House: 8x08 "Perils of Paranoia" - Discussion and Spoilers

[Trekker4747]

From TV.com:

The team takes on the case of a prosecutor who they initially believe is suffering from hyper-anxiety, but they soon discover that he has bouts of paranoid delusions. Meanwhile, Chase and Taub take an interest in Foreman's social life, Park starts to get into the swing of things, and Wilson becomes obsessed with learning what House is hiding in his home.

House Medical Reviews

This episode is the last episode before the show goes on hiatus for the winter break and returns in January or February.

 

[Forbin]

A lot of what I just watched is illegal in New Jersey!

And House is a fucking careless gun-handler, though that shouldn't be a surprise.

 

[Trekker4747]

Interesting episode, liked what they did with Park and the other doclings, interesting to see her try and to pick-up Chase and I felt bad for her when he turned her down and felt bad for NotThriteen being pretty much ignored in the elevator.

House not being allowed to possess a gun, being a convicted felon, just further solidifies how damaging to his character it was to have him do what he did at the end of last season and having him serve time in prison. It's really amazing he was even allowed to get a medical license back. But being convicted of a felony is certainly nothing to shrug off. Not being allowed to possess a gun, not being allowed to vote, so much else. Ugh. It really would have been better if they had just ignored the finale last season and ret-coned it or something.

Anyway, interesting episode but I had to roll my eyes when for the umpteenth time para-neoplastic syndrome was a suggested diagnosis. Forget Lupus that's probably the most over-suggested diagnosis of the series.

I'm a bit surprised Foreman would have such a hard time hooking up, in the first season I think there were one or two women he was with but now he's completely inept at it? Yes, handsome men who run hospitals and have probably a six-figure salary probably find it very hard to hook-up. And him hooking up with a married woman strikes me as being a bit out of character.

The antics between House and Wilson were funny, though Wilson did not find the gun in House's apartment you have to give credit to Wilson for out-thinking House a tiny bit in setting up the decoy trap to lure House into a false sense of security before going into the actual trap.

Obviously, for those who did not catch it, the gun and sword belong to House's deceased adoptive father who was in the Marines.

The was an Average episode. Usually the one before the winter hiatus is Christmas-themed. Unless there actually is another one in the next couple of weeks (which I don't think there is) this would be the first time they've not done a Christmas-themed episode. (I think so, at least.)

I think the season has been Average so far too. It's had some ups and downs and this was the first episode since the status-quo was re-established that I think we had truly touching House ending that sort of touched on the stories of the night. (As opposed to the sitcom-like endings we've had the last few weeks.)

Overall I think the series has somewhat recovered from the damage it did to itself at the end of last season but it's still carrying that weight mostly with House's felony actions.

And I still cannot stand to watch them do the tracheotomy without wincing.

 

[CorporalClegg]

What I saw:

BS DDx, BS DDx, Ford Commercial, BS DDx, House/Wilson Gold, BS DDx.

Man has this show fallen hard.

 

[Forbin]

Oh, god, the friggin Ford commercial was ridiculous! Product placement is one thing, but an outright in-show commercial is beyond the pale. Bones has done a few of those too. Hate it!

How high are House's ceilings, that they could support the height needed for a net trap? And how stupid is Wilson to not SEE a big net on the floor?

And - I want a hidden armory room like that!!!

 

[Christopher]

This was a mediocre episode overall, but I don't think I've ever loved a teaser on this show quite so much. The way the lawyer handled his medical crisis in the middle of a witness examination, remaining so disciplined and calm as he informed the judge he might be having a heart attack, was awesome. A very clever setup and a nice bit of characterization. And certainly a refreshing change from the eleventy-umpteen times they've had the patient just pass out in the middle of something.

I agree the blatant Ford commercial stuck into the middle of the episode was awful, though I did like the way Park's reaction was basically "What the hell am I doing in a car commercial?" and refusing to play along.

The House-Wilson interaction lately has degenerated to silly slapstick and pointless head-butting. It's no fun anymore.

I don't care much about Foreman's love life, but the actress playing Anita (Yaya DaCosta, who was one of the Sirens in TRON: Legacy) is astoundingly beautiful.

 

[Random_Spock]

Oh, god, the friggin Ford commercial was ridiculous! Product placement is one thing, but an outright in-show commercial is beyond the pale. Bones has done a few of those too. Hate it!

How high are House's ceilings, that they could support the height needed for a net trap? And how stupid is Wilson to not SEE a big net on the floor?

And - I want a hidden armory room like that!!!

Yea I hate that kind of thing too! It's one thing to have advertisements between parts of the show, but when it happens in the show itself, it almost makes the show unwatchable.

*speaking of which -- still not watching House. Been reading what's been going on plotwise, and it still hasn't gotten me reinterested in the show.

 

[Christopher]

Then again, incorporating commercials into the body of the show is actually a revival of a decades-old technique of radio and early TV, and sometimes it was handled rather cleverly. Like in the classic radio comedy Fibber McGee and Molly, where every week the characters would be visited by their neighbor (and the show's announcer) Harlow Wilcox, who would inevitably manage to steer their conversations onto the subject of Johnson Wax, to the perennial annoyance of the other characters.

But then, it's easier to justify such a thing in a comedy where the fourth wall's fairly thin to begin with, I suppose. Not to mention that in-show product shilling was more forgiveable back in the days when it was the only advertisement in an otherwise uninterrupted show. Having in-show, scripted car commercials in a show that already gets interrupted for commercials every 6-7 minutes feels like overkill.

I like the way White Collar handles its in-show car advertising. It's not as self-conscious as this was. The car's features are actually shown being used in plot-relevant ways rather than just having the characters randomly talk about them, so it feels organic. (Kinda like the way so many shows these days are written to incorporate situations where the characters need to use the fancy apps on their iPhones or Google Android Whoozises in order to discover something or solve a problem. Cell phone use really is so ubiquitous that it doesn't feel like an unnatural inclusion.) And it doesn't have the blatant fisheye-lens closeups on car logos that we saw here.

 

[auntiehill]

A very average episode. So far, this whole season has been unremarkable.

 

[Random_Spock]

Then again, incorporating commercials into the body of the show is actually a revival of a decades-old technique of radio and early TV, and sometimes it was handled rather cleverly. Like in the classic radio comedy Fibber McGee and Molly, where every week the characters would be visited by their neighbor (and the show's announcer) Harlow Wilcox, who would inevitably manage to steer their conversations onto the subject of Johnson Wax, to the perennial annoyance of the other characters.

But then, it's easier to justify such a thing in a comedy where the fourth wall's fairly thin to begin with, I suppose. Not to mention that in-show product shilling was more forgiveable back in the days when it was the only advertisement in an otherwise uninterrupted show. Having in-show, scripted car commercials in a show that already gets interrupted for commercials every 6-7 minutes feels like overkill.

I like the way White Collar handles its in-show car advertising. It's not as self-conscious as this was. The car's features are actually shown being used in plot-relevant ways rather than just having the characters randomly talk about them, so it feels organic. (Kinda like the way so many shows these days are written to incorporate situations where the characters need to use the fancy apps on their iPhones or Google Android Whoozises in order to discover something or solve a problem. Cell phone use really is so ubiquitous that it doesn't feel like an unnatural inclusion.) And it doesn't have the blatant fisheye-lens closeups on car logos that we saw here.

Agreed. That's way too much. One of the best examples that I've seen of that was in the movie 'Inspector Gadget'. Loved the tv show, but hated that the movie was shilling so much commercial wise . It really bummed me out. As for the 4th wall in it... it practically wasn't there.

That's a better way to handle it. I think NCIS does a similar thing as well, and the X-Files did too.

One of the worst ones from the latter was an advertisement in show for a Fox show, 'When Animals Attack' . Talk about being blatant. But at least it only happened once during the episode, and not all the way through, like a lot of shows do today.

 

[Forbin]

btw, Wilson, by bringing House's gun to work, violated NJ's "illegal possession of a handgun" law, since he doesn't own it. And we can probably tack onto that transporting a handgun without it being in a locked container, transporting it (no doubt) in a part of his car other than the locked trunk, and there's a law about only being allowed to transport a handgun between home and the shooting range without stopping in between... and I'm sure the hospital has a rule about staff having guns at work.

And just let me mention again the assanine way House waved that thing around and pointed it at Wilson. Even if you think it's unloaded, that's rule number one. NEVER point a gun at someone you're not planning on shooting.

 

[Christopher]

^Does that apply even if it's a prop gun? Or was House lying about that? It kinda looked like he let the pencil drop into the "plugged" barrel after Wilson left, but it was very unclear.

 

[Trekker4747]

^Does that apply even if it's a prop gun? Or was House lying about that? It kinda looked like he let the pencil drop into the "plugged" barrel after Wilson left, but it was very unclear.

It was a real gun, he did let the pencil drop into the barrel after Wilson was gone, the implication seemed to be that it was his adoptive father's gun.

 

[Forbin]

Realistic-looking prop guns (like AirSoft) are required to have orange-painted muzzles, so a cop won't mistake it for real and shoot you*. One NJ democrat is, in fact, trying to have them declared as full-on "firearms" and regulated the same. My state sucks.

*Nothing, of course, prevents a criminal from painting his REAL gun's muzzle orange and faking a cop out.

 

[gh4chiefs]

btw, Wilson, by bringing House's gun to work, violated NJ's "illegal possession of a handgun" law, since he doesn't own it. And we can probably tack onto that transporting a handgun without it being in a locked container, transporting it (no doubt) in a part of his car other than the locked trunk, and there's a law about only being allowed to transport a handgun between home and the shooting range without stopping in between...

JFC, I could NEVER live in NJ.

 

[od0_ital]

So, my friend D & I were watchin' last night, and after House made the reference to a higher power & then told 'em to look it up, I heard from the other end of the couch, "It's a Pokemon!"

House made D look it up on her smart phone...and that made me laugh more than Wilson in the net.

 

[Trekker4747]

btw, Wilson, by bringing House's gun to work, violated NJ's "illegal possession of a handgun" law, since he doesn't own it. And we can probably tack onto that transporting a handgun without it being in a locked container, transporting it (no doubt) in a part of his car other than the locked trunk, and there's a law about only being allowed to transport a handgun between home and the shooting range without stopping in between...

JFC, I could NEVER live in NJ.

Kind of my thoughts, I'm all for reasonable levels of gun-control but what it seems NJ has is levels of insanity that pretty much renders the purposes of a gun pointless.

But in NJ you also can't pump your own gas, so...

 

[Saul]

The car commercial washed over me. But I am not bothered by it. Films and TV do lots of product placement. Seeing all the characters use a Mac every week is more obvious to me.

 

[bigdaddy]

The good news is Hugh Luarie came out again and said this is the finale season for him. I don't believe this is a stunt to get more money. Now we just need to get the writers to realize you can't have a show without him.

 

[Agent Richard07]

- Vincent Spano! I always wondered what happened to him.

- I didn't notice the product placement with the car. I was too distracted by the fact that they were obviously driving around Southern California. And the conversation about how it can slow down on its own didn't seem forced or like they were selling anything either. It came off to me like a brief mention about the cool thing the new car can do. Just a few weeks ago, Being Erica did something similar involving a car that could park itself. It was impressive enough that I didn't care that it was a product placement.

The good news is Hugh Luarie came out again and said this is the finale season for him. I don't believe this is a stunt to get more money. Now we just need to get the writers to realize you can't have a show without him.

If the show had been titled Chasing Zebras as intended at one point, I imagine that they'd be trying to continue the show without Laurie.