History Headscratchers / House

*** This. And to link it with a previous argument : yes, as Cuddy says herself, he could never get hired anywhere else - meaning she ''has'' to keep him on staff if she doesn't want him to, I dunno, sink further into depression and let himself die rather than find another job to pay rent and food. It's part caring, part pity - and a third, tiny part business. Because as stated earlier, you can bet your weird malfunctioning organ system of the week that the case files of all those wealthy benefactors, their friends, their families and their pets all land on House's desk.

** The MST3kMantra certainly applies here. The show has a very blatant level of fantasy despite its presentation as something that takes place in [[LikeRealityUnlessNoted recognizable reality.]] The production is clearly more concerned with being an effective ''television show'' than being completely realistic, and I would wager the writers simply don't consider people who can't handle the unreality of things like House's ability to maintain employment to be part of their demographic. As the first counterpoint notes, House lives in a world where his competence, not his willingness to act like all the other sheeple, is the only thing that matters. Those of us who have had or can at least ''sympathize'' with this fantasy usually don't care about the opinions of [[strike: sheeple]] people who can't.

** [[{{FanonDiscontinuity}} Who now?]]

*** But Wilson's intentions are pretty much always good. When Wilson pretends he doesn't know Chase is back at the hospital in Season 4, this is before House has developed hallucinations - this isn't Wilson making House think he's losing his mind again, this is Wilson trying to get House to come up with getting a team together again (just *telling* House what to do doesn't work, he's so stubborn it's better if he rationalizes a way to comply). The lie at the beginning of Season 3 is...not good writing, it's done for the sake of tossing a ConflictBall into the fray rather than making any sense, a lot like "Sports Medicine" when Wilson lies about why he can't go to the monster truck rally when actually he's having dinner with Stacy - she's in town for the weekend, why can't he reschedule with her for Saturday or Sunday instead of Friday? Conflict! Anyway, House doesn't respond well to being manipulated, but he also doesn't respond well to being directly confronted, however nicely, about anything. Wilson's ability to deceive House speaks to his intelligence and cunning, but it's clearly a skill he's developed when trying to get House to do something that's good for House. Wilson has a great bedside manner but he doesn't manipulate or lie to patients because they're usually not pathologically obstinant like his best friend is.

* Why does Foreman and Thirteen just hook up all of a sudden? It all started during the hostage crisis, but it seemed as though there was no UnresolvedSexualTension in the recent episode arc at all? In contrast, Cameron and Chase had a ton of it and it made perfect sense when they got together, but now with these two it's practically non-existent.

* The episode with Dave Matthews ended on one of the biggest BrokenAesop ever. Through the whole episode, they show how music affects people. House himself is completely dumbfounded when the patient finishes the song that House had started writing in high school. Then, at the end, they decide to surgically alter change him from a gifted savant to an ordinary schmuck so that he can button his own shirt. Do you think that Beethoven would have ''EVER'' agreed to give up his ability to write, play and appreciate music in exchange for getting his hearing back? Ray Charles for his eyesight?

** Except that any reasonable person realizes that it is [[{{Precision F Strike}} complete and utter bullshit]] to call that "rape".

*** So you believe that everyone the party and play boy slept with was raping him? that in fact everyone in that group of druggies were rape-seekers?

** I would say that it is because they don't have several sticks up their asses? Cameron was not forced, she was not coerced, most importantly, she did not feel violated in any way, because she did something she wanted to do, she was not raped period, the whole point of being under influence negating consent is for cases where a person is taken advantage of, which does equate to rape, simply willingly having sex while you are drunk or high does not equate to being raped, and its ridiculous that if you do not feel raped you should just because someone else says you were. The spirit of the laws is more important than the letter of the laws, if there was no coercion, no force, no violence, no abuse of trust, no advantage taken. Equating something like this is to rape is an insult for all the people who have really been raped, because being stupid and drunk cannot compare to the pain and anguish of being raped, whether it is by physically being forced to have sex or finding out that while you were vulnerable and unable to take decision someone took advantage of you, those instances are rape, this isn't. So it's not that people on the show don't realize that there is more than one type of rape, it's just they realize the difference rape and an adult putting herself under the influence of drugs to go crazy and shag her co-worker, who as far as I recall did protest to the fact that she was high and was called on the fact that he slept with her anyways.

** This is why we have jury trials to determine these things - if one party complains. You investigate the salient points and come to a determination of whether a crime was committed or not. Cameron was treating a patient who convinced her to try crystal meth. The patient claimed that the drugs made his life better through random hook-ups with complete strangers. This piqued Cameron's interest so she took some of his stash instead of disposing of it all (Theft btw, & possession) and invited Chase around to her apartment, ostensibly for a drink but as soon as he entered, she pounced. He relented, the sex was consensual and Cameron was lucid enough to be making a rational or semi-rational decision - it wasn't particularly chivalrous, perhaps, but a jury wouldn't find Chase guilty of rape. Guilty of bad decision making, but that's not a crime.

* Agh. The thing currently bugging me is House's detox. Why was it so short? It was just one night, then poof, no more pain. Sure he still seemed to be feeling like crap, but it seemed like the process was way too short. Hasn't he tried detoxing before anyway? It always seemed like when he did, he was in major pain for longer periods of time. (Granted, it's been awhile since I've seen those episodes so I could be missing something.) Also, Amber just disappearing like she did. Maybe it was just me, but her vanishing like that after ''one night'' without Vicodin just seemed to quick.

*** No, not really. But then again, people on this page have pointed out plot holes with House's Vicodin. It's a Just Bugs Me page. People are going to bitch and moan about minor things.

** the issue with the case is that Medicare/Medicaid will not '''pay''' for ''off-label'' use of medication. Sildenafil, while showing some help for other types of circulatory problems, has not been approved by the FDA for treatment of those problems.

** It's also a bit of meta [[FridgeLogic Fridge Logic]] though, since House is so adverse to change, they didn't change the opening creds of the show, either.

*** Oh, I'm not complaining about getting set up or anything, I just wanted to know if the writers had said what they meant, or if the commercial had been written by Fox, taken out of context, was a retrospectively [[BlatantLies Blatant Lie]], that sort of thing.

* In " Birthmarks" we see House give a eulogy at his Dad's funeral. He starts off rattling about how much he hates the man, and then reels it in and says some somewhat genuine things, his voice cracks and he looks close to crying....before he turns around and takes a DNA sample from his dad. Was the voice crack real emotion, or was he just faking it?He obviously has some conflicted emotions about his dad so maybe it was real, on the other hand he immediately turned around and took a DNA sample, so it's kind of ambiguous.
** What exactly is the question here? The way i read it, the things he said were genuine but as usual he used sarcasm/jokes to act as if they weren't genuine and also wanted to know if he really was his father.

*** Uhm, it's not impossible. A step-father has been an alcoholic for at least 10 years now, hospitalized several times because of it, disappears from his job for about two weeks in two month to lie around at home and drink... Well, appearantly, everyone at his company have already figured out what's going on, and they're keeping him around because when he does come to work, he's awesome at it. We literally became rich by now, but considering that he's so much of a jerk that House could use him as a role model, I would much rather see him finally poison himself to death than bring those 'worker of the month' tablets from work.

** I'm confused, how is any of that indicative of the Hospitals financial success? All that stuff would have been installed when the hospital was built, not something they are constantly paying for. How is it a stretch to think a university teaching hospital, in a high wealth area, wouldn't have a rather large construction budget to make it look as good as possible? It's not like we see them constantly renovating and putting in all new stuff. And as to house being seemingly all knowing, 1) That's the whole point of the show, how good House is at what he does, 2) "Never reads"? where'd you get that idea, first off we've seen he has walls of his house covered in bookcases full of medical texts and even seen him double checking stuff on occasion. Just because we don't see him sit down and read them doesn't mean he doesn't, it just means watching someone sitting there reading tends to be boring.

* Tritter bugs me for a few reasons. First of all, he's impatient when House arrives in the room. House responds with sarcasm. House takes a look at Tritter's rash and gives a valid reason for dismissing him. Tritter then tells House to take a swab, because he thinks he knows far more about medicine than a doctor. He then tries (and fails) to intimidate House verbally, and when that doesn't work, he actually assaults him and informs him [[Main/InsaneTrollLogic "Treat people like jerks, you get treated like a jerk."]] He later threatens to sue, calling House a bully (remember that assault when verbal intimidation didn't work?), saying he wants House to learn a lesson about treating people nicer... That whole thing Tritter just went through with the anal thermometer after assaulting the cripple. Now, I get that he's supposed to be House for Policework (whereas House is House for Medicine), but the fundamental problem with the way Tritter works is that at the end of the day, Tritter's methods would get most of his cases thrown out in court, whereas House's methods leave him with live, grateful patients (or dead ones) and Tritter's methods leave him with disgruntled suspects facing jailtime. One of these methods leaves people (and their lawyers) willing to overlook the letter of the law and the other does not. Any lawyer worth their law degree would use the fact that Tritter was hounding House for an apology (and the fact he arrested him and then was willing to release him for it later) as some pretty serious abuse of authority, which means Tritter even arresting House would qualify as misconduct.

* It may be a bit late, but this has been bugging me for a while now. When Cuddy spends the night with House during the beginning of Now What, who the heck is taking care of Rachel!? Did Cuddy call up her nanny and say, "Hey thanks, can you come over for the night? I have to go proclaim my love for my employee." or did Lucas have to stay over and watch his ex-fiance-after-a-day's kid? Either way, seems pretty awkward...

*** It could have been written in a way that it worked, yes, but with a show as complex as House you want to keep things as simple as possible. From a writer's perspective, the major point is that House has stopped "popping his pills" and is "clean". Having House not downing pills every few seconds was the change that the writers needed to keep the show fresh and accessible. But I guess that's why this is the "just bugs me" page, not everyone can suspend their disbelief for every single aspect of the shows they watch.

*** The illness was associated with really precoce puberty. They wanted to know if it could come from the school environment. He is geniously interested by the answer, because multiple children developping the same growth abnormalities wouldn't be a coincidence.
* In a recent episode Named ( i think) " A Pox on our houses" a teen aged girl and her father come down with what is beleived to be Small pox. the man eventually dies from it. this disease is eventually revealed to be Rickettsialpox. The Thing is, through a curory glance at wikipedia it would seem its more similar to chicken pox than small pox, and there have never been any confirmed deaths. The hell? Rickettsialpox doesn't work that way!

*** House is fiction and they can make up whatever they want. Also, Wikipedia is usually pretty accurate.
*** Also also, these people are actors, not expert doctors. Their "expert" medical opinions are written for them by the show's writers, who are probably not expert doctors either.

*** Except that, looking for the "small patches of dark, dead tissue" was what confirmed the Rickettsialpox diagnostic. Of course, he could have contracted both, but then, House was taking an leap of faith to taking off his gloves and search the body.

** As mentioned above, the lack of surgical masks is a casualty of the tv format. [[ExecutiveMeddling The networks don't want the actors' faces obscured too much]]. ER and Scrubs does the same thing all the time. If the show were a little more realistic the doctors would have masks and gloves on every time they break into a patient's house. And to be fair, they don't ''always'' treat highly infectious diseases. Most times the patient is afflicted with something that can't be easily passed from person to person like mold or some weird cancer. And when they are dealing with something highly infectious like smallpox (or something that looks like smallpox) they keep the patient quarantined and don't go in there without the proper safety equipment.\\

** If your talking about the episode I think your talking about, The man had recently quit smoking and switched to a nicotine gum, which was causing him severe diarrhea. Diarrhea can cause some pretty destructive health problems over short periods time (in the realm of two or three weeks, though depending on diet and environment may not even take that long). So, yeah, the guy going back to cigarettes for a while until he finds a better way to quit WOULD be the ideal solution (if the man couldn't stop both. Given the intake of nicotine gum, the man was really addicted. going back to cigarettes was simply a solution to an immediate problem) I may be wrong, but I think House said something along the lines of "Try the patch" as he walked out, too. That all being said, this is house, who really doesn't care unless the patient is interesting. I wouldn't be surprised if House told a kid to go play in traffic as a cure for chronic boredom.

** Amputating his leg wouldn't fix his pain(the brain still receives the signals, phantom pain and all that), it would only reduce his mobility.

* Whatever happened to that big argument here about Wilson killing the warlord? I was actually enjoying it, and wanted to chime in on it!
** It was turning into a big pointless argument in which neither side was willing to give any ground, logic be damned.

** It happens. A have a friend who works in a restaurant (same deal) and I've never seen her wear anything except spike heels.

*** House bears maybe 25% of the blame for Amber's death. He was drinking at a bar on a work night to the point where his keys were taken. Despite stalking Wilson for their entire relationship, he forgets or doesn't know Wilson was on call that night, so he calls expecting Wilson to drop everything and pick him up - one of those tests of Wilson's devotion and patience House regularly conducts, trying to see if House is still Number 1 in Wilson's life now that Wilson has found someone who isn't incredibly needy and makes him incredibly happy (see for evidence every episode where House asks something excessive of Wilson that he could easily do for himself). House could've called a cab or gotten on an earlier bus by himself like a grown ass man. Amber, trying to keep this three-way relationship harmonious and do a favor for her boyfriend, tries to pick up House, he storms out like a child and refuses her offer of a ride. It's not his fault Amber followed him, but she was trying to look out for him in his drunken state and maybe have a conversation. It's not House's fault Amber was taking an aggressive flu medication or that the truck hit the bus or that she was being nice, but the inciting incident is his fault. That's why Wilson is angry, that it took so long to figure out WTF had been going on with House and Amber, that House's most banally shitty behaviour lead to this, that Wilson had finally found someone who wasn't a version of one of his wives and whom he was on an equal footing with that he might've beaten his track record, and then she was just fucking *gone* and everything that happened leading up to that was unbelievably traumatizing. Here's the thing: Wilson doesn't express any anger toward House. He gives him a look that expresses how wounded he is when House has just woken up, but leaves without saying anything...for months. Wilson being Wilson, he represses whatever unpleasant emotion is boiling inside. He comes back after four months, is perfectly polite as he packs up his things, and tells House that yes, he did try to blame him, but he went over it so many times he realized he couldn't. What Wilson couldn't do anymore was enable House, the circumstances that created the situation where House could call and expect Wilson to be there, no matter what was going on in Wilson's life. The "we're not friends, maybe we never were" parting shot was harsh and untrue, but it's how he felt at the time. I don't get why people think Wilson was being unreasonable, either in walking away from House for while or asking him to endure the risky Deep Brain Stimulation considering how much Wilson has done for House and put up with from him for so many years. "I should've been on that bus-no, you should've been on the bus alone" is true, it's not wishing House was dead instead of Amber, it's wishing House would've taken responsibility and changed, and let Wilson change too.

* So I just watched the whole series over the course of a few months and one thing's bugging me, just what is everyone's relationship to each other in terms of friendships? Early on Foreman didn't seem to regard the others as friends (having an apparent dislike of Chase) but Cameron obviously thought of all of them as friends. But then as the seasons go one all of the ducklings can be seen hanging out together outside of work which even seems to include the new members of the team that replaced them in season 4. And what do they regard House as because he has been shown to hang out with them from time to time and they seem to have a decent enough time Chase, Foreman and House's karaoke is a particularly memorable example of this as is Chase's bachelor party and yet whenever the topic comes up House and everyone else refers to Wilson as House's only friend. I know the show has a pretty complex interpersonal relationships and not everything is black and white in terms of relationships all the time but I just can't get it straight.

* Why do the orderlies leave food for coma patients? It's a RunningGag in the series where House hides from Cuddy in a coma patient's room where he watches TV and eats their food. Something similar happens in Film/TheFugitive, does this have a basis in real life?

* Why was Foreman made Dean of Medicine? Foreman probably had at most 10 - 12 years under his belt. Wouldn't it have made more sense to give that position to a department head likr Wilson or someone that's been a doctor for 20+ years or board member then to Foreman?

Anyway, it's [[TheSpock logical]] to go with the "see if you can find someone else" option over drugging yourself, but happiness, love, all the things he used for his reasons? They're not logical. That was the whole point, since House was TheSpock and DXM Guy was TheMcCoy for this episode. Just because he's smart doesn't mean he can't make an idiot of himself because he is (or at least thinks he is) in love. ...And no, I did not mean [[IncrediblyLamePun that]] in the least bit literally.\\

** The perjury was part of an IdiotPlot and made no sense; how did telling them one prescription he stole was a placebo cancel out all the other possession charges? The judge said she dismissed the case because he wasn't peddling dope on the street. His illegal acquisitions of pain meds aren't hurting anybody, except himself. But, yes, that probably would lose him his license in the real world. Like Wilson would have lost it for sleeping with a patient.

*** Actually if someone is a rapist then that is a perfectly GOOD reason to be banned from practicing medicine. Particularly considering that persons enacting crimes of sexual assault tend towards very specific and deliberate drives to cause traumatic harm to other people... all of which IS NOT CONDUCIVE TO THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE. Which is exactly why SEX OFFENDERS ARE NOT ALLOWED TO PRACTICE MEDICINE. Even if the victim doesn't press charges, the ability to enact something such as rape is directly in contradiction of not only the hippocratic oath but the state of mind to act in someone's best interests (called DUTY OF CARE). A couple of things here though: 1) it is really easy to tell if someone is unconscious or drugged (in which case they can't give consent), and 2) I'm pretty sure the words "no, stop!" are pretty fucking clear.

*** The above troper's logic leads to two charges; both partners raping each other ''at the same time.''

*** No one's gender gives them the right to have sex with someone who can't/doesn't consent. And Chase deserves to have his medical license revoked if he can't tell that a person is under the influence of something mind-altering. He actually did say something about her being high. Still, if he honestly didn't realise she was high and thought she truly was consenting of her own free will, then he's not a conventional rapist and shouldn't be judged as such, but he should immediately be banned from practising medicine forever.

*** What? Just because one is a rapist doesn't mean one should be banned from practicing medicine. Especially if charges are not pressed, if state of mind and ability to give consent were not compromised (and believe it or not, meth doesn't cause intoxication in the same manner as alcohol, and has been ruled in several courts as allowing one to give consent), and especially not if both partners agree to consent afterwards! Ruining a man's life because of failing to identify someone is under the influence of drugs and not simply distressed or really horny is NOT an acceptable outcome.

*** Uh, it ''isn't'' their 'personal definition of rape', it's the ''law'' in several countries.
** I don't agree that a drunk/high person assaulting a sober person shouldn't be considered rape. If a person forces another person to have sex against their will, that's rape by my personal definition. That includes if the person doesn't have the will to decide yes or no. As for how much of a altered state of mind a person has to be in before they reach the point of not being able to make an informed decision, I agree that can be hard to tell. Frankly, if Chase had been high as well and she had acted the same way she did, I wouldn't consider it rape. However, he had clear mental facilities, he could weigh the pros and cons, he could decide yes, he wanted sex or he wasn't sure but he was going to go for it anyway or no, he didn't want sex. Cameron didn't have clear mental facilities. She, at the time, didn't have all her facilities to decide yes, she wanted it, she wasn't sure but was going to try it, she might regret it but she was willing to take the risk, etc. And Chase, knowing that her brain was so altered that she could do numerous things she might not do/wouldn't do/wouldn't want to do if she had the ability to truly think about them, didn't put a stop to things, didn't call an ambulance, didn't call one of his colleagues for help, didn't decide that he was off-duty and simply walk out of the apartment. He raped her. He took advantage of the fact she didn't have the ability to give true consent to have sex with her.

** This is why we have jury trials to determine these things - if one party complains. You investigate the salient points and come to a determination of whether a crime was committed or not. Cameron was treating a patient who convinced her to try crystal meth. The patient claimed that the drugs made his life better through random hook-ups with complete strangers. This piqued Cameron's interest so she took some of his stash instead of disposing of it all (Theft btw, & possession) and invited Chase around to her apartment, ostensibly for a drink but as soon as he entered, she pounced. He relented, the sex was consensual and Cameron was lucid enough to be making a rational or semi-rational decision - it wasn't chivalrous but a jury wouldn't find that Chase would be guilty of rape. Guilty of bad decision making but that's not a crime.