?) And he puts the moves on 13. And his blood turns to sludge.

---------------------------------------------

Prev. Episode: 4-03 Alone ............. - 10/09/07
Next Episode: 4-05 Mirror, Mirror - 10/30/07

==========================
Guest Cast Ep. 4-04, "Guardian Angels" Aired 10/23/2007
Recurring Roles:

Bobbin Bergstrom......Nurse
Anne Dudek...............Amber / Cutthroat Bitch / CB
Peter Jacobson...........Taub / Plastic Surgeon Guy / PSG
Carmen Argenziano...Henry / Old Guy / OG / Bosley
Andy Comeau............Brennan / Young Guy / YG
Edi Gathegi................Cole / Big Love / Black Mormon /BM
Kal Penn.....................Kutner / Foreign Guy /FG
Olivia Wilde...............Thirteen / 13


Guest Stars:

Azura Skye..................Irene / Patient
Caroline Lagerfelt........Connie / Mom
Scott Alan Smith.........Dr. Brady/ interviewer
Kenneth White.............Old Man / Grandpa
Jerry Hauck..................Martin / Mortician


Posted by Cecil on October 29, 2007 7:55 PM
Permalink |






Hey, Cecil. So you're a Mormon? I mean, your synopsis was pretty by-the-numbers'til you got to the part about House ripping on BL's beliefs...

-- 1. Posted by: Anonymous at August 12, 2009 10:46 AM

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