As the show does in its best moments, it takes our expectations and twists them. (House: "Two clinic hours says that those love apples are handcrafted by God." Foreman: "I thought you didn't believe in God." House: "I do now.")Īnd the story is treated with the intelligence to question a society that sexualizes a teenager, treats her as an adult, then castigates those who look at her as a sexual being, without sympathizing with either side. But it is treated with fidelity to the character of House, who cracks jokes that are wrong, wrong, wrong, and I am going to burn in hell for laughing at them. It's an uneasy plotline, and it wouldn't be House if I could say it was treated with compassion and tact. House looks abashed, like he's been shown the error of his ways, gives Foreman a sincere-sounding "thank you," then turns around and yells at Dad in a crowded waiting room: "Are you doing your daughter?" House doesn't like it when people other than himself cause PTSD in his patients, so he promises Dad confidentiality in exchange for the admission that he had sex with his daughter, once.īefore he gets that confession, Foreman admonishes House to accept that his increased leg pain is causing him to rush the diagnosis. House thinks Alex's hidden heroin addiction is only part of what's causing her symptoms, and that she might be suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. If that wasn't enough to strip him of the world's best dad title, Alex's father is soon suspected of sexually abusing her. Her devoted daddy/manager gave her a little Valium with her champagne backstage, right before she ended up in a "catfight and cataplexy on the catwalk," as House puts it. While a crankier-than-usual House is contending with increased leg pain that Wilson thinks is psychosomatic, a result of sending Stacy away, he focuses on this week's patient, 15-year-old supermodel Alex. This is an episode that invites us to look below the surface, past our expectations, past easy answers of good versus bad, wrong versus right. That can be uncomfortable and disturbing, but it's also daring and challenging. For while House almost always saves the patient, the world remains a pretty messed-up place. We don't have the comfort of knowing House will save the day and all will be right with the world. The beauty is that when it does, it doesn't wrap the issues up in a nice easily digestible package that allows viewers to partition characters and actions into black and white. House is always entertaining, usually thought-provoking, and occasionally delves deeper into murky ethical waters. I found this week's "Skin Deep" the most uncomfortable, disturbing episode so far, for very different reasons. In an average House episode, it's the CGI shots of a patient's oozing intestines that most disturb me. (Warning: spoilers for the episode that aired Feb.
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