This episode did NOTHING for me. I'm glad to see the writers breaking down the formula a bit to get away from the typical episode flow. However, there's no sense to this episode. The girl is apparently some major intellectual or psycology major. No one has been able to break House that deep, and this girl manages to pull it off?

What we learn of House's past isn't especially amazing, and we didn't need an entire episode to get there. There was zero explanation for why she chose House. What comes through in the dialogue is hardly a reason. It was written as if she had some connection to House, and the end result is amazingly bland.

It had a lot of what makes the House character great, but missed every other opportunity to explain how this story fits together.

Finally, someone else who came away from the episode with the same feeling I did. Thanks Diane. I think this is one of those episodes that will continue to seep into your consciousness ... the parallels between House and the cancer guy, both of whom were treated ill by their fathers and their two choices -- the one who "did something" to change his outcome (House, of course) and the other who lived down to his father's expectations until he had nothing left to do but die ... the refusal by House to draw a distinct line, because drawing lines leave no room for exceptional cases, which echoes back to "Three Stories" with his refusal to tell the students whether Stacy made the right choice ... so much to love.

I hadn't picked up on the bug parallels yet. Cool.

Does anyone else feel cheated that the Tritter problem went away so easily? Many episodes of run-up and POOF Cuddy says her bit on the stand and it's all over.
This was a good episode, less of the illness-of-the-week formula is a good thing.

Oh, Diane, you have so perfectly captured my thoughts and impressions after watching this superb episode twice last night! I was enthralled by David Shore's courage in NOT making the abortion debate the centerpiece of this drama; a lesser show would have wallowed in self-congratulation for tackling this sensitive subject.

I was also thrilled with Shore's ability to take the formula he has established for the show and shake it like a rag doll: clinic patients taking over the asylum, a dying patient asking for no pain treatment, a sympathetic patient actually demanding House be her doctor, a shaken House forced to confront the deep empathy that belies his brittle persona. The tact with which Hugh Laurie underplayed the reveal about House's abused childhood was a monument to subtlety and power. We now know something more about House but by no means has his complex character been completely explained.

You are so right to say that the entire episode has to be re-watched as a meditation on House's own condition rather than on that of the raped girl. The trauma of House's downward spiral during the Tritter arc has not at all been dismissed or diminished: House is still grappling with the emotional fall-out of those experiences as are Cuddy and Wilson to different degrees.

I was blown away by this episode and seriously shocked by the shallow negative rants offered on other boards without pity. Brava to you for shedding such glowing and thoughtful light on this splendid episode.

sorry but the episode is terrible and please no more cameron she is so annoying!

I'm not sure what to make of this episode. On the one hand, I liked that they've decided to forgo the usual "Mystery disease of the week" formula which has admittedly gotten boring. On the other hand, it was rather boring. There wasn't any witty bantering between House and his co-workers (except Wilson's "Am I supposed to be you? I don't want to be you" comment), and I'm dismayed to see that House can still control Cuddy with his stubborn attitude. I question whether or not he's really learned anything from his encounter with the rape victim.

Also, I totally misunderstood House's explanation at the end. I thought that it was his father who was being abused by his grandmother. I didn't know that it was House who was being abused by his dad. Shame on you, R. Lee Ermey! ;)

I thought it was excellent TV. Katheryn was the centerpiece for me. Terrific performance. Makes me want to see her again in a well written drama. The writing was also terrific. Well written dialog to be specific. Give and take that had me locked in. Hope this acting/writing/direction combination comes back soon.

Thanks, Diane, for an excellent review of the actual episode. (Perhaps some folks thought from the blaring promos this would be a different sort of show and were disappointed by the careful and subtle way the themes of abuse and abortion were handled. Maybe they thought it boring. Not me.)

And yes, after watching it a second time, I've discovered more depth and details (thanks for pointing out the bug theme — from the cockroach bite to the ladybug perusal to House's bug comment — very cool writing, direction and acting). Hugh Laurie brings his A game every week and I so much appreciate that: he is alert, sensitive and utterly relentless in portraying the character's idiosyncratic range of traits right to the bone.

So the patient demands he treat her, and to treat her, he forces himself to tell this story. It reminds me of Lines in the Sand, the "eating the red berries" scene, when he tells his story to get the patient to repeat what he does. In the end, House still doesn't know: meaning or meaningless? Reason or No Reason? Perhaps it will all stay in that one day, one room. Great stuff!

Our Dr. House is back and Tritter is gone!
HURRAY!!

I shed a tear at the end of this one.
Very good episode. Writing and acting superb!

Thank you for a wonderful review, Diane! I'm so glad that I'm not the only one who loved this episode! Your insights helped me connect things I still hadn't quite figured out, making me love it even more. And I, too, think it's awesome that this show doesn't shy away from controversial topics like religion, abortion, child abuse, etc.

Good stuff, kiddo. I really ate up the dialogue in this episode, personally. And at first I wasn't sold on the stories themselves, but upon reflection, they gave me so much more House in my House, and I'm so happy to have that back. I hope some other people who were thrown off by the episode will rewatch it, and find the beauty I found in the structure of his day. I'm happy you found it as well.

Thanks all (sylph as in biblio-? hi there!). Interesting range of reactions to the episode, for sure. I tend to have a bigger appetite for this sort of philosophical talking head episode than some people I know, so I suppose it's no surprise I'd love this one where others found it boring.

An excellent write up as always, Diane. I liked the episode, but I didn't love it. I thought it was too ponderous for ponderousness' sake. That doesn't mean it didn't have some great moments, it did. It didn't have enough to carry a full hour when the only counterpoint is the Cameron storyline. THAT is the one that aggravated me. Quick, someone put something together so we can watch Jennifer Morrison emote.

I do think there were powerful moments, mostly because Hugh Laurie can make even stretched storylines compelling. The dialog was mostly strong, and that helps. Do we know anything more about House than we did before?

I hate that I sound like I am picking the episode apart because I didn't hate it. Just like I didn't hate the Tritter/House storyline. There were great moments throughout even if there were some missed opportunities.

Gah, THANK YOU SO MUCH for this. I know everyone's allowed to have a different opinon and all the rest of it, but I can't understand why some people hated this episode. It was fantastic. Not my favourite (Three Stories does it for me, too) but one of the most interesting and affecting ones of the entire series. David Shore gets a huge thumbs up from me for deviating from the formula and succeeding (well, I think he did, anyway).

I don't have much to add except that this:

For me, that's the most profound point of the episode: Our terrible events don't make us who we are, yet they tend to be what people judge us on. Maybe we need meaning to turn them into something more than terrible events, but we are more than the sum of our tragedies. House lost much of the use of his leg, House is in pain, House pushed away the love of his life, House was shot, House was abused. None and all of that makes him who he is. As he says, some people go through terrible things and do just fine, some go through terrible things and their lives suck.

is almost exactly what I was saying to a friend today (only not as nicely, because I was ranting somewhat insanely, and you're, well, a professional writer). Thanks for articulating it so well! Oh, House... you will never stop intriguing me.

GREAT REVIEW!

this episode was definitely a fan girl's dream and I enjoyed it immensely.

"What the hell can I do that you're not going to dismiss as being just because I was raped?"

I really like this because it made me realize how much i dismiss about House because of his traumatic experience with his leg and Stacy's intervention. That's not the sum of his life- he was alive before then and was most probably still deeply flawed. This episode made House more real for me, real beyond the timeline of the show. House was there before the leg and the vicodin; they are as much the symptoms as they are the causes of things with him.
Learning of his father's abuse helped me in this. No matter how much I love him in the show, I was always frustrated by how set in his ways House is. I mean, yes- House has to be House to continue with the show but surely he can't be this self-destructive based on just the limp and the story behind it. It seemed fake, very tv-show-like. Now it makes much more sense because the trauma has to be much more deep seated than an experience in your 30s to so thoroughly screw up a man. The very way his mind works is so much more self-destructive than his Vicodin addiction; it's now clearer to me now that i see how the route his thoughts follow has to have been adaptive to the abuse he suffered.
This all makes me want to go back and watch the episode when his parents visited him. His explanation to Cameron about his father in that episode seems so much heavier in this light. I wonder if Wilson got this lighter version he gave Cameron as well or does he know the extent House's father took his military strictness? I don't think it would make Wilson more sympathetic to House (well because poor Wilson would die if he got any more sympathetic, lovely bundle of therapist/father/friend/lover(hee hee i wish!) that he is). However, it might help Wilson see how tough it is for House to change- then again, Wilson knew House before the limp so he must know that he damage goes far back.
I wonder if House has ever told anyone else about his father? Stacy? Somehow, I think this might have been the first time he said it outloud. If that is the case, I think that this confession will have much more far-reaching effects on House than just inspiring legions of fangirls to grip their pens in delight and write pages of fanfic with Wilson comforting House through teary confessions with teh pr0n to follow. Heh.

write pages of fanfic with Wilson comforting House through teary confessions with teh pr0n to follow.

Eeeewww. As Chase said once to Cameron when he found out she was going out on a date with him, "But he's so old!" LOL

One thing that no one touched on was that the description that Hugh gave of how his 'Oma' treated him was almost exactly how he was treated in real life by his own mother. The only thing that I am unsure about (and hope there wasn't any truth in) was the fact about being locked up by her. He himself made this reveal in an old GQ magazine which can be found on the last page shown at: hughlaurie.net

(quote) ...When he was little she would beat him, saying "You are lucky your father isn't here" And then my father would come home and say 'You are lucky I wasn't here', which we all knew was an absolute lie. He accounts for his mother's unkindness simply: "She had moments of not liking me; quite protracted moments. When I say moments I use the word broadly to cover months."

It is a brilliant article/interview which is a great read from beginning to end, btw.

Maybe because it has nothing to do with the show?

Ok well let me try this again....

On THE SHOW his character made comments as to how he was treated as a child which seemed to directly parallel his experience in real life. I was simply wondering if what he related ON THE SHOW was taken from his real life experience.

Hope this clarifies what seemed to be a pretty obvious post....

What I'm saying is that child abuse is hardly uncommon, the story was hardly "almost exact" - House talked about sleeping in the yard and getting ice baths - Hugh Laurie did not write the episode and is unlikely to have decided to go to David Shore to try to inject his painful personal experiences into the show, and I find psychoanalysing an actor via his character gets into creepy territory that I would rather stay away from in talking about an episode, especially when you're making no connection to anything on the show other than to say "look! Hugh Laurie was abused too! Isn't that interesting!" There are many other forums on the web to analyse his personal life as if it's the fans' plaything, but it makes me sick to have my episode reviews be one of them.

What may be 'creepy' to one is interesting to another. Sorry to have made you 'sick'

As to these 'other forums' you mention, please put up a link that directly relates to the character AND the actor and I will gladly post there.

peace

I always run to your reviews. I don't always agree with you (less so this year), but I always find what you have to say compelling and and intelligent. After reading one negative view of this episode after another on a prominent message board, I thought I must've missed something. I found myself completely drawn into One Day/One Room.

I agree that it wasn't quite 3 stories, but it told us a great deal about House (apart from the abuse). I have to think that the weeks in rehab have had their effect on him, and almost despite himself, he found himself drawn in. He fought against it; begged Cuddy to get him out the room, and yet, when he had the chance to discharge her, he didn't. Because she requested that she stay. I think House was unnerved by her more and more as she got under his skin. His frequent refrain of "why me?" was interesting. I think he knew (subconsiously) "why him" and I think it freaked the hell out of him.

I know you'll disagree, but I think House's motivations in this episode seem much clearer and simpler than you make them out to be: he's stuck with a patient who has a problem (psychological trauma) that he isn't qualified to treat.

He wants to be able to say, "The patient came in with X, I prescribed Y, the patient recovered, I rock, Next Please." Not being a therapist, and not being allowed to move to a more amusing case, he *flails*. Just as in "Words and Deeds" when the ultimate biologist meets with a partly psychological problem he hits it with the nearest blunt-instrument of a medical procedure that comes to hand. His goal in this case isn't so much "make the annoying patient better" as it is, "make the annoying patient go away."

Yes, cuddy should also have known better than to stick him with this.