TV Review: House - "House Training" - Page 6

Ironically, that cements the fact that Foreman isn't just a mini-House, but shares some of Cameron's viewpoints as well. This scene had shades of her words in the season two premiere "Acceptance," where she claimed that when a good person dies someone should be affected, and put herself in the role of that someone. In this case, Foreman is even more tightly bound to the patient, having caused her death.

As with season one's "Histories," where Foreman dismissed a homeless woman for the same reasons he initially dismissed Lupe, he comes around to sympathy in the end. This time, he recognizes that he was judging Lupe as a distancing mechanism. He tells her about his own bad decisions in the past, and the second chance he got by leaving home.

"If I'm not the smartest, not the first, they'll figure out I'm not supposed to be here," he says. He explains that the last time he was home, his last year of college, when his mother put her arms around him, "that was the last time I felt at home. I only put distance between you and me because I know there isn't any."

She acknowledges her poor life choices, explaining "I always thought I was young, I had time." Foreman reaches out for her hand, and I had to reach out to wipe away my tears, damn him. He sits vigil with her because she has no one else, and she accepts it because she has no one else. Wilson sits vigil with House, and it's hard not to think about the fact that he has no one else, by choice.

Though Foreman has stopped an equally frustrated but not emotionally attached House from performing more tests on Lupe in his quest to solve the mystery, he phones him to give the news that she's died. So House performs an autopsy before Wilson uses his patented technique on her grandparents to inform them of her death and get their consent.

The solution is heartbreakingly ordinary. She scratched herself with a bra hook — I knew those bloody things were deadly — and died of a simple but uncharacteristically presented staph infection. "That and some bad decisions," House tells Wilson.

Chase the former seminary student failed to cheer Foreman up with the offer of drinks, so offers instead prayer as his coping mechanism. House less sincerely tells him to turn to religion, or giving alms to the poor, before "comforting" him that he'll kill again, in the same way, because that's the nature of their specialized practice.

Article Author: Diane Kristine Wild

Diane writes about boring things by day, pop culture things by night. She also runs the TV, Eh? website, a compilation of news about Canadian television. Follow her on Twitter @deekayw for more random thoughts.

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