Dr. House M.D. reviews. S1E02. Paternity.

Another Tuesday, another episode of House. It was a good episode, but it just reinforced some of my complaints about the first episode.

(Yar, there be Spoilers below!)

Once again, the final diagnosis was unorthodox, but clever. Just like in the first episode, the team doesn’t so much as deduce the correct diagnoses as much as stumble toward it like a drunken sailor staggering down the street. It’s multiple sclerosis! No, it’s neurosyphillis! No wait, it’s subacute sclerosis panencephalitis! There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to their diagnostic strategy; they just jump from one convenient explanation to another.

The whole adoption issue and sub-plot was just nothing but a smokescreen. Despite what Dr. House shouted, it did not affect diagnosis. House had never asked the mother about her immunization status when he thought she was the patient’s natural mother, so why should it suddenly matter when it turns out the patient is adopted? It just gives the writers another excuse to show Dr. House’s “brilliance” and “non-conformity” (and lack of ethics).

I realize it’s only been two episodes, but I’m starting to notice a pattern: due to some unforeseen complication, the ordinary diagnostic techniques won’t work and the team has to use some clever and unconventional means of diagnosis. In the first episode, the patient had a sudden (and suspiciously convenient) gadolinium allergy, so an MRI couldn’t be used. The doctors then had to x-ray her leg looking for glow-in-the-dark worms instead. In this episode, the patient’s spinal fluid couldn’t be tested because of the treatment they’d already given him (which makes little sense), so they had to get a tissue sample from the back of his eye.

Once again, the hospital seems strangely understaffed as the young gun physicians end up running all the tests themselves.

I don’t know if I missed it in the first episode, but apparently each of the young guns is some sort of specialist. We find out this episode that Omar Epps character is a neurologist (which is lucky, since both of the first two cases have been neurological cases).

Now, don’t think I don’t like the show. It’s very enjoyable and better than 90% of what’s on television. Hugh Laurie is great as Dr. House, and the characters of Omar Epps and Sean Patrick Leonard are growing on me. I just have high expectations for a show that bills itself on cleverness and zebras.