A review of last night’s two hour House season premiere by Tara!
What an appropriate title for this episode. In every sense of the word, House was broken. And it took the very talented Andre Braugher (Homicide, Thief), playing House’s psychiatrist, Dr. Nolan, to not only make House see that but, more importantly, to acknowledge it, accept it and make peace with it.
This episode was not the traditional formula we are used to seeing. Rather than the hospital where the ‘team’ tries to figure out what’s wrong with this week’s patient, the first images we see are those of House going through withdrawals, in a singular cell like bedroom. Once the images stop and we see that House has begun to recover, it becomes clear that he is ready to leave. And he goes about doing so in typical House fashion.
With that we get our first introduction between Dr. Nolan and House. House tells him he’s a lot better and wants to leave, “Gonna miss you. Wanna start missing you as soon as possible.” The sarcasm begins. Nolan counters with, “your issues run deeper than Vicodin,” as he has been misusing the drug for years but his hallucinations happened only after two colleagues died. House wants to leave but Nolan stops him by saying he can’t without his recommendation.
Welcome to Ward Six.
Just a quick look around the room and we see men playing ping pong, a girl with very large and broken glasses holding a stuffed animal that even when I paused my DVR I couldn’t figure out what it was. I don’t know why but I’m curious.
