TV Review: House 8.20, 'Post Mortem'
One more down, two to go. Then that’s all there is to House. So how well does this most recent episode stack up?
rating: 4.5
(WARNING: significant spoilers follow!) One more down, two to go. Then thats all there is to House. So how well does this most recent episode stack up? We begin with a patient dying (and a cameo by this episodes director, Peter Weller), and watch as her body gets taken to the morgue. There the medical examiner (I think thats what he is, anyhow), begins the autopsy. Hes working along, criticizing Doctor Wellers skills, and then starts to cut open his own face. Whee! House (Hugh Laurie) and team get involved, naturally. But its not long before House is whisked away by Wilson (Robert Sean Leonard). More about their antics in a bit. The patient turns out to be extremely critical of all the hospital doctors except House. Since House is gone, Chase (Jesse Spencer) handles the diagnostic process and claims its being done by House. The patient accepts this, though he really dislikes Chase and calls him out for basically not doing anything but living in Houses shadow. This leaves something of a mark on Chase, who decides that after this case, no matter the outcome, hes going to leave the hospital and head out on his own. The rest of the team take this to Foreman (Omar Epps, sadly underused this season but fantastic here), and try to get him to convince Chase to stay. More stuff happens with the patient, none of which really matters to me, since its not like I could even begin to guess the diagnostic outcome (it involved soap. Yes, really). Whats important is that at the end, Chase does indeed walk. I was happy to see him do so. The patient is correct; Chase was basically just twirling his thumbs living in Houses shadow. Id like to think that in any real-world situation such a gifted doctor would have left his position ages ago. But presumably everyone wanted to keep Jesse Im a hot Aussie Spencer around, so we wait until the final episodes to ditch him. Its understandable, I guess, but highlighting it like they did does kind of make his character look like a bit of a twit for wasting all this time. But thats that for that. The House and Wilson story this week was, really, everything I wanted but didnt get last week. Wilson has recovered from his chemo and is waiting to have a test done to see if his tumor has shrunk to the point where he can be operated on. He wants no part of sitting around doing nothing while waiting, so gets a flashy sports car and tells House hes going to Ohio to see Julie Christie, an actress best known for her role in Doctor Zhivago (which I found highly overrated, but thats something for another article). He also makes it clear that House is coming with him even if House has to be drugs to make that happen. So begins the road trip, driving from New Jersey to Ohio through countryside that looks suspiciously like Southern California. Along the way, Wilson eats an 80oz steak in under an hour, has a threesome that lives down to his expectations, speeds past a funeral procession and crashes the car, all the while saying how selfish he is now going to be and how he doesnt really care about anything but making himself happy. Perhaps hes been reading a bit too much Ayn Rand? Of course in the end, when faced with the possibility of doing what he wants or taking care of an old woman with dementia, he stays with the woman, something House later confesses he was glad Wilson did. He makes it very clear that he prefers the Wilson he knows and loves to this weird new creation. And that then leads into the scene where Wilson gets tested and House gets to see the results. We arent told directly what they are, but we can hazard a guess from the look on Houses face. I was very pleased with this story. I think it gave Wilson some character development hed not had over the last few years and gave House a real look at what it would be like to spend time around House, since thats basically what Wilson was doing. The House/Wilson relationship is at the core of the series and Im pleased to see that they spent real time this season, and especially the last two episodes, dealing with it. Next episode we should find out whats going on with Wilsons health, and then after that, we get one last one. Hopefully it will be good!