Role Model

Vogler blackmails House into attending to a stricken senator with presidential aspirations played by veteran actor Joe Morton. Turns out the senator has a lot more wrong with him than just dizzy spells. He almost dies, partly due to misdiagnoses. House eventually solves the mystery, and frankly this was not one of my favorite episodes. However, House gets off a highly memorable line: when Morton, who is black, asks House what he thinks his presidential chances are, House says something like, "They don't call it the White House because of its paint." And House sabotages Vogler in a unique way, but this you must see for yourself because I am not telling. Meanwhile, Cameron fades away. A grotesque clinic scene involves an extremely fat woman whom House thinks may be pregnant. She's not, and the situation goes from bad to worse before House is finally able to straighten it out.

The highlight of this episode is definitely House's speech at the end for the conference. The cat and mouse game between Vogler and House is fine, and it takes some interesting twists in this episode, but the patient's case is less than thrilling. Also, the development of House's relationship with Cameron is almost annoying here. (It gets more interesting later in the series.) However, to correct a comment made earlier: The overweight woman whom House thinks might be pregnant is NOT in this episode. That happened in the prior episode, "Heavy." House's clinic patient this episode is a very skinny woman whom House says HAS BEEN pregnant, although she denies having had sex in the last year. However, further symptoms suggest she is lying.