I thought it was in answer to the conversation about her enabling him and why she did that. That confused me. Is she saying here that the fact that she cares about him makes her screw up? Or is it just House suggesting that? Lovely how, when he walks away in that scene, he waits at the door. I thought he was considering going back and talk about it, but in fact he was waiting for the result of his prank. Wonderful.

Just as "Emancipation" clarified the real consequences and impact of Amber's death, "Last Resort" has clarified, for me, the real moral problem of how House has risked the lives of his patients in order to use them as bargaining chips. To gain personally from unnecessarily risking someone's life is corruption. For a doctor to risk his patient's life for personal gain (drugs or to retain a friendship) is on a higher level of immorality. I am grateful that Shore has decided to address this question because it's not going away quietly.

I was late to watching this one, but thank goodness I got to watch it without commercials. The breaks really do come in the worst spots now. Still, I thought KJ did a great job of maintaining the tension and using the hospital spaces to create an eerie feeling. Everything felt so taut and genuinely frightening - in part because we don't know what the gunman will do, and in part because we don't know what House will do at any given time. Zeljko Ivanek is so amazing. That he can make his character both terrifying and sympathetic is just remarkable. OW really nailed this one. I think that in a way, the drama was finally big enough to match what the Huntington's means for Thirteen. Yay, Cameron, for getting that diagnosis. Makes sense, as she is the patient history queen. I was kind of waiting for Cuddy to take that drawer, go out in the hall, and beat House with it.

Oh. My. Gods. Can we please have an episode that isn't about 13's Huntingtons? That bothered me even more than Chase walking out. Chase walking out annoyed me because I wanted to see more Chase, not because I thought it was OOC. On the contrary, it made sense to me. I don't recall Chase taking big risks when someone's life was on the line on purpose, hence the gravity of The Mistake. It's called The Mistake for a reason... not only because it cost Kayla her life, but also for the enormity of the event for Chase. It wasn't like him at all, and it haunted him; it probably still does. As he has moved into his role in surgery, he has been even more careful. He has refused to operate if the chances were good that the patient would die. I don't think he'd be eager to do something that could cost an innocent person his/her life... and he wouldn't be eager to risk House's life either. I don't know if this has to do with his backbone as much as it has to do with the core of his being, based on the traumas he's suffered. And I'll stop here before I get told to move this to the character thread. And yeah, for someone who had practically zero screen time, he sure is dominating the conversation here. Can you hear that, TPTB??? It amused me that Cameron was all "What? No, he's kidding. He's standing right here." As if House would fall for that. Oh, Cam. You are a lousy liar. Responding to the SWAT leader's assessment of House and Huddy: You don't get to be in his position without some serious intuition about people. House is NOT the only human being alive who can size up a person or a relationship quickly, and there's nothing like trauma to bring out the purity of someone's feelings. I don't think it would be difficult for him to figure out what kind of person House is (and he would have asked people, I'm sure, to try to anticipate House's actions). The traits he rattled off are not the most subtle in House's toolbox. ;) And don't forget: while not canon, certainly conversations went on between SWAT and Cuddy that we were not privy to. Who knows what she gave away? And I totally agree with the vampire makeup comment. It was a serious distraction for me. It was WAY over the top.

I thought OW did a bang up job in this episode. Kudos for her. I believed her when she said she didn't want to die. There was one part that stuck out to me. In the beginning, when 13 takes that first shot, she could have given herself something, and the second syringe could have been filled with a sedative for Jason. Granted, that would mean we wouldn't have an extended hour of House to watch. I'd love to see a hostage situation in which it's ended peacefully almost immediately and then the rest of the episode deals with the reaction of the hostages. Okay, so this is House and we won't get another hostage situation nor an episode dealing with 'feelings', but it would be an interesting take on the subject.

This is the House I've been missing. This is the troubled but still very grown up person I remember from S1. I like him so much better than the jokester and the hipster. This type of writing brings out the best in HL, if you ask me. I hope TPTB don't forget about him immediately. I agree, Peggy, that I love to see House in this role. But I also think he is the jokester and hipster. He's empathetic and he's arrogant. He's concerned with the puzzle and he's concerned about what the patient needs. I think we'll continue to see the many sides of House, and given how differently people respond to the episodes (to me this one was miles better than The Itch, while some posters think the opposite) that's a good thing.

carrie, the syringes didn't arrive pre-made. The syringes arrived empty, with one bottle of medication to dose from. (These were not run-of-the-mill, commonly-used medications, such as epinephrine or ativan--which appear to be used commonly and therefore are purchased by the hospital pre-dosed in pre-made syringes.) If they'd sent in two bottles of medication, and House and 13 dosed the syringes from two separate bottles, then Jason would have been suspicious. The point was, he wanted to make sure he and the guinea pig got the same medication. If there had been two different bottles, then he'd have had no assurance of that.

I would love to be able to agree with those of you who think House giving the gun back was in character and a wonderfully "shocking" moment, but I don't. House had the weapon and the control of the situation. Only a complete fool would give the gun back to a crazy guy. No matter how sympathetic House might be to the quest for the truth, he still saw Jason shoot one person and come within a second of shooting the nurse. Is the answer to a puzzle really more important than the life of a teenager and one of his fellows and his own? House is logical if nothing else and there's no logic at all in that move. He had every evidence he needed that Jason was not just a nice guy looking for an answer. Jason had that potential to kill and the walls were closing in. He was desperate enough to take the hostages, and shoot one person. House had no reason to believe he would not be desperate enough to start shooting again. That single act destroys the gravity of the situation. I don't like it when House looks stupid.

I don't think House looked stupid; I think he looked foolishly obsessive. And that has been a consistent character trait since season 1. This is the man who gave himself a migraine and then tested a sketchy migraine med, in an attempt to discredit an old med-school rival, in a larger attempt to distract himself from his (second) loss of Stacy.

He gave himself a migraine. Foolish, maybe. Obessive, sure. Irresponsible with human life? Not really. He didn't effectively put a gun to the head of an innocent teenage boy which is the line he crossed in Last Resort. We'll just have to agree to disagree.

When he gave himself the migraine, he absolutely put his own life at risk. The nitroglycerine he gave himself to cause the migraine could have killed him. Webber's migraine medication could have had an adverse effect and killed him. The meds Foreman finally gave him could have caused heart failure and killed him. He has always played it loose with his own life, and he has always put diagnosis/truth before anything else. It was absolutely a bad move for House to return the gun; I'm not saying he made the right call. I'm saying it was in character. As House is not stupid but rather smarter than everyone else, I don't think we're supposed to see him as stupid in this scene. I think we're supposed to see him as foolishly obsessive, which is something he has always been. You don't have to agree with me. I'm just pointing out what I think was the writers' intention with that scene.

House is logical if nothing else and there's no logic at all in that move. He had every evidence he needed that Jason was not just a nice guy looking for an answer. House's logical thinking has always been impacted when he's emotionally involved or identifying with a patient. That's been consistent since the pilot episode. This episode, he identified with this patient's need to know what was happening to his body, both because of his overall need to know, which we know he's obsessive about, and because he's walked in his shoes of having something terribly wrong and nobody being able to diagnose it and indeed dismissing him as a drug seeker. He didn't see Jason as a psycho once he knew he wasn't using the situation for some other purpose, like show a loved one he was really really sick or prove to his work he was really really sick. House identified with that need to know--he's been there. It impacted his thinking and then he had to face that when the gunman went back on his word and looked like he was going to kill Thirteen. I thought it was good drama.

Running theme throughout all seasons of House: Even brilliant people make stupid choices sometimes. That's why one of the most popular lines on the show is "You're an idiot." And it gets said TO House as much as it is said BY him. FWIW, I said -- out loud -- "Are you f*ing kidding me?" when he gave Jason the gun. But honestly, it's not the first time someone has done something on House that has caused me to say that. Out loud. And of the people who have caused me to say that, House ranks #1. (Other instances include Foreman jabbing Cameron and Chase telling Kayla's brother "I was drunk." Sure, they had reasons. I still couldn't believe what I was seeing.) House thought he had Jason sized up. He *is* arrogant as hell, and he believed he knew Jason's limits. He appeared genuinely pissed off when he seemed to be wrong... then ultimately he was proven right when he asked 13 "Why are you still alive?" I'm sure if we hear about this incident again, we'll hear about that aspect of it.