Damned If You Do

I watched this episode not knowing that in the weirdest way this would be a Christmas episode of sorts. Now, I know it hardly touches the subject, but there is some Christmas aspects about it in a House sort of way. Well, with or without this being about Christmas, this episode has become one of my favorites because I like the way the show talks about faith and spirituality.

Every time a nun gets a rash they think its stigmata. Like a moth to a burning bush.

This episode is a taste of House's ongoing battle with religion. As a man of science, he believe in only the empirical evidence of life's cruel nature. However, many of his patients (and coworkers) generally believe in a higher power if not a guiding grace. This makes a lot of sense when you're in a hospital and death pollutes the air while the living are made to grapple with the seemingly random suffering of others. Not to House. So he goes out of his way to not just battle religion undermining science but to just demonize the whole thing.

Again its early days for the show and they haven't had House launch a full on offensive against Christ yet. You get a fun mystery surrounding some nice fake-outs that ends in a Nun suffering for her past.

House Quote: "Pretty much all the drugs I prescribe are addictive and dangerous. The difference with this one (cigarettes) is that it's completely legal."

I was ready to cringe at this episode. I know there are people out there who look at a TV show and are offended if people act in a perfectly human way. Not everyone is a believer and many who say they are only use religion at their convenience. If God is perfect and pure, then what we do on earth would be in God's name, including wanting to live to make things better. House's character spends so much time wading through deception and subterfuge. He sees his role as the healer. It seems to me that should be enough to be accepted unequivocally. Yes, spouts off disrespectfully (as he does with people who have no religious affiliation), but it is often when they are shortsighted and have done things that are destructive. Instead of sugar coating, he lays it on the line. I have struggled with religion my whole life. I could go on, but this is not the place.

At some point, religion ends up being being discussed in most hospital shows, usually through a minor character (James Cromwell's priest in ER, the religious nurse in Scrubs). House is no exception, only this time the subject is closely linked to the medical science, a contradiction that makes for an utterly fascinating watch.

The diagnostic case is that of a nun (Lost's Elizabeth Mitchell) seemingly suffering from an allergy of some kind. When she doesn't respond to treatments, but instead gets worse as time passes, the enigma becomes a direct confrontation between the nun's spirituality and House's belief that he has a better chance of saving her life than any higher power that might be.

The topic of faith provides interesting insight into the character of House, who has his own set of beliefs - chiefly the "everyone lies" mantra, which plays an important part in the episode's outcome - and comes off as a very complex man beneath the misanthropic mask he wears at work. Mitchell is a nice contrast to that attitude, and their interactions are the emotional and philosophical core of a story that manages to go beyond its formulaic plotting to tackle something deeper, and does so with great care.

Do you wanna see an addict doctor tell a nun she is looking at him with lust? Do you wanna hear jokes about people hating nuns? Do you wanna hear a doctor call a nun a liar? Do you wanna see a nun looking at a couple at the beach like she is enjoing seeing people with beach clothes? Well i dont like to see my faith beeing mocked by some moronic show from those creeps from hollywood. I was disliking the show already and now im disgusted. I bet a show mocking muhammed wasnt made right? I guess Our Lord Jesus Christ line at the Cross fits here:FATHER FORGIVE THEM,CAUSE THEY KNOW NOT WHAT THEY DO.