HouseCall – “Selfish”

Posted by on Sep 28, 2010 in Features | 1 comment

This week’s episode of House takes us back into the old and familiar patient-of-the-week formula as season 7 continues to define the characters in new and interesting ways.

There are spoilers for the episode “Selfish” from this point forward.

There’s a lot going on in this episode, and I think that it makes up for the lack of everything going on in the season premiere. Whereas I honestly feel like the season premiere was too focused on House and Cuddy (to the point where all of the other characters, specifically Thirteen, become insignificant), this was just the right mix of everything. This episode was definitely about House and Cuddy, and their now-public relationship, but it also involved all of the characters as well as having an interesting case to diagnose.

A reader of last week’s HouseCall pointed out that the medicine in House isn’t “real” and that “It is a version of STAR TREK’s particle-of-the-week.” Well, considering that Star Trek is my favorite anything, you can imagine how little that hurts my feelings. I don’t really care that the medicine isn’t real; what interests me is the Sherlock Holmes dynamic — the solving of the mystery, even if it is a “particle-of-the-week” a la Star Trek. The medical mystery is what makes the characters interesting. If it wasn’t for the cases, there would be no interesting character development between the main characters, no bringing out the best and the worst in all of them.

This week’s patient is a young girl named Bella that collapses during a skateboarding benefit while pushing her older brother Hugo around in his wheelchair. During the entire diagnoses, House is playing nice. He’s deferring to what Cuddy orders because they’re dating now; as House describes the reactions of the relationship from his team, Foreman is “in favor,” Taub is “indignant,” and Chase is “indifferent.” Wilson, on the other hand, doesn’t believe House at all (and after last week, it’s understandable) — until Cuddy comes in and puts her hand on House’s crotch for a fairly long period of time to convince Wilson that, yes, they are dating.

Anyhow, back to the point, the fact that House and Cuddy are dating is “screwing things up.” Cuddy tries to go to HR and find someone to be in charge of House, but no one else wants to supervise him, so they must make the best of their situation. As Bella’s condition continues to deteriorate, it puts a strain on things. By the time they figure out the correct diagnosis, Bella has burned through a donor lung and will die without a marrow transplant and a donation of half of one lung from her brother. When the parents decide not to do the transplant, House snaps back into him old self, calling them idiots.

House and Cuddy get into a full-blown argument, a la the good ol’ days, as House goes off on the parents and tells them they’re stupid for not trying to save their daughter who will potentially live for decades in favor of not shortening the lifespan of their son, who will only live for years at best due to his medical condition. House and Cuddy argue in front of the parents until the son, Hugo, overhears them and makes the decision for them, begging his sister to take his lung and marrow to make his life mean something.

As the episode draws to a close, Cuddy tells house that their fight was their first real and honest interaction since they came back to work. House says they got lucky because Hugo agreed to do the transplant, and Cuddy comments that maybe if she and House continue to be brutally honest with each other, they’ll get lucky again.

House tells Cuddy her ass is huge, grabs it, and they walk into the elevator together.

I really enjoyed this episode. I feel more like this is what the season premiere should have been. Maybe if I watch both of these episodes back to back, a la a longer two-hour episode, I will be able to appreciate the season finale better. Either way, it was a good episode, and it was interesting to see how House and Cuddy were able to work out their personal relationship and work relationship differences.

About Tiarra


Tiarra Wantz is a comic book and sci-fi geek girl who enjoys reading, playing video games, creating typography art, and comparing everything to “that one episode of TNG where…” Tiarra lives in Las Vegas with the love of her life, Dan, where they live together with two cuddly kittens named Panda Face and Ser Pounce-a-lot and a precocious pup named Pippin.

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  • http://zahirblue.blogspot.com/ David Zahir

    I enjoyed this episode as well. Mind you, as a writer myself, I feel compelled to point out that without an episode like the premiere, the interactions between House and Cuddy would make no sense. Once those two crossed the line into entering a relationship, they then had to hammer out the beginning of that. This was a seismic change in the entire dynamic of the show–it had to be dealt with and in depth.

    “Selfish” suffered actually just a tiny bit as a result of the continuing fallout. The denoument of the brother insisting his sister take his marrow etc. seemed just a tad formulaic. Really good acting, though, and I don’t see offhand a way to get around that weakness in plot structure. Were the medical mystery and its drama too powerful, it would eclipse the simmering tension between House and Cuddy.

    As far as HOUSE episodes go, I’d put this in the middle tier (which given the overall quality of the show, is a very respectable placement).