It's good to be back, people, but catching up on last week's episodes and reading Genevieve's blog bummed me out; wouldn't you know it, the one week I'm tied up with Sunday night commitments is when all four cartoons are pretty damn good. I agree with Ms. Koski: Last week's line-up was as close to a four-peat as we've had so far this season, which, for those of you who have been playing along at home, is all I've ever wanted in this world. Ever. And I missed it for some stupid other work thing that was totally stupid and dumb.

But the TV gods: they're a forgiving bunch. This go-around wasn't bad either, starting with a Simpsons that, well, reminded me a lot of the episodes I used to like from way-back-when. Homer and Lisa simultaneously discover skills they can use for some sort of gain—Homer exploits his knack for bluntness and makes a quick buck breaking up his friends' failed relationships; Lisa, meanwhile, is enjoying herself tremendously working on crossword puzzles and entering competitions. Homer grows a conscience and closes Sweet Conclusions (after a visit from the ghosts of children and shared furniture his breakup efforts destroyed), but as is the case with Homer 2.0 of the new episode run, he quickly squanders his goodwill by gambling the company's earnings against Lisa in the crossword championship. She loses to, I believe, Gil with a weird accent: bad for her, great for dear ol' dad. Furious, Lisa chooses to use Marge's maiden name from now on.

What follows is something we haven't seen in quite some time: Homer feels genuinely bad, and tries desperately to make it up to Lisa, succeeding with a message embedded in her crossword puzzle via Will Shortz. (Most. Belabored. "Celebrity." Cameo. Ever.) Scaling back the wackiness provided a nice balance to Homer's earlier antics. And hell, it worked even though it wasn't even really all that funny of an episode segment. The Simpsons needs a little groundedness every once in a while to make the better parts of the episode—especially the glance between Lenny and Carl upon hearing Moe answer the phone as "Lisa Simpson"—stand out that much more.

Over in Arlen, King Of The Hill also laid out two disparate storylines upfront, destined to collide: 1) No one listens to Bill, not even customer service operators; 2) Peggy wants to buy a giant flat-screen TV—for watching, of course, but also to prove to Hank that she's capable of earning the dough. Minh and Dale turn her on to the stock market, and in a desperate attempt to learn what average people are buying, the trio gets close to Bill, whose shopping habits they believe to be the key to financial success. And, look at this, Bill doesn't mind being used, so long as he has people to hang on his every word. What can go wrong?

Of course it can't last, though, because as Dale puts it—citing "several hundred episodes of Candid Camera as evidence"—people who know they're being observed don't act like they normally would. Eventually Bill feels the pressure, and finds himself incapable of making a decision about a digital camera. So in a desperate attempt to prove he's still got the golden touch, he invests all his money in…well, something, but the important thing is that he fails and loses everything. The gang pools its resources to bail him out, but here's where the episode starts to wear thin for me. Bill's sad-sack act is well known on the show, but it works best in small doses. By losing everything, fixing it all quickly by declaring bankruptcy and throwing little warmness to the friends who at least tried to help him out, Bill's worn out his good will. So when Hank throws Bill an understanding smile at the end—while Mr. Strickland listens to Bill's tale—I wondered why he wasn't more angry with his needy friend.

In continuing Genevieve's thoughts on less-than-timely Family Guy references, what do we have here? A Jurassic Park opening bit? (Actually, too soon.) It serves as a way to turn Peter on to the perks of being an executive at the brewery, so he's now determined to get a promotion. Only problem is, he never finished third grade (all of a sudden, so many things make sense). If he can go back to complete it, like some sort of Billy Madison–lite—just in time with this one too, Show—he'll get a new management position. Brian is also dealing with business woes; having purchased a big band music club, he and Frank Sinatra are struggling to bring in much of an audience. They hand over the reigns to Stewie, who turns it into trendy new nightclub pLace. Then there's the part where, um, well Andy Dick's there, and…uh�?

You know, I'm racking my brain trying to think of what else I can say about this one, but I guess there just isn't much. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. There were some funny bits tonight—I particularly enjoyed the John Madden wedding video, Michael Jackson's aggressive groin abuse and Yosemite Sam trying on skinny jeans. And Peter gets in trouble for burning part of a children's hospital, but not until the very end of the episode (a nice meta comment on the show's propensity to screw with reality for the sake of a joke). But…yeah, not one of the greatest Family Guys ever, and certainly not a bad one. Just very, very slightly above average. (Which, given this season sans last week's episode, is definitely an achievement.)

But American Dad, oh boy is there a lot to say. Look, I know it's a comedy show and all, but a significant chunk of the episode is predicated by the fact that Hayley would fall for a guy who looks exactly like her dad. And the family doesn't want to break up the relationship because she might go a little nuts, which should be the least of their concerns because—to quote myself in the previous sentence, with caps lock�?[this guy] LOOKS EXACTLY LIKE [Hayley's] DAD!" Why caps lock, you ask? Because here's the thing: Incest? If you can believe it, it's rarely funny. I wasn't, like, offended or anything by the show's audacity, but we can agree it wasn't the best choice of topics. Why couldn't it have been someone who looks like Roger (alien-cest) or Klaus (fish-cest)? I would have taken Steve's hair-lipped friend—can we get hair-lip guy in here?

But, my friends, I never thought I'd be writing the following words: I…thought they did an okay job with the whole "incest" thing. Yeah, Hayley falls for a guy who's Stan's exact double, but Francine's reenactment of prison shanking (Stan: "She made some very rewarding choices"), Stan and Hayley's uncomfortable dinner and even Stan's momentary excitement that Hayley had found someone of whom he (reluctantly) approved worked in the episode's favor. They didn't hammer us with the Stan-lookalike aspect, only played it for maximum (and there was certainly a cap on this) comedic effect. Plus, I enjoyed Steve's momentary career as a chicken sexer, complete with Roger's cock-fighting hijack—wow, I guess I never thought I'd be writing those words either.

Grades:

The Simpsons "Homer and Lisa Exchange Cross Words": B+

King Of The Hill "A Bill Full of Dollars": B-

Family Guy "Tales of a Third Grade Nothing": B

American Dad "Pulling Double Booty": B-

Stray observations:

- Poor, poor Ilsa never gets any love.

- "Two Rob Schneider movies are playing at the same time!"

- "Next time, it's personal."

"Emancipation"

We get two PotWs in "Emancipation": a sixteen year-old girl with seizures and a confusing history, and a little boy with stomach pains. The former is for House and his lackeys to solve, the latter is Foreman's chance to prove that he doesn't need House standing over his shoulder to solve a case. Unsurprisingly, both cases end up thematically related by the end; and sadly enough, both cases are pretty boring.

There is a particular phenomenon that's been discussed elsewhere on the TV Club boards: the way that some shows can have a dynamite supporting cast, but suck rocks when it comes to their main character. It comes down to the fact that it's difficult to write heroes and not have them wind up boring. Too often with an on-going series, a lead has to be relatable to just about everyone, and because of that, they don't get a whole lot of room to develop or grow. Besides, these are people who have things happen to them, not people who make things happen—which may help with the structure long-term, but doesn't make them the most endearing folks around.

Clearly, that's not the case with House. There's a reverse to the Dull Hero Theory, and that's a show where the main character is basically the only interesting thing going on. Something like Dexter, with its terrific central performance and conceit, surrounded by a lot of wasteland and tedium. We don't have to suffer quite that much with House, but there are moments; at the very least, without Hugh Laurie, you don't have a series.

If that's true, why does he seem so tangential to the action lately? Of the two main threads this week, House largely stayed in the background on both; he delivered his usual snark during team meetings, prodded Foreman to grow up a bit, and like always, had the big deduction when it came time to figuring out PotW #1's secret. There were a couple scenes of him and Wilson messing about, but it hardly built up to much.

After all the ado over kissing Cuddy, I can understand that it was time to ease off on the sub-plot for an episode or three. (Or, hell, you can junk it for the rest of the season, eh?) House has been on the air for nearly five years, and it's not like this is the first time that Dr. Doom has been relegated to the sidelines. But there's been a sense this whole season of House pulling away from the rest of the cast. Maybe it's intentional, maybe it's building to something; I really hope it is. For right now, though, it just makes the show a lot less fun to watch.

Of the two PotW's, the girl, Sophia, had the more dramatic story, but it all seemed a little familiar. She's claims her parents are dead; she is, of course, lying. Her parents are alive, but her next story is that her father raped her, and her mother lied about it, so she wants nothing to do with either of them. This becomes important when the team finds she's dying of leukemia and needs a bone marrow transplant (neat little twist here; they treat her for arsenic poisoning initially, only to find that the arsenic was actually holding the leukemia off), and her parents are her best chance for donors. She refuses to contact them, so Thirteen tracks them down for her. (Kutner would've done it, but he's still all sad that Sophia lied to him.) Only it turns out "Sophia" isn't the girl's real name, and those aren't her real parents. At first it looks like she'll take her secret to the grave, but then House realizes that she's rationalizing far too quickly, and forces her to confess the real reason she split from her parents: she's responsible for the death of her brother. He drowned in the tub when she was supposed to be watching him.

So the real parents are found, there's a reunion, etc. It was a bit much; and the final reveal paralleled a little too nicely with the other main case of the week, a little boy named Jonah. When Cuddy gives him the chance to prove he doesn't need House, Foreman struggles with the diagnosis and turns to Cameron and Chase for help (yay!); but when they can't figure it out, he gives up and asks House. Only House refuses to help, forcing Foreman to get the answer on his own—the kid's suffering from too much iron, and it's all because his brother has been giving him too many vitamins. So on the one hand, we have a girl who killed her brother from too little care, on the other, a boy who nearly killed his brother from too much. Very neat. But oddly generic, even the lying "Sophia." The strongest element in her story was her relationship with her real parents, but given how the episode unfolds, there's no real relationship until the closing montage.

The most interesting aspect of Jonah's story wasn't about the little boy at all. It's how Foreman is trying once again to define his position on House's staff. Foreman's efforts to figure out what kind of doctor he can be have always yielded good drama, but while I like how this ended, with him telling House he's going to do clinical trials, and House being okay with it, it seems sort of redundant. After all, Foreman did have a different job for a bit, and he did save at least one life there; the training wheels have been off for a while.

Really, this season needs to up the ante again. According to promos, we've got a gunman and an extra-long episode next time, so here's hoping that will be more memorable than what we got here.

Grade: B-

Stray Observations:

--Taub tells Sophia he has Huntington's, and Thirteen freaks out. Sheesh.

--From Thirteen: "So the object in life is to get hurt just the right amount?" She says it sarcastically, but that sounds pretty much dead on to me.

--A brief glimpse into Foreman, M.D. Apparently, he's much nicer.

'House' You're on your own

 For the last several weeks, the writers at House have upped the ante with his relationship with Wilson falling apart and coming back together, his father dying, 13 going off the rails, Taub admitting to his wife he had an affair, Cuddy getting and then losing a baby, and Cuddy and House kissing. This week, I think they held. Or maybe folded. I'm not sure.

The POTW is a 16 year old girl who whose parents were killed. To avoid going into foster care, she got her GED and was emancipated. Then she got a job as a factory worker, where she collapsed onto a conveyor belt and nearly went into whatever horrifying crushy thing conveyor belts in factories always seem to have. She arrives to House with fluid in her lungs, no previous trauma, lung or cardiac issues, no bacteria and no pneumonia.

Taub shows a little bit of his true colors when he suggests that working in proximity with recent immigrants is a probable cause, but the rest of team jumps to sex and drugs. Except for Kutner, who believes she's a remarkably mature 16 year old who is sex and drug free. House, in no mood for a differential, tells them to shut up, check her home and work for toxins and drugs, run pregnancy and drug tests, and perform an echocardiogram to check for heart damage which might be caused by drug use. The team scatters, except for Foreman, who asks House if he can run a clinical study.  House is in no mood for that either, and refuses, much to Foreman's dismay.

Kutner tries to connect to the POTW, admitting he lost his parents when he was 6 and the pain never goes away, but does get easier. She admits that she still gets nervous when there's a knock at the door, expecting a state trooper with more bad news. He tells her she's already survived the worst, and her heart is healthy. And so is her home, as Taub and 13 find out. But, while searching, 13 makes time to bash Kutner for immaturity and poke Taub by telling him she wouldn't ask him for relationship advice. Because going out, getting messed up on drugs and sleeping with random women is the height of both maturity and relationship health. On the upside, she finds a bong, so at least she accomplished something constructive while judging her peers.

The team gets back together and though Kutner thinks she needs steroids, the rest of the team opts for beta-blockers on the basis that steroids can kill drug users with irregular heart beats. House specifically asks Foreman to start the meds, but Foreman passes it off to the team and goes to the clinic. Cuddy finds him there and talks him out of needless clinic hours and into taking on a case of his own to prove to House he can handle more than he's currently doing. I kinda miss the clinic patients. They were always good for a laugh and something tells me the 4 year old vomiting blood Foreman gets isn't going to offer many chances for humor. During all this, Kutner talks to the POTW who swears she never did drugs, so he opts to forgo the beta-blockers in favor of the steroids. This will all end in tears, I just know it.

The next time we see the POTW, she's screaming at the staff to leave her alone and has to be given a sedative and put in restraints. Since beta-blockers don't cause psychotic breaks, Kutner admits he changed treatments. But House blames Foreman for not managing the POTW's care himself, thus allowing her to fall victim to "empathetic orphan syndrome". On the upside, the fact that her heart didn't fail on the steroids rules out vasculitis and arrhythmia. Foreman theorizes that prinzmetal angina could cause an artery in her head to spasm and House orders him to perform an fMRI. Foreman tell the team to prep her and call him when she's ready.

He returns to his 4 year old and gets assistance from the kid's older brother in talking the boy into swallowing a camera pill which looked like it would barely fit in his mouth much less down his throat. Seriously, that thing looked terrible. But instead of choking, the kids gets a fit of giggles for no good reason. We have another symptom! Foreman goes to Chase and Cameron for a differential. Competing teams? Interesting! They agree to help just in time for Foreman's beeper to go off, allowing him to leave his patient in their hands. Returning to the POTW, he finds Kutner asking her questions about how she found out her parents were dead. She repeats that a state trooper came to the house and they nab her for lying since the limbic system - which controls imagination - lit up. She admits that her parents aren't dead, but her dad raped her. Cue the uncomfortable silence.

The team tries to come to terms with this bit of information and how it affects the differential. House opts for extreme stress interrupting the heart-brain connection and tells them to put her on anti-psychotics.  13 goes to treat the POTW, while advising her to press charges to reach closure and reduce her stress. The POTW shows more insight than one might expect when she points out that pressing charges will just label her, as they have labeled her and thus are now treating her with tranquilizers. Except that she never gets that treatment as they notice her urine bag is reddish brown. Meanwhile, Chase and Cameron let Foreman know all their tests were negative just in time for the 4 year to go into cardiac arrest and need to be brought around by paddles. They urge him to talk to House about the kid.

House is worried about his own patient, whom he figures has arsenic poisoning based on the finish the wood furniture she built in her apartment had. They remove the poison from her blood, which causes her to go into seizures. A new MRI reveals that she's developed lesions on her brain in the last 3 days. House tells them to put the arsenic back. Arsenic used to be a treatment for Leukemia. Now we use bone marrow transplants, but she's not going to want her parents to donate to save her life. And he's right, as usual. He seems less right when Foreman asks him for help with the 4 year old and he refuses.

13 is equally stubborn when it comes to respecting the POTW's decision to not contact her parents. Taub pulls an interesting card, telling the POTW he's dying of Huntington's and would do anything to prevent it, but she reminds him her dad raped her and it's quite a bit different. 13 gets indignant about Taub using her life to lie to the POTW and then she turns around and ignores the POTW's wishes by finding her parents herself. Which is when she discovers the POTW has stolen someone else's identity and therefore likely forged her emancipation documents. She tells her that they will need her parent's consent to treat her and POTW reminds her when she gets sick enough it will be an emergency and they will have to treat her.

Foreman meets with Chase and Cameron again and they wonder if the mother isn't making her son sick out of desperation, or the older brother out of jealousy. Just like House, Foreman gets hit with a sudden insight and figures out the older brother was giving the boy too many vitamins, causing too much iron to build up in his system and nearly kill him. The POTW has a less easy time of things. Or perhaps, too easy a time. 13 tells House that the POTW's first impulse was not wanting to give her parents the satisfaction of saving her life. He recognizes it as a rational response and not an emotional one, and therefore she's lying. Again.

He confronts the POTW himself, and in short order, gets her to admit that her father didn't rape her. Rather, she can't face them and feels like she deserves to die, because she killed her younger brother by not watching him when she was supposed to. House points out that by not calling them, she'll be killing their other child and hands her his phone. She makes the call and her parents arrive for a tearful reunion, while the little boys leave hand in hand.

During the course of the episode, there were a few moments between House and Wilson, where they talked about Cuddy by not talking about Cuddy. House accused Wilson of trying to manipulate him by not telling him what he thought he should do, but for the most part I found their interactions lacked the usual oomph. That aside, there was a moment when Wilson seemed almost pleased that House hadn't talked to Cuddy like he told him to. Perhaps because he doesn't want them together after all?

The evening ends with Foreman returning to tell House that he's going to do the clinical trials. House says OK, pointing out that before, Foreman asked if he could and this time he told House that he was. He can't say 'no' if it's not a question. Wilson tells House it was a nice thing he did for Foreman, not stepping in and letting him figure it out on his own. It draws a nice parallel with how Wilson had not stepped in and is letting House figure things out on his own. Yet, to me...it feels a little too clean.

There wasn't a whole lot of funny this week, but here's my favorites:

House: Steroids could cause an irregular heartbeat, making her current one Irregular-er-er.

House: Foreman, start her on beta-blockers. The rest of you, do anything that isn't starting her on beta-blockers.

Cuddy: House did something out of self interest? Freaky.

Cameron: Don't you work with 3 other doctors and a grouchy gimp?

'Bones' joins the mile-high murder club

 Bones does its part to save the airlines money by making its viewers swear off airplane food for life. Distract yourself from your flight-induced hunger pangs by wallowing in all the spiffy Bonesian banter, celebrating the return of "scary woman" Caroline Julian, and contemplating Sweets' competitive-karaoke chops.

Return to your seats and fasten your spoilers.

Brennan and Booth are on their way to China -- Bones will be inspecting some 40,000-year-old remains, and Booth will be protecting sensitive American technology. OK, if you say so... I'm willing to go with it, if only to see poor Booth sandwiched in the middle seat in coach while Brennan reclines in first class. Booth keeps trying to sneak into first class (and these flight attendants are clearly not at the top of their game, as they let him sneak past the curtain twice), and finally, he's given an excuse to stay when a flight attendant starts screaming. You'll have that when find a human body overdone in the oven. Ick!

So now they've got a crime scene, and the suspect is most likely not going anywhere for the next several hours, but there's a problem -- once they land in Shanghai, the whole shebang becomes custody of the Chinese government and... Ok, you know what? Just go with it. They need to solve the crime before the plane touches down, yadda yadda plot-convenience-cakes, and if you tilt your head and squint you can totally see it. 

So: How to solve a gruesome crime in a limited amount of time with minimal equipment? Improvise! That includes using denture cream and baby powder to make a cast of a wound, snagging the blue light from the movie projector and a gun-lover's shooting glasses to make one of those lights that reveals blood, and enlisting super-strength reading glasses as magnifying lenses. It's pretty cool.

After some searching, and with the help of the team on the other end of an internet connection (but they told me I couldn't check my gmail in flight!), the team identifies the victim as Elizabeth Jones, a travel writer from D.C. She recently did a story on pilots with hidden DUI convictions -- and surprise surprise, the pilot on this flight just happens to be one of the subjects of her story! He denies everything, and agrees to delay the landing to Shanghai to give Booth and Brennan more time to figure things out.

Sweets finds out Jones was having an affair with a married man. Shockingly, that man is on that very same flight! What are the odds? He's traveling with his sick wife and their teenage son, who had been filching teeny tiny liquor bottles this whole flight. (Like I said -- lax flight attendants.) Booth and Brennan find blood spatter on the kid's first-class slippers, and there's a tense confrontation over whether they could get a warrant from Caroline before the plane landed, but they managed and they got their man. Kid. Killer. Then they turn around and fly home with the kid, apparently on an empty plane. No wonder the airlines are in trouble!

The lab rats -- plus the flight crew
Hodgins has a few moments of discombobulation seeing Angela and Roxie as a couple, especially after he and Angela have such good work mojo together. He eventually asks her if it's just that she's really a lesbian, but Angela says no -- she capable of loving a man, she just doesn't quite love Hodgins the way she should. Later, she asks Roxie to move in with her. Roxie is shocked -- it's always the other way around with you! She also turns Angela down -- it's too soon, and there are too many unknowns. 

More amusing it the impromptu assistants Booth and Brennan pick up en route. Booth was sandwiched between two Miss Marple wannabes in cattle class, and they keep contributing materials to the investigation. Even better was the running commentary -- I didn't hear a shot, so it must be a stabbing! Oh, look, they're building the blood-seeking light! Here, take my knitting needle -- you can use it as a probe! (Apparently the security agent at the airport was just as half-assed as the flight attendants, because I know I've seen knitting needles confiscated.) They were kind of adorable, in small doses. I wouldn't want to see them as NotZacks, of course, but for the story, they served.

Booth and Brennan
This was a pretty fluffy episode, but there were still some nice moments. Chief among them was one that the commercials gave away: Brennan has her hair up in a bun and is wearing the massive cats-eye magnifying glasses. Booth sees her and says, "All right, what I want you to do is take off your glasses, shake out your hair and say 'Mr. Booth, do you know what the penalty is for an overdue book?'" Hee!

The best Booth/Brennan interaction came when Brennan told the flight attendant that she was going to China to pursue her real passion -- ancient remains. Booth gets concerned-- I thought you loved working with me! "You're bored," he worries. "The spark is gone." In the end, Brennan reminds Booth that she insisted on being included in field operations. She willingly gave up old bones to work with Booth.

The other recurring bit was that everyone seemed to think that Booth and Brennan had a bom-chicka-wow relationship, much to Brennan's confusion. When Booth tries to steal the seat next to Brennan in first class, saying he wants to be close to his partner, the flight attendant replies with "Your sexual relationship is not relevant, sir. This is first class." "Why does everyone think we have a sexual relationship when we barely ever touch each other?" Brennan wonders. It's called chemistry. Brennan. That counts as science -- you should know something about it!

Highlights, thoughts and odds and ends

• Poor Booth -- I’ve made the trip from the East Coast of the U.S. to China in coach. It's not fun.
• Sweets tries to entice the team to hang out with him and Daisy by promising a little competitive karaoke. Angela and Hodgins have plans, and Cam suddenly remembers she's driving Angela and Roxie to the train station.
• Sweets shows that he dos have skills when he gets information out of Elizabeth's publisher that "scary woman" Caroline was unable to unearth. Go Sweets, with your psychological mojo!
• Kate, the snotty flight attendant, goes into shock when she discovers the body in the oven. I love when she starts playing with Booth's tie as he's trying to (gently) question her.
• Still more evidence that this airline needs a much better HR department: The other flight attendant is using the in-flight phone to make calls to her boyfriend, which, the pilot gasps, is against the rules "So's having sex with a passenger in the bathroom!" she shoots back. That shuts the pilot up. But that's not all -- boyfriend-chatting flight attendant is actually stealing credit card numbers from passengers and passing them along to her boyfriend, who sells them. Nice! I'm so taking the train home for Christmas...
• Booth is kind of adorable as Brennan digs into the body. "Can you turn her around so she's not looking at us?" he asks. Still, he can rise to the occasion -- when Cam asks about the state of the flesh, Brennan doesn't know how to deal with something so inexact. Booth steps up -- "If she were a turkey, she would be dry and overdone." Nice recovery there, Booth!
• I loved the banter at the end. Booth and Brennan are hanging out in first class, contemplating the return trip. The both recline their seats. Brennan's goes flat; Booth's doesn't. Booth complains. "Maybe it's because you're supposed to be in coach," Brennan suggests. Hee!

'Prison Break': My betrayer, my Self

 This week on Prison Break, the Breakouts defeat their enemies, achieve their goal, vanquish those who would harm them -- and then discover they're just as screwed as they'd always been. Dagnabbit! When are these crazy kids going to get their shot at a shirtless paradise?

These spoilers have silencers

When last we left the Breakouts, it looked like they'd made a fatal mistake in their quest for Scylla. Michael moved the mini-monolith, and the General came a-running. “You almost beat it," the General sneers. "The frustration must be killing you." But it was all a part of the plan -- they needed the General's card, and he just brought it right to them. The General remains smug -- you're still missing several cards. Au contraire, says Michael, exhibiting his wares. How did you get all five cards?" the General gasps. "The frustration must be killing you," Michael smugs back at him. I believe Sucre sums up the situation most poetically. Quoth Fernando, "Suck it, General."

Of course, there are still several obstacles. For example, Gretchen and T-Bag are heavily armed and waiting for the Breakouts at Gate, and the General has a whole bunch of goons at his beck and call. Still, Michael and Co. decide to leave via Company elevator. The General thinks he's on firmer ground now -- you'll never make it! I can give you anything you want! Just give in, and all will be well! You can't kill me, or you lose your leverage! Ah, but the Breakouts have planned for that. See, Lisa, the icy other woman in the General's gang, is interrupted in her lunch by a soup dumped on her lap. A gun-toting Sarah is waiting in the bathroom for her. Remember that little piece of evidence Gretchen passed along when she didn't get the General's card? That was her telling Michael that Lisa was the General's daughter. Bingo -- leverage.

With Lisa in peril, the General agrees to walk the Breakouts out past the gantlet of goons. But they won't get far, he vows. Plus, he gives Linc and Michael a little parting gift -- you know your dad used to work for us, right? He was an executioner -- a Death Fairy. Now the men he trained will be after you.

Company thugs tail the Breakouts to the Ontario airport. The Breakouts split up, with Mahone and Sucre heading off on land while Linc and Michael take the bag containing Scylla and head for a plane. The goons ground everything, then make their move. They take Michael's bag -- but it was a clever switch! Sucre smuggled Scylla out in his pants! (Lucky, lucky Scylla...) The Breakouts present Scylla to Self, who thanks them effusively, hands them their transfer papers, tells them to await the parade  (ok, FBI convoy) and walks off into the sunset. Nothing suspicious about that at all...

Of course, there was plenty more going on while the Breakouts were thus engaged. Feng was still holding self and Trishann captive. Trishann has an amusing meltdown -- "You're the worst partner I ever worked with! Leaving me with the one-handed freak and the crazy bitch while you hang out with GQ!" -- which distracts the thugs long enough for Self to unlock his cuffs with a hidden key, then take out the thugs. He unlocks Trishann, who shoots Feng as he was aiming at Self. Self doesn't seem happy about that. Hmm.

Back at Gate, Gretchen and T-Bag are preparing a warm welcome for the Breakouts. Smarmy boss Mr. White comes in to schmooze Gretchen and catches sight of the guns. Doh! Gretchen proceeds to take the whole office hostage. Trishann comes back to the office and frees the captives, but Mr. White proves to be a craven idiot when he decides he'll make a break for it -- and he fails utterly at sneaking. Gretchen proves to be the rare bad guy who can, in fact, hit the broad side of a barn with automatic weaponry, and White dies. Gretchen and T-Bag make a run for the garage. Gretchen comes thisclose to killing T-Bag, but Trishann shows up with her Fedmobile and interrupts. Gretchen runs, and Trishann nabs T-Bag. Poor guy -- he just wanted to stay a salesman!

Trishann takes T-Bag to the rendezvous point, where Self arrives bearing Scylla. He's bummed that Gretchen got away, and he quizzes Trishann on other potential buyers now that Feng is dead. Trishann says T-Bag will spill as soon as they get him into an interrogation room. So Self shoots her. Self! You double-crossing rat! He was in it for the money! Back at Breakouts HQ, the Breakouts FINALLY start to get suspicious after they've waited for their parade for an hour. Michael opens the envelope full of 'transfer papers" to find a sheaf of blank pages. Doh!

Highlights, thoughts and odds and ends

• I can't tell whether Trishann's meltdown, where she hysterically (in both senses of the word) called Self the worst partner ever, was sincere or was a ploy to distract. I hope it was the former.
• The Breakouts beset the General's goons as soon as they step off the elevator. They were unwilling to put down their guns -- until Mahone aimed his pistol at Scylla. Nicely done, Mahone.
• The Breakouts all made themselves comfortable in the General's office as they awaited word from Sarah. I love that Sucre raided the General's liquor cabinet. Hee!
• The General tried to bluff his way out of the leverage situation -- Sarah Tancredi wouldn't hurt a fly! Maybe that was true once, Michael says -- before you tortured her. Makes you reconsider that whole policy, doesn’t it?
• Linc was quite happy to rub the General's nose in their victory -- " I guess right now you wish you'd framed somebody else, huh, General?"
• Michael stuffed the bag the Company goons took from him with a book -- "All's Well that Ends Well." Ah, but Michael -- you forgot that this NEVER seems to end�?
• After Trishann caught him, T-Bag lamented that he could have been a salesman-contender, if not for his past. He spouted Gate-speak -- he's caught in the negativity of a past identity, yadda yadda yadda -- then pauses. "Who'da thought they actually be right bout something?"

"Last Resort"

So there's this guy—with a gun—and he busts into Cuddy's office while House is screwing around with her desk, and he asks for Cuddy, and House is all like, "Pfft, enjoy my sarcasm!" and the guy's all like, "Okay, suck on some hostages!"—and he brings a bunch of people in from the clinic, because, y'know, that whole gun thing makes an especially persuasive argument, and he tells House, whose totally paying attention now, that if House doesn't figure out what's causing the gun guy's symptoms (shortness of breath, tired, rashes), somebody's going to die.

Oh, and this is all in an episode (called "Last Resort") that runs an extra! eight! minutes! Freaking awesome.

Or it could've been, anyway. As is, "Resort" isn't a total failure, but it's definitely a disappointment; and those extra eight minutes were largely eaten up in a series of short, pointlessly arty sequences that should've been left on the cutting room floor. Once again we're treated to 13's struggles with mortality, and once again, those struggles left me largely cold—the writing seemed less like how a real person (or at least a believable character) would handle a situation, and more like an intellectual exercise designed by people with no real feel for human nature.

That's really my biggest problem with the episode, and for the parts of this season that have left me cold. You can make an argument that 13, confronted by her impending doom, would flirt with death as a way of finding control over her situation; if she gives up hope now, she won't have to worry about crashing as hard when the inevitable occurs. This is logical, but in practice it always comes across as overly mechanical and self-aware, especially given the nature of the series to constantly comment on itself. 13's problems are never affecting, because there's never any surprise in what she's going to do next.

But at least we still have House, right? Watching him deal with the gunman, Jason (Zeljko Ivanek), was initially a lot of fun; as he jumps from disease to disease, getting his whole team in on the case via cell phone and making drug exchanges with Cuddy, he seems interested in solving the mystery, and even moderately concerned at having a gun pointed at his head. He tries some cleverness early on to slip Jason knock-out meds, but it goes south when the guy proves to be just smart enough to stay in charge for as long as the episode needs him to be. From then on, 13 has to have first crack at whatever drugs House decides to try; she volunteers, because of the whole near-death wish mentioned above, and spends most of the remainder of the episode looking pale and dying prettily. So in addition to solving the problem, House also has to keep her from dying; but weirdly enough, this never enters into any of his calculations. It seems like a missed opportunity—the show gets more interesting when House has to work under restrictions, and having him try and find ways to treat Jason without killing 13, instead of just getting shocked each time Jason demands 13 test the meds, could've been neat.

We get some stuff outside Cuddy's office with Cuddy and the SWAT guys, and the various Coke teams running around not accomplishing much, but for once, the focus is largely on the central story. (Hell, it's the only story.) Which makes the occasional directorial flourishes even more irritating; instead of keeping the tension high, every ten minutes we're treated to some bizarre slow-down of events. I liked the music cue at the cold open well enough, but everything after that was a useless distraction.

Eventually House et al leave the office for a trip to Radiology to give Jason an x-ray. Here's where we get the episode's biggest twist. After the first x-ray has a "starburst" blocking the picture, House convinces Jason to give up his gun in order to get a clean picture from the machine. Jason ultimately agrees and House re-runs the machine; but once he realizes that his current diagnosis was incorrect, House gives the gun back to buy himself some more time to figure out the real problem.

I can almost see this working. House's obsession with puzzles, his need to know, has been well-documented on the series, and having his current patient leave with the puzzle unsolved would drive him crazy. But again we have that lack of understanding of human nature in the writing. I can buy House being tempted, and if it was only him and the gunman, I could've believed he'd be arrogant enough to do it. But 13 and the teenager were still in the room; for House to willingly put their lives in danger again is just beyond the pale. Worse, he suffers no consequences for it; by episode's end, the status quo has been restored. He aided a felon in front of witnesses—he did it just to satisfy his own curiosity—and the worst he gets is a tongue-lashing from 13 about his ego. That's lazy as hell.

Maybe the reason House could justify giving the gun back is because he believed that Jason was no longer a threat; this is probably what we're supposed to think, given the way the two bond over "needing an answer." But we're never given any real sense as to who Jason is. Apart from some babbling about the "need," he's not a character so much as a plot device, which makes House's decision even harder to sympathize with. If the motivation had been more specific, or better developed, it could've worked; but the guy is a blank slate, which meant there was no way to predict his actions. I spent the last ten minutes really hoping House had screwed with the gun somehow—but no. He was just being a dick, and in the end, no one really cared.

"Resort" did have its share of nice touches: the final, silent exchange between House and Jason, confirming melioidosis; the chat between Cuddy and House in the final scene that dealt with the relationship issue in a believable way; the reveal on what House had been doing to Cuddy's desk at the beginning of the episode; and hell, at least 13 has finally gotten over her emo crap and is going to take some steps towards living her life. Really, though, for the hype, this was a let-down.

Grade: C+

Stray Observations:

--Wire Watch: Wood Harris, Mr. Avon Barksdale himself, was the head of the SWAT team. He wasn't much good, either, but I'd blame that more on the role than the actor.

--Gunman: "Florida counts?" House: "Well, not to the Supreme Court."

--House on 13: "I would've laid money you had herpes."

'House' Sicko

 Tonight, House was introduced to a new way to approach health care reform: armed and dangerously.

The slow-motion opening montage is proof positive that this is sure to be a dramatic evening. Or perhaps melodramatic. 13 is performing clinic hours and is accosted by a man insisting all he needs is a refill for his migraine meds, but she's only interested in seeing emergency patients. The guy rightly points out that she's not in the ER and she warns him not to piss her off. Her bedside manner is as warm and fuzzy as House himself - who is at that same moment, rifling through Cuddy's desk. Foreman approaches 13 and offers her a place in his Huntington's drug trial, but she passes, admitting she's not doing any treatment at all.

A patient comes in from the waiting room and asks if Cuddy is in and House promptly tells the man to get lost. He does, but he's back a moment later, with a gun in hand and about a dozen hostages - including 13 and migraine man. He demands to see the best doctor in the hospital, otherwise he's going to start killing people. The man has seen 16 doctors and had countless tests in the last two years and still no one can identify what his shortness of breath, random rashes, heart palpitations, stomach pains and insomnia are related to. And he's willing to go to jail to get a diagnosis. It's the perfect patient for House!

The hospital is evacuated and House gets to work on the POTW. And by 'get to work', I mean 'try to figure out why he's come in with a gun to get a diagnosis'. He insinuates that the man's wife left him, only to find out he's never been married. Stymied, he asks one of the hostages for a lighter. One of them makes a move towards Cuddy's desk and he warns them all not to touch it. Interesting. A lighter is passed over and when the POTW can't blow it out from arm's length, we get the first possible diagnosis: pulmonary scleroderma. House says "Case solved, see you on visitor's day", but we all know that was way too easy.

The phone rings and House answers it with a merry "Crime scene!" to hear Cuddy asking if everyone is OK. The POTW wants a test to confirm the diagnosis and House gamely orders up a shot, to be delivered by Cuddy. She's clearly nervous about House's involvement, but it's less clear if she's nervous because she cares or just because...well, it's House. When the shot arrives, the POTW balks and wants it to be given to a hostage first. House points out that the hostages are all either sick, pregnant or on painkillers themselves and the POTW points out that migraine main is pain med free, since that's why he was there in the first place. Migraine man tells them to give it to 13 instead and House calls him a creep before giving him the shot.

House then approaches the POTW to administer the same shot, but before he can, migraine main falls to the floor. The POTW points the gun at House, but has to agree when House illustrates the err in logic behind shooting the doctor who's working on his diagnosis. So he shoots a hostage in the leg instead, just to prove he's not to be messed with. The phone is ringing again but the POTW is not in the mood to talk, so he simply picks up and hangs up, as outside, SWAT moves in. The head of SWAT asks Cuddy if she has a loved one inside and she denies it, but the look on her face speaks differently.

House gets the old and new teams on a conference call and lists the POTW's symptoms. Chase storms out in protest of giving the guy what he wants and the rest of them get their assignments, as far as test running and house snooping. Back in Cuddy's office, the POTW suddenly freaks out, hearing people at the window. He peeks through the blinds into the barrel of a weapon and points his gun at the nearest hostage, telling SWAT to back away. House notices a small bug on the window, but is more interested in the new symptom that emerged, since the POTW heard them at the window when no one else did. He and 13 theorize on what could cause amped hearing as well as a general weakness on the left side of the face. And I thought crooked grins were charming.

They come up with another diagnostic theory, only the test for this one (a form of herpes) is incredibly painful if the person does not have the illness. When House orders up 200 micrograms of capsaicin, it makes sense why it would hurt.  Capsaicin is the active component of chili peppers. If the herpes infection is present in the nerves, apparently the person will remain pain free. A few hostages are released in exchange for the drug, the one he shot and the migraine man, and 13 is the next lucky hostage to get the treatment before the POTW. This garners House's disgust as he accuses her of waving the white flag at life because of her Huntington's. She doubles over in pain, leaving House to muse "I would have laid money that you had herpes."

House prepares the next dose for the POTW and theorizes that he was defined by his work but all his illness made him sloppy and got him fired. The POTW asserts that he just wants to know what's wrong with him. Well, we know it's not the herpes diagnosis, because he falls to the floor in pain when he gets the shot. Not long after, the POTW's heart begins racing and 13 suggests they get the paddles. House points out the the muscle contraction the electricity causes will fire the gun, so they wisely opt for a chemical intervention instead. Again, the POTW insists that 13 take it first, regardless of the fact that her heart is not racing. She collapses as her heart rate drops and he agrees to take the shot, bringing his back to normal.

With no signs of tachycardia and sweat coming out of only one side of his face, House moves to a new diagnosis: cancer. Wilson takes the consult call, but the POTW wants more proof. A handful more hostages released and with the remaining 5 tied around him for body shielding, they make their way to radiology. House again tries to psychoanalyze the POTW and finally gets the answer we all knew was there - the POTW can't handle not having an answer. Just like House.

In a plot point I am confident we could all see a mile away, the POTW must relinquish his gun to get results from the CT scan, since the metal in his hand is interfering with the machine. As the gun is handed over, 2 hostages run out leaving just 13, House and a teenage boy who wants to see how it will all end. Of course, the test shows no cancerous tumor and as the POTW sits devastated with the knowledge that it's all over, House hands him back the gun and gets back to work on his differential. The entire moment is well acted, but so glaringly obvious that I can't help but feel disappointed. Outside, the SWAT leader tells Cuddy that he hopes her boyfriend knows what he's doing, and I barely kept myself from rolling my eyes.

The team gets back on the line, but Foreman announces he agrees with Chase and leaves. A new theory is produced with a new drug needing to be administered. The SWAT leader negotiates the teen's freedom and tells the POTW that they can't test anymore drugs on 13, who's barely able to remain upright at this point. When the drug arrives, the POTW changes the game and demands 13 take it first. Given that it is designed to affect her breathing, House reveals she has Huntington's and tells the POTW he's killing her. We can hardly expect the POTW to care, and he doesn't. 13 takes the drugs and soon after goes into kidney failure. The POTW takes it, to no effect.

The team and House try to figure out what's protecting the POTW's kidneys, which somehow works out to House needing to slap the POTW for diagnostic purposes. The new theory that arises from the smack is ameliodosis. With the final drug on delivery, the POTW is down to one more trade. He opts to give up House, since he wants to give 13 the meds first. House assures him the medication will kill 13, but the POTW doesn't care, he wants his answer. This would have been a great moment to have House stare his own obsession in the face, but nothing of the like happens, alas. 13 points out that she's dead either way and House simply leaves.

13, now alone with the POTW and the syringe of her doom, suddenly grows a will to live. She cries and admits she doesn't want to die but the POTW argues that she just doesn't want to do it herself, she wants it out of her control and now it is, since he has a gun. She continues to cry and Olivia does a very moving portrayal of a person begging for her life. I just found it hard to connect the moment with the nasty, self-centered, destructive 13 we've seen all season. But, the POTW is moved and grabs the syringe from her, plunging it into his own arm, as the SWAT team's charges finally go off and blow a hole in the wall. They rush in to subdue the POTW and House rushes in to get to 13, asking how she's still alive. She tells him "he didn't make me take it". Which is one way of putting it, but for someone who was sobbing a moment earlier and was just caught in a bomb blast, she's remarkably calm all of the sudden.

The show ends with 13 going on dialysis and asking Foreman to be included in the drug study for Huntington's. Meanwhile, House shows up in Cuddy's office as she surveys the damage and announces his diagnosis was confirmed. They have a brief confrontation about how House handled the POTW and how she handled the situation because of House's involvement and how it proves they can't have a 'thing'. House points out that if she's blaming the outcome on their non-relationship, the only answer is to do the opposite. She asks him, in awe, if he wants a relationship now and he denies it, heading for the door. She sits at her desk and opens the drawer, only to have it spill it's contents on her feet, since House had put it in upside down.

Tonight's funny:

POTW: I'm looking for Dr. Cuddy...
House: Either she's not here or she's under the desk. Either way, leave me alone until I'm finished.

POTW: Dr. Cuddy brings in the drugs. Alone.
House: She might be armed. I'd have her deliver it shirtless.

Cameron: Ameliadosis? It fits all the symptoms.
House: It would if he had ever been in a tropical region.
Cameron: Costa Rica? Panama? He's never been...
POTW: I've never been anywhere south of Florida!
House: ... YOU IDIOT!
POTW: Florida counts?

'Bones': The (rich) kids aren't alright

 I'm starting to think several people on the Bones writing staff are arguing with their parents, spouses or significant others about why they don't want to have children. This is the second episode in a row where some punk kid did something horrific. What's next -- a toddler terrorist? An infant serial killer? A genocidal zygote?

Max K, the spoiler way!

When a couple of tree-poachers (can you poach trees?) find a charred skull dangling from a tree in a national forest -- right in the middle of the masked booby migration route! -- Booth and Brennan are on the case. A DNA hit from some bone marrow reveals the victim was Cal Warren, an ex special-forces Marine who had gone completely off the grid. He paid for everything in cash, he wasn't in any databases, and for all intents and purposes, he'd disappeared.

An RF proximity card found in Cal's apartment leads Booth to Woodbury school, the sort of k-12 private academy that costs more than most universities and promises to give the children of the exceedingly rich every advantage in life. Cal was working as a nanny for Lexie and Royce, the children of Richard and Elsbeth King. Richard is a defense contractor, and there had been kidnapping threats. Could someone who was coming after the kids taken out Cal?

The first interesting fact the team uncovers is that Cal's body was incinerated with airplane fuel. And looky here -- Dr. Ezralow, a high-powered dermatologist and mother of another Woodbury kid, flies a Cessna. She initially claimed she didn't even know Cal, but she eventually confirms that they were having an affair. But she claims she didn't do it -- and says that Cal gave her some insider information that was very damaging to Richard's company. When the team finds the site where the body was burned, it's yards from one of the King's country homes. Plus, Booth wicks a bit of fuel from Richard's fine Italian sports car, and discovers that Richard fuels his baby with aviation gas.

But the bones suggest that Richard didn't do it -- at some point, Cal was dragged by a choke chain, and the person doing the dragging was about 5'5". Elsbeth, then. She confesses -- but Sweets isn't convinced. Again, the evidence bears Sweets out -- the blast pattern indicates that an even shorter person fied the shot that killed Cal. That's right -- Lexie, the 11-year-old daughter, killed Cal when he refused to do her homework for her. He threatened to tell the school, which has a strict honor code. She would have been kicked out, and all her friends go there! Her mom saw Lexie standing over Cal with the gun, and she disposed of the body. That, my friends, is really, really bad parenting.

The lab rats
Wendell Bray, the Ryan Notwood NotZack, is back, and I think he's up there with Clark as my favorite NotZack, even if he does bring up tapeworm-infected beer. Ewwwww. Cam tries to heal Hodgins' wounded soul by getting the two lab rats to do an experiment, but Hodgins won't bite. Apparently, he only does experiments when there's an accused murderer egging him on -- he finally rediscovers the joy of the lab when Brennan's dad, Max, helps him build a wind tunnel to prove the wind speed that was needed to blast a charred skull-bit into a tree. Ah, science!

Booth and Brennan -- and Max
Speaking of Max... Cam hired him to work in the lab as a science teacher. Max is introducing young kids -- who have the run of the Jeffersonian -- to the joys of science by firing lasers through jell-o and doing the Mentos-in-Coke trick. It's very cute, but very odd -- why would he be doing science demonstrations in the forensics lab? I'm just not going to think about it, because I love Ryan O'Neal as Max.

Brennan is appalled her dad is working in the lab -- we catch criminals, and he IS one! She wants Cam to fire him. Sweets thinks Brennan is acting out on her abandonment issues, but both Max and Brennan dismiss this. When Brennan finds Max helping with the wind-speed experiment, she fires him-- his presence compromises the investigation! She, Sweet and Max talk about this, and Max says that he's going to stick with her -- he won't leave her again.

Max talks to Booth, who (after fending off questions about whether he's sleeping with Brennan, and if not, why the hell not?) agrees to talk to Brennan for him. He gets the chance when Max is demonstrating  scientific principles to Parker: Your dad is great at what he does, and look at how excited Parker is! Could you overlook the evidence-tampering thing, just for me? Brennan sees through this -- "You're trying to do a favor for me by telling me it's a favor for you" -- but she relents.

The other major Booth/Brennan interaction revolves around Booth being paranoid that he's not giving Parker the best in life by not sending him to a school like Woodbury. Brennan doesn't help -- basically, she spends much of the time saying yeah, rich kids have it better, and you're not doing right by Parker, but you probably won't absolutely ruin him or anything...l probably. It's frustrating. In the end, Brennan starts to come around to the fact that good parenting trumps the advantages that big bucks can bring. It's just maddening that it takes a murderous 11-year-old to make them both figure that out.

Highlights, thoughts and odds and ends

• Yay, Gina Torres! Now if only they'd given her something to do...
• I looked up the masked booby migration routes. (Yes, I'm a geek.) According to Audubon, they don't tend to get that far north. Dear writers: it wasn't as funny as you thought. I did, however, like the humorless Masked Booby Defender -- "The Department of Fish and Wildlife does not kid, Agent Booth." You can keep her.
• Max spots Sweets coming into the diner: "There's the doc that told the jury that I was a sociopath!" he says. "Likeable sociopath," Sweets corrects. That makes all the difference!
• Angela shows off her mad deductive skills. "For an artist, you make a pretty good detective," Cam says. "I think you just insulted me," Angela replies. Um, yeah, she did.
• I get why Brennan would stress the benefits of education and minimize the role of the parent -- she was abandoned by her folks and then basically raised by wolves. That's why she would spout things like "Assuming quality education and adequate supervision, parents are actually rather irrelevant beyond a certain age." Still, every time she dissed Booth's role as a parent, I bridled. Booth is a great dad, and she knows it!
• I loved Hodgins enthusing about the experiment Max helped put together. "Your old man, he reminded me of why I got into science!" he crows to Brennan. "To catch murderers?" she asks. "No -- to figure things out in amusing ways." Heck yeah-- science education would be a lot more popular if kids were allowed to test various ways things could explode.

Prison Break: Picking up the pieces

 Last week on Prison Break, the Breakouts realized that Don Self completely screwed them. This week, they get to return the favor -- after some death-defying and Hail-Mary-pass activities, of course. Plus, T-Bag is going to be in SUCH big trouble...

Spoiler SMASH!

The Breakouts quietly -- then not so quietly -- contemplate Self's perfidy, and it's kind of heartbreaking. Poor Sucre keeps insisting that no, really, the parade is just a little late, and Self is playing a practical joke on them, and maybe they're being punk'd, and, and, and.... sigh. Sorry, bunny, but you've been had. Meanwhile, Mahone spews venom, Michael's brain starts melting, Sarah wants to figure out what to do next, and Linc SMASH! Meanwhile, over at Company HQ, The General contemplates his humiliation. General SMASH! The General's minions circle and snipe as he tries to act like everything's fine, and he eventually has to shoot a guy in the face. That was therapeutic!

Self calls his boss and spins a story about how the Breakouts betrayed him and killed Miriam/Trishann. Then he shoots in the air, screaming "Burrows, no!" Stanton, the boss, is bent on revenge. He storms Breakout HQ, but the Breakouts have already vacated. They're surprised they're being accused of murder -- again, in LInc's case -- and moderately panicky. What to do?  Sucre wants to head for Mexico, but Michael is adamant -- we're taking The Company down, and that's that. Oh, and that whole time-bomb-in-my-head thing is just going to have to wait. Sarah is NOT happy about that, and tells him he reminds her of her dad. That's not a good thing -- he spent so much time putting other people's needs and problems ahead of his own that her mom left him. Sarah pledges to stay with Michael, however.

Self hijacks T-Bag and makes him take him to Gretchen's family. Self tries to lure Gretchen there by having her sister say her kid was in an accident, but Gretchen's not an idiot. Self demands that Gretchen find a new buyer for Scylla, or he'll unleash the T-Bag on the family. Funnily enough, the Breakouts also contacted Gretchen, in hopes of getting to Self. With her daughter in danger, Gretchen gives up the location of the meet she was supposed to have with the Breakouts. Don calls in a tip to homeland Security. Michael calls Stanton while he's waiting, and a fortuitous siren informs him that Homeland Security is closing in. He escapes -- but Linc gets nabbed. Doh!

Linc argues with Stanton and Senator Dallow, the two superiors behind this operation -- why would we risk our freedom to kill Self? Stanton doesn't want to hear it, but he eventually does some digging and discovers that Self had set up a new identity and booked tickets out of the country. Huh. Dallow makes a pitch for all the Breakouts to come in and testify against Self. But there's more to it than that -- Stanton warns that if news of this operation comes out, they're facing substantial jail time. But if the Breakouts just happened to be slaughtered... well, who would know?

 Michael tells Mahone, Sucre and Sarah that they should take the deal, but that he's set up a meet at a secret location. He sends Sucre and Sarah ahead... and it turns out to be the Greyhound station. Mahone tells them Michael wants them to get out of town. Sucre and Sarah reluctantly agree... but change their minds.

Stanton is set to kill Linc and Scofield, but Sooter, a US Marshall who claims to be looking into the Burrows/Scofield/Supermax thing, shoots Stanton. He's working for The General! Before he can take his captives back to The General, Sucre drops him -- and then Linc shoots him. He threatens to shoot Dallow, too, but Michael convinces him not to.

Self and Gretchen meet up with the buyer...and Self realizes he's not as smart as he thinks he is. See, Michael removed a piece of Scylla, and he's kept it hidden in the warehouse. Hah! Take that, Self!

Highlights, thoughts and odds and ends

• Sorry if I missed anything. My cable is being recalcitrant, and things were jumping around. As my colleague Andy reveals, I blame Fulcrum.
• Howard, The General's minion, was all but salivating at the sight of The General on the ropes. Doesn't he realize wounded animals are more dangerous? The General’s daughter, Lisa, doesn't take the shooting well.
• Michael moans that he should have seen Self's betrayal coming. But... he did, didn't he? Or at least, he saw SOME reason to keep a bit of Scylla behind�?
• Once T-Bag gets over his shock, he's impressed with Self's double-cross: "I always said cops are more crooked than criminals." The he tries to guess Self's motives: A woman on the side? Gambling debts? "Maybe you're a geologist of the rock-candy variety..." Hee!
• Gretchen's sister calls, sniffling about an accident. Gretchen: "I want you to tell whoever's got that gun pointed at you to grow a set and get on the phone." I love Gretchen. And I'm going to love her even more when she rips Self's head off with her bare hands -- and without chipping her manicure.
• Gretchen's sis is less enamored with her -- when Gretchen threatens T-Bag that there will be consequences if he hurts them ("You will remain captive in my negativity...") Rita hauls off and smacks her across the face. I'll fix this, Gretchen swears -- and Rita hits her again.
• Gretchen also tries to play the guess-the-motive game with Self... and it doesn't go well. He calls T-Bag in instructs him to take out his gun, pull back he hammer... fortunately, the buyer calls at that moment. I can't help but thing that Gretchen is really, really going to hurt both Self and T-Bag when she gets the chance.
• Self's bluster is less effective with the buyer. We can do business when you get the whole thing, Vikan says. "Who is this clown," Self demands. Vikan rolls his eyes: "There's a piece missing, slick." Dork! Guess you're not so smart after all, huh, Self?
• All the surviving Breakouts are back together, except one -- Mahone took off. Where’d he go �? and why?

'House' and Cuddy, sitting in a tree, F-I-G-H-T-I-N-G

Because Jessi is off getting a fancy pants masters degree while I'm destined to die a couch potato, I'll be your guide to the world of the childish and immature on House tonight. Who knows? We may get around to discussing some medical mysteries, too.

POTW: Our POTW is a (non-creepy) DVD fitness trainer who collapses and falls down a set of bleachers while filming a commercial. Aaaand now I'm afraid of bleachers. Ouch. Turns out, she's had secret gastric bypass surgery, which leaves her open to any number of side effects. Among the theories: intestinal bacterial infection, sleep apnea, toxins, Guillain-Barre syndrome, and prion disease. Her symptoms escalate from fainting to nerve numbness to hallucination that her obese clients, infuriated at her hypocritical gastric bypass, visit the hospital and attack her. It's terrifying.

The tests range from running on a treadmill in the morgue to floating poop in water to a good old-fashioned MRI. However, before they confirm anything, she's miraculously cured by eating a piece of cake. I KNEW CAKE HAD HEALING POWERS!!! The deliciousness is our bodies' way of telling us that it's really, really healthy! Totally makes sense. Turns out, the patient has hereditary coproporphyria, which is treated with a high-carb, high-sugar diet. ...Best disease ever? Aside from all the neurological problems, of course.

However, our dear POTW refuses to reverse the gastric bypass, choosing a less effective drug instead. House respects her decision...sort of: "There's [sic] not many people who have the guts to admit that they'd rather be pretty than healthy." Taub, having been taken in by her talk about how she's in the fitness game to make people healthy, rather than for money, is pissed. And I find it hard to believe that a cynic like Taub wound up buying her act.

House and Cuddy (don't make me say "Huddy"): Well, folks, what we've got here is a classic escalating prank war. Immature? Yes. Absurd? Yes. Illogical? Yes. Entertaining? Well...yes. But it's highly possible that my judgment is clouded by my shameful shipper tendencies. If so, my apologies. Because Cuddy's office was destroyed last week and she holds House responsible (and because he has the biggest, most patient-free office), she'll be sharing his office while hers is repaired. And can I just say that all crazy pranks aside, I totally loved Cuddy piping in on the differential. Yay, DoctorCuddy!

House throws the first grenade by insisting that they share his desk, and then holding differentials in his office while Cuddy's on the phone. Supposedly he's just trying to make her miserable so she'll leave, but it kind of seems like he's just trying to be around her, no? Wilson, the big fat meddler, suspects the same of Cuddy and tells her as much. Cuddy, striking back at House, spills some smelly hydrogen sulfide in the office right before she leaves for the day, leaving the team stranded in the hall for the night. And now, things get less sensible.

House first responds by destroying her office's toilet, which, as Wilson later points out, simply guarantees her presence in his office longer. She responds by removing all the furniture from his office, and he responds by having a bidet installed in her office instead of a new toilet. Yeah, it's pretty absurd. But then, a breakthrough! Maybe! When Cuddy interferes with his attempted brain biopsy, House accuses her of stopping him because she "has the hots for [him]" rather than for medical reasons. Cuddy in turn points out that he's still in the office because he's got the hots for her.

After arguing for a moment, House accuses Cuddy of screwing with him. After she asks if he's screwing with her (I sense a pattern here), House simply says, "That depends on your answer." They step toward each other, and all of America begs them to just make out already and stop pulling each other's pigtails so we can move on with our lives. Cuddy agrees, getting all meta: "Everybody knows this is going somewhere. I think we're supposed to kiss now." House: "We already did that. [Grabs a boob.] ...Seemed like the logical next step." Okay, that's pretty hilarious. I'm glad he's still House. Poor Cuddy, though, says that she's an idiot for being surprised, and walks out as House tries to convince her to leave her boobs with him. Oh, House.

In an interesting little scene, House asks Taub about his philandering days, trying to rationalize that he's really saving his relationship with Cuddy, I suppose. Cuddy, in the meantime, tells Wilson that it's all over because House is "an unemotional child incapable of intimacy or romance." BUT, it turns out House tracked down her desk from med school and got it put in her new office. Awww! But as quickly as we're lifted up, the show beats us back down.

As she's happily going to find House, Cuddy sees him through the glass of his office talking with another woman (see below) as she fixes his jacket. Totally innocent(ish), but Cuddy looks crushed and a little pissed, and walks away. No! Though to be fair, knowing House, it could have been a LOT worse. And that's why you don't fall in love with House. Or you just get it over with and bang him already (are you listening, TPTB?).

Kutner and Taub: Wow. So...wow. Kutner is seriously, seriously stupid. We open the episode with Cuddy mentioning that requests for House have dropped by half, and quickly find out why: Kutner is running an online medical advice clinic in House's name. This is just unrealistically ridiculous, entertaining though it may be. Unfortunately for Kutner, a problem patient from online shows up in the real world demanding help from House. With the promise of being cut in on the profits, Taub and Chase help Kutner with the patient (and with keeping the secret). Cameron, of course, helps for free. Unfortunately, the woman dies before they can cure her. ...Or does she??? Yes, yes she does.

House busts 'em in the morgue, calling Kutner and Taub fraudulent, idiotic killers. Yup. He says that the patient was easily treatable. In fact, it may still be possible! After House hops up on the table and gives the woman's corpse chest compressions, she comes back to life, scaring the hell out of the idiot twins. Ha! Apparently, she wasn't even sick - just a paid "thespian" (i.e. prostitute, whom Cuddy later spots chatting with him in his office). House planned the whole thing, even getting Chase and Cameron to play along. And rather than shutting down the site, he demands 50%, because making money and pissing off Cuddy are probably equally awesome in his book. 

Thirteen: Thirteen is participating in Foreman's drug trial for Huntington's patients, guilt-free now that she knows her nerves have already started degenerating. We discover through flashbacks that her mother was very far gone at the time of her death, unable to control her body's movements, much like the other patients in the study who Thirteen is forced to confront every time she shows up.

Foreman, nosy and insistent as always, forces her to continue showing up and gets her to admit that the patient in the waiting room reminds her of her mother, and how Thirteen hated her and wanted her to die by the end. The disease had made her scream at Thirteen and act really horrible, apparently, and so Thirteen refused to say goodbye before she died. Rough. Touchingly, Thirteen tries interacting with the waiting room patient, helping her with her jacket. I'm definitely looking at Thirteen a little differently (and more forgivingly) after this episode. Knowing something and seeing something are two different things. 

Favorite House quotes:

While looking at a photo of the fitness trainer: "Wow, muscles and curves. My penis is so confused!"

After overhearing Taub saying that Kutner is going to destroy his career: "What happened? You call Foreman 'clean and articulate' again?" Ha, nothing like a nerdy (and somewhat outdated) political joke to make me happy.

'Prison Break' plays Calvinball

 Remember Calvinball from Calvin & Hobbes? That great game insisted that the rules keep changing, and you never know quite what's coming next. Apparently, Self, The Breakouts, The Company and the Feds are fans. That's the only way I can explain all the ups and downs and reversals this week on Prison Break. Plus, Michael is fine with fanaticism, T-Bag gets religion, and then religion gets T-Bag -- right where it hurts.

This spoiler knows its Psalms.

Don Self has a problem -- he's got most of Scylla, but Michael and the Breakouts kept one vital piece. So Self mounts an assault on Breakouts HQ, firing gas canisters into the warehouse in the hopes of smoking everyone out. Fortunately, Michael sent Lincoln outside to watch out for just this situation, so Linc puts a stop to that. But Self is also prepared: He's got Gretchen, who has a very large gun. No score for either side.

The Breakouts have a cunning plan -- they secrete Sucre in Self's car behind a false back in his car trunk. Apparently, Self and Gretchen don't notice the sudden loss of trunk space. However, Self has his own tricks -- one of the gas canisters he fired into the warehouse is actually a mini ultrasound-type camera, so he can track the Breakouts movements. We're tied at one all.

Sucre calls in from Self's hideout, a grotty downtown hotel that rents by the hour. Michael MacGyvers some gas-canister launchers out of discarded plastic pipes, then rigs the fire escape. Sucre gets the skeezy desk guy to call up and tell Self that folks are looking for him. When Gretchen does recon, Sucre jumps her. Self escapes out the fire escape, but Michael's trickery means that Self falls to the ground. Michael steals Scylla and scampers. Breakouts: 2, Self: 1.

But wait! Michael gets woozy and collapses -- that pesky brain tumor is acting up again! Self shows up and snags Scylla back, and Gretchen, driving a car she's stolen from Company goons who came to nab them, takes him to safety. The Company scoops up Michael.  Breakouts: 2, Self: 2, Company: 1.

Meanwhile, Mahone is trying to get the Feds to help out. He goes to Felicia, his old partner, for help, and she brings on Wheeler, the sanctimonious little schmuck who was an ass to Mahone back when he was still at the Bureau. Wheeler agrees to take Mahone to the Attorney General -- IF he can deliver evidence. When Mahone gets the call that Scylla is gone, he despairs, but Felicia tells him that he can still have a meeting with the A.G. Lies! Wheeler is taking Mahone into custody!  Breakouts: 2, Self: 2, Company: 1, Feds: 1.

 T-Bag is left at home to guard Rita and Emily, Gretchen's sister and daughter. Emily is kind of an idiot -- "Are you a friend of Auntie Gretchen?" -- and T-Bag is becoming more and more unhinged about losing his Cole Pfeiffer gig. Things get tense when Self tells T-Bag to waste the two if he doesn't hear from him in two hours. Then a bible salesman shows up at the door, and T-Bag gets suspicious because he's wearing a military academy ring. He beats the guy up, drags him inside, ties him up and prepares to kill him, on Self's instructions. Rita reminds him that if he kills this man, he's turning his back on Cole Pfeiffer for good. When the bible salesman is able to win at Name That Psalm, T-Bag tells Rita to take Emily and run, then unties the bible guy. Oops. Apparently it's possible to hold both Company directives and Scripture in your head at the same time -- he’s Company after all! The bible salesman knocks T-Bag out and brings him back for The General.  Breakouts: 2, Self: 2, Company: 2, Feds: 1.

Self prepares to meet the buyer, and Gretchen's conduit, Vikan, condescends mightily. When Self learns that the buyer is on his way, he shoots Vikan and his minion. Gretchen is aghast, but Self just wanted to eliminate (literally) the middleman. I'm going to call that a flag on the play. No score.

Linc decides he's got to do anything it takes to get Michael back, so he walks into Company HQ. The General shows him Michael prepared for surgery, then tells Linc that he can help Michael -- IF Linc gets Scylla back for him. Linc has to work for the Company now, just like his dad did. The General hands over a dossier: Tombstone II. What does it mean?  Breakouts: 2, Self: 2, Company: 3, Feds: 1.

Dammit -- the Company wins again!

Highlights, thoughts and odds and ends

• Self is unapologetic about screwing with the Breakouts lives. Just business! He says. I'd shoot him for that alone.
• T-Bag is really, really hung up on the whole Cole Pfeiffer persona that he had to give up. It was a legitimate scam, and he was good at it. I almost feel sorry for the poor, murdering psychopath.
• Michael and Sarah debate is motives for remaining fixated on The Company. I have to destroy them -- that's where this whole thing started! Michael says. Sarah quite reasonably brings up that for Linc, it just started when Michael broke him out of prison. All this Company stuff? It's too much!
• Emily tells Gretchen "There's this mean man here." Gretchen brings up the heartwarming story of a mean man who used to date Rita, and who disappeared on his way to the store. I'm guessing Gretchen had something to do with his disappearance.
• When Michael MacGyvers the canister launcher, he sends Sucre out to buy hairspray and a lighter. Why send one of the men with no hair to buy hairspray? Wouldn’t it make more sense to send Sarah?
• Lisa, The General's daughter, tenders her resignation -- she doesn't like what she's discovered about her dad. "I wanted a son," The General replies. Nice.
• I'm bummed that Self killed Vikan -- he amused me, if only because he had such contempt for Self. "Listen to me you mook! You're in the deep end of the pool now, at least act like you can swim!"
• Why oh why didn’t Gretchen kill Self when she had the chance! I really hop Rita calls Gretchen and lets her know they’re safe, so she can commence the ass-kicking.

"Joy To The World" 

Just how hard is it to be kind? And what sort of person are you if you can't manage it? "Joy To The World" is all about the little things—underage drinking, teenage pregnancy, virgin births, and bullying—but what it really comes down to is how being a decent human being is maybe not that human after all. Kindness takes effort; and as House has shown us again and again, even the best of us can use the occasional push in the right direction.

The PoW, a sixteen year-old girl named Natalie, is living proof of the damage cruelty can cause. In the cold open, she's tricked by a pair of Mean Girls into humiliating herself during a chorus concert; but it gets worse for her when she starts hallucinating, vomits, and collapses to her knees. In House's office, we get the usual pattern of theories and sarcasm; the theories are tested, they fail, the patient gets worse, rinse, repeat. Generally, PoW's fall into one of two types: either they serve as the main focal point of the ep, the planet around which all other stories orbit, or else they maintain a roughly equal balance with everything else. Natalie's struggles are in the latter category. Despite the presence of Sherilyn Fenn as Nat's mom, we never get to know her or her family particularly well; it's not a bad PoW (and it gets surprisingly tragic by the end), but the medical stuff is largely rote.

More interesting is Cuddy's immediate connection to the patient. House thinks she's projecting after the loss of her baby a few weeks back, but to the writer's credit, Cuddy's relationship with Natalie never becomes too heavy-handed. Cuddy even gets to solve this one(I liked House talking over her epiphany for a moment before recognizing the look on her face); too bad for Natalie that she's got eclampsia, a disease that hits pregnant women and essentially gives the poor girl a week-or-less death sentence.

But before we get to the end of that, might as well check in on "World"'s other two plotlines. After House's attempts to manipulate his staff get prematurely bud-nipped (New Coke by and large was a treat this week, and I dug the hell out of Taub's fake-out), he needs a new game; an argument with Wilson sets him back on the track of trying to be a better man, so he puts in some clinic time to spread some love in the world. This has mixed results. House's idea of "decent" is probably his biggest problem when it comes to not being a jerk; he seems to think it's just bland politeness combined with an almost embarrassing over-eagerness to please. It's not an act he can maintain for long, so it's not surprising how quickly he breaks character. In a decent twist, he reverts back to his old manipulative self to save a marriage by convincing a couple that they've been blessed by the heretofore unproven medical miracle of parthenogenesis; to wit, Mommy (who's supposedly a virgin, and whose fiancé actually is) is gonna have her very own virgin birth.

This is, of course, utter crap, and it's not all that believable that it wouldn't backfire; at the very least, an actual case of parthenogenesis would get some attention, especially if the tests came back around Christmastime. Still, it was fun seeing House once again confirm his world view, and show Wilson up to boot.

Third plot has 13 tracking down the woman she talked to last week at the Huntingtons trials; her name is Janice, and there's no real surprise that we're seeing her again, since it's doubtful Lori Petty would've signed on to do a background character no matter how much her career's tanked. 13 finds out Janice quit the trial because Foreman was dismissive of her physical complaints; she confronts Foreman with this, he doesn't see what he did wrong, and she accuses him of being like House. Unsurprisingly, this sets him soul-searching, and he ultimately gets back in touch with Janice and proves that he's not a bastard after all. As a reward, he and 13 end the episode making out in front of a Christmas tree. Like I said, I'm curious to see where this goes; unlike Cuddy and House, the power levels between 13 and Foreman seem basically equal, and the evolution of their friendship has been one of the pleasant surprises of the season.

Overall, "Joy" was a satisfying way to close out the fall; more of an ensemble ep than we generally get, everybody got a few good moments (well, aside from Chase and Cameron—when she asked Kutner about Natalie's status at the end, I was surprised she even knew what was going on), and nothing dragged. And we even got a bit of tragedy; medical shows can't have every patient living, but killing off the poor, picked-on teen is pretty dark. Natalie's monologue about giving birth—about hiding her pregnancy, and then delivering in an abandoned house and leaving the baby to die because she didn't know what else to do—was particularly harsh.

It got a little lighter, though, when Cuddy tracked down the house and found that the baby survived; the kid was rescued by a couple of druggies. This leads to a final development that brings back Cuddy's baby-obsession—since child would be too painful a reminder of their daughter's death, Natalie's family is putting the baby up for adoption, and Cuddy's going to swoop in to the rescue. It's a disappointingly neat conclusion to an otherwise pleasantly messy episode; one could argue that Cuddy is finding life in death, but what it really feels like is a convenient way to get her a kid with no strings.

Ah well. I'm sure we've got lots of parenting antics coming up in January.

Grade: B+

Stray Observations:

--Kutner being a bully was a nice touch.

--Wilson's "Irene Adler"—awesome.

--Seriously, Taub kicked some ass here. "This is a good experience for me, as my parents never got divorced."

--See y'all next year!

Prison Break: "The Sunshine State" - Episode 416