"It's not like Jones has been pigeonholed into a certain type of character"

I don't know about that... It seems like he always dies at some point... Lion King, Star Wars, Field of Dreams, Conan, Clear and Present Danger... And now House.

Does he ever make it out alive?

Absolutely. Jones played the part brilliantly.

Short of cartoon villians, no monster looks in the mirror and sees a monster. What a monster like Dibala sees in the mirror, and what their followers see when they watch the news, is a person doing what's needed to achieve what they think is a noble goal.

I felt the character was in keeping with the premise of the show. I am able to look beyond an actors past work, and
allow them to flower, and I do agree, that EVIL does not look you in the face and say" here I am ready to kill you".Let's not nit pick a great actor and a show that took us somewhere we were surprised to be.

This sounds very similar to a "The Unit" episode - protect an African dictator in the US for surgery so he can go back and let his people die, or let him die and save his people. Maybe it wasn't "The Unit," but I know I've seen a similar story line before.

I could see it. Like the other posters have said... it's all about shades of grey.

I did jump though when he told Cameron to kill him.

Have you ever seen interviews with dictators? Most seem down right normal and easy going. I don't think that Hitler in his films he seems more like a evangelical, don't even go there, preacher. Until we link in our minds actions with people, unless they are truly unhinged, they are just people neither good nor evil. Chase didn't see him as anything other than a kindly old man until he admitted his intent to wipe a ethnic group off the face of the planet.

That's the point. I think JEJ did an excellent job. He had to have what old footage of Sedot, Mugabe, or Melosovich. They came off very much the same in their interviews.

Well he was sick the whole time, literally on his deathbed. Plus he was in America, in front of Americans and American doctors from whom he wanted to receive good healthcare.

I think it would have been utterly phony for his character to be an evil, cruel, abusive dictator given this situation. He very well may have been cruel and threatened that one nurse into giving him her blood, but we didn't get to see that. And even then I bet his men did most of the coercing.

The problem with "House" that everyone is ignoring is that the DEA bitched and whined about House's vicodin use and finally Fox caved in and wrote out all painkiller use by Dr. House from the show. The DEA has been given final script approval of all episodes of "House."

He'll always be King of Zamunda in Coming to America to me.

Evil dictators ususally don't seem evil because if they did they would never become dictators.

Didn't you notice how he tried to bond with each doctor that he came in contact with and at least for a time it worked with each.

I think that we could see him in those shades of gray was part of the point. He doesn't think he's evil. He thinks he's doing what is absolutely right for his country and people, even if it means killing half of them.