Liz Friedman of Xena fame has written three episodes of House. Last week’s was “Merry Little Christmas”, in which Cameron managed somehow to keep her mind on cases, visit House and tend a wound without making googly teenage crush eyes at him, and basically stay out of the story’s way.
Before that was an episode called “Forever”, in which Cameron actually practices medicine instead of letting herself be drawn into a debate over her last-episode decision to order a dangerous biopsy for Foreman when the decision was left in her hands.
Before that was a very annoying episode called “Hunting”, in which a man with HIV made his party-hearty lifestyle sound so tempting that Cameron took some of the ecstasy he’d smuggled into the hospital, ended up sleeping with Chase, and regretted the whole stupid thing. But therein lies the key: she figures out that the HIV patient is full of crap and in denial. It must be noted that normally when Cameron does something stupid, she learns nothing.
Liz Friedman brings out Cameron’s edge. She allows Cameron to show anger and determination instead of taking things too personally and being stubborn for no good reason. Her Cameron practices medicine instead of getting distracted by all the drama. I could live with this Cameron. It’s too bad we’ve only seen her in three episodes.
See, now, I don’t normally watch House but I saw this episode for some reason. From an outsider’s perspective, Cameron was actually pretty annoying. I’m sure I need the backstory, but I found her pouting and evil eyeing of the two people who wanted to detox House silly and a bit on the juvenile side. It’s difficult to understand how they were the bad guys in the situation. I also found the scene at his apartment a bit cloying.
I can imagine it playing that way for you. Believe me, Cameron was toned WAY down in this ep. Normally, she’d be ranting at the people who want to detox him and making serious awkward googly eyes at his apartment.
As for the detox… this ep didn’t cover the backstory. Is House an addict? If so, is it a problem? The show has done a good job raising some questions about just what addiction is, and whether it’s always a problem. Personally, I don’t think addiction is as simple as TV makes it out to be. Technically, anti-depressants bind with your brain chemistry in very much the same way as heroin. But if you need that brain chemistry correction to have a healthy emotional palette, then you NEED to be addicted to those drugs. So it’s kind of odd that we label the physical process of “addiction” as 100% evil, when certain medications use it as a manageable mechanism.
House is in chronic, permanent, serious pain. The pain was relieved briefly with surgery at one point, and he went happily right off the pills – no problem at all. The pain came back, and he went back on them. Because it’s an opiate, it’s inevitable that his tolerance will keep going up. But he’s never screwed up due to the drugs: he’s only ever screwed up due to being in withdrawal from them.
It’s a tough issue. I can’t say that House doesn’t have a problem. But I definitely can say no one’s proposing a better solution for his pain management, and it DOES need to be managed for him to function. I consider detox a bullshit answer for his overall problem, so I may have been sympathetic to Cameron on that point. Which is, er, the entire point of the past few paragraphs here, aside from enjoying hearing myself talk. 😛