House-Season 4, Ep 15-16

 I really find myself wishing that House would put aside his stubborn nature-just once. Even though I remain hopeful that House will one day expose his warm nature, I know that it could never happen. Perhaps one of the reasons this show is so alluring, is the way the audience is drawn to the characters- at least for me, when House confronts people and situations with his usual aloof, and sarcastic demeanor, i keep hoping that the next episode will bring out the warm, gentle qualities in him. However, my wishes are fruitless since this does not actually happen-but my expectation that it eventually will leads me to watch episode after episode. 

In the first episode, you can sense Cuddy's desire for House to be at a Jewish baby naming ceremony, but House disarms her pleas with mockery each time.  In this episode, House also tries to break up Thirteen and Foreman. Since they refused to break up, he decided to fire Foreman.  Thirteen and Foreman made it seem like they broke up so that House would rehire Foreman. I did not realize until after I finished watching the episode, that Thirteen and Foreman planned their break-up and found myself feeling sorry for House.

For the next episode, "The Softer Side", we were introduced to a couple whose new-born child who has both female and male genitalia. This boy(Peter Jackson) was later seen to have collapsed after making a winning shot for his school's basket ball game. Peter Jackson's parents posed the idea that their son might have a blind uterus and suggested an MRI.  House agreed to this, but only because he wanted to appease the parents and refrain from arguing with them. Only later did he realize that Jackson was merely suffering from dehydration and by giving him the MRI scan, the "contrast material" that was injected into his system only made his conditions worse.  This has important implications: just as i believe that House is a better problem solver, and thus a better doctor to his patients when he does not get emotionally involved with his patients, I also believe that his "playing nice" doesn't benefit his patients either. In this case, House believes that being nice and giving into the demands of Jackson's parents,  was a moment of weakness, and something that could hurt his patients.

In this episode, House also takes methadone to eliminate the pain he feels from his "bad leg".  It's a little ironic to me that the "best" doctor on the show, takes a life-threatening drug. Shouldn't doctors know better than to consume harmful substances like that? Perhaps House''s sense of pride allows him to think that he is invincible and immune to the same diseases that other people are vulnerable to. 

It is interesting to note that House only decides to stop taking meth after he realizes he potentially put his patient in a dangerous situation-he didn't stop taking meth because he's worried about his well-being, or because he's worried about hurting those who care about him, but he stop taking the to minimize the likelihood that he would hurt his patients-does this mean that he's self-less

House doesn't want to take the easy way out even if this means that he will have to endure more pain. 

I think that Cuddy also plays an important role in this episode. She stands up for Thirteen when Jackson's parents accused her for interfering for their son's life, and also convinced Jackson's mom to stay with her son even if he hadn't wanted her there earlier.  She demonstrated that it is really important to remain objective even when deeply stirred emotionally.  There are some parts of this episode that were unsettling. it was interesting to meet that both wilson and cuddy gave in to house taking meth. Wilson convinced Cuddy into agreeing with him that him taking meth made him less "miserable". I was shocked to find Cuddy offering House meth at the end-is she willing to allow him to risk his life in exchange for happiness. It seemed like she was opposed to House having anything to do with meth earlier when she gave him an ultimatum, but yet in the last scene she willingly offers House meth.