A Belated Happy Holidays To House (1/29/08 episode reviewed)

Show's title: It's A Wonderful Lie

House, MD, returned Tuesday for the first of just a handful of promised new episodes. I am assuming it was because of the writer's strike that this Christmas-themed episode is airing now.

The show began with a classic House switcheroo, where the viewer plays the series game of name-the-person-who-is-about-to-be-hospitalized.

As the episode begins a teenage girl is doing some simulated rock climbing with help/coaching from her mother. Her mom, Maggie, is played by the actress, who used to play Donna on The West Wing, which was one of my favorite shows for its first few seasons before Aaron Sorkin left it.

The daughter falters and the viewer is meant to think, uh oh, she's going to fall. But the show's writers have long abandoned making the victim obvious, and such was the case here.

Instead, Maggie suddenly suffers complete paralysis of her hands and drops the safety rope holding her daughter, who falls. While people rush to see if Maggie's daughter is fine, her daughter is instead concerned about what's wrong with her mom. Her mom can no longer feel her hands.

Credits roll.

House is given the patient's medical history, told Maggie, 34, is a single mom who had a double mastectomy in response to breast cancer. He is more interested in the claim that the mother never lies to her daughter.

While this story was unfolding what I found more interesting was that the series continues its positive trend of having interesting things happening during exposition scenes. In past seasons it was not unusual for House to play with his cane or throw an object during a scene which has the main purpose of conveying information.

For this episode the choice was made to have House join Maggie's daughter in sucking on lollipops while he pressed her on information about her mom. When she says she and her mom never lie to each other House, always fascinated by deception, becomes a bit obsessed with this topic.

At one point House even pressed the 11-year-old daughter on her mom's sexual position. She tells him her mom prefers to have sex with her chest to the bed so her sexual partner won't stare at her scars.

House sends part of his team to talk to Maggie's most recent sexual partner, who admits slipping her some ecstasy. They put her on dialysis but instead of helping her she becomes, temporarily, blind.

To get this information the team had to lie to the lying sex partner. Moral: Don't lie? Actually if anything, House is having trouble at the concept still with the concept that anyone would be honest all the time and doesn't stop until he catches mom in a big lie.

House sends his people to not only go to Maggie's home but to also grab her computer so he can read her emails. I've always felt this premise a bit tenuous but the idea of grabbing computers and reading emails was too implausible for me to digest.

Just when the viewer is wondering whether this whole plot arc is meant only to remind the viewer that privacy laws like HIPAA haven't stopped House from understanding the importance of privacy and boundaries (he is more of an ends-justify-the-means-type guy) House finds emails that might help solve the mystery of Maggie's medical ailment because she complains of joint pain. Ultimately, though, it turns out the email didn't really help anyone with anything, except serving as an odd plot device.

I was underwhelmed by this whole medical arc though I did love one dialogue exchange. It came as they were trying to determine why Maggie was blind:

Maggie's daughter (if they gave her name, I missed it): "Your boss is weird."

Taub: "Yeah, he is. He thought he'd get information you may not have been telling us -"

Maggie: "By being a jerk?"

Taub:"You'd be surprised how often it works."

The more interesting plotline was the Secret Santa. Only House would be wacky and deceptive enough to rig the holiday ritual so that everyone had House as their Secret Santa recipient. This leads to some hilarity as the staff figures out that he rigged it and how they react to this. House figures he'll spark some dissension and he might get some nice ties or sweaters.

Just as the viewer was beginning to wonder whether there was a point to having the episode set at the holidays other than the Secret Santa fun, we get a key serious scene. House walks through the hospital lobby, where Wilson is wearing a festive holiday hat amid partying employees. House tells Wilson that Maggie is dying.

There's nothing more depressing than someone dying on Christ's birthday, Wilson says.

Wilson: "The angels of Christmas have finally given House a present he can appreciate."

House: "Oh, don't ruin it. Don't pin this on Christ. He's got enough nails in him."

Now THAT is a line you won't hear often on television. The exchange reminded me that Epiphany Sorbet wrote an article last year about House being one of the few well-known television atheists.

House thinks of something and goes back upstairs and announces, 'I am going to perform a Christmas miracle." He, of course, does.

I don't want to spoil things by revealing what happens in the final scenes but it does nicely provide one more reason why the show had the holiday theme.

Overall, it was not one of the better episodes but it was still better than most medical dramas. I'll give it a 7 out of a 10.

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