Okay, I was wrong, House proposed the bet. Cameron heard him call Cole a "dark religious nut" and they got into a conversation about him. Then (and the memory fades just that fast!) I believe House asked her if she wanted to bet and she said no, she wanted him to be nice to Cole -or nicer. Then he flashed the $100 and the bet was on. I didn't see her saying she wanted him to be nicer (which, for House, doesn't necessarily mean being nice) as wanting to control him. I mean if you (general you) overheard someone you know insult someone, wouldn't a typical response be to say "hey, take it easy there."? That's how I saw it.

I get that and without his insulting attitude he wouldn't be House, but I agree with Bessie Mae...just because he does it to everyone doesn't mean that people are wrong to point out that, in some cases, he could stand to back off a bit. It definitely would have helped him out with Tritter had a nurse been present in the room or Wilson popped his head in to ask a question and saw the setup for distaster that was happening in that exam room.

But this is House we are talking about. It would be stranger to have him NOT insult someone. He insults/ridicules/makes fun of/teases/harrasses everyone from the NKOTB, the ducks, to Wilson and Cuddy. Not to mention what he did to Tritter. :lol: Right, it would be strange for him not to do it. But, Cameron isn't sitting in front of her tv, watching "House" and enjoying Hugh Laurie play a deliciously irreverent and rude guy. She's a coworker, listening to her former boss be rude to someone. I think everyone at one point or another (and more often) has had someone call them out on behavior. I don't even think Cameron wanted him to stop insulting Cole completely, or change in any fundamental way. She just seemed to think he was especially harsh and making Cole a scapegoat.

What really interested me was House's comment that she was trying to control him. When, I wonder, does he think he was controlled by her in the past? I don't think he was saying she did control him in the past, only that she's been trying to since the beginning. If pressed, she might say "influence" instead of "control", and we might say "manipulate", but since he's used to Cuddy and Wilson trying to control him, both outright and by manipulative means, I think he'd consider it splitting hairs. I'm going to hope, with fingers crossed and with the understanding that this show is addicted to dropping story lines and I will never get my way, that ROG will return. For poker. Okay, I now desperately want to see Methos (the original ROG) interacting with House and Wilson.

This felt very much like a transitional episode to me, one that neatly sets up the dynamics and tensions for the next few weeks of drama. I liked it alot, but did not love it. I really did not get what Cameron and Chase were doing in this episode and felt they came off as real interruptions of the developing storylines with the candidates and Foreman. I wonder how the ER is so slow that Cam can spend her work day goading House and counseling Cole. Since the baiting of Cole read very much as a redundant escalation of the racial harrassment of Foreman from seasons past, this cast a disturbingly unpleasant shade over House's interactions with him. House's race-baiting was actually funny once upon a time, but now the repetition makes it looks like an unsavoury pattern. Of course, excuses can always be made that House was using his standard technique of trying to dig for the weak spots of each person in order to ferret out truths about them. And as in the past he made the unimaginative assumption that race or religion, or better yet race and religion, would do the trick with a black Mormon. As with many past over-the-top behaviors ( last week's exploration by electrocution being only the most recent), House was prompted by an extremely silly bet. I wonder if Cole's climactic decking of House was the result of his taking Cameron's suggestion to heart. I doubt that Cole was really all that put-out by House's juvenile and decidedly non-intellectual taunt that Joseph Smith was a horny hypocrite. I suspect Cole figured out that Cam was right and that confrontation was a good way to get House's attention and respect. I am really going to miss Henry. The Old Fraud was a wonderful foil for House, inventive with metaphors, quick at getting to the end of the thought process, smart -mouthed when needed, sly always. I completely see why House would be beguiled by Henry's character and style and also why he would find Scooter superfluous for his new team. Too bad, because I liked the idea of father-bedeviled House dealing with a wise, sensitive, experienced older guy. I also am more engaged by Thirteen each episode and like the way OW is underplaying the part; she is a Mona Lisa-cool contrast to the overwrought and hilarious antics of the obvious Amber and does not remind me of Cam in any way. For me the jury is still out on Kal Penn's and Peter Jacobs' characters but I do like the way they interact with House in this episode. Kal wins the prize for his great one-liners during the grave digging scene. Cuddy was marvelous throughout this episode as she manoevered Foreman into becoming House's guardian devil. The snippets of Foreman's interviews at the other hospitals really told us all we needed to know about how extraordinary Cuddy is as an administrator and as a friend to House: unlike those lesser hospital chiefs, she has the imagination, skill, courage, generosity, and "stones" to hire a great but unorthodox doctor and make that decision pay off for her hospital and its patients. The other administrators stated explicitly that they would not hire Foreman because, while he had the superior medical talents they needed, they were not prepared to handle his House-taught tendendancy to follow his own insights into patient care while disregarding standard medical procedures and the direct orders of his boss. This is what got Foreman fired, proving, as one of the timid administrators stated, he didn't leave House soon enough. So Foreman was blackballed, as Cuddy put it in a stunningly bold turn of phrase. But she stoutly believes in her own abilities to rescue the outcast and turn him into an asset. She did it with House and she is prepared to do it again with Foreman. Ever the risk-taker, Cuddy is gambling that she can kill two birds with one stone -- get the talented Foreman back onto her staff and provide House with the curbs and restrictions he needs to function best. The past few cases have shown her that House needs boundaries and surveillance to prevent him from abandoning patients in the hands of underskilled newbies or trying to almost-kill himself. We will see if she can make this gamble work. The war to come will not really be between Foreman and House, but rather between Cuddy and House. In the preview for next week, spoiler alert - House states his understanding of this dynamic clearly when he vows to make Cuddy pay for imposing Foreman on his unit. I think that House is pissed off at Foreman, but he is furious at Cuddy. I am looking forward to the confrontation to come. Spoiler alert added by Poeia

I don't like Foreman. But I think it is clear that within the world of "House," he (along with Cameron and Chase) are identified as among the top doctors of their generation. They were selected to participate in a nationally prestigeous fellowship with House and have worked closely with him on a wide variety of cases for three plus years. All three have learned an immense amount during their time with House. Had Foreman not blown his chances at Mercy by directly disobeying his boss to follow his own gut instincts on patient treatment, we are made to believe that his career would have continued its upward trajectory. I may be confused, but I thought that a major theme of the final several episodes of season three was that Foreman was suffering from a bad case of the "yips." That is, he profoundly lacked confidence in his own judgement. He said to Cuddy, in turning down her offer of his own unit, that he was not ready for the challenge. House explicitly told him he was not ready because he lack such confidence and was still longing to follow House's medical lead. Foreman plays at showing a smug and confident exterior to the world but House (and probably Cuddy as well) sees through that facade with ease.

In S1 and the first half of S2 I could understand calling Foreman "talented." But last year I couldn't. And I'm not just basing it Lupe's death. I almost wonder if Foreman wouldn't be a more talented doctor right now had he *not* worked with House. We know he's smart and we know how he *wants* to be as a doctor (at least I think we do, but who knows), but his personality flaws are highlighted when matched against House's stubbornness and his own set of personality flaws. Maybe Foreman would be downright brilliant if he *had* worked with Dr. Marty. Coming out of lurkdom to mention that I also noticed how Wilsonish Cameron was last night and I think that was my biggest problem with her portrayal. Not the fact that they are setting her up as a friend for House, but that she was clearly written in an extremely similar way to Wilson. They've been setting her up as similar to Wilson since season one. She's the one on the team who worries about him, who asks him questions, who pays attention to the little changes. Where they take that is up to them, but that part of Cameron's personality isn't new. What I've always thought was interesting is that Cameron and Wilson both have similar personality traits, but they diverge at various points. They're similar in some ways but very different in others. Cameron even mentions this! No she didn't. She asks him if he treats the only other person who actually bothers to engage him the same way he's treating her at that point, i.e., "are you also a pain in the ass to your only friend, House?" Frankly, that question didn't even need to be asked because people who just happen to pass them on the street some random afternoon can tell that House is a pain in the ass to Wilson.

No! Old guy, don't go! Seriously DS, take 13! Take the plastic surgeon! Take 6/9! Take...that other guy. Not the old fraud. I actually didn't think there was too much Foreman and Cameron. It just that their scenes were very blah. I didn't feel like Cameron was trying to help Cole at all. It was all about her trying to annoy House and using the poor, unsuspecting Mormon to do that. Chase seemed a lot more genuine than her. Overall the episode was very meh, I think it's mostly because of the limited Wilson and Chase screentime but yay for that last scene with Cuddy being Cuddy again.