TV Review: House 8.17, 'We Need the Eggs'

rating: 4

(WARNING: Significant spoilers follow!) This was the first episode of House where I truly felt like the end was near. There€™s only a few more episodes left, and with this story it feels like we€™re beginning to enter the endgame. The medical case this week centers on a patient who is admitted after crying blood. So, yeah, if he could figure out how to make pills that cause that, he could make a lot of money from the emo crowd. Anyhow, as the team are going through the usual diagnostic process, they discover that the patient has a sex doll that he€™s in a €œrelationship€ with. The doll is one of those really expensive ones that many guys wish they can afford, but cannot. Trust me, they€™re quite pricey. Beyond a reviewer€™s salary, at any rate. Moving on! The team begins to think that the doll might have some sort of bacterial contamination, which given what the patient uses her for, isn€™t unlikely. Things get really odd when they discover what appears to be a tumor in the doll€™s body, but which surgery (yes, you read that right), proves is actually just an air pocket. In the end it turns out that the patient has been using some bizarre Indian teapot thingy to treat allergies, and probably picked up an amoeba infection from that. So, cautionary tale, all. Use distilled water if you€™re flushing out your nose. The medical mystery was mildly interesting, but not overly so. I did find the ethical discussions about the sex doll and the man falling in love with it to be kind of fascinating, but too short and sort of glossed-over more than I€™d like. Meantime, in the soap opera side of the show, House (Hugh Laurie) is conducting interviews for a new prostitute. Turns out his current one is leaving the business to get married, and he€™s high and dry, as it were. This leads to a series of interview segments which aren€™t that interesting, but which kill some time. Eventually he decides to track down the hooker€™s fiancée and set up a honey trap by getting the man to cheat on his would-be wife. This doesn€™t work too well when it turns out that the hooker is in fact lying to House. She€™s actually still going to be ho€™ing it up, just not with him. She finds it disturbing that he€™s cheating on his wife so blatantly when it€™s clear that her and he have feelings for each other. This segment also contained an interesting ethical discussion that didn€™t take up enough time, and in this case it focused on prostitution and the right or wrong of it. For the record, I have no problem with it ethically, and I think it should be legal and very heavily regulated. And in the background of all this we have the usual relationship antics going on. Chase (Jesse Spencer) and Adams (Odette Annable) flirt with each other. Taub (Peter Jacobson) meets a nice woman and totally screws it up, and Park (Charlyne Yi) is being courted by a young man played by Patrick Stump, the lead singer for Fall Out Boy. I suppose if the patient really does develop those pills, at least he€™ll have someone who can help with the marketing. The interesting take-away from tonight€™s episode doesn€™t happen until the last few minutes, as House receives word that the government has approved his wife staying in the country. In theory they can now give up their happy married couple routine. But he doesn€™t want to. He clearly has feelings for her that he isn€™t ready to deal with, so he just throws the letter in the trash. This is the part that really felt like build-up to the end. I€™m willing to bet, and this might change after next week€™s episode, that House winds up remaining with his new wife. He does seem to care about her and vice versa. They seem to make a good match, and perhaps there€™s a part of him that longs for a normal life. Giving him one is something the writers can€™t do while the show still airs, but it might be a good way to send off both him and the series as a whole. I can certainly think of worse ways.