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readingrat) wrote2012-09-21 11:08 pm
Crane collapses and ADA
... or WTF was House doing there?
A/N: I'm posting this here instead of where it logically belongs, because I can control what goes on at my journal, and if need be, I will. You are free to voice your opinions, but be sure to do so in a way that does not belittle other people's opinions or insult them for having whatever opinions they have.
What was a disabled doctor with a gimp leg and pain issues who has no interest whatsoever in emergency medicine doing at a crane collapse site and crawling through piles of rubble while younger and more able-bodied doctors galore were populating his hospital's ER?
That's the question we've been asking ourselves ever since the episode aired, and it's one that's come up again recently. No one really seems to know the answer to that, and the show doesn't provide one, not even one that'll hold in canon, let alone in RL.
Since canon doesn't provide an answer, let's look at the RL-compatible one that is getting the most approval at present: his boss must be mad. Or a slave driver. Or both. There's definitely something in this. Let's take a closer look, as Dr Nolan would say.
Why is House there in the first place?
It's never stated explicitly in the show why he turns up at the crane collapse site - Cuddy doesn't demand his presence, and had he not showed up in her office just before leaving for home, he wouldn't even have known about the collapse. It seems that he follows Cuddy out of curiosity; he senses that something is off with her reaction to his house-warming gift, something connected with Lucas, and he follows her hoping to find out what it is. And once he's there, he does a bit of triage. Should Cuddy have sent him back? Well, he isn't there at her bidding, so if he worried about getting hurt or stressing his leg, he shouldn't have come. It's a bit of a debatable point, but so far Cuddy hasn't exerted any pressure to keep him there. She may be somewhat neglecting of his well-being, but given the carnage around her, his gimp leg pales in comparison, and one could argue at a stretch that making a disabled but mentally otherwise fit employee leave after he came voluntarily and is showing a certain willingness to stay could be taken as an affront by him.
He's bored there though - just heaps of people dying of boring injuries - so once he has a patient he wants to take off again to the hospital. But Cuddy demands that he stay, arguing that he's better at triage than anyone else. Which is true - House only just correctly diagnosed a man as a hopeless case, freeing ambulance resources for someone else who will actually benefit from it. So, although Cuddy's demand is potentially damaging to House, it is beneficial to patient care. It's the same situation later, when Cuddy wants House to crawl back through the rubble to Hannah. If she sends someone else, there's a danger of Hannah working herself up into a critical state.
So, we've got House going to the site because of his curiosity (his own choice) and staying there because Cuddy puts patient welfare before employee welfare.
Is that how a responsible employer should act?
I should think not. Employers, even those that work in health care, are primarily responsible for their employees; patients are entitled to everything that is feasible within the limits of employee rights, but not over and beyond that. They are not entitled to their attending's lobe of liver, for instance, no matter how much that attending messed up. Even if House does not wave ADA in Cuddy's face, she has to shrug her shoulders, write off the people House could have saved if he'd stayed to do triage, tell Hannah that she's getting whatever physician is at her disposal and that she'll have to suck it up - since when do people in an emergency situation get to choose their attending? - and send House home. (However, I'd think twice before condemning her for being a crappy employer. You can only afford to do so if you are sure that in her situation you'd act differently: you've got a bright doctor who can, and does, save lives and who isn't complaining about his disability. Would you send him away when you know he isn't going to cut up stiff?)
So, can House sue her?
If I were House's lawyer, I'd advise against it, because I'd be able to predict what Cuddy's lawyer will do. If Cuddy gets sued by House for violating his ADA rights (or whatever they're called), then her lawyer won't hesitate to look at House's record as an employer, and frankly, that won't be pretty. House repeatedly demands that his employees break and enter, which is instigation to a crime, and that in a country where people are allowed to defend themselves by taking out a gun and shooting at whoever is entering their house (which means House is recklessly endangering his team). Even if he doesn't get shot, Foreman is risking a prison sentence because he has a police record already. As for putting employee welfare before patient welfare, there's Last Resort, where House deliberately endangers Thirteen's life, very much against her will, in order not to diagnose his patient.
House may be able to take Cuddy down, but he'll go down with her. He could, at a stretch, argue that her high-handed way of treating her employees rubbed off on him, but that argument didn't convince me when it was repeatedly applied to a mere fellow, Chase. I doubt it'll convince anyone when the subject of this 'brainwashing' is the head of a department well able to think for himself, not an impressionable young fellow.
Does the fact that House doesn't have a handle on Cuddy in a legal sense make her actions any less objectionable? Not really. I've always been convinced that an action can be morally deplorable even if there is no legal redress to be obtained. In this case, however, there is one circumstance to consider. House is one of the major beneficiaries of Cuddy's disregard for the rules and regulations that govern a work environment. Cuddy knows fully well that he sends his team to b&e, that he palms off clinic hours on them, makes them do overtime when and as it suits him, etc., but she never interferes. If she did - if his team were no longer allowed to break laws - then House the diagnostician would be the person affected most, and a lot more of his patients would die. IMO House chooses to remain at PPTH because unlike New York Mercy, where Foreman does a stint, he has a work environment here that closes its eyes to legal niceties that stand in the way of patient care. You can't have your cake and eat it - if House or his fans want to take the high ground on employees with disabilities in order to enforce his rights, it could well be that someone gets the idea that his employees are also entitled to have their rights enforced. And that won't work well for House.
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We all know (I would imagine) that House is there because the whole point of the episode is to have him go through incredible trauma which leads to possible relapse which leads to Cuddy turning up which leads to a Relationship. He's there because TPTB needs him to be there so they can have their season ending cliffhanger.
But if we look for a real world explanation your chain of reasoning seems sound to me. I don't see a real problem with Cuddy asking him to do triage *above ground* - it's well within his physical capabilities that we've seen on the show.
If I remember correctly House only ended up underground because he was bored, and decided to smash into a vending machine to get a drink, then got curious when he heard a sound. ANd I think he tried to get out of being with Hannah as soon as he could??
I had a lot of problems with Cuddy's treatment of House in this episode I must admit, but not because he was doing triage there.
(The real problem I have with this episode is that the Hannah's death (and House's trauma) was brushed off so quickly so they could get with the sex.)
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My impression at the time was that House followed out of curiosity, and Cuddy should have kept him aboveground. He helps her suit up, so it's not as if he doesn't know where she's going.
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Yes, I agree with your assessment.
My rant is more of a meditation on, 'Is House really having a crappy time at PPTH?' with focus on the employer-employee relationship as shown in this episode. But I think it's possible to make my general point, namely that Cuddy the Dean and House the Diagnostician have a symbiotic sort of relationship that benefits both of them. Cuddy gets that feel-good warmth from having lives saved by someone who'll take the rap if things go wrong, while House gets a working environment that'll let him do his epiphany thing with very little interference. I don't think Foreman gets slapped down at NY Mercy because he is young, or black, or not a genius. He gets slapped down because no sane employer will take the risk of having his doctors treat patients on hunches alone, no matter what the rate of success.
If I remember correctly House only ended up underground because he was bored,
Yes, that was essentially it. I have no problem with him crawling down there when it's his own decision, but I did have qualms when Cuddy sent him down again, for one because it's one thing for him to do stupid things and another for Cuddy to ask him to do so. (To carry the argument to extremes: he can go poke knives into sockets if he feels like it, but it wouldn't really be okay for Cuddy to ask him to repeat the procedure ...) But if I remember correctly, his objection wasn't that it was a problem for a cripple (and he has no hesitation about playing the cripple card when it suits him), but because he wanted to get back to a patient with an unsolved problem. And that's what my main problem was at that point. Hannah didn't really need him, the crane driver did, so it was not logical in a Houseian sense for him to go back to Hannah, and a waste of resources from an administrative pov. When Cameron wants to do that sort of thing, House goes all sarcastic on her. (Acceptance, where she wants to 'waste' her time on someone who is diagnosed already, instead of placing her resources at the disposal of an undiagnosed patient.)
I had a lot of problems with Cuddy's treatment of House in this episode I must admit
I must admit I didn't, other than the last five minutes, which were in bad taste as far as content goes and bad television as far as episode unity is concerned. (And yes, that, 'let's forget about Hannah and Lucas and get on with the sex' was traumatising.) The rest seemed normal to me - by their standards. IMO House pushed his luck there as much as Cuddy did - questioning her motherhood and her relationship when he knows both are sore points - and I don't think Cuddy does 'nice'. She's compassionate at times, but verbally she's as much of a marauder as House is. The 'chalk line on the ground' speech to Wilson always struck me as pushing very far into his personal sphere, and it didn't really sound like advice from a friend to a friend to me. (i'd be perplexed if a friend talked to me like that.) I'd have had no issue with it if she'd said it to House, but Wilson doesn't talk to her that way. (It was hilarious, though.)
But Cuddy's treatment of House in 'Help Me' is one of those instances where childhood traumas 'will out', as they say. I'm scared of tall guys, and I mean literally scared. I tend to notice House yelling at Cuddy much more than the other way round, because I perceive that as threatening. Cuddy yelling at House OTOH mostly strikes me as ridiculous and futile, although Help Me is an exception. Other people have bad childhood memories of mothers or maybe female teachers yelling at them, and they register Cuddy yelling at House much more than the other way round.
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I guess that's where my meta level receptors kick in, saying that the patients' medical problems will stay on hold until House has finished training dogs, stalking Wilson or whatever else he's up to. Which brings me to my point: it's what both of them do - regularly - not only Cuddy. Both of them were yelling and acting unprofessionally. But our reception of whose behaviour is worse depends on what our experiences have conditioned us to react to.
I found the whole yelling thing unpleasant, as it was meant to be, but I could see where both of them were coming from, not just House. (And yes, I also hurt for House, very much so, knowing what a crappy time he was having overall.) But I guess we may have to agree to disagree on this.
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Ask me what I think of House refusing to treat his patient until Wilson did whatever it was he wanted Wilson to do and I'll say pretty much the same thing I said about Cuddy above. What made it a little worse for me this time was that they are in a crisis situation. In a hospital it doesn't matter much if House is preoccupied--he's reachable by pager and there are other folks on duty at all times to tend to patient needs. Whereas at an accident site there's just the people who are there.
It's true, though, that I tend to be more sympathetic to my favorite characters.
I have no problem with us disagreeing, either, but I do like to try to understand perspectives I don't share.
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Just before the yelling starts, the EMT in charge pleads for an amputation, saying that they couldn't get Hannah out within the time span necessary to guarantee she'd survive toxic shock (or whatever it's called when circulation returns to the leg). House refuses, saying he was the only one who knew what a leg was worth and implies that he'd put Hannah up to suing the EMT if he amputated, upon which Cuddy sends the EMT away and asks him (nicely) to keep his personal issues with her out of it. He accuses her of being a narcissist, she says he should move on instead of making everyone miserable, and then he shouts (for everyone to hear) that was rich, coming from a middle-aged mother dating a man-child (I'm quoting loosely, but I read it up in clinic_duty before posting this rant, so I think I've pretty much got it). And that's when Cuddy yells back about everyone moving on, House having nothing and her being sick of tiptoeing around him. So basically the yelling was about House (as the attending) agreeing to an amputation. The personal stuff was incidental. From my pov it was Cuddy doing what it takes to make House see sense there. It wasn't nice, but it isn't nice either when House does that to his team or to patients and their families.
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I still think it was a cruel thing to say, as was dragging Wilson's name into their fight. At that point she's kicking House while he's down--she has what she claims to want, after all, and House doesn't. I don't think the fight was really about Hannah. I think Hannah sparked it but it was really about the two of them, and maybe that's why I'm far less tolerant here than you are.
Also, this: It wasn't nice, but it isn't nice either when House does that to his team or to patients and their families.
But House gets a lot of (well-earned) crap for doing stuff like that. He's manipulative and mean to people, and he gets called on it repeatedly by everyone around him. If Cuddy is doing the same thing here, then IMO she deserves the same reaction. One of the things that bugs me in general about her character is that she basically never does. Most characters on the show never told her or reacted to her when she was being difficult or selfish or mean, whereas House heard it frequently. Now that's not Cuddy's fault at all, but it hits my buttons anyway and I --unfairly, I admit--think less of her for it.
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That may be partly because we only see the vast majority of the show from House's point of view. In the episode 5-9 when we supposedly get Cuddy's viewpoint she is called a bitch three times and yelled at by her surgery chief. House also tells her off quite a bit.
I would also argue that from an every day relationship standpoint, House is far "meaner" (willing to say something to cut someone down in the harshest way possible) than Cuddy usually is. She tends to reserve much of her cutting directness for House (with the one very memorable scene where she warns Wilson off Amber, at House's request. That seems so out of character that Wilson calls Cuddy "House" and compliments 'his' disguise ;P)).
I think a lot of people at the hospital don't like Cuddy for a lot of different reasons, but they do seem to respect her. Cuddy can be one tough lady. And you get the feeling that she fought her way to where she is now by being that way. Even House respects her as an administrator (if not as a doctor), despite all the mocking.
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[PPTH Pharmacy/Lobby. Day. Wilson stands at the pharmacy, looking at some charts. Cuddy walks up to him, a mischievous smile on her face.]
LISA CUDDY: Are you sure she doesn't wanna just take you back to her lair, hang you upside down, and deposit her eggs in you?
[He's thrown for about a second, but recovers immediately.]
JAMES WILSON: Excellent disguise, House.
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Yes, this exactly. One thing I think that is consistent about Cuddy is that she *does* generally have faith in House and is willing to back him up - she wants to save those lives on the edges which other hospitals would let go because of the risks. Yes, occasionally she interferes but mostly he gets his own way.
but I did have qualms when Cuddy sent him down again
I had only vague recollections of the sequence of events so I checked through the transcript last night. She asked him to go back down because Hanna was terrified and 'freaking out'. I suppose they could have just told Hanna 'tough luck' but I think at this point it's more human compassion than dispassionate use of resources. There's a woman trapped far underground wby her leg, she wants the guy she's bonded with, pretty much most people are going to want to give her anything she wants.
I remember being struck when I watched this episode by how House kept leaving Hanna at every opportunity. I've seen this sort of episode a lot of times and the usual trope is that the rescue worker (whoever they are, passer-by, doctor,paramedic, whoever) stays with the trapped person throughout, often at the risk of their own lives. House doesn't until the end - and I must admit my reactions when I saw it the first time was 'House, stop running off and get back down there with her!'. So when Cuddy urges House to get back down there, it didn't worry me (I mean in real life I wouldn't want to do it that's for sure but I expect my television heroes to suck it up and get the job done :)
Once I skimmed the transcript I realised my memories of bad treatment of House by Cuddy boil down to one thing
I'm moving on. Wilson is moving on. And you... You've got nothing, House, nothing. and I'm sick of other people having to tiptoe around you and make their own lives worse while they try to keep you from collapsing
That hits a nerve with me, as well as every time Wilson calls House miserable and tells him he makes everyone's lives worse. And points out he has no friends.
and then of course there was the greatest romantic line of all time I love you. I wish I didn't
yeah - I wonder why that relationship didn't work out?
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I'm a pretty rational person, and that was my reaction - someone go tell her she can't always get what she wants. Especially since the premise on which the show is based and which we see fulfilled time and again is that House isn't your hero in a lab coat who'll save people because he can do it. He's selfish and will only do it for patients whose condition is of interest to him. Your run-of-the-mill patient has to depend on 'ordinary' doctors and suck it up.
That hits a nerve with me, as well as every time Wilson calls House miserable and tells him he makes everyone's lives worse.
It is a very odd thing to say regardless of who says it, and it also hit a nerve with me. But what House said to Cuddy hit a nerve with me too, so I could see where she was coming from, even if I didn't approve.
and then of course there was the greatest romantic line of all time I love you. I wish I didn't
I wonder why that relationship didn't work out?
Now that didn't surprise me either. I think we were meant to see the writing on the wall. I remember thinking about the relationship during the hiatus and coming to the conclusion that if it worked, it would only be because House could do relationships, not because Cuddy had the slightest talent or insight in that direction. But my take on the yelling was, 'Well, they've crossed the line again, but on Monday they'll go back to work and things will go back to normal.' I'll agree, however, that as foreplay it totally sucked, and I'd have felt a lot better if House had relapsed and everyone had had to think about how their behaviour contributed to the fiasco, instead of everything being bathed in a pink glow of incipient sex.
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Once I skimmed the transcript I realised my memories of bad treatment of House by Cuddy boil down to one thing
"I'm moving on. Wilson is moving on. And you... You've got nothing, House, nothing. and I'm sick of other people having to tiptoe around you and make their own lives worse while they try to keep you from collapsing"
That hits a nerve with me, as well as every time Wilson calls House miserable and tells him he makes everyone's lives worse. And points out he has no friends.
It probably shows my own awful biases (having to live with 2 very temperamental people over the years) but that didn't bother me at all, it actually made me slightly pleased for Cuddy and on occasion Wilson. Everyone does tiptoe around House to keep his world from collapsing, and it is normal for people to reach a tipping point and let him have it. Is it the best way to handle it? Absolutely not, but it is very human and real life and made the show seem more realistic to me.
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Now, I can make excuses for her, she's under stress, House has been niggling at her about Lucas all day, she is defensive because she's not sure herself that she's doing the right thing with Lucas, she's worried about Hanna, House is a pain in the arse to deal with etc but I don't think the excuses change the fact that it's hurtful.
I wish House had told her to go to hell when she came to him a few hours later with this 'I love you but I wish I didn't' stuff.
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It's an explanation, not an excuse, and yes, it's hurtful. But the way you juxtaposition what she said with what happened later goes to show what most fans objected to, namely that they ended up in bed after that (and after that even worse 'I love you, but ...' remark). IMO, that's getting two separate issues mixed up. If she'd yelled at him and hadn't gone to him later and hadn't ended up in a relationship with him, most people would have shrugged and forgotten about it. My feeling is that for non-Huddys her sin is 'compounded' by the fact that she ended up in bed with House. The original deed, as a stand-alone, would never have elicited so violent a response, not after what House threw at her earlier.
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But I'm not sure you can separate the two things. The whole episode was about their 'Relationship' (Hanna was merely a side dish apparently) - everything they said to each other plays into the final resolution. Should these people be getting together at this point? IMO, no - there are too many issues there. As they've shown by yelling hurtful things at each other.
On a different, but related issue - I've always wondered about House's gift to Cuddy at the start of the episode, a suprisingly thoughtful gift (which she basically doesn't react to at all) or something designed to try and win Cuddy back?
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I can, for myself. If the episode had ended with House in his bathroom, relapsed or possibly about to relapse, I'd have chalked it down as a pretty crappy thing to say to him, and pretty crappy timing from House's pov, but not of much consequence otherwise. I knew she had it in her, and I felt that her buttons had been pushed. I had much more of a problem that she'd start a relationship with him with all those issues between them unresolved and with the 'I love you' thing, which was stupid and immature given that she was trying to start a relationship with him. So, for myself, I can consider what happened earlier separately from what happened later, because the later incidents don't follow automatically out of the earlier ones. I can't, however, separate the later ones from the earlier ones when judging what happened at House's place. (Does this make any sense? It's late here and I'm tired. What I'm trying to say is that the yelling shouldn't be judged by what happens in House's bathroom because it comes first; what happens in House's bathroom is, however, a consequence of what happened earlier, therefore the yelling counts when judging what Cuddy does when she goes to him.)
I've always wondered about House's gift to Cuddy at the start of the episode, a suprisingly thoughtful gift (which she basically doesn't react to at all) or something designed to try and win Cuddy back?
IMO it's a thoughtful gift (House's version of making up after he slapped her offer of friendship down at the end of Baggage), and Cuddy doesn't react positively, not because she doesn't appreciate it, but because for a moment she fears that House has found out about the engagement, and she isn't ready to deal with the fallout as yet. (She asks him how he 'knows', upon which he says that her moving in with Lucas was no state secret, at which she shows relief.) If she'd reacted normally, House would have had no reason to be suspicious and follow her to Trenton, upon which the whole episode would have collapsed.
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Yeah, that makes sense
If she'd reacted normally, House would have had no reason to be suspicious and follow her to Trenton, upon which the whole episode would have collapsed.
Yes, true - I just felt bad for him at her lack of positive reaction because I felt it was a sincere gift that he'd gone to a lot of trouble to find and then re-find - and he'd written 'Greg' in it. Awwww... I can't help it - my instinctive need to cuddle my favourite character comes out sometimes :)
ETA - A very minor point but I'm not sure if its certain that House only came along because he was curious. After their conversation about the book Cuddy says We have to get to Trenton - she could have been meaning 'we' the rescue team, or 'we' the people in this room. She doesn't seem surprised to see House at the site (going from memory).
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Maybe he was supposed to go, but would House normally react to that kind of a vague demand to do something he doesn't feel like doing? Apparently he wasn't informed beforehand, and from the looks of it he was on his way home, so if he hadn't detoured to Cuddy's office, he'd never have known about the disaster. If he was on call, then he'd have been paged. Nor does he dress in that jump suit thingy, so it's more like he's not on duty there, but simply 'passing by'.
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I wish House had told her to go to hell when she came to him a few hours later with this 'I love you but I wish I didn't' stuff.
I think House wished he didn't love her too. Of course he never said that, but I think they were both on the same page with that which is why it was never, ever going to work. Personally, I wish the show had allowed it to play out as a one night stand with cooler heads in the morning. That would have worked perfectly for me.
ETA: Moved here because I put it in the wrong spot.
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It COULD have been a great moment of growth (dare I say change?) for the character
This. But 'change' is a very bad word, and you'll have to scrub your keyboard with soap now ;-)
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Actually, regarding the tiptoeing around House, I had a similar reaction, although to do the character(s) justice, it seems to me that no one tiptoes around anyone very much. It's more that the fans expect pretty much everyone to tiptoe around House. (Cuddy's 'chalk line on the ground' lecture to Wilson had me yelping between amusement and horror - IMO, they don't have the kind of relationship that allows for that. In fact, I find it hard to picture any sort of friendship that allows one person to tell the other that they're dating a human shark. I'm not sure whether anyone ever found that a reason to bitch about Cuddy; it's only when she pummels House that everyone goes berserk.)
House's methods are judged by whether they work, not by whether they are 'nice' to the people affected, whether it's his team, the patient or the patient's family. In this case he was allowing personal issues (his own experiences with his leg; his problems with Cuddy) to affect his judgment. Was it nice of Cuddy to yell at him? No, but logic hadn't worked. Did the yelling work? Yes; after it he went down to Hannah and talked her into the amputation, which was presented to us as the correct choice from a medical pov. So, seen at that point, what Cuddy did worked, and in House-land, that justifies everything.
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Anyway, in these kinds of things I resort to meta and just give Cuddy a pass here. House's presence on site is ridiculous, his crawling around in the rubble is ridiculous,and Cuddy telling him he had to stay was ridiculous. But up until the last 5 minutes it was an amazing episode. You can't judge TV characters as if they were real people because they aren't. Their actions will be inconsistent not because they are harboring darkness and secret agendas, but because they are written by people who make them behave in such a way as to advance the plot of the moment.
There are things I disliked about Cuddy in this episode, but House being at the site wasn't among them.
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Ditto. Definitely a 'ka-boom' moment, one year before the phrase was coined. When someone has a stupid idea like that, where are the rest of the production team? What happened to the concept of checks and balances?
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Snort! Very sane. I do too, until people go, 'God, how dreadful for House!' all over the place, and I start wondering whether I lack compassion and empathy.
Their actions will be inconsistent not because they are harboring darkness and secret agendas, but because they are written by people who make them behave in such a way as to advance the plot of the moment.
Ah, exactly.
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