Spoiler Alert!!! Not all surprises revealed in detail, but still: please do not read any further if you haven't already seen this episode. ....................
Already from the pre-title opening on I knew that this one was going to be different. Not the usual case of someone suddenly suffering severe pain, seizing, etc. Instead we are in the middle of House and his team discussing a (gross and a little absurd looking - a small hint) case - then something happened which already gave me the clue that this is going to be about "is this real? Is it a dream?": the scene where House is attacked by an intruder. It all plays out in a surrealistic and unusual-for-a-House-episode style.
I think this episode pays in a large part homage to movies like "Jacob's Ladder" and "Fight Club": everything we see during the main story is in one single person's mind. The final revelation (hardly a twist since it is signaled long before) might also be just the writers fooling us again: The case they where discussing (man with swollen tongue) at the very beginning of the episode was perhaps only in House's imagination (at any event the whole treatment-gone-haywire during the dream/hallucination was not real)- and he asks for some medicine being given during surgery because he knows/remembers from his "dream" that it will perhaps heal his leg pain (or maybe not). House without painkillers and cane in Season 3? No way.
Some great philosophy and some great clues about what makes Dr. House really tick (as if we didn't know already). He is like Sherlock Holmes: he tries to be ice cold, arrogant and distant - hiding a heart of gold to protect himself and all others - to be as unbiased as possible, even though House is a modern version with biting sarcasm and great humor thrown in.
I am sure there are lots of in-jokes and movie references thrown in by the writers in this episode. I will look for those on future viewings. Brilliant!
Already from the pre-title opening on I knew that this one was going to be different. Not the usual case of someone suddenly suffering severe pain, seizing, etc. Instead we are in the middle of House and his team discussing a (gross and a little absurd looking - a small hint) case - then something happened which already gave me the clue that this is going to be about "is this real? Is it a dream?": the scene where House is attacked by an intruder. It all plays out in a surrealistic and unusual-for-a-House-episode style.
I think this episode pays in a large part homage to movies like "Jacob's Ladder" and "Fight Club": everything we see during the main story is in one single person's mind. The final revelation (hardly a twist since it is signaled long before) might also be just the writers fooling us again: The case they where discussing (man with swollen tongue) at the very beginning of the episode was perhaps only in House's imagination (at any event the whole treatment-gone-haywire during the dream/hallucination was not real)- and he asks for some medicine being given during surgery because he knows/remembers from his "dream" that it will perhaps heal his leg pain (or maybe not). House without painkillers and cane in Season 3? No way.
Some great philosophy and some great clues about what makes Dr. House really tick (as if we didn't know already). He is like Sherlock Holmes: he tries to be ice cold, arrogant and distant - hiding a heart of gold to protect himself and all others - to be as unbiased as possible, even though House is a modern version with biting sarcasm and great humor thrown in.
I am sure there are lots of in-jokes and movie references thrown in by the writers in this episode. I will look for those on future viewings. Brilliant!