House Review: 8x17 "We Need The Eggs" Is Rotten

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Ladies and gentlemen, we might have a winner in the race for the worst script for House before the show leaves the airwaves for good. Sarah Hess and Liz Friedman had a strong lead with “Man Of The House.” It was neck and neck with “Gut Check,” written by David Hoselton and Jamie Conway.

But leading the pack by a length as we go around the home stretch is “We Need The Eggs,” written by Sarah Hess and Peter Blake.

Imagine you have a friend-of-a-friend, an obnoxious drunk who brays with laughter at his/her own jokes. Now imagine that friend-of-friend is a shambling, fetid zombie.

(Note to self: do not watch the Season Two arc involving “the love of House’s life”, Stacy, played by Sela Ward, on the same day a new episode airs. Said arc is sensitive, well-written, two adults behaving in a believably screwed-up way. “Distractions” begins House’s hiring of hookers for uncomplicated sex.)

This ostensible premise is a large slab of fatback about how we all want love but fear it too much, and the substitutes we choose instead. “We Need The Eggs” is a quote from Annie Hall:

I thought of that old joke: This guy goes to a psychiatrist and says, 'Doc, my brother's crazy, he thinks he's a chicken.' And the doctor says, 'Well why don't you turn him in?' and the guy says, 'I would, but I need the eggs.' Well, I guess that's pretty much now how I feel about relationships. They're totally irrational and crazy and absurd, but I guess we keep going through it because most of us need the eggs.

OUCH! That anvil hit my foot! And so early in the episode! House says the movie is a critique of “our modern mores”. (Annie Hall was made in 1977.)

The underlying premise is how the show demeans women at every opportunity. Not just House, the show itself.

Open with a man out on a date with a woman, Molly, who is not his girlfriend. She likes him and tells him she wants more. His eyes promptly begin to bleed. Way to avoid commitment.

I have to admit here that I was filled with excitement because the arcade game owner was played by my old pal Eddie Pepitone.

The POTW, Biff, is in love with a rubber sex doll, Amy, played by a rubber sex doll. He’s had it customized to look like a yoga instructor he dated for the length of your average high school crush. He loved her but she didn’t love him.















"You come here often?"


Perverted Biff adores Amy (reminding your faithful correspondent of both Lars and The Real Girl and “Mannequin 3: The Reckoning” from Supernatural, in which a man is in love with a—surprise!—rubber sex doll). Speaking of Supernatural, the segment I enjoyed the most was when Amy became “real”, climbed on top of Perverted Biff and proceeded to gush blood from a wound on her torso all over both of them. But of course it’s a hallucination, the go-to device for damn near everything this season.

His illness is from using tap water in a neti pot.

Parallel with this is a sitcom so tawdry I wanted to erase it from my mind half-way through. One imagines the guffaws in the writer’s room: “That’s really sick!” “Let’s go there!” “Omigod, House and his hooker—genius!” “We make hot chicks to do sexy things—no, STUPID sexy things!” Greg Yaitanes: “Ka-boom!”

House’s favorite hooker, Emily, is quitting to get married. He needs a new hooker/rubber sex doll! OUCH! That anvil hit my other foot!

House interviews a parade of prostitutes at his office. One is rejected because she can’t fix small appliances. The last one is reduced to standing on her hands and spreading her legs wide open. Cue laugh track.

House goes to Wilson for advice, Wilson points out that House is married to a beautiful, intelligent woman—adorable Dominika! House enlists Dominika in an adorable plot to break up Emily’s marriage. They hide in her truck called “Knishing On A Star”. Har har.



















Bond Girl and Creepy Grandpa coming up with a plan

Wearing a wire, Dominika propositions the fiancé, a fat man (visual gag: beautiful woman, ugly guy, the uber-pairing for most sitcoms) who is ready and willing, but—wait for it—he’s not Emily’s fiancé. He's her brother! Cue laugh track to hysteria and applause.

House begs Emily to reconsider. It creeps her out that House is living with a fake wife. Maybe she would be okay with a rubber sex doll.

“I see the way she looks at you. I see the way you look at her,” wise hooker Emily says. “It’s not the way my pimp looks at me.” Oh, wait, that last line might be a misquote.

House is stunned at this revelation. He and Dominika might be in love. At least for this episode’s purposes. For a character David Shore said they weren’t bringing back, Dominika is getting an awful lot of screen time. All right, so it’s not Karolina Wydra‘s fault that she’s trapped in this crummy storyline. But why is she so cursedly adorable? Why are all of the women such ciphers?

Oops, I forgot, this is House.

In other boring relationship news, Adams and Chase debate why neither of them have relationships. Yawn. Taub invites a woman over by lying to her. Yawn. Park meets a fellow nerdy music lover and they play guitar together. That’s cute.

House almost kisses Dominika when she says she fixed the blender. You see? A hooker couldn’t fix the blender! Dominika is the woman he’s been searching for! She’s adorable! Then he pulls away—he’s scared of love—his relationships always end badly—he’d have to run his car into his own apartment--!

But when he opens a letter that says Dominika has been approved for citizenship, he throws same into the trash. Much the way he deleted the message on his answering machine while Wilson was staying with him, saying there was an apartment available.

In Episode 10 of Season 2, Stacy compares House to hot vindaloo curry. She starts to tell the same Woody Allen joke, but before she can deliver the "egg" punchline, House interrupts with "curry."

God, I miss curry.























"Why am I even here?"

NOTES:
House + Dominika = Eeeeeew
I’m starting to wonder if Hugh Laurie isn’t just high on life.
Robert Sean Leonard is mugging his way through his scenes with a palpable air of disdain.
The rubber sex doll is the perfect actress for House.
I wish Dominika was played by Eddie Pepitone.
The “Park looks nerdy but says shocking things” is getting old.
After this episode, I’m going to my doctor to get checked for an STD.

Ciao,
Elisa & Fletcher


DISCLAIMER: I am a reviewer, not a recapper. There’s a difference. You want a recap, go to another site.

To those who ask, "If you hate the show so much, why do you keep watching?"

Because I need the eggs. OUCH!

House Review: 8x14, "Love Is Blind" Has A Tin Ear

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In its continuing efforts to make us forget that this was once a brilliant, ground-breaking television drama, writer John C. Kelley (late of NCIS) and director Tim Southam bring us this listless effort.

While not as bad as “Man of The House” (but really, what could be?) instead of a profound examination of a family mired in duplicity, and how House came to be the man he is, the viewer is treated to a parade of sloppy jokes and lazy clichés. The reason it has taken so long to write this review was that I kept delaying having to rewatch it.

Consider this: you have approximately 42 minutes of time to fill. You have to make choices about what to fill that 42 minutes with. Let’s divide it into chunks, like a large sundae.

Chunk One, melted Wavy Gravy:

WHO IN THE NAME OF JESUS THOUGHT PARK HAVING AN ACID TRIP WOULD BE FUNNY? And those cartoony visions of Chase, Adams and lastly, Taub as the tooth fairy? What show is this?? If I want to watch “Who Shot Roger Rabbit” I’ll go to Netflix, thank you very much.

Apparently the POTW was hoping to have hallucinations, so he laced his ice cream and candy with LSD. During the usual search of the patient's dwellings, Park ate some of same, and so we are inflicted with Disney-itis.

Under the influence, Park attacks Wilson. Wilson tries hard to give a shit.

This waste of screen time needs to apologize to its viewers.


Chunk Two, Vanilla:

The patient, who we shall call Blind Biff, has loud explosions going off in his head, like the deaf teenager a few seasons back. Biff has a deeply masochistic girlfriend/slave who has been taking care of him since college.

However, he’s met someone new who expects him to be independent. Biff is ready to be independent. He wants to give Masochist Melissa the old heave-ho and ride off into the sunset with Shiny New Girl. Who, for some reason, is never shown. A throwaway line, “I don’t want her to know I’m in the hospital” takes care of that. Good work, writers!

However, some treatment or other renders Blind Biff Blind Deaf Biff (say that five times fast) and before you can say “low self-esteem” Masochistic Melissa has thrown herself across Blind Deaf Biff sobbing how much she loves him. Blind Deaf Biff is no fool. Screw independence. Shiny New Girlfriend isn’t going to stick around with someone who is going to need full-time care. So, in a triumph of self-preservation that left me misty-eyed, he asks Masochistic Melissa to marry him. “YES!” she yells. Blind Deaf Biff is deaf no more! His hearing returned magically to hear her chaining herself to him for life! Now he is only Blind Biff!

I half-expected the wife from “Nobody’s Fault” to run in and scream, “He saved my husband’s life—whoops, wrong episode.”

Chunk Three, Rocky Road that fell out of the cone onto the sidewalk: House’s family.


Blythe comes to the hospital to see her son. Now, bear in mind that she was presented as a loving parent in “Daddy’s Boy” and “Birthmarks.” A veritable June Cleaver who looked the other way while Ward was beating up the Beaver.

House wants nothing to do with her, and wants her to think he was in Africa the past year. This makes no sense, particularly when she reveals that she knew he was in prison the entire time. Uh, Blythe, could you explain why you never bothered to contact YOUR ONLY SON during all of that time? She tricks Wilson into thinking she has cancer, causing House to show up at her hotel. House learned his manipulative skills from someone, clearly.

Blythe answers in a hotel bathrobe. House discovers she is in bed with…Thomas Bell, his biological father! Played by Billy Connelly, whom I adore and who did his best to sell this trash. (Diane Baker, who plays House’s mother, was born in 1938. Billy Connelly was born in 1942, which makes him seventeen years old when House/Hugh Laurie was born. Who knew Blythe liked them so young?)


"You were such a tender piece of young flesh, then, Tom."
"Thank you, Mommy Dearest."


You may recall some episodes back that House read a book of essays by Bell, who was a minister, and apparently quite devout. (This show will absolutely torture you if you have any memory at all.) Since then, he has morphed into a carefree Scottish man who was a chaplain in the American Navy (?) who did quite a bit of partying back in the day. Bell and House not only have matching birthmarks on their heads, they have them on what a romance novel would call their “manhoods,” as well.

We further learn that Blythe was quite the hippie, taking drugs, sleeping around, demonstrating against the war while ignoring that her child was being abused and seemingly not noticing that her husband was a Marine. There are enough disconnects here to cause a power shortage to the entire Eastern Seaboard. Including the fact that not only did she not feel it necessary to contact her son while he was in prison, but also that she got married to Bell two months after House Sr. died in Season Five. So she lied to House for YEARS?

Bell says quite rightly that he could “have done something for the boy” and House might not have turned into “a pill-popping sociopath”. This last is at a cozy dinner at a restaurant where House has brought Dominika because the company is lacking in adorable, and Wilson…because he’s there. House stands up and pulls out his manhood to show the matching birthmark.

I will pause here to note that Wilson doesn't look at all surprised. I assume he's seen it before.

Bell loses his cool, whereupon Blythe says the hoariest line in all of drama [if you don’t apologize to my son] “You will never see me again!”

Oh, really? The man you’ve been balling while your son is in prison? “You will never see me again!”

Now, honestly, who says that? And over a personal spat? Are the interns writing the scripts? “Dirk, get me a soy latte and write Scene 36 while you’re at it.” It’s a cheap line for a cheap moment of cheap drama.

Bell and his son bond later, I have no idea why. House says he “respected” his father and I did an honest-to-God spit-take. Champagne all over the Aubusson. The man he didn’t visit for a year while the guy was dying. (Am I sensing a pattern in this family?) Who he wanted to give a “bastardodgy”. If House respected his father, I am Lady Gaga.

The sludgy fake whipped topping to this sundae:

Wilson does a DNA test which proves that Thomas Bell is not House’s father after all. Let us consider this matter...Bell and House have matching birthmarks in the same two places; at age eleven House had catalogued all they have in common physically...but Bell is not his father?

“Your mom’s a slut,” Wilson observes. The House of yore would have had an actual reaction, instead of “She’s less boring than I thought.”

I wish I could say as much for this episode. Sorry for so few details, but I simply could not get through it more than twice. The second time I kept screaming uncontrollably, which is why my dialogue quotes aren’t more precise.

We are now coming to the final eight episodes. As much as I will mourn and miss this show (or what this show used to be) all I can say is, thank God.

Feel free to discuss this in the comments, and bear in mind: I am always right.

Ciao,
Elisa

Review: House Ep. 8x13, Caveman Of The House

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Much like the doctors vying for the title of team leader, the writers of “House” are striving to see who can write the worst script before the series’ end. Sarah Hess and Liz Friedman have a strong lead with “Man Of The House.”

This script is a strange mix indeed: a cauldron of outdated sexual politics, sitcom, and…what was the third thing? Oh, yes, the patient of the week, a marriage counseling motivational speaker named…um…er…Biff. Sorry, but it's easier to call them all Biff.

A professional speaker who urges men to be more like women and get in touch with their feelings, Biff collapses and falls off the stage.

House announces that because of evolution, it is impossible to change the way men act. (Does devolution explain the change of his character from tortured genius to bullying baboon?)

It seems that Biff had a life-altering experience three years prior, when he was beaten up in a fight in a sports bar. Since then he became a changed man, from hard-driving corporate shark to someone with very strange hair and moist, sensitive eyes. Biff claims his wife has changed “my life and my diet.” He’s gone red meat and gluten-free, which means he can now only eat cardboard. She beams.

For no other reason than for wacky shenanigans and false conflict, House starts a contest among his team for highly undesirable position of team leader. Why anyone would want a job that humiliated Foreman for years is beyond me, but it’s going be hilarious!

Whenever the camera pans around the diagnostics room, I’m distracted by the redecoration, including the mysteriously vanished garage door into Wilson’s office. Who directed this episode, Greg Yaitanes?

But wait! There’s more! Flying in from Sitcom Land it’s the long-lost Dominika, House’s green-card bride. She’s adorable. Her accent is adorable. Her long brown hair is adorable. She needs to keep her adorable self in the country, which means to pretend having lived in marital bliss with House for the past six months. So they need to learn every fact possible to each other, coached first by Park, then by Wilson. He has seniority because he has been married three times.

(Side note: in an interview prior to Season 8, when asked if they were going to bring back Dominika, David Shore said no. Apparently he felt the show needed more breasts now that Lisa Edelstein is gone. And in the new world order, they have to be nonthreatening breasts. Dominika’s breasts are adorable.)

She offers House $30,000 to pretend to be her real husband as opposed to her pretend-real-husband—they are married, yes? So isn’t he her real husband? My head aches already. God, she’s adorable. She dances around House’s living room to Amy Grant songs. As much as I actually like the character, this woman needs to get a fatal disease.

Oh, dear, your faithful correspondent forgot the patient! There’s been some diagnosing, wrong naturally. Do you really care if I recap the diagnoses so far? No, neither do I. I’ve watched the episode twice, and I don’t know if I have the stomach to do it again.

House goes to Biff and asks if he was hit in the groin during the bar fight. The answer is yes. While they discuss it, House drops things, asking Adams and Chase to bend over to pick them up. Biff never takes his eyes off House. Which either means he has no sex drive, or he’s a fanboy who can’t stop staring at HL.

The blow turned Biff's testicles purely ornamental, which is why he is so sensitive and preaches feelings and makes pottery. And has no libido, even though his wife is the hottest woman on the show. Although less adorable than you-know-who.

House orders injections of testosterone. Biff’s wife obviously hopes that among the side effects will be getting laid more than every six months. The shots make him leaner, meaner, craving hamburgers, and cracking lascivious remarks about her ass.

The oh-so-funny B-story has House and Dominika posing in various outfits in front of a green screen, which can then be made into travel pictures. For the Las Vegas picture, they don huge Elvis wigs.

Taub asks to talk to House alone. Taub feels the team should be friends, not competitors. How long has he worked there? House announces that Taub is no longer a man because he is raising children. (Huh?)

And House is wearing a Hawaiian shirt and a giant Elvis wig.

GOOD GOD, WHAT ARE THEY DRINKING IN THE WRITER’S ROOM? WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE AND HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO SIT THROUGH THIS NONSENSE? A CHIMPANZEE TAKING A CRAP ON A NEWSPAPER WOULD BE BETTER THAN THIS!

Oh, dear, pardon my outburst. So unlike me!

"Who can turn the world on with her smile?"

Meanwhile, the patient gets jaundice. Don't they always? By the end of the episode, he’s so yellow he looks like Big Bird crossed with Donald Trump.

House and Dominika welcome the immigrant agent, Nate, to House’s apartment. Nate doesn't find it strange that a beautiful young woman is married to her creepy uncle. Everything is going beautifully until Nate asks to speak to a neighbor. He opens the door and—there’s Wilson! Wearing a silly hat! Wilson has dropped in from Sitcom Land to pretend to be the wacky British neighbor. But the real occupant of the apartment shows up. Ruh-roh!

Nate orders House and Dominika to be in his office at ten the next morning. Dominika might be deported! House is threatened with jail for the 35,000th time! What’s going to happen?

Long story short, the judge is so impressed by how adorable Dominika is that he’s going to let her stay for six months. But she has to live in marital bliss with House full-time. They will be spot-checked at all times of the day or night. I was hoping for deportation, but that would have been so season two.

Biff now has turbo-nads. For starters, he tells his wife that “he’s going to be the man in this relationship.” In fact, he’s going to make some kind of deal whether she likes it or not. In two viewings I did not get what the deal was, but it doesn’t matter. He’s Doing What He Wants, Damn The Torpedoes, Because That’s What Men Do.

"Can you believe anyone watches this?" "No one does. That's why we're cancelled."

After viewing some old videos of Evil Corporate Shark Biff, House has some kind of epiphany. House and Taub go see Biff. House announces that chronic hoarseness is a symptom of chronic thyroiditis. Biff’s not hoarse now, but he was three years ago. And chronic thyroiditis comes and goes. The Magi-Cam goes into Biff so that House can rattle off some gibberish that means, “you’re sick.”

They’re going to treat Biff with steroids. Testosterone and steroids! Biff will Hulk out! Maybe Chase will get stabbed once more! House says, “Kicked in the nuts is kicked in the nuts.” I rewound the scene to see what that had to do with anything. I still don’t know. Enlighten me in the comments, won’t you?

But Biff spoils the fun by refusing the testosterone, despite the health risks. “I’m a better man without it,” he sighs. His wife leaves the room to hang herself because now she will never have sex again.

Cut to wacky C-story: House is putting the team, save Taub, through a series of idiotic contests (suturing pigs’ feet) for the bafflingly coveted position. Taub gets it by offering to split the difference in his salary with House.

At the end, as Amy Grant blasts on the soundtrack, House comes back to his apartment to find it immaculate and hideously decorated. Adorable Dominika is doing adorable dance aerobics in the kitchen. Cut to House making a series of facial expressions until he says (and I want you to know I said this with him): “Honey, I’m home!”

Ruh-roh.

Ciao,
Elisa & Fletcher