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‘House’ Differential Diagnosis: Special Season Finale Edition

House

Human Error
Season 3 Episode 24

Courtesy of Fox

Each week in Differential Diagnosis, we’ll recap last night’s episode of House the way the good doctor and his team would do it. This time we’re holding the Sharpie.

The Situation
A sick woman and her husband flee Cuba for the sole purpose of seeing Dr. House — who is too busy firing and alienating his employees to attend to her unexplained pain, fever, fatigue, double vision, skin rash, and bad fake accent.

Symptoms
• House ignores Wilson’s seventeenth “Just show Foreman you care” speech. Wilson warns of House’s aversion to change, citing his decades-old guitar.
• House barely interacts with Foreman (and totally ignores the patient).
• House bristles at Chase’s knowing him so well.
• House tries agreeing with everything Foreman says, which gains him no ground and just pisses Chase off.

Initial Diagnosis
Narrative Scoliosis: Of course House will convince Foreman to stay, finding hidden reserves of compassion (or something) … but this is one crooked-ass way of getting there.

Secondary Symptoms
• House fires Chase for no good reason.
• Patient’s heart stops. She miraculously revives when they pull the plug.
• House’s attempt to keep Foreman is almost calculatedly halfhearted. Foreman actually goes!
• Cameron finally decides she digs Chase and resigns in solidarity!
• House gets a new metaphor guitar.

Final Diagnosis
Remission but not recovery. House has threatened change before (whether it’s a healed leg or a budding romance with Piper Perabo), but the change never takes. The writers may be hoping to give the show new life by pulling the plug on several major characters. But House (the character and the show) hasn’t hit rock bottom yet. He (and it) will relapse to delightfully self-destructive form in no time. —Jordana and Sean Williams

‘House’ Differential Diagnosis: Special Season Finale Edition