"Last Resort"

Episode Rating: B-

WARNING: CONTAINS SPOILERS

There are a few things in the television world you just don't expect to see. For instance, no one expects a remake of an old TV show to ever get off the ground. No one expects sitcom spin-offs to ever be worth watching (with the rare exception), and few could ever make a good argument predicting good singing on American Idol. And I, for one, never thought a House episode about a sick man taking patients and doctors hostage could be painfully dull, but tonight's episode proved me wrong. Does this mean we will one day see a good TV remake or spin-off? Worse still, does this mean American Idol might one day find some talent?

In all seriousness, this wasn't an awful episode of House, but for such a high-concept storyline, I would have expected to be riveted; instead, I spent a lot more time yawning than caring about the characters. Željko Ivanek, the man who played the trigger-happy patient, is a fine actor (watch the second episode of the John Adams miniseries and you'll know what I mean), but he wasn't the right kind of guy for this role. The character seemed totally sane throughout, which took away a lot of the suspense. While he had a gun in his hand the whole time, the weapon never felt threatening. He shot a patient once, but the lack of buildup and the lack of discussion about it after the incident made the scene feel dull.

House's behavior didn't help. I get that part of House's character is his inability to be serious in desperate situations, but even the most goofy person would probably shut their mouth for a few moments if someone was waving a gun in their face. House is the main character of this show, and if he had acted scared, we would have been scared. That's one of the first rules of creating suspense; you have to transfer emotions through the character the audience empathizes with, and if House is just cracking funny one-liners, than the audience doesn't feel very threatened. It's no surprise that the best part of the episode came when the hostages were reduced to just House and Thirteen, because that's when House got serious and realized his mistake in giving the gun back to the patient. That was suspenseful, and if the entire episode had been like that, then it would have been an "A" installment.

Another problem was that for much of the episode, the gun-wielding patient's medical mystery didn't link into any sort of character development for the main cast. The episode opened with the patient taking the hostages, and then leaped immediately into the diagnosing process. It was House stripped to its core; just a diagnosing process, not a character-based story. Yes, there was the hostage situation, but as I've already gone over, it wasn't very suspenseful or interesting. Considering that the medical mystery itself was pretty boring, we were left with a dull episode. A lack of character development, a uninteresting hostage scenario, and a boring diagnosis will do that.

Don't get me wrong, though; this episode wasn't horrible or anything. It was a nice change of pace in the formula, but I was constantly distracted by how much further they could have gone with it. The episode wandered for a while in this manner until we hit the last twenty minutes, which were actually very good. Once the hostages were distilled to House and Thirteen, the episode became suspenseful, fixing the three major problems of the episode thus far.

The patient had been using hostages as guinea pigs the entire episode, but it wasn't until he started using Thirteen exclusively that this element of the story got interesting. Using a character like Thirteen as the guinea pig not only added some much-needed suspense, but it also gave the episode a shot of character development. It finally addressed the issue of why Thirteen has been acting so careless with her life. Did she want to die? Did she value her life at all? The scene where the patient held her at gunpoint forcing her to take the final drug was an absolutely terrific scene. Thirteen's ultimate decision that she did not want to die was powerful, and looks like something that could deepen her character in the weeks to come.

Still, it was too little too late. If the episode had been House and Thirteen alone from the beginning, there would have been a larger chance for character development and an increased level of suspense. There should have been more scenes with the characters outside Cuddy's office and their reaction to the situation; they were all surprisingly calm given the gravity of the crisis. A premise like the one found in tonight's episode should equal a scary nail-biter, not a dull hour of television. The last fifteen minutes or so could definitely be called 'nail-biting,' but the same can't be said for the rest of the episode. Overall, this was one of the weaker efforts this season, though it's very cool to see the show branching out in its storylines.