"Fall From Grace"
6.0
"Fair"
Now well into its post-Huddy phase, House's philosophy for the rest of the season seems to be, if you can't make it good, you can at least go big. Where else are you going to see a pre-credits sequence in which a couple of little kids who you will never hear about again set off an impressive-looking rocket in the woods for the express purpose of inadvertently setting fire to a homeless man, thus introducing us to our principal guest star and case of the week? Those of us who loved the House of old can't help mourning the show that it used to be, but the airwaves are cluttered with smoking hulks that used to be good shows, just sitting there, taking up space. Showmanship ought to be count for something.
Showmanship was much in evidence tonight, as House, the old rascal, set about torturing Cuddy for dumping him by parading around the hospital with a delectable-looking young lady of Slavic provenance on his arm and brazenly involving his former squeeze in the preparations for their green card marriage. It was actually a lot like the pre-Huddy House, except for two things: The aggressive cuteness of it all cut off the flow of blood to the medical plot line, so that it never seemed all that important or involving, and despite the evidence of your eyes and ears, you were meant to understand that House and Cuddy were in agony because of all the things they couldn't say to each other. What with House tooling around the hospital on a Segway with his new sweetie-of-convenience hanging on behind and the two of them assaulting Cuddy with remote-control helicopters, much of the episode seemed intended to be mordantly, painfully funny, slapstick tragedy, cry because their hearts are breaking.
Most of it was just stare-at-the-screen-in-silence theoretical-funny, though it did occasionally sink to the groan-worthy, as when the green-card bride broke out the malapropisms. Also, at one point, House had a consultation session while piloting a monster truck. This scene made a very important dramatic point, which is that House still does well enough in the ratings that whoever is in charge of the budget will sign off on a request for a monster truck.
At this point, the most moving experience connected to the show is probably just watching Lisa Edelstein working like a saint, as she tries to navigate the currents of her character as they've been shaped by the writers' self-contradicting whims without making a fool of herself. Her hard shell of indifference to House's cruel prankishness, her mask of bureaucratic reasonableness when she told House that he couldn't use the hospital chapel for the wedding, and her stoic unhappiness as she stalked out of the wedding before she could break down were all believable in context, even if they were a little hard to knit together, let alone connect to the woman she used to play, whose emotions were tingling and confused in a hundred different ways but who was still smart enough to not get too close to this a**hole. As for Hugh Laurie, he's still a commanding presence who's fun to watch, though I'll repeat that sticking him behind the wheel of a monster truck is pushing it. As a sop to the old fans, there were even a couple of shots of him sitting at his desk looking obsessed and haunted, as if he were actually thinking about ways to save somebody's life. But the pain has drained out of his performance; House is no longer the guy who greets a call girl at his door with, "I need a distraction. You don't need to talk to be that, do you?" Now, he's the guy who, in his darkest hour, is seen with a different Maxim cover girl in every scene and even teams up with them to play practical jokes. And without pain, House is, well, just another a**hole. He's a charismatic a**hole, but all that means is that you can't take your eyes off him even when you're past the point where you wish you could.
