Tuesday 17 May 2016

House MD Redux: Wilson's Heart

So people who know me also know what a huge fan of the TV Show House MD I used to be. Though I had vicious disagreements with some of the diagnostic trajectories and story lines, in general, the concept of a pained, misunderstood genius appealed to me. I enjoyed watching this misdirected misanthrope and felt his unreal genius attract me.

However, it has been a while since the show ended and though I never really followed any other TV show with as much of interest and passion (though as I betrayed in my last post, I have shifted my nerd focus on to the Game of Thrones), I always kept longing for something like House MD to come along. So today, in the evening, while randomly flipping through the TV shows rerun on the glut of local cable channels, imagine my shock and surprise when I stumbled across what was ostensibly one of my most favorite House MD episodes of all times: the two-part season finale of season four, the one in which Amber, Wilson's love interest, and a fiercely competitive doctor, almost like a female version of Gregory House in certain ways, dies. House puts his life on the line to get to the bottom of the mystery behind the rapidly declining multiorgan failure that strikes down Amber (popularly known to the show fanatics as Cut Throat Bitch because of her gunner nature).



The medicine in the episode was spotty, at best, and sloppy at worst. For example, I still cannot come to terms with the fact that Wilson suggested cooling Amber further down would help - hypothermia does not work that way! And it is extremely rare, to the point of non-occurrence, that someone is put into protective hypothermia for a very long time. The pharmacology behind Amantadine poisoning - the eventual cause of her death - is solid, and there are documented cases, albeit rare, of similar, unfortunate outcomes.

But this episode always touched a chord in my hear. The manner in which a concussed House agreed to get a deep brain stimulation to revive his memories (it does not work that way - we cannot yet stimulate a particular memory thread. You are more likely to succeed with Dumbledore's Pensieve for that.) and went into a coma, the way in which House's fallibility is exposed, and his human, vulnerable side comes out is a revelation. Somehow, you cannot but empathize with the misanthropic physician.



But at the end of the day, Amber dies, Wilson leaves, questioning his friendship with House, and he resorts to his pill-popping shenanigans. People do not change...


The songs... oh the songs...

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