House episode based on Dooce? Patient blogs EVERYTHING

It is amazing to me that people still don’t know what blogging is on TV shows. Can’t the same networks that set up fake blogs done by their characters (who don’t exist, hello, people) at least acknowledge that by now we all know what a blog is? Okay, maybe FOX doesn’t do that, but the writers presumably don’t live under rocks. Nor, presumably, do the characters. /end rant.

For some reason, the writing seems tighter, more cohesive, better now than it did in the fall. Even though we still have House and Wilson pranking each other, and we still have sub-plots involving the interns (oh, Chase, you’re such a pretty face), the focus seems to be back on the patients and their ailments. Unlike Heather Armstrong, Frankie (Laura Prepon) doesn’t have any children. However, she is clearly a popular blogger, because she has readers from Singapore calling to offer their kidneys. Frankie’s perturbed husband mentions her audience and her desire for “hits.” Heather Armstrong supports her family with her blog.

The episode touches upon how much you can really know someone when you only know them on the Internet, whether Eric Foreman can sound condescending if Frankie only writes down what he says, and why it’s sometimes easier to be intimate with people when they aren’t looking at you. At the same time, in a parallel story line, House is reading a book of sermons by a minister. He is hiding this by replacing the dust cover with that of a Henry James novel called The Golden Bowl. Wilson and Chase cannot figure out why House is reading the book, until Chase calls the author and distributes copies to everyone. The author is a man Chase recognizes as House’s biological father.

So, now we can start with the fun facts of the episode and how everything fits together:

1) When House is speed dating, he can tell by visual clues and cues that a woman is lying to him, because she has entered fake words into her crossword puzzle. She tells people what they want to hear, after meeting them. The corollary to this is that you can’t do this on the Internet: all you have is the words. Ironically, in a world where all patients lie and everyone on the Internet lies, this patient is almost Radically Honest.

2) Laura Prepon’s character Donna on That ’70s Show dated a guy named … Eric Forman. Both are FOX shows.

3) Instead of talking to his biological father, House reads his book, trying to make a connection with the words.

4) Instead of having friends, Frankie writes her blog, trying to make a connection with the words.

5) Thirteen and Chase agree that being able to look into someone’s eyes has value: How much success would Chase have with dating if he didn’t have his pretty face aiding him?

6) The Golden Bowl is about marriage and fidelity. It is not only the book jacket House used to disguise his book, but also, he was the product of infidelity; the book was also Cameron’s favorite book, though Chase does not know what it is about. It is also about a father and a daughter– if it had been about a father and son, it would have been even more perfect, but as it is, it was a pretty neat wink.

Finally, Frankie’s case is solved because of the one thing she does NOT blog about: Poop. If it were truly Heather Armstrong’s blog Dooce, the patient would have perished. Please, somebody, tell me the writers knew that Dooce always writes about poop so they deliberately set that up.

Clacked by Jen Creer
on Mar 09, 2010 @ 15:00 EST5EDT