But he has been shockingly careless this season - death and near death are not because of the seriousness of the POTW's condition, but lack of attention and a cavalier attitude. That I don't care for. This reminds me of last season: people were complaining about how oddly happy (or hazy) House was on ADs for quite a while after the Tritter arc. It took him (literally) looking into his own reflection to discover that something was amiss: he was so happy at his insanely mad diagnostic skillz that he forgot about the dying patient. Until he saw his own smile. Then he put it all together that he was not being himself, outing Wilson as the culprit, and we were able to laud HL for his subtlety in playing exactly the same character during that arc but on ADs and a little more carefree. It was a puzzling shift in the character that went on for a number of episodes and was then explained. Now, we have a House blinded by his attraction to beautiful women. He has always been attracted to beautiful women, but has never before been blinded by that attraction to the patient, or possibly even more significantly, to the puzzle. So, perhaps here as well there is an explanation forthcoming. Perhaps he is still on ADs, voluntarily or involuntarily, perhaps a different pill that doesn't make him hazy, but rather, horny. Or perhaps he has an increased hormone production because of an endocrine disease of some sort (to do witht he Vicodin?) with much the same side effects. I'm no doc, but I don't think this is a writing error, I think it's part of a well-written arc, in which his own physical and emotional issues come up as his nemesis of the season (as in his poignant "perky pretty things are good; repulsive teenage boys are bad"; does anyone not think he was referring to himself as the rtb there?) His intrinsic self-loathing, which has always been ameliorated by his necessarily astonishing diagnostic skills, might now come more to the forefront, as his faith in himself is again shaken (much as it was last season by Wilson and Cuddy's Lie in Meaning). After all, he's really not every guy. Really. Except that if he were (and, of course, for the most part he is or could be) and he could embrace that part of himself as fallible, yet still worthy of love, he could start some emotional healing. But he's not because he says he's not in the core of his being and so he most likely won't. But then, who knows? Could be he's just stoned. ;->

I am seriously procrastinating here, so bear with me... I used Taiga's very useful summaries to determine how many cases House has gotten 'right'. I'm defining 'right' as getting the primary diagnosis correct on at least one of the main patients. Getting the diagnosis 'wrong' is defined as House not coming up with the correct answer for the primary diagnosis. Wrong guesses don't count against him as long as he comes up with the correct answer eventually. I also excluded episodes without the normal format - e.g., No Reason, Three Stories, One Day One Room. House has gotten 55 cases right and 8 cases wrong in seasons 1-3 (87% correct). In season 4, he’s gotten 5 cases right and 2 wrong (71% correct). I performed a Chi Square test to see if there’s a significant difference between seasons 1-3 and season 4 in the percent of cases that House got right. I found no significant difference in the number of correct diagnoses by House between seasons 1-3 and season 4 (Chi Square = 0.324, df = 1, p = 0.57). Ergo, there is no evidence (yet) to suggest that House is less intelligent or even not as good at his job this season.

Sorry about the double post - I can't edit my old post and add quotes at the same time because I'm dumb :) Since he's spent extended periods of time in at least two, possibly three, completely alien cultures, I don't see that new personalities would distract him to that extent! But we already have evidence that he does get distracted by people's secrets (Fools for Love, House Training). I don't necessarily mean he would be distracted by different types of people, I meant he might get distracted by new people in his life. And his diagnostic skills were recognized long before he had any team; the department was created specifically to take advantage of his unique abilities. We don't know when he got his first team. We know he had people before he had the original fellows. Also, I think Alone (and Airborne) pretty much showed that although he can work by himself, House works better with a team. Especially a team that he knows how to work with.

blue, it's testament to my level of boredom that I went over the numbers and I agree (although I can't remember the last time I tackled a 2x2 table so I sort of forgot about Yates...2 or 3 times, but nevermind that). However, using Yates on such a small sample is a statistical nono but I can't be bothered to do a Fisher-Irwin. Let's just say that the Yates is correct.

To quote Chevy Chase: It was my understanding there would be no math.

I believe math is very much part of the axis of evil ;)

Hey bailey and galaxygirl, that's cold! (Wholeheartedly verbal here, but appreciate your efforts, blue!) :) Actually, the percent right vs wrong diagnoses doesn't really matter as much to me as the how and the why. But we already have evidence that he does get distracted by people's secrets (Fools for Love, House Training). I don't necessarily mean he would be distracted by different types of people, I meant he might get distracted by new people in his life. Oh I certainly agree - it's just that I've never seen him, well, blither before. Even detoxing, his brain never shuts out the medical problem. We don't know when he got his first team. We know he had people before he had the original fellows. Also, I think Alone (and Airborne) pretty much showed that although he can work by himself, House works better with a team. Especially a team that he knows how to work with. He does work better with a team, and we know he had one previous to CC&F. I was thinking more of the transitional period from nephrology/infectious disease to diagnostics, and we don't exactly know how/when he made the transition. But there are so few departments devoted exclusively to that particular specialty, for PPTH to create one and put House at its head, he must have shown extraordinary skill in that regard. No matter how much Cuddy likes and respects him. :wink:

Actually, the percent right vs wrong diagnoses doesn't really matter as much to me as the how and the why. It's the how and the why that are bugging the crap out of me as well. The patients in 97 Seconds and Whatever It Takes were both compromised as a direct result of his Survivor competition, and House was seriously off his game in Ugly because of the CIA doc. I'm beginning to think (hope?) that this might be the point of this arc. It seems to me that House lost a bit of his of mind along with his team.