The Lesbian Lorax, I Guess

There's moment early in the episode, when Chase is wheeling Augustine to the MRI room. She tells him that she has always wished to be a nun; that she spent her childhood in a Catholic orphanage and joined a convent when she turned eighteen (a lot of this turns out to be a lie). Chase reacts to this story passively, but what's interesting is how familiar this story must have sounded: it is nearly identical to his own. Chase went to Catholic school: like Augustine, the church was the closest to a loving family that he could get, and like Augustine, he attempted to join the church as soon as he was able. Even knowing the truth of Augustine's story — that she left in her teenage years, that she only returned to the church after a series of struggles and personal crisis — doesn't diminish the parallel. If anything, it increases it: Chase's teenage years weren't exactly easy for him, either.

Of course, we won't learn about Chase's particular history until later. I find the order the show decides to tell it to be rather fascinating, which I'll talk about more next episode: but really. First we learn what he wanted to do with his life, then we learn why he wanted so badly to escape the one he had, and only last do we meet Rowan and learn the full scope of the story. It's a total reversal of the usual format for these things, and an interesting one — if slightly inadvertent, since Socratic Method was originally written as episode two of the series. I do think the reveal that Chase tried to escape his mother into seminary would have had a bit more impact had we known about her already, but… more on that next episode.

Chase spends much of this episode impatient and dismissive of Augustine and her faith in a way that retroactively reeks of jealousy: he seems desperate to let the others know how little he thinks of her and her beliefs, but when he is given chances to talk about it — during Foreman and Cameron's theology debate, when House asks him directly — Chase deflects and refuses to open up (very much a pattern we will see). But then, as Augustine herself says, he is a lousy liar.

Until this episode, we have mostly seen Chase as detached and in control. He has not bothered himself about moral questions; he has not been terribly invested in any patients or grim prognosis. We had a flicker of emotion from him last week, with the dead infant, but at first his snark towards Augustine really doesn't seem too out of the ordinary — he's a bit more blatant than usual (he has, until now, been good at putting a smarmy front towards his patients), but it is not until the end of the episode when he drops the act entirely that you have to wonder: how much of his apathetic act is an act?

Well… a lot.

But let’s take a minute to talk about the rest of the episode.

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Where later seasons tend to do away with the pretense of why is House taking this case, early episodes actually have quite a lot of variety in the means and ways he ends up on the job. This episode, it is the idea of House’s own fallibility that is both the excuse and the larger examination: did House screw up? Despite House’s insistence that he didn’t make a mistake, the lack of documentation and evidence means that — well — the question becomes a matter of faith for the cast. Foreman and Cuddy believe it is a likely possibility, where House and Cameron believe firmly in the opposite. Wilson seems to play the “middle” — raising the possibility multiple times but not quite coming out and saying he believes it — and Chase, typically, abstains from offering an opinion.

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Cameron has an odd showing in this episode: this is an immunology case, but where neurologist Foreman and intensivist Chase have now each had episodes where they could show off their specialties, Cameron mostly spends this episode defending House’s views over her medical knowledge. I can’t go so far as to say this is out of character for her, though. Cameron has always been House’s number one defender and advocate, and the episode itself underlines this point. While she claims not to believe in God, it never crosses her mind to doubt House: if he says he made no mistakes, then he did not. She suspects allergic reaction immediately, but puts it aside in order to support House. He is right to call her out on not sticking to her guns, but to Cameron, loyalty is more important than being right, something she later reenforces by attempting to reassure House (needlessly) that he has done nothing wrong in this case. If House spends the episode trying to find evidence for something that might not exist — to support his own conviction that he made no error  — Cameron doesn’t need proof: House’s word is enough. 

Interestingly, she is the only one for whom that is true.

Foreman attempts another coup of the department, objecting to House’s treatment and, when he fails to rally any support this time, going over House’s head to Cuddy. This is the first time in the series we have seen someone “tattle” like this, and it’s almost surprising what a non-issue this becomes: he is not mocked or punished for ratting. You could write this off as Foreman being given a lot of leeway compared to other characters, but I don’t know if it’s quite that simple. What it does go to show, however, is that Foreman is still struggling to fit in with Diagnostics: he sees the negatives, but not quite the positives. To him, House is insane and irresponsible, and Cameron and Chase complicit and passive: while Foreman professes to believe (at least theoretically) in God in this episode, House is very much not it. 

But I do want to talk briefly about House’s reaction to realizing Foreman ratted, because. While we are not lacking so far in evidence that Foreman is his absolute favorite: good god. Immediately after being knocked off the case by Cuddy, House spots Foreman through the glass. They lock eyes — and House smirks. That’s it. He is not angry; he is not upset. He asked Foreman what he planned to do to stop him, and now he knows. I daresay that House is proud, and this is underlined later — along with Cameron’s own mistakes. House congratulates him for standing up for his beliefs, even as he scolds Cameron for choosing House’s beliefs over her own. Damned if you do, Chase offers, but I think it’s more simple: faith can only go so far.

yeah no foreman isn't his favorite at allllll

There’s not really much I can say about Cuddy in this episode besides she’s so good, she’s always so good. The show continues to walk a line with her as the antagonist but not the enemy: she truly believes she is saving House from himself when she takes him off the case, and the episode — and even House — does not treat her as incorrect for believing so. I’ve always really liked her calm approach to Cameron’s attempts at defusing and undermining Cuddy’s authority — Cameron begins to nitpick and bring up House’s ideas at the differential (that unceasing loyalty again! It really never crosses Cameron’s mind House could be wrong), and Cuddy very calmly asks her for specifics, for elaboration. Cameron cannot provide any — she is parroting someone else’s ideas instead of her own, God Cameron is the most religious-coded atheist on the planet — but Cuddy does not press the point: she has made it already.

Wilson continues his strangely ambivalent early S1 trend: he suggests, and repeatedly, that House did screw up… but never really commits to fighting for or against the idea. His character really does change drastically by S2, and I’m more and more interested in trying to pinpoint the shift: he thus far is much more devil’s advocate than supporter, quick to duck out of a scene or proclaim his own disinterest in House’s obsessions. That obviously changes, but when? The fact that he knows to look for House in the clinic once House begins doubting himself is interesting — maybe the most telling thing he’s done in the series so far — but even here Wilson is more interested in voicing the story aloud (you feel guilty, you want to clear your name) than giving his own thoughts.

The main cast — sans Chase, who, once again, shows absolutely no interest in House or House’s opinions — spend much of this episode questioning House, aligning themselves with or against him and his theory of the case. It’s the first stirrings of the larger theme of season one of House, I think: Just who exactly is Greg House? The show is very interested in asking this question, but avoids easy answers. Instead, time and again, House is observed from the outside, with the other characters and patients seeing in him what they want: in Paternity, the patient dreams of him as a violent sociopath, where Pilot’s Rebecca sees him as a bitter ‘cripple.’ Foreman views House as reckless and careless; Cameron views him as a figure of absolute faith. So who is he, really?

In Damned if You Do, even the nuns are asking the question. Sister Eucharist is kind enough to give House a summary of his own personality: as someone who hides and masks with humor to avoid being real. It’s exactly how countless tumblr and wiki posts would (and have) described him, but House jumps in on the line, finishing it with a sarcastic self awareness: he’s not tough, he’s vulnerable. House knowing his own character brief immediately calls it into question for us and the people around him: is this who House is, or are we being told a story? I barely know you, Eucharist concedes, before saying that she hopes (she has faith) that she is correct, because this is a story that is useful to her. This is a version of House that she wants to believe in.

As House himself puts it a little later: I’ve found that when you want to know the truth about someone, that person is the last person you should ask. 

For all of House’s outer conviction that he has made no errors and done nothing wrong, there are more than a few hints that this, too, is something of a story. He does not argue with Cuddy’s throwing him off the case, and in fact immediately begins acting on these doubts. To overuse the metaphor: House’s faith is waning. He searches the clinic for evidence he cannot find, and when that fails, he goes to Chase.

It’s. Kind of telling that this episode is the first time in the series that House and Chase have any sort of personal, one on one interaction. Chase really gets the short end of the stick in S1-2, being clearly the lowest priority from the writers — which is a shame, because his stuff is so juicy and he really is fantastically written and acted, and Spencer and Laurie have fantastic chemistry when they do share scenes. Case in point:

House summons Chase to his office with a page about his mother (dead for ten years, Chase mentions: the idea that House did not know this already is very telling, especially as Chase has already worked here a full year), but what follows is less a conversation than another piece of storytelling: just as Eucharist in the chapel summed House up, House is presents Chase with his theory of what makes Chase tick. Just as with House in the chapel, Chase leaves House with no real choice: he deflects and shuts the conversation down at every turn (“I don’t know nuns,” “maybe I hate them on principle”), and even in the end doesn’t give an inch: Chase doesn’t so much as admit he was raised Catholic, let alone that he was in Catholic school, let alone the other revelations of the episode. We are left wondering, as with Eucharist, how much of House’s story is even true, although House has the advantage of knowing Chase at least slightly better and the episode (and rest of S1) suggests he is largely on the money.

House’s suggestion that Chase does as he is told flips what we know of Chase largely on its head. We’ve known that he is a nepotism hire, but House’s suggestion that medical school was “the last thing [Chase] wanted” is a new one, and puts this hiring in a new light: did Chase ask his father to get him this job, or did his father make the decision for him? So, too, does his general disinterest get cast in a new light: whereas before he could be dismissive and callous, napping on the job and disinterested in cases — the least likely of the team to be involved in differentials — this apathy looks different with the idea that Chase never wished to be a doctor, that he is perhaps struggling in a field he has no interest in… or even aptitude for. That he did it anyway, and that he has risen to such heights despite his disinterest, is fascinating: unlike Foreman and Cameron, who we know by now wanted to be doctors and have worked extremely hard to reach this level, Chase is here despite himself. No wonder he comes off as disinterested and lazy.

House saying medicine is the last thing Chase wanted of course brings up the question: what is the first thing? 

If this episode suggests that Chase’s apathy is borne less from genuine lack of feeling and more because he’s stuck in a career and life he doesn’t particularly want, his next seen all but confirms it. Left alone with Augustine in a clean room, and after an episode of posturing about how much he hates nuns and religion and faith, Chase all but falls over himself to comfort her as she grows upset, offering to pray with her and telling her he was once a seminarian. 

In fact, he even tells her his favorite bible verse, which the episode paraphrases slightly, but goes as follows:

so that the genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold which though perishable is tested by fire, may redound to praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

To say that Chase’s favorite bible quote is one that, essentially, amounts to, “your suffering is worth it and will be rewarded” is just as telling as the fact that he was in seminary. Chase reveals that House was in part wrong about him: he wasn’t merely an obedient son with the ‘fear of God’ put into him: he was a believer, and if he never wanted to be a doctor, I do think he would have made a good priest: while Chase obviously has some other glaring personality flaws and issues that might have made that path difficult for him (we already know he’s a flirt), he is a remarkably good confessor, giving Augustine not just sympathy but a bit of a sermon. He tells her exactly what she needs to hear, giving her comfort but also reassurance.

Retrospectively, I think we have seen this trait of Chase’s before: there is a passing line in Paternity that he talked the patient’s parents out of suing, and we saw in the Pilot that he is quite good at small-talk and deflecting through chit-chat. It is also a trait we will continue to see: Chase is often a sounding board for Cameron and Foreman, and his perceptiveness is a consistent (and very honed) skill. He is good at this, and the scene itself is carefully directed: he pulls up a chair and sits at Augustine’s bedside, he speaks quietly and meets her eyes; even his smock could almost be robes, differentiated from his shirt and tie. In this moment, he is that person he wanted to be; he could be here as a priest and not a doctor. His earnestness with Augustine is fascinating, all religion aside, because it is entirely new to us. There is no pretense or eye-rolling, no discomfort or (feigned) apathy. This is the real Chase, the one House only sort of grasped: House, remember, did not guess for a second Chase was in seminary.

By his own admission, however, Chase “failed” his test of faith. Implicit is the idea that it was always a struggle for him — again, his favorite verse is a reminder that faith is a struggle — although he doesn’t elaborate on how or why he left the seminary. We learn much later he was only there a year; in later episodes, we learn what I think is suggested now, that Chase never really felt a calling, only an intense desire for a calling; that like Augustine, the Church was a home and family for him, but that unlike her, he was unable to truly believe in the rest. Later, Augustine shares her favorite verse with him, the parable of the Prodigal Son. 

To put it bluntly, fandom makes a bit too much of this, at least in early seasons, relating the story to Chase and to House. This episode marks the first time the two have ever spoken on a personal level (and it was less a conversation and more a series of accusations); Chase’s main trait thus far has been apathy, not any desire to please House. The Prodigal Son is a parable about a favored child with ambition and not a lot of sense, who leaves home only to return and be celebrated (to the bemusement and annoyance of his more obedient brother). On every level, this story fails to connect to Chase’s relationship with House: for one, he never tries to leave on his own power, and House thus far does not particularly care about him. But that isn’t to say the story has no relation to the episode at hand. 

Chase, we have been told, is a good boy. We do not yet know the timeline of his life, but we can infer that seminary was likely before medical school; from this we can infer that he has already left and returned home, already been ‘celebrated’ for his return to obedience after a rebellion. In this light it is seminary, it is Chase following his own wishes, that is framed as the heedless waste of time, the mistake whose end is worth celebrating. 

In the story of the Prodigal Son, the Son takes his inheritance and goes to a distant land, where he wastes his money and has a string of bad luck that leads him to return home. Desperate, starving and without means, he resolves to beg his father’s forgiveness, only to be celebrated and accepted with joy. Chase, too — we eventually learn — went to a ‘distant land’ (England) for seminary school, and returned only after he had been expelled. But, you know. You have to wonder if the Prodigal Son thought it was a worthless waste of time before things got bad. If Chase’s life had worked out as he hoped, would he have returned to Australia and obeyed his father’s wishes? If he felt he had any other choice? Judging by how uninterested he seems in his career, I suspect not.

There’s another, even bleaker read on this story. Chase in this episode is again living in a distant land — this time New Jersey, not England — and living on his father’s name and wealth. When Augustine says he’ll be waiting for you, does she mean God? Or does she mean Chase’s father?

When House and Augustine finally talk, he immediately calls Augustine’s story out as false, and claims it’s instead a way of running away. From here, however, House and Augustine’s discussion moves on to one of the big themes of the show: Faith, the concept of faith, and the idea of death. House expresses a distaste for belief without evidence, something that can apply just as much to medicine and God as it does his earlier thesis that the worst way to learn the truth is to ask, only to be quickly stymied by Augustine’s assertion that faith is a fact, that one cannot hate God and not believe. Much has been made of this, and I’m not really the person for a theological argument, but what does interest me is how quickly House folds. As with Rebecca, once House meets a patient, he becomes surprisingly unwilling to browbeat them. He allows Rebecca to decline treatment; he allows Augustine to keep her faith.

Allows might be the wrong word here. But House does show a real reluctance to push his patients, despite his usual conviction that he is right and they are idiots. Is House a gentler person than he is given credit for? Does he perhaps lack faith in his cause that he doesn’t otherwise imply? Or does he, possibly, have some larger issues being hinted at? Not for nothing does much of House’s backstory revolve around a lack of consent with medical treatment. But also not for nothing is there an entire scene in the Pilot where Wilson, our voice of the writer’s room, tells us that House can no longer act in Rebecca’s best interest now that he knows her, and therefore cares about her. Augustine’s beliefs are silly and frustrating from afar, but when he knows they are sincere, he can no longer demean her for them. 

When Sister Eucharist says, earlier in the episode, that House hides behind jokes to avoid sincerity, House interrupts with a quip about being damaged and vulnerable instead, and makes a point later about how the worst way to get to know someone is by asking them directly. Just as he was not entirely correct when he summed up Chase in his office, I think Eucharist (and House’s convenient interruption) was also not entirely on the money. House does hide, and quip, but not because he’s afraid of being hurt, but because he is, in fact, kinder than he lets on. 

I do love a good House MD Ending Montage, and this episode gives not just the first but one of the better ones. As House and Wilson hang out at House’s apartment, laughing and eating Chinese food — Wilson being given some much needed depth and mystery with the reveal of his wife who he does not want to see, at that — we also check in on the others: Foreman volunteering, Cuddy working late at night, and Cameron pleased by a mysterious Christmas present. I love when a montage sums up everyone’s priorities and characters this tidily, and of course, I’d be remiss if I didn’t end this rewatch where I started: Chase in the hospital chapel, watching not the preacher but the congregation, before finally turning away. 

In speaking to Augustine, House accuses her of being not just a liar, but a bad one — an accusation, remember, also made about Chase. House further underlines the point: her calling is no more than what is convenient for her at the moment she needs it: leave the church as a teenager, return when things go bad, give up instead of facing her feelings. Not to put too fine a point on it, but this is Chase all over again, who just earlier in the episode was telling Augustine he had always wanted to be a doctor, just as she was lying about always wanting to be a nun. 

Chase may never have wanted to be a doctor, but he no longer feels comfortable in or with faith. So what does Chase want? Does he even really know? Or is he, like Augustine, going to simply make the best of the situation he’s in — make this job and House his calling going forward, because it’s the hand he’s been dealt. I’d say only time can tell, but… even if it wasn’t planned in advance, we know where Chase’s story is going to end: with his name on the office door, looking around in bewilderment and more than a little fear. In a cut line from this episode’s script, Augustine asks: A calling is something you’re born with, isn’t it? 

Well? Is it?

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MISCELLANEOUS NOTES: 

This episode continues an early-season trend of Cuddy’s that I don’t really love: whenever we see her in her office, alone, she is inevitably making plans to play golf or tennis or setting up a date with someone she met online. I was going to make a note here about how it is rather dismissive and even demeaning — ha ha, the lady boss only cares about her social life — but even writing it, it did occur to me that this is an odd parallel to House and his slacking off, isn’t it? I still feel that tonally there’s a difference, but… let’s leave it for someone else to expand on. 

This episode marks the first time we see House watching Prescription: Passion, his favorite fictional soap. It must have been so fun to write and film these little scenes — they’re always so ridiculous, although, at a stretch: the subplot of his soap this episode revolves around rumors of a sexy nurse sleeping around at a party, and the subject of this episode also seems centered on just what is House doing. I’m sure someone could stretch that into something deeply thematically relevant if they tried.

I’ve always really enjoyed how House-the-show handles religion. While House is openly dismissive of religion as a concept, and it would be easy for the show to treat its main character’s views as fact, the show doesn’t actually do that. Faith — when genuine — is treated with respect, even by House, and individual characters each have fairly complexed and nuanced feelings about faith and religion, from Cameron’s atheism but outpourings of real faith to Foreman’s religious background to Chase’s endless spiraling about his own beliefs. It would have been very easy to show the nuns in this episode as being misguided or as correct and teaching House a lesson: instead, the show does neither, and to its benefit.

It’s a little thing that the episode doesn’t make much of, but: while the other characters refer to Augustine as “the patient,” or “the sister,” Chase always calls her sister, whether giving her pills (“this will help, sister”), or when referring to her in a differential. It’s such a nice little character beat, an absolutely unconscious sign of respect from someone busily pretending he doesn’t care. But then, Chase is a terrible liar.

Cameron giving House a Christmas present (and the implication that he gives one back — as unlikely as it seems, any other possibility is less likely at this stage) is, I think, the official kick-off of the House/Cameron arc, although thus far the show hasn’t bothered really setting it up. I mention it mostly because I see a lot of comments that it “comes out of nowhere” — I don’t particularly care for it either (dislike the ship, love the character study), but I do think it’s disingenuous to pretend it never happened or was never foreshadowed at all. It’s stranger that Cameron would give House a gift, given that their prior interactions haven’t been all that warm — but then again, she is the type to give presents to her bosses. (And given where Cameron’s love story does end up, it is very funny how Chase interrupts the moment. A beautiful, accidental bit of foreshadowing.)