There's something in the air this week on House: House. "Airborne" (alternate title: "Snarks on a Plane"?) takes him out of the hospital and into an even more confined space as he and Cuddy fly back from a conference in Singapore, where he gave a three-minute speech and nearly made up for not taking a vacation last episode.
Cuddy: The room service thing was just spiteful.
House: I was hungry.
Cuddy: $300 for a bottle of wine.
House: I was thirsty.
Cuddy: $120 on video services.
House: I was lonely.
It's fine, though, because he made up for the frivolous $500 he expensed by downgrading Cuddy's ticket to coach while he luxuriates in first class. He kindly offers to trade with her when the passenger next to him loses his lunch and the flight attendant calls for a doctor. "I'll get her," he says.
On the ground, we meet the other patient of the week, sweet, dumpy Fran (Jenny O'Hara, who looked familiar to you because she has guest starred on every show ever made). Fran lives with her sweet cat in a sweet house and is getting ready to have a guaranteed sweet time - twice - with a sweet prostitute. I wonder if she uses the same dial-a-hooker agency House does? The festivities are dampened when Fran passes out at the sight of Robin in leather. While Robin's about to make an exit with the money, the cat's stern gaze inspired her to do the right thing and call for an ambulance. Cats and Cameron - useful as moral compasses.
The set up to the episode was highly promising, with two parallel medical mysteries, with Wilson trying to play House and corral the argumentative ducklings, with House and Cuddy trapped together, Cuddy's life seemingly in House's hands, and House creating a makeshift diagnostic department complete with stand-in ducklings. Poor emasculated Chase is replaced by a kid whose task is to agree with everything House says. Foreman's Doppelganger, who is told to disagree with everything, doesn't speak English - and it doesn't matter in the slightest. Cameron's replacement, who House assigns the job of being morally outraged at everything he says, is described in the episode media release as Sour Faced Girl.
The episode itself didn't quite live up to that promise, though there were enough great moments to keep "Airborne," um, aloft. (I think I'm done with the bad puns now.)
Fran is not quite the soft, sweet woman she appears at first. After collapsing with more seizures in the clinic, she tries to sell Wilson a story about visiting her sister in Duluth. He notes her un-Duluth-like recent tattoo, and extracts the confession that she actually went to Caracas, where she did drugs off a gay man and had sex with another called El Gordo, all in an attempt to seize the day after her 58th birthday - the age at which her mother died. Robin the hooker, whose feline lesson in doing the right thing has brought out her requisite heart of gold, seems suddenly impressed.
Article comments
1 - Corien
I really enjoy your House reviews every week! Keep 'em coming!