In The Comfort Of My Own House

Audience: 18-30

Purpose: The purpose of this review is to comment on the recent "House" episode and how it compares and contrasts with many of the previous episodes.

As the Monday evening lineup of television shows was nearing it's climax, I knew I was in for an hour of drama, excitement and humour. FOX television's "House", which was created by David Shore and had debuted in 2004, has become known for it's dark and mysterious leading character, Dr. Gregory House, played by British actor Hugh Laurie. Each episode revolves around a medical mystery that can only be solved by House's brilliant mind and his dark obsession with answering questions that no one else has answers for. The combination of both, provide for a wildly entertaining and suspenseful Monday evening television show.

This week's episode, "House Divided", opens with a scene that introduces both the patient and his mysterious and frightening accident or symptom from a not yet known illness. Ultimately, this introductory scene, which has been used in every episode, links the background story of the patient to their visit with the almighty Gregory House and his team of talented doctors. Many of todays drama-mystery based television shows use this type of opening scene to grab attention and create suspense to watch the rest of the show. More often then not, this tactic has proved successful for the "House" series, and remains a success for this week's episode.

In "House Divided", we are introduced to a deaf teenager with mysterious symptoms that require the knowledge of House to cure. The only problem is that House is experiencing issues of his own. In this episode, House is having hallucinations of his subconscious mind in the physical form of the now dead Dr. Amber Volakis, played by Anne Dudek. Throughout the episode we learn that Amber is basically the physical being of House's inner thoughts. She knows everything he knows and also knows things which he is unaware of. This aspect of the episode quietly became the dominant focus and main plot. Two other sub-plots were also present, but lacked the same substance as that of House and Amber.

The events of Robert Chase's (Jesse Spencer) bachelor party and the mysterious symptoms of the deaf patient, Seth Miller (Ryan Lane), were used to strengthen the storyline of House and his hallucination of Amber/himself. On their own, these sub-plots held little value, and at times had some cliche moments, for example the scene where Seth hears his name being said for the first time and both he and his mother tearfully fall in each other's arms. As usual, the acting of the guest stars/patients was simply average and nothing spectacular.

As for some of the visuals, it seemed as though there was a bright hue of light surrounding the characters throughout the episode, making it all seem like a dream at times. With that in mind, it's quite ironic to think that an episode revolved around an insomnia ridden House, actually looked like a dream. The whole idea of House losing his mind yet also visually seeing his subconscious mind, was the most intriguing and entertaining part of this episode.

In the end, "House Divided" did live up to the usual level of suspense, humour, and mystery but did so without any medical marvels. More can be expected from "House", and with the subtle cliffhanger in "House Divided", more is surely to come.