If you have a thing for Lisa Edelstein (and you should), don’t miss tonight’s seventh season debut of
House. You get to see way more of her tonight.
The episode, entitled “Now What?”, finds House (Hugh Laurie) and Cuddy (Edelstein) finally doing the deed. Getting their groove on. Banging the living snot out of each other.
Hey, nice to see these kids letting their freak flags fly.
Much of the episode takes place in House’s dump of an apartment, at least the House and Cuddy scenes. Back at Princeton Plainsboro teaching hospital, House’s crack diagnostic team have to cure and sober up a sick neurosurgeon colleague (Former Hill Street Blues scene stealer George Wyner) in order to keep an administrator from shutting the place down. There’s also a whole third storyline about Thirteen taking off on some sort of mysterious sabbatical (allowing smoking hot Olivia Wilde to shoot a movie or three).
House and Cuddy finally doing it sure sounds like a jump-the shark moment. Canadian-born creator and executive producer David Shore insisted it wasn’t when I spoke with him at the Fox press tour party on the Santa Monica pier this summer. Shore says he just couldn’t hold off on bringing the two characters together any longer. Edelstein also says she was finally glad Cuddy was cuddling up with House, but what was she supposed to say.
Still, I’m sure Edelstein welcomes the extra focus, and makes the most of it in the first two episodes back. I always say The West Wing was never the same after she left, which was 10 minutes into that series.
Judging by the first two episodes of the season, I don’t think the romantic entanglement has hurt the series. Laurie and Edelstein are fun to watch together and the romance does rock this series out of its disease-of-the-week comfort zone. There is legs in the whole boss and resident genius predicament.
The good news is that House continues to be Sherlock Holmes, M.D. This is especially true in the season’s second episode, where a skater girl collapses and her family have to make a painful decision in order to try and save her life. House may be a little less grumpy now that he’s getting some, but he’s still a pain in the ass and rude to everybody. Not even Cuddy can fix that, thank goodness.
The screener sent to critics came with a note from Laurie saying don’t worry about not having time to actually watch it. “I would only suggest you leave the DVD in a prominent place in your home and enjoy the warmth generated by the good opinion of your partner/friend/employees as they soften toward you.”
Worth a try, I say. House returns at 8 p.m. on Fox and Global.
If you have a thing for Lisa Edelstein (and you should), don’t miss tonight’s seventh season debut of House. You get to see way more of her tonight.
