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House: Here Kitty
by Hemal Jhaveri, posted Mar 17th 2009 12:29PM
(S5E18) "Cats make terrible doctors. Oh wait, that's women." -House
We get a break from the angst factory this week. The neurotic and usually enjoyable Judy Greer guest star's as the patient of the week, who arrives at PPH with fake seizures, green pee and a cat that can predict the deaths of old people. With all that, and some light-hearted pranking between House and Kutner, and this episode felt like it should have aired around Halloween, and not near the end of the season.
I enjoyed parts of this episode but didn't get any real dramatic tension from it. Even while crazy cat lady Judy was possibly dying, it was hard to muster up any emotion beside indifference to her situation.I had a moment of panic when it seemed that perhaps something actually was wrong with House, since we've been given clues in previous episodes that his pain problem is getting worse, but that passed quickly when it all turned out to be prank on Kutner. Aside from that, there was very little emotional drama in this episode. Even the dead step-son wasn't enough to engage me in the patients plight.
While House is often known for it's gut wrenching and heavy plots, I felt like they tried to shoe-horn in the dead kid here. It felt tacked on and forced, out of sync with the rest of the episode's tone.
Despite the lack of emotional engagement, there were some bright spots in and episode that was mostly filler.
We got to see a side of Taub that we haven't seen before, angry, impatient and kind of a jerk. While I am all for House getting some of his medicine handed back to him, Taub's attacks were passive aggressive and really had no direct bearing on House himself. He acted out of frustration for his own situation and lashed out at the closest target. It was a totally coward move.
It was good to see Chase again also. I like how they trot him out when a patient needs a sympathetic ear to listen to them whine about the lack of meaning in their lives. Though, the next time he pops up, I'll assume that we're in for another episode that ruminates on life, death, faith, chance and meaning. These are themes that when interwoven in well crafted episodes can provide real insight. Here, we got a few meandering thoughts with any real cohesive structure. It's all fine and good, and much better than a lot of shows can do, but lacked a lasting impact.
There were some funny moments as well, and I laughed out loud at the pee in House's chair. Kutner really did get him good.
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