Out House

The latest episode of House, "Body And Soul," really annoyed me. It was about a Hmong boy who dreams that a demon is strangling him.  When he wakes up he can't breathe. House's team fails several times before they finally come up with a simple solution--Ibuprofen--based on a billion-to-one diagnosis.  Par for the course.

Except all along the boy's grandfather claims the ancient spirits are angry, so performs an exorcism while they give the boy drugs.  That and a few other unexplained incidents leaves open the question as to what actually was wrong.

One of the great things about the show has always been that House will consider a lot of possibilities, but he won't put up with magical explanations.  Numerous patients have come in with superstitions--some have even tried to con him--but he always finds out the actual cause.

So the old House, and the old House, would have shown what the real problem was. Instead, we end up with the cop-out we seen on hundreds of other shows...was it the rational explanation, or was it something else?  A tiresome plot point that House has always been smart enough to avoid until this, one of its last episodes.  Pity.