Getting caught up: House & Terminator

Okay, a couple of side projects have gotten in the way of my TV-watching and blogging for the past week, so I'm going to try to catch up as much as possible today. I'll hopefully have a "Pushing Daisies" double-post on the last two episodes this afternoon (still need to finish last night's episode), and, if I have a chance, will watch and write about "Life." Meanwhile, after the jump, spoilers for, in order, last night's "House" and Monday night's "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles"...

As a sequel to one of this season's best episodes of "House" (they even gave it a similar title), "Joy to the World" didn't really live up to the original. Lisa Edelstein was outstanding again, but because the writers for once decided to serve as many characters as possible (the exceptions, as usual, being Cameron and Chase), the Cuddy/baby stuff got a little lost in the shuffle. And the other material (Wilson trying to make House's heart grow three sizes, House then using that as an excuse to invent a virgin birth, Kutner being unsurprisingly revealed as an ex-bully, etc.) wasn't so great that it was worth crowding out the A-story. And the less said about Thirteen and Foreman hooking up despite zero chemistry, the better.

"Terminator" was also fairly underwhelming, an episode that brought in bits and pieces of better episodes from this season -- a time-fractured narrative, Derek brooding over his post-Judgment Day life, civilians dealing with the weight of a future with Skynet -- and yet seemed disposable throughout. After being more than happy with the atmospheric character pieces they've been giving us for most of the season, I'm starting to get impatient for the plot to kick into gear, and we only have one more episode before the show sits on a shelf for two months, then gets banished to die on Fridays.

What did everybody else think?