Reflecting On "Birthmarks," the Oct. 14 Episode of House (Warning: Spoilers)

Guess who that kid is?

Warning: This review/recap is even more unusual than most of mine, which is saying something. (Lots of parenthetical comments.) Consider yourself warned. If you are looking for a straight recap without any personal asides I suggest leaving this article stat.

Unlike some relatives (I am looking up in your direction, Dad, ) I don't ignore or deflect emotional topics... and perhaps that is why as I was watching this and typing up this recap I found myself, without much conscious thought, writing some asides and personal digressions. I decided to keep those in but put them in parenthesis and to add the warning at the topic.

Now all of that said... this was, to me, a very good episode. Very powerful even if you are not still dealing with fresh pain over the loss of your own father. The writing and acting on this show was stellar. The medicine was more questionable, as Polite Dissent notes on his blog but forced to focus on someone who had a foot of bowel removed (ew!) or House trying to avoid attending his own dad's funeral you can guess where my attention strayed and where it stayed.

The patient of the week is a 25-year-old Chinese woman named Nicole, who grew up in New Jersey but was trying to meet her adopted parents in China when she got sick. I am admittedly going to give her story line short shrift.

After the credits roll, House walks into a room with his team and Taub tells him to call his mom. "What are you, my mom?" House asks him. He presses Taub about bags under Taub's eyes as they continue a plot line from the last episode that I find so uninteresting I don't plan to mention it again. "I don't know what your daddy issues are but don't deflect them on me," Taub tells House.

Foreman also tells House to deal with his dad's death and the funeral. "Seriously I am fine. I did not even like the guy," House said.

Cuddy tells House to go to his dad's funeral but House continues to insists he has no interst in attending the funeral let alone delivering, as his mom wants, the eulogy. he's asked to give the eulogy. House jokes that since eulogy means good words he would rather give a "bastardology." Oh, that House and his snarkiness. Cuddy tells him to act like "a grown up."

While talking to the POTW (patient of the week) House insults her for not covering her mouth when she coughs. (Which reminds me of the time when I was student teaching when I emphasized to elementary school students the importance of hygiene, from washing your hands to covering your mouth. These kids were shocked and appalled when I explained that most people, unlike them, did not normally sneeze or cough into their arm but instead into the hands and then would shake others hands. I then fake sneezed into my hand and said I wanted to congratulate them for being so good at hygiene and thus wanted to shake everyone's hands. They looked at me and my sneeze-filled hand with such disgust you would have thought I'd just farted and tried to light my fart on fire - which I once saw campers do at summer camp..... But I digress. Where was I? Sorry, I'm a little off my game today. Ah, right, House.)

They suspect SARS is the cause of the lady's problems. Cuddy gives House a shot she says is to prevent SARS. Soon after we saw House collapse... and come to (or so the camera suggests) in the passenger seat of a car driven by Wilson, who says, "I am not doing this because I care!" This scene had particularly great acting.

House shares aloud his suspicion that Cuddy drugged House, at the suggestion/behest of Wilson. House does not like it when he gets drugsis given drugs without her permission.

Wilson suggests House needs to deal with the emotions caused by his dad's death.

House, at a rest stop, said his dad did not talk to him one summer, instead slipping typed notes under his bedroom door.(Oh, man, it was at this point that this episode started to really hit home now. I used to communicate best with my parents by typing notes to them which I'd leave on the breakfast table. Wow, I feel like a freak now for doing that. But I still talked to them all the time, but realized quickly I can best articulate and communicate my thoughts in writing. Besides, you don't have to worry about someone interrupting you or cutting you off or body language when you pass it on through typed notes.)

Wilson tells House to lie if he needs to but give his mom the impression they are/were a happy family. (See above about hitting home.)

Finally House, continuing his odd habit of negotiating for everything, offers a deal: He will go to the funeral if Wilson gives him his cane. But when Wilson hands him the cane, House, ass that he is, uses it to knock Wilson's car keys into a sewer grade. House explains he said he would go but not when. Can I just say how impressed I am with how quick House is with that cane? If, or when, he loses his medical license House can do a cross over onto a martial arts tv series.

While Kutner, et al are advancing the plot regarding the patient of the week House is further hindering Wilson's attempts to get them to his dad's funeral. When Wilson asks House to hold a flashlight while he retrieves the car keys House predictably throws that too down into the sewer. It was the House equivalent of handing a cookie to the cookie monster and being chagrined when said cookie is consumed.

Wilson said they will delay the funeral until House arrives. House says his dad was so punctual that if you did not make it to a meal on time you did not get to eat that meal.

(Sorry, another aside: If that was the rule with me when I was growing up I would never eat. I live on what I call Scott Standard Time (SST for short), which is 30-45 minutes past regular time. Speaking of which I saw a clock the other day which threw me for a loop. It's not just a confused clock like others I wrote about but this one is 30 minutes fast. I have seen people who set their personal clocks or watches to avoid being late but a bank clock? Anyway I pass by this bank clock on the way to work and even when i'm on time or early it says i'm late. Gets my ire up every time! Hmm, what's going to happen when we all change our clocks a few weeks. Maybe instead of being 30 minutes early it will be 30 minutes late? That will really confuse me - I will think I'm even later than I already am. Oy.
Stay tuned..

Anyway...)

Chase, who knows from father issues, says House may not be admitting it but he is probably an emotional mess right now. Watching that I realize that I, writing this, am becoming an emotional mess.( What are the odds that recapping a television episode would be cathartic, helping me move past some of my own father issues? And am I not lucky this has happened with this show and not, say, Dexter or Reaper?)

House and Wilson get on the road again but House uses that cane (I am starting to think this cane should demand its own credit - it is THAT good) to hit the accelerator, forcing Wilson to choose between hitting a police car or passing a police car. He opts for the latter.

This leads to my favorite scene in the episode, which takes place at a police station after we learn that Wilson has a warrant out for his arrest.

I love it when the cop shifts gears from being such a hard-ass he makes the guys on Dragnet and Adam-12 seem new agey wishy washy lazy slackers to (upon learning House is trying to avoid his own dad's funeral) wants House to do right by his mom by attending the funeral: "Stop acting like such an ingrate and go pay your respects to your father," the cop tells him.

Meanwhile House has let Wilson in on another one of his daddy issues: House believes his dad is not, in fact, his dad. Biologically, he means. (And, watching that, I flash back on reading a children's book about a parents market where you can switch parents. Predictably the protagonist tries out some new parents before deciding to stick with those already present. Oh, man, that must have killed my parents since they would have obviously known I read it. Man, I suck.)

They arrive at the funeral home. His mom says something which I could easily imagine my own mom saying: "I don't care that you did not like him. He was your father and he loved you. The war is over."

Best exchange of the episode:
House's mom to Wilson: "Stop looking so worried. I know he is going to make me proud.
Wilson: "I am sure that you know him better than I do.

House, forced to give an eulogy, gave the kind of speech about his dad that I played out in fantasies but never articulated.
"This man you are eager to pay homage to was incapable of admitting any point of view but his own. He punished failure..."

Then he pauses mid sentence: "He loved doing what he did. He saw his work as some kind of sacred calling, more important than any personal relationship. Maybe if he had been a better father I would be a better son. But I am what I am because of him for better or for worse."

(At this point I flashed back on all the times I said I wanted to avoid the maxim of "like father like son" coming true, not realizing or understanding that it would not be a curse but a blessing in disguise.)

Then House loses his composure as he says, "I just," chokes up, tries again to get it out, "I just wish..." before stopping to kiss his dad's forehead. I am going to just pretend he didn't do what he did next.

There is a cute scene later on in a diner where House and Wilson, are working, albeit briefly, as a team like Starsky and Hutch or Cagney and Lacey, except that they are doctors.
"This is fun. Isn't it?" House asks. We later get the answer from Wilson: Yes, it is and he misses it. Which means... hooray for those of us who like Wilson (bad news for those who do not) that he is now back, returning to the employment of the hospital.

Related links:

Season opener - reviewed by Vacelts, reviewed by Polite Dissent

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