House, "Don't Ever Change": Amber is slammin'

Spoilers for last night's "House" pre-strike finale coming up just as soon as I figure out how many of my Canadian relatives went to McGill...

What really strikes me about this episode is how well it works as an unintentional season finale. The new team now has a few episodes under their belt. Cutthroat Bitch, the most indelible character to not make the team, gets to return in a recurring capacity and demonstrate some real growth. And one of House's fundamental beliefs about people is proven wrong, both with the patient and his friend, leading his heart to grow, oh, a half a size at least.

There was a lot of discussion last week about whether the adoption revelation served any purpose. To me, all it did was to once again confirm House's "everybody lies" theory, and not even in a way that was medically useful. Three and a half years in, we know everybody lies. We don't need to be constantly reminded of that, especially when it doesn't have any bearing on the case. On the other hand, to see House recognize that he's not always right, that some people can surpass his low expectations of him? That's interesting. That's something we haven't seen before, and it's a nice note to give Hugh Laurie (and, for that matter, Ann Dudek and Robert Sean Leonard) to play.

(Not that the show needs any more characters -- see (or, rather, don't) Cameron this week -- but it might be nice if Amber wound up with a radiology job at PPTH, so she could consult on the occasional case.)

I really liked the Hasidic couple story (featuring Sarah Silverman's sister Laura), both for the characters themselves and for the way the new team interacted with them. After they spent the entire Super Bowl episode harassing Cameron, it was good to have them in the thick of things, applying their own personal biases to the case in the same way the old team (Cameron in particular) might have. I especially liked Taub's spiritual semi-awakening, and then Kutner's comparison to the varying degrees of geekdom was a funny agnostic touch.

What did everybody else think? And how many more days will I have this cough before I'll need to find a real-life Dr. House?