(no subject)
1. Does this hospital only have the two elevators we see in the entrance hall? That doesn't seem to be enough to me - from the outside shots, PPTH looks quite big, and any hospital that size I've ever been to had far more than just two elevators. Which only makes sense, really, since big hospital means many patients, which means a large a staff and many visitors, which means lots of people wanting to go up and down. Two elevators wouldn't be enough by far.
2. I hate the entire subplot with Cuddy and her 'pranks', plus I really don't think prank still applies to things like the tripwire which could end up with someone getting seriously hurt if they fell wrong. What probably annoys me most is that I actually like Cuddy, and her extremely childish behaviour is making me dislike her. This isn't how I expect a supposedly competent administrator who got the job as one of the youngest people ever to behave. She's the boss, for crying out loud, so if House's behaviour upsets her so much, why doesn't she actually act like one and let him know in no uncertain times to either toe the line or face the consequences (which of course would mean that she would actually have to make sure that there would be consequences instead of not only doing nothing herself but actually protecting him from external consequences to the point of committing perjury)?
Besides, doesn't she worry about her reputation as a person of authority in the hospital? Wilson knew what was going on, and the janitor guy sticking the out-of-order signs on the elevators obviously had to, and if the way she acted ever became widely known in the hospital, who could ever take her seriously again? She risks making herself a laughing stock here.
3. The short exchange between House and Kutner - "I'm here because I want to help people." - "No, you're here because helping people makes you feel good." - amuses me and reminds me of a Friends episode in which Joey tries to convince Phoebe that there's no such thing as a purely selfless act because doing something good for someone else will always make you feel good about yourself too. In the end, though, does it really matter? Presumably, the person getting helped isn't going to care too much whether the person doing the helping is doing it for sorely altruistic reasons only or because they like the warm fuzzy feeling doing something good for someone else gives them. If the first person gets the help they need, and the second person feels happy about it as a result, it's good for both of them, isn't it?
4. Why would Taub have no other options than to work for House? He agreed not to work as a plastic surgeon any more in return for his colleagues not telling his wife about his affair, but since he has now told her himself, I would think that they'd have no more leverage over him. Unless there's something else they know...
5. Why is Thirteen so convinced that if she'd been on the real drug from the start, side effects would already have cropped up before? I don't find it too unlikely that some effects might take time to develop, or would only start manifesting after she'd had a large enough dosage of the drug. The dose makes the poison, after all.
6. Nice to see House and Wilson in the same scene again.
7. Er. The PotW scratched through her skull? Is that even possible? Mind you, fingernails can be quite tough, but I'd still think that when it comes to bone versus fingernail, the nail would either break or get worn down before it could dig a hole into the skull bone.
7b. Besides, wouldn't the pain make her wake up; or wouldn't she at least feel it once she was awake?
8. Why would Foreman need to ask the drug company about whether there had been any other cases of side effects like Thirteen's? He's running the trial - shouldn't he already know?
8a. And speaking of which, since we're eventually told that no other patient suffered these effects, that means that lots of people took the drug for weeks and are perfectly fine, while Thirteen just has to take if for a couple of days and immediately gets a brain tumour big enough to blind her? Not that it's entirely impossible, I guess, but it does rather appear that the universe really hates this woman.
I don't blame it, though, really.
8b. And did I miss something during the various discussions whether Foreman should tell the drug company, or did they solely focus on a. what it would do to Foreman's career and b. how it would affect Thirteen, and not really waste too much though on the fact that covering up such dangerous side effects also endangered every other patient in the trial who got the real drugs?
9. "It involves House, Foreman and Thirteen, which means that it's either dumb, dangerous or tragic or a combination. I'm embracing my ignorance." Heh. I still love Taub. Though I wish I could embrace my ignorance about the whole Thirteen stuff as well. I don't care how oh-so-tragic they make her, and the funny thing is that with all the drama they had about her this week, the one scene in this episode that really struck an emotional chord with me was the teeny tiny scene at the end where Wilson finally washes Amber's cup.
10. Speaking of teeny tiny scenes, if this is the 100th episode, couldn't they at least have included one short appearance of Cameron and Chase each? You know, those guys who are still listed in the opening credits while all the new ones aren't? I'm sure we could have sacrificed learning about whether Foreman and Thirteen drooled and snored, for example.
11. So Thirteen gets a brain tumour that's aggressive enough to go from non-existent to causing severe symptoms in just a few days, and a single radiation treatment is enough to make it fold and go away completely? Did it go "plop" and just suddenly disappear?
12. And of course there are no consequences for Foreman's screwing with the trial. I shouldn't be surprised, really, but the way the protagonists of this show can get away with anything, from messing up clinical trials to forging prescriptions and aiding hostage takers, without any repercussions makes me feel very, very sorry - and a bit upset on behalf of - the guy who got fired and then had the cops called on him (by Foreman on House's orders, no less) for faking that race driver's polio symptoms to get funding for research. Really, that wasn't worse than some of the stuff others have done, and he probably had far more altruistic reasons as well. So what did the poor guy do to make him the only doctor on this show to ever have to face the consequences of his actions, apart from not being a member of the main cast?
13. This isn't really specific to this episode, but it amuses me that after I said in my comments on last week's episode that I wished the show would go back to more medical mystery and less soap opera, I read an interview with Jesse Spencer, in which he said:
As soon as you get away from that procedural element and start worrying about relationships between the characters too much, I think it gets soapy... for lack of a better term. We don't want to do that. I think our show works best when we rely and focus on what the show is, which is House and the procedural element and how these characters are involved in that.
From your mouth to the producers'/writer's ears, Mr Spencer.
And a few more comments in case you were wondering what brought on last week's random poll about irregular verbs - some time ago, I read an article about how irregular verbs had a tendency to become regular over time, and I realised that although I had been taught that the past forms of "learn" and "dream" were "learnt" and "dreamt" when I first staring learning English, I had somewhere along the lines slipped into using "learned" and "dreamed" after seeing it used a lot.
What I find interesting is that although both learn and dream are fairly common verbs with the same irregular form ending with t, according to my poll of regular versus irregular verbs, "dreamt" is still putting up much more than a fair fight against becoming regular, while "learnt" already seems to be close to looking for its white flag. (So yes, shocolate, it appears you are endangered species, at least in this regard ;-)
Will "meant" ever become "meaned" along similar lines? Since irregular verbs are usually more resistant to becoming regular the more common they are (some of the most common verbs are irregular, such as be, do, go, and everyone's favourite lie and lay), probably not anytime soon, I guess. Which is probably a good thing, because "meaned" kinda hurts my eyes.
And speaking of hurting eyes, I feel rather vindicated about the results of the last question, because although dictionaries and grammar books will tell you that both "proved" and "proven" are correct past participle forms of prove, "it has been proved" looks just wrong to me, and apparently I'm far from the only one ;-)
And thus ends my grammar discussion of the day.