(Season 5, Episode 11 – “Joy to the World”)
It’s so nice that Foreman, after five seasons and a couple of half-hearted appearances by dates, finally got it on with Thirteen! I was wondering if that’s where they were going with the relationship ever since the episode in which Foreman got so upset about Thirteen’s behaviors with drugs and women, earlier in the season.
I have been watching and reviewing House for awhile now, and sometimes episodes resonate with me more than others. Last week, I thought the writing was a little uneven. The antics were a little too slapstick for me. This week I thought the episode had more focus: I always like it when there is a good case, and the case was important in last night’s episode.
There was a lot to like here — Wilson’s story about Irene Adler almost slayed me. I kept working my mind back to see if I could remember a patient like that. “The one who got away.” Nice. House was messing with his minions, as usual, but the antics took a nice backseat to the case.
Did anybody else wonder about why Cuddy was so closely affiliated with this case? Did anybody else guess? I think I should have wondered more from the title of the episode — it has the word “Joy” in it like the episode in which she lost the baby she was going to adopt. I didn’t suspect that the patient had been pregnant, let alone given birth to a child in a dilapidated house and then left it there for dead!
I was a little shocked by the fact that there wasn’t more outcry about the fact that this baby had died. I was holding my breath: I thought Cuddy was going to find a body in that house. I am not sure that I buy that those people were able to care for a baby who might have special health needs for three weeks, but hey, a Christmas miracle, I’ll roll with it.
A couple of other notable moments: Lori Petty gave a fine performance as the Huntington’s patient who takes issue with Foreman’s attitude. I was pleasantly surprised when Kutner went and apologized to the boy from his high school for having been so horrible to him. Taub totally called that one wrong. And House telling that couple after six hours that the woman is going to have a baby with maternal-only DNA was screamingly funny (I’m willing to suspend my disbelief selectively, I suppose!).
But I think what this episode boils down to for me is that Cuddy gets her baby after all. And I’m thrilled. But what will this do to her relationship with House?
Clacked by Jen Creer
on Dec 10, 2008 @ 13:04 EST5EDT
It will be a reason for House not to get closer. Plot device.
Just for the record the Irene Adler story was one of two Sherlock Holmes tie ins in this episode. Irene Adler was described by Conan Doyle as “The Woman” in Holmes’s life, the one woman who was his intellectual equal. The other Holmes tie-in was the antiquarian medical text that was Wilson’s gift to House. It was by Dr. Joseph Bell, who had been Conan Doyle’s instructor at medical school in Edinburgh, and who was credited by Doyle as being the model for Holmes’s deductive abilities.