TV Review: House 8.7 – “Dead and Buried”
As a whole, I’m still enjoying the show and the series, but I do wish they’d move into some more interesting territory.
rating: 3.5
Im very divided on the most recent episode of House. It had two very distinct plots with different outcomes and diagnoses. One of them was really awfully stupid and bad, and the other was really interesting. We start with an unusual cold open. Normally the show begins with our seeing the victim of the week having an attack or something. In this case, its House (Hugh Laurie), and the Crunch Bunch hanging out in his office talking about various things when Foreman (Omar Epps), comes in to give House the case of a fourteen-year-old girl with unusual symptoms. House is, instead, more interested in covering the case of a long-dead four-year-old boy. Foreman makes it clear that the girl is the case he must work on, so House compromises by working on the boy behind Foremans back. Lets start with the girls case, and a warning that theres some spoilers here. She seems like your basic sweet and decent fourteen-year-old girl whose mother keeps slipping her medication. The team runs a battery of tests and eventually finds out that the girl is pregnant, which is something of a surprise to everyone, including the girl, since she claims to have not had sex. Much poking around and investigating is done which leads to the very unsatisfactory, end of act two conclusion that the girl has multiple personality disorder. This was something of a headdesk moment for me, since that particular disorder doesnt seem likely to actually exist, or if it does, it doesnt exist in the way that the popular media would have you believe. Interestingly, the woman known as Sybil recently admitted that she made up pretty much everything about her case. Fun times. Anyhow, the multiple personality disorder is only the first part of the diagnosis and theres more after that, but really at that point I didnt care overly much, as the MPD pretty much knocked me out of the girls story. The case of the dead boy was much more interesting. It turns out that House is in an anger management course with the boys father, which is how he became aware of the case. He (illegally, from what I can tell), gets access to the boys corpse, and with help from the father, starts investigating what actually killed the kid. On every level this case succeeds much more than the other one. Its far more compelling and illustrates the fact that House is addicted to solving puzzles, to the point of being willing to risk going back to prison by breaking his parole to do so. This causes much consternation for Wilson (Robert Sean Leonard), who worries about his friend. The more soap-opera aspects of this weeks story center around Chase (Jesse Spencer), turning up with unusually good grooming. He claims to have a new girlfriend, but everyone else, especially Park (Charlyne Yi), arent buying what hes selling. It turns out that the truth of whats happening with Chase iswell, something that must be seen to believe. Ill just say that somewhere out there, Steve Irwin is smiling. And probably wrestling an angel. Like I said, the two stories are very different and the first one was dull, pointless and silly while the second was deeply interesting and engaging. I wish I could give this episode two grades. The first would be about two stars for the girls story and the second would be about four, maybe even five, for the boys story. But I can only do one, so well go for 3 ½ stars, and a hope that perhaps things will improve. As a whole, Im still enjoying the show and the series, but I do wish theyd move into some more interesting territory. At the moment it feels like theyre just treading water, advertising the shock of the week in their trailers and suffering from some level of creative burn-out. With luck that will change as the season continues. We can only hope.