House season premiere: You suck, Emmy Voters

Just to get this out of the way, it’s been eight freaking weeks, and Cuddy couldn’t replace the carpet House bled all over after he was shot? Wow. Also? I love the idea of House needing to flex his “sarcasm muscles.” If such a thing exists, I must be like a sarcasm body builder.

Best quote of the episode:
House: I don’t remember you being this bitchy.
Wilson: The Vicodin dulled it; in the sober light of day I’m a buzzkill.
Ok. The actual episode. This show continues to take the basic formula of “patient comes in with a mystery condition, doctors can’t figure it out and so try a crazily dangerous treatment or diagnostic method advocated by House that [shocker] doesn’t work, and it turns out to be some totally unrelated disease that House brilliantly figures out at the last minute,” and make it interesting every week. How? With good writers and fascinating, well-acted characters, especially now that they’ve further developed some of the secondary ones. (Hat tip to you, Cameron and Wilson. Cuddy, hopefully you’re next.)

This episode featured a pretty much completely paralyzed man (brain cancer) who tried to commit suicide by electric wheelchair + swimming pool. Note to self: get one of those earpieces for my cell phone, so as to avoid brain tumors and the eventual necessity of the wheelchair + swimming pool combo. House’s leg is cured and he’s off the Vicodin, but still addicted to causing other people pain solving interesting cases. (Cameron: “It’s interesting only if you’re right; if you’re wrong, we’re torturing this guy to amuse you.” Um, DUH, Cameron. Have you never seen the show before?)

Wilson thought House just needed some time to become the friendly, patient-loving House we’re all sure he has the potential to be. I’d say he could use some good sex…possibly with Cuddy. But despite Cuddy’s protestation that House “[doesn’t] use hunches—[he] always has reasons” (has she never seen the show either?), House continued to insist upon a crazy, baseless hunch that giving this paralyzed dude some hormone could cure him of his woes.

When Cuddy gave paralyzed man the hormone and (after nothing happened at first) walked away, I was all, “Alright! An episode where House ISN’T magically right about his random unsubstantiated hunches! Finally the show branches out!” Eeehhh, not so much. Instead, it turned out that he was right, but thanks to Wilson wanting to teach him a valuable lesson, they just won’t tell him about it. Way to be a good friend and drive House back to drugs when he couldn’t get his case-solving high, Wilson. I guess making Wilson more interesting as a character comes at the cost of me being more annoyed with him at times. Fair enough. And let's face it: I can't wait to see what's next.