House “Private Lives“ Recap & Review

Photo from Fox

It’s all about things that people like to keep private in this episode of House(Fox) “Private Lives”. This episode was one of the more enjoyable episodes of the season, maybe because it included very little Lisa Cuddy (Lisa Edelstein) and her usual annoying drama. The episode featured a lot of humor that made me laugh openly, you know, those good laughs that you can feel all over. The scenes with Wilson as an unwitting star in a porn film was thoroughly enjoyable, and seemed to be a joke that kept on giving throughout the episode. What I also found interesting is that we may be seeing House as he really is, off the drugs, trying to solve the mystery of who he really is and what makes him tick. It is as if House is going through a process of diagnosis on his own psyche, and House’s psyche is what drew me to this series to begin with – not the patients, not Dr. Cuddy, not his staff. This was a great episode that only risked derailing once – when House asks Cuddy if she wants to make out. I was hoping to get through at least one episode without having that storyline inserted. All in all, I found myself glued to the screen the entire time, patient of the week and all.

Here’s what happened:
The patient of the week finds her way to Princeton Plainsboro Teaching Hospital and House’s (Hugh Laurie) team by her sudden bruising and bleeding. She’s a blogger who keeps her entire life out in the forefront by reporting every single move she makes. To make a long story short – I like to do that with the patients because I don’t usually develop any attachment to them – it’s a fact that she leave OUT of her obsessive blogging that helps cure her case. In fact, she goes from having only days to live to having a promising prognosis. So, I suppose that even people who blog compulsively about the minutia of their lives likes to keep their privacy about certain things, in the patient’s case, she doesn’t discuss her bowel movements.

But a friendly battle begins between House and Dr. Wilson (Robert Sean Leonard) when House resurrects a porn film which Wilson claims he appeared in inadvertently, an old buddy of him using old film footage of him and inserting it into the film. House of course endless needles Wilson on the issue, spreading the information to just about anyone on the staff he can, and hanging up posters from the film in Wilson’s own office.

At the same time, Wilson has also roped House into coming on a speed dating session with him, and Wilson also brings along Dr. Chase (Jesse Spencer). A friendly bet ensues where House things that Chase can pick up tons of women at the event, even if he drops the accent and acts like a jerk. At the end of the night, House and Wilson only get what looks like one person interested apiece, while Chase gets a handful. Chase spends the rest of the episode trying to deal with the fact that he’s cute. I find myself wishing he will not hook up with Thirteen (Olivia Wilde).

Wilson, however, decides to get back at House for exposing his film past by trying to expose something that House doesn’t want revealed. With the help of Chase, they discover that a book that House appears to be reading is not what it seems, as House is using another book’s dust jacket to cover up the real name of the book. When Wilson and Chase dig through House’s office, they find the book and discover it is collection of sermons written by a Unitarian minister. Wilson quickly takes the book and tells Chase not to mention it to anyone, making Chase wonder what Wilson is up to. Later Wilson confronts House about why he is reading a book of sermons, and House makes excuses, for example, by saying his therapist told him to head it. Wilson is not buying it, wondering if House is in pain or worse yet, back on his Vicodin. House asks him to trust him, a clear sign he wants Wilson to drop it. And for once, I find that I trust House in this case.

But Chase manages to get a copies of the book for House’s team, and House seem surprised when Chase says he talked to the man to get extra copies of the out-of-print book, House asking Chase if he mentioned him during the call. Later, Wilson realizes that the author is House’s biological father, and confronts House as to why he is reading the book rather than contacting the man himself, seeing that House seems to think religious things are “crap.” It’s the word “crap” that points House to realizing that the clues to the patient of the week lies in her own crap. Literally.

Later, as they leave for the day, Wilson tells House that House wasn’t simply reading the book, he was studying it, as if he wanted to see how the writer's head worked. He also comments that House is not ordinary, he’s out on the "fringe,” commenting that “I’m your best friend and half the time I don’t understand you.” Wilson wonders if House was trying to find out if was someone else out there like him and asks if he found anything. House tells him underneath the god stuff there is just – more god stuff. It seems that for now, House won’t get the answers he needs from reading that book.



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