My oh my. At 40 minutes in my husband looks at me and says" this is the stupidest episode of House I've ever seen." Sadly, I agree, It had BIG.SPECIAL.EPISODE. written all over it. The slo-mo! The vampire-like faces of 13 and the patient. Yikes. The more the drama upped, the more we laughed. That being said, I loved getting an extra 8 minutes of HL. For a minute, I thought 13 was really dead!

Oh, I forgot to mention the nose goes moment was so hilariously wrong. It's probably one of my favorite moments on the show, now.

Just to echo since I forgot to mention in my earlier post, yes HL looked hotter than hell tonight, and I think it's because with the spiky hair, he had that just got out of bed look. Back to the regularly scheduled episode discussion....

The lack of Wilson was extremely odd. I agree. Obviously, I'm a bit biased, what with my devotion to H/W. :wink: I know that every episode can't focus on their relationship, but I really felt like Wilson was missing here. In Birthmarks they went through all the trouble to establish the fact that one of Wilson's greatest fears is losing House. I expected the writers to at least touch upon that a little bit in this episode.

I do have to chime in that HL was seriously hot tonight. I wasn't big on the hostage!plot, but if it leaves him looking like that I think he needs to go work for the SWAT team. Guh. I do think Chase walking out was in character, even if it was a dick move. Remember early Chase? A bit of a dick. He wasn't trying to do the nice thing, just what he thought was the right thing, and Dick + Taking A Stand = Continuity in my opinion. He's seemed nicer lately because we never see him, we're feeling sorry for him for getting fired, or he's being all "I Love You" to Cameron, so this seemed a nice call back. I still love him. =)

Meh. I liked last episode better, oddly enough. Wasn't feeling the suspense. Maybe it's because my irritation level with Thirteen has just reached the unbearable stage. Please, please go away. Please? Chase? It seemed in-character somehow. He has strange reactions sometimes. His home life growing up may or may not have contained violence of the parental kind, so I don't think he was looking at the situation (person threatening violent things) very rationally. Then again, who knows. Sometimes he just cuts and runs like that. HL was great as always, LE had some great expressions, OW did pretty well in the last few minutes.

Oh, I forgot to mention the nose goes moment was so hilariously wrong. HAHAHA! I almost forgot about that - it was awesome.

I did like that the reason House was in Cuddy's office in the first place wasn't because he was trying to get something from her desk -- he was booby-trapping it. When it was just Thirteen, the one hostage and House, House could have given him back the gun without the bullets. Or he could have given Thirteen and the hostage the choice of agreeing to say that the POTW had gotten the gun back or else he would actually give the gun back. He could have actually bought time to finish the diagnosis without re-arming the man. (But, if he had, Thirteen couldn't have had her epiphany that she wants to live.)

It doesn't help the innocent people. Usually in these situations, the terrorist kills the hostages anyway, even when they get what they want. Well, I didn't see him helping out in any other ways. I thought it was just a jerk thing to do. I do think it was IC, he's always been kind of a "look out for myself and your problems aren't my problems" guy and usually I like that about him, but this was just a little too much for me. This was different, there were multiple innocent lives at stake, nothing House or anyone else did anything to cause it to happen, and he walked out because he didn't like that the guy was taking hostages? Does he think anyone else liked it?

I liked it a lot. Hugh Laurie front and centre, with House's values and his obsessions and eventually his care on display. I believed that he would be arrogant enough to hand the gun back and I liked that he then had to accept that he had endangered Thirteen himself. I liked it that it was harder for him to walk out of the room than ask to take the meds himself. He's got values and every once in a while he gets a kick in the pants to remember that they do include people as well as puzzles. I thought Olivia Wilde was very good, nailing all her scenes. She hit all the right notes this ep. I didn't like Chase just walking out, because although I do believe he can tell House no and that he is very pragmatic about situations, I didn't believe he had no emotional stake in what was going on in that room. There was a better way to trim the cast. But all in all, an excellent episode.

Guys, guys, guys, I said I wanted House to care more about the diagnosis, but not to the point where he gives a gun back to a crazy person who is, basically, a spent force at that point and thus puts 2 other people's lives in danger! Can we have a happy medium, here?

I guess I may be hard to please or something because that episode did nothing for me. I couldn't muster up any sympathy for the potw. I can't even remember his name. I felt more sympathy for the hostages (excluding House and Thirteen) than I did for him. I was hoping the pregnant lady and her husband wouldn't buy it. I knew when Thirteen volunteered to be the guinea pig that she'd end up deciding she wants to LIVE!!. I know I can't be the only one who was hoping that gunman would shoot her, can I? I fail to see how this was original in any respect. I think it was completely derivative which disappoints me because I know the writers are capable of so much better. On another note, wtf is up with hospital security? It's not like they've never had a gunman come through the doors of PPTH before. And another thing, not a mention by any one wondering how House might be coping with the possibility of getting shot again. And come on! Infarction, gunshot, od, bus crash, brain surgery, hostage. Did I miss anything? Enough with the melodrama. I want smart, clever, thought provoking drama not this crap. Ok, rant over.