House: “Joy To The World” a Sorry Episode

Last night’s episode of House, “Joy to the World’ was a holiday-themed episode. Sadly, it didn’t bring me much cheer as the show continues to be stuck in a storyline with House (Hugh Laurie) and Cuddy (Lisa Edelstein) dancing around their feelings for each other. But what I got out of it was one question – does Dr. Cuddy spend any time actually doing HER JOB? For a person who is supposed to be the Dean of Medicine and in charge of hospital administration, she seems solely focused on two things: a baby, and throwing herself at House, not necessarily in that order. She seems to have plenty of time to concentrate on the patient of the week. Lucky for Cuddy that it turns out that the patient had given birth and abandoned the baby. Cuddy tracks down where the patient left the baby and goes there alone and recovers it from the strangers that found her. Again, lucky for Cuddy the patient is going to die, and she wastes no time to make sure is able to adopt the baby. I found her selfishness sickening and pathetic. I wasn’t happy at all for her that she got this baby.

Each week I hope that they get away from Cuddy’s constant preoccupation with House, and each week it only gets worse. It seems like bad joke that may have been funny at first, but when you keep hearing it, the humor is no longer there. The storyline ran its course long ago. Maybe if we get lucky, Cuddy will be too absorbed with being a new mom that she won’t be throwing herself at House for a while.

The one part of the show that continues to work well is any scene with House and Wilson (Robert Sean Leonard). Those two are great together and the writers seem to consistently give them good dialog.

But the curve ball last night was the passionate kiss between 13 – AKA Remy (Olivia Wilde) – and Dr. Foreman (Omar Epps). It was a bit of a surprise to me because I feel these two have zero chemistry together. In fact, those two don’t seem to have any chemistry with anyone on the show. Out of the large cast that they have, I am not quite sure why they decided to put these two together. Foreman is not exactly Mr. Warm and Fuzzy, and 13 isn’t exactly Ms. Warm and Inviting.

At this point, I think I am watching the show out of sheer habit, in the hopes that it will return to the quality and intensity it had before. I now put the show in the same category as USA’s “Monk” (which I haven’t watched I don’t know how long). It’s not a drama as much as it is a comedy. I hate having to call it a “dramedy” because to me, that is the kiss of death for any credible show.

On a side note, I forgot that I had made this House Christmas video months ago and never finished it. So here it is, maybe this will put House viewers in the holiday spirit. Last night’s episode surely didn’t do the trick!

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