I've always seen him shy away from touch or, like with Andie, completely freeze up and look extremely uncomfortable. The only exceptions I've seen are Cuddy, Stacy, and Blythe House. He told Cameron he'd rather go to jail than hug her. *cackles*

I think House's issues are a little about the person doing the touching, but a lot about the situation. In this case he needed to get somewhere and she was the way to make that happen. If it wasn't urgent then he could have dealt with it himself. He shook Cameron's hand when she was coming back to work, he refused to shake her hand when she quit. He was in control when she was returning, but he was thrown for a loop when she quit and he just shut down. House has that whole tendency to kind of disappear inside of himself when things surprise him. When he can milk the cripple thing he snarks at the fact that people don't rush to his side to see if he's all right (i.e., stumbling in the conference room and being snide with the "no, i'm okay"), but he's always struck me as very much a "don't help me, I can take care of myself" kind of person. If it's not a matter of importance he makes jokes, if it *is* a matter of importance he pushes people away. In any case, it's been three years since he refused to shake Cameron's hand. I think that slowly, in spite of the set back that was Stacy, he's opened up as far as his own personal space goes.

Hasn't House technically almost died FOUR times now? To whomever said that's like Buffy, hahahaha. I lol'd. 1. Infarction 2. Two gunshot wounds 3. OD at Christmas, Season Three 4. Electrocution I really think this series is going to end with House's death. Like Doyle did with Holmes, this character is so beloved that the rampant speclation and fandom could only really end with the show if they killed him off. I mean, in the last episode. And then we could have awesome reactions from Wilson, Cuddy, Chase, Cameron, Foreman, Von Liebermann, Stacy, old patients, n00b fellows...

It's part of the writers' plan to slowly get the audience to realize that House and Wilson are both Friends of Dorothy. As is Wilson's quoting My Fair Lady. Okay, this made me spew tea on the monitor. I love you, RSH and not because you give me pain meds. :-)

It's part of the writers' plan to slowly get the audience to realize that House and Wilson are both Friends of Dorothy. As is Wilson's quoting My Fair Lady. You know that this makes you my most favorite person in the world, right? ETA: I didn't even see Fiddy's post. Great minds think alike, I guess.

The scene with House, and the scene where Amber was alone with the patient, seemed to me to be there to show that there's more to Amber than just playing the game. I didn't think the touching was a big deal - it's functional, like the masseuse or the physical therapist. (Helpfully, Amber is also quite tall - probably around 6' in heels - so House actually could lean on her.) She can't stay, because her ability to function on a team is virtually non-existent. But I think if the story were to look closer, we'd find that she didn't go into medicine just so she could beat everybody else. I found Thirteen's situation pretty lousy, personally. Her patient died because she didn't follow through on his treatment (and not like, you know, her patient was diabetic, left the hospital and ate a pie - she lost track and didn't make sure he took the single-dose medication she prescribed for him). She let herself be distracted by the competition, and she'll have to live with the fact that a nice, adventurous guy (and his dog)died because of that. I guess my feeling on the character is that I don't think she's a mess or a Mary Sue, but I don't feel like there's much to get behind with her yet. *shrug* (But then, I have trouble buying the whole smart+assertive+likable+pretty=Mary Sue. If that's the case, I went to college with about a thousand Mary Sues.)

I liked how they had the scene with foreman and mrs. ziegler and Foreman tries to convince her why he needs to take the course of action he's suggeting for his diagnosis and she's like "not so much." And then the very next scene, Cuddy tells House HE can't do the course of action he wants to take for his patient and House convinces her using medicine to back up his reasoning and she agrees. It was very nicely played. And house rules and Foreman's ego is bruised. SUCKA!!!!

Awww Fiddy, Sauty the love and favoritism is not only mutual-it's canon.

I personally would rather be disagreed with than lied to and humored. I don't see what business either of them has commenting on it at all unless the patient asked for their opinion or unless it factored into the patients treatment. House thought it did... To House, he was throwing away the last chance to save his life because he was expecting something that wasn't going to happen. Pointing out this (from House's POV) fallacy was to convince the patient to make a better-informed decision about his treatment. House didn't want to give up on the patient though Wilson already had. This is interesting to me because we've seen House lie and manipulate patients in order to get them to follow his idea of what lies in their best interest treatment-wise. This is echoed in Family: HOUSE: You've gotta be kidding me. You're actually upset. You just said what you believed. WILSON: I also believe in patients making their own choices. HOUSE: Because it lessens your guilt if things go wrong. You're not protecting your choices. You're soothing your conscience. WILSON: By that logic, a sociopath would make the best patient advocate in the world & HOUSE: You don't explain chances and probabilities. You lie to them. In 97 Seconds, at the stage of their argument, the patient has been wrongly diagnosed with cancer. I see House and Wilson as both believing that they are advocating for the patient in what seems more of an ideological division; House steadfastly wanting to treat the cancer at hand despite the patient's resistance and Wilson wanting to honor the patients choice to be allowed to die.

The scene with House, and the scene where Amber was alone with the patient, seemed to me to be there to show that there's more to Amber than just playing the game. I didn't think the touching was a big deal - it's functional, like the masseuse or the physical therapist. (Helpfully, Amber is also quite tall - probably around 6' in heels - so House actually could lean on her.) She can't stay, because her ability to function on a team is virtually non-existent. But I think if the story were to look closer, we'd find that she didn't go into medicine just so she could beat everybody else. There's nothing about the above that I don't agree with. Amber, I think, is a dead end character as far as being a part of this team goes, but I would actually be interested in seeing her show up later on just to see what happened with her. She's not going to pass the test or win the competition, but she's going to learn something. I don't see how she can't. I found Thirteen's situation pretty lousy, personally. Her patient died because she didn't follow through on his treatment (and not like, you know, her patient was diabetic, left the hospital and ate a pie - she lost track and didn't make sure he took the single-dose medication she prescribed for him). She let herself be distracted by the competition, and she'll have to live with the fact that a nice, adventurous guy (and his dog)died because of that. I guess my feeling on the character is that I don't think she's a mess or a Mary Sue, but I don't feel like there's much to get behind with her yet. *shrug* I, for the most part, liked last night's episode, but I almost felt like I was watching a story unfold that I would have enjoyed much more had it been a movie. As it is, I like 13 and I see potential there, but I'm also viewing her in about the same way that I'm viewing the two Guatemalans on "Heroes". I like them, I want to know what happens with them, but I'd like to just magically have the backstory so that I don't have to go through twelve more episodes of them running, accidentally killing someone, running, accidentally killing someone, etc.

What I like about it is that House generally never gives up on his patient, it seems like Wilson and the rest of the House entourage often throw in the towel pretty early, but what I like about House.... well there are so many things, duh.... but I like that he sticks with it to the very end, sometimes to the very grim end (i.e. the patient Foreman killed last year) but nevertheless he's loyal and reliable that way and always has a reason like for example last night when he says the guy shouldn't make medical decisions based on some fantasy of the afterlife. I like he always has a solid reason. Now I'm sure if I thought real hard I could find eps that disagree with my statement, but I'm talking on average. Overall, I just thought last nights episode was so well written and so well done and usually I'm nitpicking at everything wrong with an ep, so this is refreshing.

I don't think it was the patient's decision not to take the pills. 13 put them on the table in front of him, but before he could take them, Kal Penn's character moved the table out of the way, so the patient could be picked up and carried to the bathroom. I think it simply was a case of 'out of sight, out of mind'. 13 was interrupted by the two guys and (mistakenly) assumed she could trust the patient or the other doctors to make sure the medication would be taken. Lawrence whatever (Kal Penn) and the other guy were much too focused on running their own tests to remind the patient. Once they all were in the bathroom, the dog was left alone in the room and swallowed the pills. That's my take on it. What's disappointing about this is that the whole mystery of the show was revealed in the official press release: As the two teams are trying to one-up each other, complications arise when one team treats the patient but doesn't follow through to make sure their treatment was executed. Loved that Foreman's team threw the 'treating the patient until she dies' argument at him.That's what he's always been saying to House, isn't it? Having had a major problem with Foreman's unwarranted cockiness in the past, I find this very satisfying. Other than getting my thirst for Foreman-humbling quenched, I found all the scenes with him rather boring, and worse, interrupting the flow of the other story line. I'm ready for Scooter M.D. (or rather Scooter non-M.D.) I just love him to death. Maybe that's another reason why it puzzles me that people see ship as much as they do. Because I don't tend to see hidden meanings or metaphors or whatever I can't clearly express or understand from people who do. <snip> Thank you for saying this. I agree. I don't see a ship every time a person touches another. Sometimes I think my enjoyment of episodes is higher because of it. I'm not saying that shippers in whatever arena shouldn't have fun with their preferred pairings, just that It makes me sad when fans angst over what might possibly come in the future that would somehow disqualify their pairing, and have all their own enjoyment in the story and characters ruined by it. He didn't almost die when he ODed. He was concious when Wilson showed up, and he was OK enough to get to Tritter's office like 3 hours later. I agree with the 'didn't almost die'. But he went to Tritter mid-day after the OD not during the night. They didn't do a very good job of portraying that in the episode (Tritter being all alone in the office and no daylight through the window), but I think that this is one of the rare instances, where we can trust the fox recaps which are done from scripts, detailed outlines or early cuts of the eps, I believe.

I for the most part liked the ep too. There are things that bother me (the idea that a service dog like Hoover would randomly eat pills from the floor bothers me, I was under the impression that they were trained not to), but on the whole it worked for me, particularly after reading comments. Foreman, yes, annoying as hell, particularly the tone with his team, but it made a weird sense given his faults & the "just like House, but nicer" - its just not very authentically Foreman, its a lousy would be copy of House. And I think that's what I like about Amber, so okay may she isn't there for the long hall, but she's wildly entertaining & I'd watch Amber MD manipulate her way across PPTH (what would Cuddy make of her? she's clearly got Cameron's number; Chase, on the other hand, has got hers). Thirteen I just find boring and not even in the cringe-worthy way I find Foreman & Cameron boring. The idea of House coming up with experimental methods to test for what exactly is there when you die seems very, very House - he's essentially a man of science & he operates exactly like this. The why of what he's doing still puzzles me though & maybe will become clearer on re-watching. The other why that interests me is why he's having such difficulty dealing with Chase's reappearance, its not like him to be left speechless by anyone, let alone Chase. Though I hated the way House played games with the PotW & didn't treat him immediately, it makes a degree of sense - House has solved the puzzle to his own satisfaction already & we've repeatedly seen he's not much interested in the aftercare once that happens. We get to see the consequences of that trait for once & I hope it doesn't get swept under the carpet.

Though I hated the way House played games with the PotW & didn't treat him immediately, it makes a degree of sense - House has solved the puzzle to his own satisfaction already & we've repeatedly seen he's not much interested in the aftercare once that happens.<snip> I didn't see it that way. At least in this episode. House knew the correct diagnosis going in. The correct treatment for that diagnosis was the first thing done to the patient, and according to the comments from the patient, House knew about tests and treatments before they were implemented. So the patient got treated relatively early on. Not much later than if House had ordered it himself directly. It's just that the pill misplacement screwed everything up from then on, IMO.