With FOX re-airing House’s third season on Friday nights, this week we got another peek at “Cane and Able,” episode two. I can’t honesty tell you how many times I’ve watched this emotional episode. (Trust me, it’s a lot.) But each time I pick up more nuances to Hugh Laurie’s perfect performance that cause my heart to break for House.
I think it is clear by the beginning of the third season that House’s best friend Wilson has a fundamental misunderstanding of House and how his genius works. Wilson may understand his friend on a personal level, enabling him to tolerate House’s less virtuous character traits, and I think Wilson cares about him (and vice versa). But I think that Wilson’s lack of understanding about House’s intellectual life and his psychology nearly destroys House. And it is not until “Merry Little Christmas” that Wilson begins to understand, when it is nearly too late. (Ah, but what good drama that makes!)
House is, in a lot of ways, like a math genius who always knows the answer, but can't quite tell you how he got there. His epiphany about Richard (the wheel-chair bound patient in “Meaning”) at the university pond was not unlike associative leaps he's made a hundred times in the past.
But this time, House’s stroke of diagnostic genius occurred in a context of which Cuddy and Wilson could not make sense. Wilson and Cuddy were chagrined that House had somehow twisted his own intention to simply “help” Richard into a diagnostics case because he couldn’t resist “playing God.” Because he needed the “fix” of a puzzle, the “rush” of solving a medical mystery. The fact that House was actually right made little difference, whatever House’s motives. But that was last week. And now, Richard, cured based on House’s theory, is back at the hospital, well on the road to recovery.
Richard, however, is the least of House’s problems. The twinge of pain that House felt in “Meaning” has returned with a vengeance. Early in the episode, House is thwarted by obvious pain preparing to go for a run. He spots his cane, sitting idly in an old golf bag; it seems almost to taunt him, and House clearly is tormented by the reminder that he stands on a precipice, and it can all come crashing down. And soon. House reluctantly takes a Vicodin and shakily makes his way to the shower. No run today. Another in a long line of signature Hugh Laurie dialogue-free scenes, providing us with more insight into House’s inner life than would 20 pages of dialogue.
Noting that House is limping again, self-appointed House-sitters Wilson and Cuddy warn him not to slack off on the rehab. Clearly not something he wants to discuss, House deflects, leaving Wilson and Cuddy to argue about the cause of the returning pain. Has House lost his confidence, causing him to become withdrawn? Or it is simply (and tragically) that the ketamine is failing? In any event, Wilson sees House’s recovery as an opportunity to steer House towards a simpler, less risky form of medical practice, rendering him less reckless, and perhaps less self-destructive? Wilson continues to operate on the false assumption that House’s associative leaps and intuitive flashes are simply “luck,” risky for the hospital, for House, and for patients.
Article comments
1 - Phillip Winn
Very perceptive, simply amazing. What a show, and what a review!
2 - Sue
Again, another great review. I always get greater insight into the show after I read your reviews.
There was a great scene in the beginning, when House came back into his house. We didn't see his face as he grabbed his thigh. We didn't need to see it; we grimaced along with him.
We get to see House's private moments, the few seconds when he thinks no one is looking, when he can not help but grimace and withdraw in pain. Hugh Laurie is so brilliant in these moments.
As a chronic pain sufferer, three months of pain relief is worth whatever it takes to achieve it. House knew that Ketamine existed, and he could have tried it before. Did he try it because he was already going to have anesthesia? Was he at a point in his life that he was willing to sacrifice his mind for his body? Or, did he even consider that he could lose his ability to diagnose patients? Did Foreman's brush with death have anything to do with House's decision? In House's dream, Cuddy gave him the Ketamine. When we saw what really happened it was House who asked for the Ketamine. In the beginning of Meaning, House thanked Cuddy for "curing him." It really wasn't Cuddy who did it if House asked for it.
In this episode, was House lamenting his own decision to get the Ketamine, or Cuddy's decision to give it to him?
In this episode, the trust between House and Wilson diminished a little more. Wilson didn't give House the pills in Meaning, but here he is offering them to him. House knows Wilson believes he is experiencing the "pangs of middle age." Wilson offered the pills to fit into his own agenda. If House had asked Wilson again for the pills, would Wilson have said yes? I doubt it. House kept writing Rxs for the pills because he still knew that Wilson would not give them to him if he asked for them. Wilson's trickery about the previous case made House mistrust him even more.
3 - Barbara Barnett
Thank you Phillip for your kind words.
Ann--I agree that the Wilson's actions drove House's actions in the next many episodes. House saw no recourse but to do what he did (rightly or wrongly). He felt trapped and backed into a corner.
House took a big gamble asking for the ketamine and he lost big time. I think that in his hallucination, he asked himself whether it was possible to find meaning in life. Was he throwing his life away? Or should he take a chance on renewing himself. I think the scene in which he made that decision (the part of the hallucination, anyway) was when he was in the car with the shooter's wife, joining her as she died in the car. As his life slipped away (both in the hallucination) and in his own reality as he lay bleeding to death on the floor, he "chose life" and fought back, not giving into the "easy choice" of death. He held on. That's what Wilson was talking about in "Meaning" (and something House must've disclosed to Wilson at some point.
But I think that what happened during the hallucination (and what I think had been his own research into the experimental procedure) made him want to try it. Even after the ketamine failed, House continued in Season three (in the spring) to seek out other ways to overcome the pain ("Insensitive" and "Half-Wit" for example).
4 - susanne
Wow!! Again another great review for a great and heartbreaking ep
I felt so sorry for House and I really just wanted to smack Wilson (but I love him). I have the feeling that Cuddy was torn between not telling him and wanting to tell him. I loved Cameron in this episode being so protective or House and understanding how vunerable he was. I liked it how she stood up to them.
Hugh Laurie just surprises me everytime I can never get sick of him..I am still shocked/surprised that he hasn't yet won an emmy!
5 - ann uk
It seems to me that House would have an easier ride if he were a musical or artistic genius as society expects them to be eccentric. But House is a genius in a rule ridden, method driven profession, His relations with other doctors are like Sherlock Holmes's with the Scotland Yard detectives- they admire him , but distrust him because they can't understand the intuitive leaps by which he solves his cases.And yet, like Holmes, his intuitions are based on extensive research and wide knowledge.( like reading Hindi !)