I'm sorry if my statement was offensive. It wasn't my intent. I wouldn't want to dehumanize abuse survivors because I am one myself. And, yet, I still find it cliche to humanize House by making him an abuse survivor. What would be wrong with having him just be the way he is because he is the way he is? Why must he be explained away by circumstances? Also, I don't like the idea of being an abuse survivor presented as a reason to get away with growing up to be an ass. Most of us can come through something bad without turning into someone so antisocial. That's why I hated Eve. Most people who are raped don't turn around and demand their way with someone else (emotionally or physically) in some sort of grasp to regain personal power. Having a bad thing happen to you doesn't give you an excuse to do a bad thing to someone else. I found the writing of this episode insulting to child abuse survivors and rape survivors.

A world of word to your post littleblue (and for the record: Eve was supremely annoying -- to me at least). I disagree that the abuse revelation somehow cheapens the House character. For one thing I expected it as I mentioned above. I know the abuse was sexual, but it struck me (as it did in Occam's Razor and Skin Deep) how fast his mind went to abuse and how he characterised (in this case sexual) abuse survivors. To me, it rather fleshes out the character that House was verbally and physically abused (in a manner consistent with a strict disciplinarian grossly overreacting). He must have been a precocious and sometimes exasperating child. Perhaps his father had difficulty adapting to his role, perhaps he didn’t understand his son or perhaps he simply wasn’t suited for parenthood. Abuse resulted. I can easily see how the two characters could have continually come into conflict and slowly undermined any chance of a good father-son relationship (standard disclaimer: No, that doesn’t excuse abuse of any form). I think it fits well with the House character without explaining every facet of it in exquisite detail. I find the themes of the episode to be highly interesting but it nonetheless comes across as one of the weakest of S3. It failed in four ways: The writing: Despite a promising start, some of the lines are decidedly clunky and not even the otherwise impeccable delivery of Hugh Laurie can save them. I expect more of David Shore. The acting: I don’t like thinking uncharitable thoughts about a rape victim – even a fictional one – but I kept wanting to tell Eve to Shut Up! She was poorly cast and never rose to the challenge. Her acting choices and, one must assume, the director’s approach to the character were appalling. The Cameron subplot: Perhaps there were additional scenes dropped from the final cut, but it was heavy-handed and felt superfluous. The hasty wrap-up: It seems as if David Shore set himself the challenge of writing an episode taking place in one day and one room -- more like a writing exercise than a meaningful creative decision. By rushing Eve’s final choice, it came across as forced and House’s otherwise strong argument in favour of logic in a highly emotional situation took on a tint of badgering.

To what struck me as strange was the way Eve kept yelling "I was RAPED!". I don't claim to be an expert on the subject (though I have had training in this area), but from what I have learned that's pretty odd behaviour for someone in her situation. And yes, it was irritating, I admit - I kept wondering if she expected someone to give her a Purple Heart. (I am soulless, I know). For me the "cliche" was that she was young, pretty, attacked by a stranger, suffered bodily harm (the STD, the preganancy), and was hysterical and suicidal. The textbook rape victim. I especially agree with your last point Silja, I thought it horrible ethically and medically that House browbeat Eve into having an abortion.

Would you prefer if she was more of a 'stereotypical' rape survivor? Actually, I probably would have prefered that or some alternative version of the squealing banshee we got. How is she supposed to act to be more representative of 'most' people who are raped? It's like I said before--having something bad happen to you doesn't give you the right to do something bad to someone else. She was victimized, but she turned around and victimized House by demanding his attention and demanding to know things that she had absolutely no business prying into. And, yet, my main gripe about the show is still the way her medical treatment was handled. It was wrong! So wrong! In so many ways! If they had given her proper medical and psychiatric care, she wouldn't have been able to browbeat House into revealing his past and he wouldn't have been able to browbeat her into giving up her theological beliefs to do "the right thing."

'k, my tuppence worth on this ep. Yes, Ms Idunno was really annoying, but I could have dealt with that. Dr OMGabuse was hardly 'another shocking twist!' But I just couldn't understand the Cameron/Bloke storyline. The thing that annoyed me the most was it supposed to be a big, heart-rending thing for poor Ms 'So I Married a Dead Guy', yet, he didn't (this is going to sound terrible) suffer enough. Anyone who has had the horrible misfortune to watch someone die from cancer (hands up twice, unfortunately), will know that the idea of that guy shuffling off this mortal coil with cancer and without any meds, will not be coherent, will not be at peace, and will most certainly be SCREAMING FOR SOME FRIGGING MORPHINE ALREADY. I guess homeless cancer stoic guy's demise was supposed to show 'something' about Cameron, but it got completely lost on me when he just didn't suffer that badly. I felt like she might as well be looking at her watch, thinking, "there are other people in this building who I can actually help, and I've already forgotten this wanker's name.' OTOH, I enjoyed everything in this ep that had nothing to do with either of the POTW, so I guess it's a fantastic 10 min ep on fast forward.

I've long wanted to get wordy about this episode, and this seems as good a place as any. Apologies for what will probably be a lengthy and semi-incomprehensible post. I'll be one of the few to say I love this episode, even though I fully think it fell flat on its face and I hated it on first watch. More accurately, I should say that I love the episode ODOR was trying to be. I think this episode could have been great--but it suffers from a case of the "almosts." The ingredients for a stunning episode were there, but everything was "almost" right to such a degree that the episode turned into blah instead. The casting: I've been wondering for a while now if the writer (David Shore, wasn't it?) originally intended Eve to be much, much younger. If Eve had been a very young teen, it would have made a lot more sense for her to latch on to House as a doctor and authority figure, and insist that he help her/fix her. The episode's weirdly unbalanced stance towards abortion also would have made more sense if she had been too hopelessly young to safely carry a baby. A good young actress like the one they had for Andie ("Autopsy") at about 13-15 years old would have been heartbreaking. (Although maybe too heartbreaking; I'm aware that my tendencies toward high drama would make me a horrible script writer. :wink:) The secondary storyline: Someone much brighter than me--I wish I could remember who you were!--made a point somewhere that the Cam!patient was meant as a parallel to House. His father asked him to suffer, and so he suffers. He refuses help and looks for punishment. A more refined unraveling of the patient's issues would have made House's abuse admission at the end come as much more of an emotional shock. I'm wondering if Shore meant us to follow Cam!patient's story in a "Three Stories" way: thinking he was unconnected to the main story, then slowly starting to suspect there's something here, then getting that sick feeling of "oh, it's House" right before it's all confirmed. (I know the Cam!patient wasn't meant to be literally House, but metaphorically? Could be...) Speaking of metaphors: The episode gets so much more enjoyable when you take Eve as kind of a metaphor for House's Issues. Everyone on the planet knows how Issues work: you think you're going along fine, and then Issues rear their ugly head. They don't seem to care that you have things to do that day, Issues show up to say "hi, I'm here and you're dealing with me. Now." This process is hard enough for any regular person, but someone like House who seems to have enormous problems dealing with emotion must feel nothing short of completely disoriented when his own personal issues start to rear their heads. He is an intelligent man with absolutely no tools to solve what I imagine is a deep well of untouched pain. This episode was almost a brilliantly sad look at how a character who is usually so capable of solving all problems to help the patient is incapable of solving his own problems to help himself. Timing: The timing was another problem. This was just not the right episode to come out of the Tritter arc with. I was much more inclined to like the episode after watching it again in reruns, completely out of sequence. Hugh Laurie: No complaints for him, though. He went through an amazing range of expression. How lucky are we to get the chance to watch him work every week. Okay, let me end this monster. It's frustrating to see an episode with great potential fall so flat, but there is a silver lining. The magic is still there, even if the magic got badly executed. Everyone out there knows how it feels when you've fallen out of the groove--your talent hasn't diminished but that extra zip that made your stuff great is just out of reach. I'm hopeful that S4 will give Shore & Co the chance to get the zip back.

This episode was almost a brilliantly sad look at how a character who is usually so capable of solving all problems to help the patient is incapable of solving his own problems to help himself. I love this perspective on what could have been a stellar episode, gone horribly awry. I think House, much like myself, has an instant ability to completely block out the terribly negative things I've experienced to the point where if someone else reminds me that they happened, I have to ask them to describe it. This instant reaction on the part of my mind has caused those emotions and other things to manifest as physical symptoms and I think the same thing has happened to House, whether he realizes it or not. Having it dragged out of him by a stranger he doesn't know at all before he's had a chance to even decide for himself to confront any of it will probably have drastic consequences of their own. Stacy told everyone that House was the same before the infarction. This surprises people and I don't think it should. He was a very small child by his own flippant admission when his emotional instability was first instilled. That will not change overnight and being forced by someone else who then asks, 'So I'm raping you now?' is tantamount to being shown a belt he'd been beaten with or suddenly having ice cold water dumped over his head and not being able to dry off. Given what's going on this season, I have to wonder if maybe that experience might be catching up with him. He might have treated his self-inflicted electrocution as an experiment and thought of it as one, but being so readily willing to possibly get himself killed just to prove a point speaks to a severe amount of damage to his self-worth.

I think it's a sad commentary that abuse is so prevalent in our culture that a lot of people find it "cliché" when presented in television and other works of fiction. It's not a cliché; it's realistic, and I'm actually surprised that the concept is not used more often in fiction. There are a lot of adults in real life who were victims of abuse at the hands of a parent (or both parents). Some of them lead normal, healthy lives; some of them don't. House is a person with a lot of odds stacked against him (victim of abuse, marginalized due to his genius, natural loner, physically disabled)... and yet, he manages to get up every day, make (ok, buy) his meals, pay his bills, go to work at a job he loves, and maintain a (strange but wonderful) friendship. I think he's coping pretty well for someone with his background. I believe that House is the way he is because he was born with the personality he has. AND he was also abused by his father. As House has said before, "Why can't it be both?" The abuse doesn't explain away anything. It's just one more part of him. And it's consistent with everything we learned in Daddy's Boy and in Son of Coma Guy. It was not a surprise to me after watching those episodes. I cannot tell you how much I agree with you on this stance. It feels just as one-dimensional to me to have House's behavior explained away by his childhood circumstances as it would if they tried it with the infarction. They've ruled that out as the be-all-ends-all and this should be, too. People are far too complicated to have every reason for every behavior boil down to one facet of their pasts. Yes, abuse of any kind does affect a person's psyche in a very deep, complex way, but it's not something that cannot be overcome. In many ways, House has done just that. Even if he is a damaged person, in more than one way, he's never let that color his identity as a whole. I think that if House thinks of himself, what immediately comes to mind is 'doctor', which is a niche he carved out solely for himself. 'Victim' is not something I see him thinking of himself as. 'Son of a bitch', yes. 'Fucking asshole', yes. 'Oh-woe-is-me', no. Even after the infarction, everything was just a fact. He can't do this any more. He can still do that. 'My father made me sit in ice'. 'My father made me sleep in the yard'. Not, 'my father is the reason I act the way I do'. He seems to share quite a lot of personality traits with his father, even from what little we've seen of John House (which I eternally lament), one of them being the need to inflict the pain he feels on others so he doesn't feel so alone. If anything, it makes me wonder about the condition of his father's psyche where he could possibly justify the things he put his son through, believing wholeheartedly that they would be helpful and/or strengthening, regarding House's character. And it's even more twisted that his ideas may have worked.