TV Review: House 8.21, "Holding On"
One more down, one more to go.
rating: 3.5
(WARNING: Significant spoilers follow!) One more down, one more to go. This is the second to the last episode of House, and it accomplished one of those rare feats of jumping the shark mid-episode and then jumping right back again. Nicely done. Lets start with the medical case. We have a cheerleader who gets admitted to the hospital after dropping his partner and suffering a mysterious nosebleed. Im not sure why either of those are admittance-worthy, but ok. While there, we learn that hes hearing voices, or at least a voice, specifically that of his dead brother. We get the usual diagnosis/misdiagnosis business and some pathos with the young mans mother having destroyed every bit of evidence that his dead brother was ever alive, before we learn that whats causing his problems is something that puts me in mind of a Ceti eel, even though it was just a blood-clot. The medical mystery here was particularly boring, though I will say that I got a tiny bit emotional in the last scene of the patient and his mother. Clearly Im getting soft now that Im past 40. The real story this week is the continuing saga of Wilson (Robert Sean Leonard) and House (Hugh Laurie) dealing with Wilsons cancer. Yes, indeed, theres no way to do the operation to remove the tumor and Wilson has probably five months to live. He intends to not seek treatment and to just go out gracefully. Not surprisingly, House has a problem with this, and plans to get Wilson to enter treatment. We then go to House doing his usual antics, including stuffing a gift Foreman (Omar Epps) gave him (season tickets to the New Jersey Devils NHL team), into the toilet. That little bit causes a massive clog in the plumbing, which cause huge damage to the hospital including breaking the floor above the MRI machine, destroying it in the process. Remember this for later. Anyhow, Houses antics go from the basic and obvious (calling Wilsons parents), to the really, really shark-jumpingly stupid (hiring actors to play Wilsons not-dead patients, none of whom Wilson recognizes as being fake until its rubbed in his face a bit). In the end, Wilson starts waffling a bit, and then tells House he isnt going to do it. He also tells House he needs a friend and wants House to tell him, Wilson, what he really thinks of him. This goes back and forth a bit more, and in the end, Wilson finally makes up his mind (again), to not get treatment. At this point, House is ok with it, and the two are making plans to spend time hiking together when the hospital lawyer shows up. Turns out the fire department got involved on the plumbing issue, handed the mangled tickets to the police, and Houses parole is being revoked. He needs to go back to jail for the remaining six months of his sentence. But Wilson is going to die in five! Ruh-roh! I had several problems with all this. First, the bit with the fake patients made no sense. When they were revealed to be his patients, I didnt understand why Wilson didnt recognize them. When they were revealed to be fakes, I didnt understand why he thought they were real when told they were. No part of it made any sense at all. I also had a major problem with the whole business of House destroying the hospital via plumbing. Really? Youre telling me a place that regularly deals with things like vomit and diarrhea on a level most of us cant even begin to imagine has plumbing that cant deal with torn-up bits of paper? And if thats the case, were being asked further to believe that the plumbers at the hospital dont know how to turn off water mains? Really? Not. Buying. It. Its clear that this was just designed to give us a weak reason to create some artificial pathos for next week. But despite that, the scenes with Wilson and House interacting with each other were, once we got past the fake patients business, good enough that I enjoyed this episode. It brought it back from the realm of shark-jumpage, and thats a good thing. I just wish it had never jumped in the first place and I really, really wish they hadnt had such a stupid twist at the end.