Meta discussion on 'Acceptance' episode
Before
reading this post, be warned that it definitely contains spoilers for last
night’s ep., and may contain spoilers for future S2 eps. SO TURN BACK NOW IF
YOU DON’T WANT TO BE SPOILED.
Still here? Ok, clickie for meta'ing
OK, now that that’s out of the way…
I’ll start by saying (if my icon didn’t make it obvious enough) that my ‘Main True Pairing is House/Cam’. Thus I have a soft spot for her. So, if you’re really not interested in hearing me bitch about how the canon writers are fucking Cam’s character up the ass without benefit of lube, you may want to give this meta a pass.
The theme of the ‘Acceptance’ ep. is, for me ‘I am mystified’.
I am mystified as to what the damned canon writers are thinking, turning Cam into this wimpy!doc. Do you really, honestly, expect me to believe that someone with such major death issues made it all the way through med school without having to face dying patients? Unless the med school in question was ‘Avert Our Eyes from Our Students’ Neuroses Medical School,’ someone in authority would’ve noticed. And either had Cam deal with it, or would’ve booted her out of medicine altogether. Showing Cam making friends with the patient, hugging the patient (which looked more for Cam’s own comfort, rather than to ease the patient’s grief at learning her diagnosis) - wrong. ALL wrong. Canon-writers, pls stop sabotaging Cam in this fashion. It’s purile and strains the bounds of credibility.
The only saving grace was that moment between Wilson and Cam, just before she tells her patient the diagnosis. And the only reason I liked that moment was that Wilson implied that he was once like Cam, getting too emotionally involved and whatnot. Good on the canon-writers, for at least suggesting that this is not a female doc problem. Otherwise, I could post a whole rant on sexism (women as overly-emotional) on ‘House, M.D.’
I am also mystified, however, as to House’s reactions this whole ep. Not that he was nasty to Cam, I kinda saw that coming, and I think I know where it’s going, but I’ll spare you my spoilery predictions of future eps. No, what mystifies me is - House’s Ducklings are there to LEARN from him. To assimilate his diagnostic clue-searching techniques, and use them themselves. So, isn’t it amazingly short-sighted and hypocritical of him to cut Cam down for trying to use his own procedures?
Not to mention, I’m also getting amazingly sick of House always being right. The deck seems to be stacked firmly against anyone else getting a correct diagnosis, other than His Lordship Grumpy. As a friend pointed out, in the Honeymoon ep., Mark only acts paranoid around House. Not around any Ducklings. So how can they come up with the correct diagnosis, when the ‘clues’ only come into existence when Mr. Genius Doc is in the room.
I was so convinced this time that Cam would actually be right, that she was doing all this testing and using House’s approach to try to help this patient…but NO, she was wrong, and he was right. Again. Yawn. Why not surprise us, canon-writers?
I am mystified, also, as to why House didn’t seem to care all that much about testifying at Clarence’s trial. Now, I know Hugh has said that House doesn’t care ‘how patients live their lives’, and that within his usual M.O., it makes sense that he’d only want to diagnose the patient in the here and now, and stick his head in the sand with regards to the fact Clarence was up for a lethal injection. But once there was a possibility that even Clarence’s crimes were biologically-exacerbated, why wouldn’t he step up? He nearly lost his medical license giving Carly in Control a new heart, he nearly lost his medical license again in DNR violating John Henry Giles’ wishes. We know he does whatever he has to do to save patients’ lives. Why is this particular case any different? Because he knew Foreman would step in and do it for him? So that House could then continue maintaining the front that he doesn’t give a rat’s ass for anyone?
I am mystified as to this whole business in the MRI of Doom and the ‘magically-exploding tattoos’. Um, note to medical consultants for the show - This? Does. NOT. Happen. Don’t any of you medical consultant dweebs watch the ‘Discovery Channel’? Mythbusters did a whole segment where they tested this theory, and NO, tattoos do not react in MRIs.
Which leads me to another consistent beef with this show. Now, I know that I’m only familiar with MRIs of the brain, but I think this applies to all MRIs, anytime, anywhere. The patient HAS TO BE RESTRAINED. If the patient moves, the MRI is blurred, and you won’t be able to see squat. In reality, when doing an MRI on a patient’s head, their head and neck are completely restrained (they even have to bite down on a ‘bite-bar’ to keep their heads still), and even then it’s sometimes not enough - give cocaine to an addict and put them in an MRI fully restrained, and you still get a lot of movement. Now, I understand the show wants their patients free to move and speak, because it’s definitely more dramatic when the patient yells that they’re seeing ‘Jesus coming for them’, rather than frantically and repeatedly pressing an emergency button (which is what patients in distress do in REAL MRIs). And I was willing to overlook it on that score. But exploding tattoos plus so-much-movement-that-no-tech-would-ever-be-able-to-see-anything-on-the-scan? Shame on you guys. No cookie.
Other, briefer, bitches of mine?
- Um, hello, where was the scene where House falls flat on his face after getting drunk with Clarence???
- What’s with that new terrible synthesized music in the closing credits?
- Why have Cam and Cuddy suddenly changed hairstyles? I realize it’s S2 and the producers want to make some changes, but if this show was ‘real life’, what’s the likelihood that everyone would decide to get a haircut/style change at the same time? Did ‘Queer Eye for the Straight Doc’ come through between ‘Honeymoon’ and ‘Acceptance’?
- And speaking of changes - while I thought Cuddy’s dress later on in the ep. made her look really sexy (Do me, Lisa, baby, right now!), where’s my beloved cleavage? I know many people feel her usual boobage is unprofessional (and they’re right), but Lisa E. said Cuddy dresses that way on purpose - she does it because she’s Dean and she can - so the sudden transformation into Lisa Cuddy, Matron, M.D., is awfully weird.
- And I don’t know what to make of the House/Stacy interactions this ep. Um, trust issues? Duh, of course there are. So why they feel betrayed when the other one goes behind their back is yet another mystery. And too bad they didn’t actually show Cuddy chewing out Stacy, I would’ve loved to be a fly on the wall during that conversation.
But yeah, there were some things I liked about this ep., believe it or not:
- It’s House! And it’s new!!!
- Guh, those Housian eyes!!!! Like two pieces of sky fell and were surgically implanted in HL/House’s head. Excuse me, I must go and change my undies.
- The ‘Musical Shirts’ thing was nice, too - look, no tee-shirt (bare skin!SQUEE1). Look, no button-down. Mmmmmm…..
- The sunglasses!House look wasn’t bad, either, heheh.
- And, in the yay-for-me Department, as soon as Chase mentioned toner, I knew it was the culprit, and I also figured the whole drinking thing was the treatment long before House revealed this to Clarence. W000t!
So that’s it. Except for one thing - FOX, you fuckers. You screwed up my feed! 8:00, you start playing House, which I only realized after I’d missed the opening sequence (and I only realized that because Global screwed up the CBS feed, too, so that I couldn’t rewatch the last ep. of NCIS). 5 minutes into it, you realize it should be ‘Bones’, and you fix the feed, forcing me to jump to Global and watch it there, on the off chance that neither of you are going to repeat it at 9:00. So I’ve missed parts of the beginning of the ep. Fuckers. Get your bloody feeds mixed up on another night, mkay?
Ok, now I’m done. Discuss!
Still here? Ok, clickie for meta'ing
OK, now that that’s out of the way…
I’ll start by saying (if my icon didn’t make it obvious enough) that my ‘Main True Pairing is House/Cam’. Thus I have a soft spot for her. So, if you’re really not interested in hearing me bitch about how the canon writers are fucking Cam’s character up the ass without benefit of lube, you may want to give this meta a pass.
The theme of the ‘Acceptance’ ep. is, for me ‘I am mystified’.
I am mystified as to what the damned canon writers are thinking, turning Cam into this wimpy!doc. Do you really, honestly, expect me to believe that someone with such major death issues made it all the way through med school without having to face dying patients? Unless the med school in question was ‘Avert Our Eyes from Our Students’ Neuroses Medical School,’ someone in authority would’ve noticed. And either had Cam deal with it, or would’ve booted her out of medicine altogether. Showing Cam making friends with the patient, hugging the patient (which looked more for Cam’s own comfort, rather than to ease the patient’s grief at learning her diagnosis) - wrong. ALL wrong. Canon-writers, pls stop sabotaging Cam in this fashion. It’s purile and strains the bounds of credibility.
The only saving grace was that moment between Wilson and Cam, just before she tells her patient the diagnosis. And the only reason I liked that moment was that Wilson implied that he was once like Cam, getting too emotionally involved and whatnot. Good on the canon-writers, for at least suggesting that this is not a female doc problem. Otherwise, I could post a whole rant on sexism (women as overly-emotional) on ‘House, M.D.’
I am also mystified, however, as to House’s reactions this whole ep. Not that he was nasty to Cam, I kinda saw that coming, and I think I know where it’s going, but I’ll spare you my spoilery predictions of future eps. No, what mystifies me is - House’s Ducklings are there to LEARN from him. To assimilate his diagnostic clue-searching techniques, and use them themselves. So, isn’t it amazingly short-sighted and hypocritical of him to cut Cam down for trying to use his own procedures?
Not to mention, I’m also getting amazingly sick of House always being right. The deck seems to be stacked firmly against anyone else getting a correct diagnosis, other than His Lordship Grumpy. As a friend pointed out, in the Honeymoon ep., Mark only acts paranoid around House. Not around any Ducklings. So how can they come up with the correct diagnosis, when the ‘clues’ only come into existence when Mr. Genius Doc is in the room.
I was so convinced this time that Cam would actually be right, that she was doing all this testing and using House’s approach to try to help this patient…but NO, she was wrong, and he was right. Again. Yawn. Why not surprise us, canon-writers?
I am mystified, also, as to why House didn’t seem to care all that much about testifying at Clarence’s trial. Now, I know Hugh has said that House doesn’t care ‘how patients live their lives’, and that within his usual M.O., it makes sense that he’d only want to diagnose the patient in the here and now, and stick his head in the sand with regards to the fact Clarence was up for a lethal injection. But once there was a possibility that even Clarence’s crimes were biologically-exacerbated, why wouldn’t he step up? He nearly lost his medical license giving Carly in Control a new heart, he nearly lost his medical license again in DNR violating John Henry Giles’ wishes. We know he does whatever he has to do to save patients’ lives. Why is this particular case any different? Because he knew Foreman would step in and do it for him? So that House could then continue maintaining the front that he doesn’t give a rat’s ass for anyone?
I am mystified as to this whole business in the MRI of Doom and the ‘magically-exploding tattoos’. Um, note to medical consultants for the show - This? Does. NOT. Happen. Don’t any of you medical consultant dweebs watch the ‘Discovery Channel’? Mythbusters did a whole segment where they tested this theory, and NO, tattoos do not react in MRIs.
Which leads me to another consistent beef with this show. Now, I know that I’m only familiar with MRIs of the brain, but I think this applies to all MRIs, anytime, anywhere. The patient HAS TO BE RESTRAINED. If the patient moves, the MRI is blurred, and you won’t be able to see squat. In reality, when doing an MRI on a patient’s head, their head and neck are completely restrained (they even have to bite down on a ‘bite-bar’ to keep their heads still), and even then it’s sometimes not enough - give cocaine to an addict and put them in an MRI fully restrained, and you still get a lot of movement. Now, I understand the show wants their patients free to move and speak, because it’s definitely more dramatic when the patient yells that they’re seeing ‘Jesus coming for them’, rather than frantically and repeatedly pressing an emergency button (which is what patients in distress do in REAL MRIs). And I was willing to overlook it on that score. But exploding tattoos plus so-much-movement-that-no-tech-would-ever-be-able-to-see-anything-on-the-scan? Shame on you guys. No cookie.
Other, briefer, bitches of mine?
- Um, hello, where was the scene where House falls flat on his face after getting drunk with Clarence???
- What’s with that new terrible synthesized music in the closing credits?
- Why have Cam and Cuddy suddenly changed hairstyles? I realize it’s S2 and the producers want to make some changes, but if this show was ‘real life’, what’s the likelihood that everyone would decide to get a haircut/style change at the same time? Did ‘Queer Eye for the Straight Doc’ come through between ‘Honeymoon’ and ‘Acceptance’?
- And speaking of changes - while I thought Cuddy’s dress later on in the ep. made her look really sexy (Do me, Lisa, baby, right now!), where’s my beloved cleavage? I know many people feel her usual boobage is unprofessional (and they’re right), but Lisa E. said Cuddy dresses that way on purpose - she does it because she’s Dean and she can - so the sudden transformation into Lisa Cuddy, Matron, M.D., is awfully weird.
- And I don’t know what to make of the House/Stacy interactions this ep. Um, trust issues? Duh, of course there are. So why they feel betrayed when the other one goes behind their back is yet another mystery. And too bad they didn’t actually show Cuddy chewing out Stacy, I would’ve loved to be a fly on the wall during that conversation.
But yeah, there were some things I liked about this ep., believe it or not:
- It’s House! And it’s new!!!
- Guh, those Housian eyes!!!! Like two pieces of sky fell and were surgically implanted in HL/House’s head. Excuse me, I must go and change my undies.
- The ‘Musical Shirts’ thing was nice, too - look, no tee-shirt (bare skin!SQUEE1). Look, no button-down. Mmmmmm…..
- The sunglasses!House look wasn’t bad, either, heheh.
- And, in the yay-for-me Department, as soon as Chase mentioned toner, I knew it was the culprit, and I also figured the whole drinking thing was the treatment long before House revealed this to Clarence. W000t!
So that’s it. Except for one thing - FOX, you fuckers. You screwed up my feed! 8:00, you start playing House, which I only realized after I’d missed the opening sequence (and I only realized that because Global screwed up the CBS feed, too, so that I couldn’t rewatch the last ep. of NCIS). 5 minutes into it, you realize it should be ‘Bones’, and you fix the feed, forcing me to jump to Global and watch it there, on the off chance that neither of you are going to repeat it at 9:00. So I’ve missed parts of the beginning of the ep. Fuckers. Get your bloody feeds mixed up on another night, mkay?
Ok, now I’m done. Discuss!