House is back!

Last season of House, M.D., ended with House (Hugh Laurie) firing or pushing to quit Drs. Cameron (Jennifer Morrison), Chase (Jesse Spence), and Foreman (Omar Epps). This season picks up two weeks after House’s exiling, in which he has done nothing but play Van Halen songs on his $12,000 flying V guitar. Cuddy forces House to take a new case and hire a new team and House agrees on the condition that Cuddy leave him alone for a whole week. Without a team to bounce ideas off of, House turns to the only possible replacement – the janitor. It does not go as planned because the janitor scolds House for being too mean to patients and refuses to break into the person’s house because he has principals. Then the janitor pulls on a lab coat so House can make him push controversial treatments onto patients.

The medical case was pretty interesting – an attractive woman is injured when her office building collapses. Unfortunately the patient’s boyfriend is along for the ride, and his last words to her before she was injured were complaining that she did not like Star Wars as much as he did. Without a team to work with, House takes a lot longer to get around to actually getting anywhere with the case – but do not be disappointed, the twist at the end is awesome.

There is a different feel to everything - not just the team, but House's vikodin is noticeably absent. The episode’s slimmed down feel without the rest of the team DOES mean more Cuddy and Wilson. This offers one of the funniest subplots when Wilson kidnaps House’s guitar and tries to ransom it back using a voice modifier. Wilson tries to push House to hire a new team and House retorts, “I don’t negotiate with terrorists.” House surely does not negotiate with anyone, and he decides to fight terror with terror.

There is one question, why does House not want to hire a new team? Did House “get hurt?” Seems kind of soft for House – maybe his pride got hurt. Nevertheless, House stubbornly refuses to hire a new team, even walking into the ER to throw out ideas to whoever will listen. I kept waiting for the interview scene shown in the preview but it never came.

The interview was slightly infuriating because the patient’s boyfriend was REALLY annoying and Cuddy could not hold her ground against House – constantly backing down from her demands. The undimensional nature of the medical exchanges without the rest of the team made me scream “WHERE IS EVERYBODY!?”

Next week’s episode looks great – lots of laughs – some progress on House’s team, and great lines in the vein of House’s advice to his new recruits – “wear a cup.”

The show starts off when a woman who works at a morgue sees dead people – and they attack her! For some reason Cameron – working out of the E.R. – convinces House to take the case. Bored with his Survivor antics, House chooses another TV show – Charlie’s Angels – communicating with his team by phone and dubbing one member, the old guy (Carmen Agenziano) Bosley. Dissent seizes the team when the sourpuss (Peter Jacobson) finds out Bosley is the team member who is not a real doctor. The two fight constantly the rest of the episode with Bosley winning the most skirmishes.

Olivia Wilde continues to be my favorite potential team member, and that could be because she is gorgeous. But it is also because her character is probably the best and has received the most time. This episode she harbors guilt about “killing” the last patient and things do not get better when the patient who sees dead people starts asking why the team killed the nice man in the wheelchair’s dog.

Partly egged on by Cameron and the $100 bet he makes with her, and partly encouraged by his mean streak, House does everything he can to humiliate The Mormon (Edi Gathegi). At first the only thing this reveals is that The Mormon is a single father. But Cameron adds some fuel to the fire and when House’s insults start to bring things to a head…well, you will have to see what happens(ed) for yourself.

Foreman knows he has been backed into a corner, as no one will hire him after his short stint at New York Mercy. One doctor who wants to hire him admits he cannot because he could never get it past the board, while another tells Foreman he has become too much like House. Which Foreman loves to hear of course. Will he have to come back and work at Princeton Plainsboro?

We pleasantly get to see a lot of Cameron in this episode as she pushes all of House’s buttons. The blonde hair is starting to grow on me, as is Cameron’s newfound drive and independence. BUT, it is becoming evident she misses House – and the team.

The episode ends with someone having to get a flower (is this what they do on The Bachelor?) Yet another reality show pun made more humorous by the fact that House brings too many flowers into the room, and has to throw some away. The banter before a team member gets cut is great (the lines in this episode were especially good throughout). The bitch, Amber (Anne Dudek) reminds everyone how she solved the case. The sourpuss complains that House always agreed with Bosley while #13 (Olivia Wilde) does her best look-at-me-I’m-Cameron-except-you-want-me routine.

Will all of the old team come back? How many of the new ones will stick around? Would they bring back only some of the team and some of the new people? Will all the new people go? You will have to wait until next Tuesday….

Could “Avatar” Win Best Picture?

By Brett Hogan

 

Last week, the trailer for James Cameron’s sci-fi experiment “Avatar” debuted. While initially unimpressed with the teaser, I began to wonder: Could this film win best picture? 

 

Buzz has been generating for this movie for years. Years. The technology to make this movie didn’t exist when Cameron conceived it, so he invented it. When is the last time you heard of a director spearheading the invention of anything? The casting started in 2005. Most movies these days, even epics, are done in half that time. I could go on. 

 

The most important thing to take away from all of this is that people are saying this will be the future of movies. Now, I don’t agree with the idea that CGI will become more prevalent than it already is. But I do believe that this will set the bar miles higher for sci-fi. I mean, that is what Titanic did. And that won some awards if memory serves.

 

I’ll bet you’re asking yourself, how can you even suggest that a film like this will win Best Picture when the initial trailer was nothing better than visual stimulation? Well, there are a couple of reasons. First, the Academy has expanded Best Picture to ten films. This doesn’t guarantee anything other than improved chances for most films on the cusp.

 

Second, after last year’s Oscars debacle, which saw the best film of the year, “The Dark Knight,” not only get shafted in awards but nominations as well, the Academy is pulling out all the stops to appease those with the loudest voices in the film industry, the fanboys. Now, the Academy probably didn’t lose anything because of that other than some viewers of the award show. Perhaps if people are again outraged with the winners or nominees, the heads of the Academy would lose their jobs. So this is all about the Academy protecting itself, which is not so outrageous.  

 

 

Third, there is an economic motive here. I’ve heard this film will cost $190 million, not counting the R&D costs associated with Cameron’s inventions or the cost of getting 3-D cameras into every theater in the country. The Academy will do everything in its power to get people into the seats and make this the next “Titanic” or “The Dark Knight.” But the Academy doesn’t have much power, besides nominating and awarding, so they will slap the “Nominated for Best Picture” moniker onto every commercial and print ad to get the people who didn’t believe the critics to relent and see this movie.

 

Of course, all of this is pure conjecture, and no revolutionary film (Terminator 2, Jurassic Park, etc.) has ever won the Best Picture category because it changed the game. Except maybe Titanic. But still, could this movie actually win? My answer is no but a nomination is certain and who knows what could happen from there. We’ll know more come February 2010.