House: Pretty/ugly

"House" spoilers coming up just as soon as I put on a necktie...

Yes, yes, yes, yesssssss!!!!

Freaked out too soon on the Michael Michele front. Sorry 'bout that. Turns out she was supposed to be unimpressive medically, and was hired entirely for her looks -- and given how meta this entire episode was (complete with a joke about how vomiting blood would have been a cool act-out, not to mention the documentary interviewer having the same name as Fox's head of reality programming), perhaps a commentary on the actress' entire career?

While House's increasing panic at his hot babe blind spot led to some amusing moments -- I especially liked him freezing with fear as he asked Foreman for confirmation on the skleroderma diagnosis -- it didn't really fit the character. Michael Michele's pretty, sure, but she's not vastly prettier than either Jennifer Morrison or Olivia Wilde, and House has never been shown in the past to be too dazzled by Cameron or Thirteen's beauty to do his job. It was an easy joke, albeit a funny one, that came at the expense of character (and was, I suppose, some kind of parallel commentary to the story of the deformed patient).

As for the episode as a whole, it's hard for me to comment, as my wife the hospital administrator spent virtually the entire hour interrupting with "Oh my god, that would never happen!" It's hard to get into the flow when you have to keep hitting the instant replay button on the DVR remote while saying, "For the love of God, it's just a show!" (She gives me the same treatment when we watch movies or TV shows about newspapers or sports and I turn into Ted Mosby: Corrector.) That said, the fake documentary episode is a dramatic cliche that's outlived its usefulness by now, and there weren't any moments where the presence of the cameras forced characters to show new sides of themselves, or even surprising juxtapositions between what the cameras caught and what was actually happening.

This was our spotlight episode on nickname-less Taub (and I'm still waiting for the explanation for why he and Kutner don't have nicknames), and it was interesting to see how easily he slid back and forth between seeming likable (finding a way to let the dad consent to the drug screening, going over House's head when they disagreed on the diagnosis) and totally reprehensible (caving on the dangerous test because he didn't want to look bad on camera, being a serial adulterer). We've now had some kind of look inside the head of every candidate except Thirteen, and that's been part of the point of Thirteen -- plus it looks like she gets another showcase next week. Will House have even cut this bunch down to three before we run out of episodes?

What did everybody else think?