Discussions inspired by "Resignation":

Brother: You probably still haven't seen yesterday's episode, so I won't ruin it for you. All I'll say is that there aren't many network TV shows that can make me yell "Oh, f**k!" out loud in the middle of an episode.

Later, me to a friend: So while watching I was wondering what that moment was. Then when her head exploded ... oh f**k!

Friend: Now really. That can't actually happen. I mean. It can't. Or I can't live in a world where it can.

Me: I'm going to pretend they took artistic license. I mean, they might have, but I don't want to run the risk of finding out they didn't.

Friend: Oh, I'll call that artistic license until my dying day.

 
House has now ruined one of my favourite expressions. Thinking too hard? My head's going to explode. Something doesn't make sense? My head's going to explode. Someone's being an annoying idiot? My head's going to explode. But no more. Now, the expression is accompanied by a gore-filled image burned into my head. Which is never, ever going to figuratively explode again.

Poor Addie is the teenaged patient of the week whose head literally explodes while she's in the MRI machine. But first, the team can't figure out why she started coughing up blood while kicking butt in karate.

Entering the home of the white board, House starts to read his coffee cup ("People don't ...") when he's interrupted and kicked out until his minions can arrive at his conclusion: the blood has no source.

The reading-the-coffee-cup moment is hardly a joke in itself, except for the backstory made clear in a recent humour piece by LA Times writer Joel Stein. I am a venti scribe starts with his quest to be quoted on a Starbucks cup and ends with an anecdote about his discovery of a grand grande quote by House creator David Shore: "People don't read enough. And what reading we do is cursory, without absorbing the subtleties and nuances that lie deep within — Wow, you've stopped paying attention, haven't you? People can't even read a coffee cup without drifting off." Says Stein: "It was clearly the best thing I'd ever read on a cup, ever. I hated David Shore with every word inside my writerhood."

That's a lot of backstory to turn a two-second clip into a joke, but it sets up an episode full of coffee cups — and conversations and motivations — that aren't as simple as they first appear.