"Paul Levinson's It's Real Life is a page-turning exploration into that multiverse known as rock and roll. But it is much more than a marvelous adventure narrated by a master storyteller...it is also an exquisite meditation on the very nature of alternate history." -- Jack Dann, The Fiction Writer's Guide to Alternate History

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

House 7.11: The Patient's Most Important Right

House came off a fine Superbowl commercial - probably the best of the crop - with one of the best episodes (7.11) of the season last night.  The set-up:  Cuddy's Yiddish mother Arlene (converted to Judaism, adopting its culture with a delightful vengeance, played by Candice Bergen) is admitted to Princeton Plainsboro with what could be a serious ailment.

We met Arlene in 7.9, when House drugged her to sleep over dinner to save him and Lisa from Arlene's conversation (which, from the viewer's point of view, was hilarious).   Now in the hospital, super-Jewish-mother Arlene, annoyed with House's manner, removes him from her case.  A good not brilliant doctor takes over.

As House later explains to Cuddy, he didn't want to risk Arlene dying, and Lisa thinking that House killed her mother every time she looked at him next to her in bed.   So House comes up with a plan: he'll continue treating Arlene, by substituting his own prescriptions for the doctor's, who thinks he's now treating Arlene.   This means that Foreman, Chase, Taub, and newcomer Martha Masters must do the actual substitutions - since Arlene would be suspicious of anything House tried to administer.  And as they all realize, this would be patently illegal - it could not only lose them their licenses but land them in jail.

It's great, as always, to see the different reactions of the team members, especially Martha's, who, as we've already seen, is more by-the-book, and respecting of a patient's rights, than even Foreman.  But House's position, that the patient's most important right is to live, is hard to deny, and the resolution of this story brings home, once again on House, the importance of going with what is medically best, regardless of standards and practices.


See also House and Cuddy on the Other Side in Season 7 Premiere ... House 7.2: House and Cuddy, Chapter 2 ... House 7.3: The Author and the White Lie ... House 7.9: The Vilda Chaya

And see also House Reborn in Season Six? ... 6.2: The Gang is Back and Fractured ... 6.3: The Saving Hitler Quandary ... 6.4: Diagnosis vs. Karma ... 6.5 Getting Better ... 6.6 House Around the Bases ... Four's a Crowd on House 6.7 ... House 6.8 and the Reverse of Flowers for Algernon ... House 6.9: Wilson ... House 6.10: Back in Business ... House 6.11: Making Amends, Mending Fences, and a Psychopath  ... House 6.12: The Progression to Mensch ... House 6.13: Cuddy's Perspective ... House Meets Blogger in 6.14 ... House 6.15: About Taub ... House 6.16: Revealing Couples ... House 6.17: Socrates on Steroids ... House 6.18: Open Marriage




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