User Reviews

Not one of my favorite episodes, "Humpty" sees Cuddy's overworked, asthmatic handyman falling off her roof and exhibiting far worse effects than the fall and a mild case of asthma would seem to indicate. Cuddy plays a prominent role in the story as it unfolds, as she feels guilty for having pushed the guy too hard. The solution to his illness is a bit far-fetched, and the fact that he is an illegal and there are litigious implications in his treatment only serve to complicate matters. And cause me to quickly lose interest. Be advised: the episode contains some rather graphic amputation footage. At the very least, "Humpty" plays to my feeling that not every patient should be able to just get up and walk away at the end.

All of the House MD writing is above par. When it is weak and off-track and off-character it is still engaging. This episode seemed to concentrate on the philosophy of "if the Doc is too emotionally engaged, they can't be objective in their treatment."...which is fine. But this is a fall-back position for over half of the House episodes. It seems to be beaten to death. This ep offered nothing new in the discussion and was just a vehicle for sparring between Cuddy and House. And the sub-plot of the black patient that was charging racism in the medicine that Foreman prescribed - ultimately calling Foreman an Oreo, and that white people had been lying to him for years - then House prescribing him the same medicine but telling the patient that it was the 'white' version just to get him to take it -- ridiculous beyond belief. Foreman then lands with both feet on House saying that he did lie and it was white people, blah, blah, blah. House lies to everyone to get what he wants done. There was no difference here. The writers wrote this up as though it made some sort of point. The only point they made is that they have not paid attention to their own show.

This episode could have been 15 minutes long if House's team had done a proper anamnesis of the patient, one of the first things that he mentions in the hospital to Cameron is being afraid of getting fired, to which she replies Cuddy won't fire him and he tells her he has another job that he has. So the team didn't know what jobs the patient had, if they asked him early on what kind of jobs he had they could have solved his case faster; and even if he lied - or rather omitted - about his cockfight job the hospital would easily have a reason to win the case against the patient and his family for withholding information that could have solved his case earlier and prevented his hand from being amputated.

If someone wonders why the team would have to ask about the patient's job, if they were interested to search Cuddy's house since he was working there, they should have searched the other places he worked as well, since that's what they are supposed to do. Who would have thought something so trivial didn't cross their minds and no one from the team considers this to be a mistake.

First, you have the worker who falls off Cuddy's roof. Because he caught some kind of bird flu, for indulging in illegal cockfight. Who has the nerve to sue the hospital that saved his life! Was Cuddy supposed to assume it was more than asthma? That cough maybe, but still it wasn't a symptom of something worse. Then the mother of said worker, who lies about not talking, let alone understanding English. Should have all our sympathy and compassion? How manipulative is she? How dishonest can you be to pretend you don't understand someone, until that someone says something that gets your attention? Was she planning on using this tool for the trial? And that patient calling racism on a treatment, that is more efficient to his ethnic group... In that case, what is the point in prescriptions? And that little paper in each medicine's boxes? Or medicine even? This episode is a sad realization for everything rotten about a lot of things these days. But it is written in a subtle way that isn't preachy or one sided. And I like how they let the suspense build up on who's the new patient, on each episodes opening, lately. So far, season 2 is as good as I remember. Probably one of the best of the whole series for me.

After watching for what felt like at least an hour and a half, I was ready for a break. I was SURE this must have been a special two hours episode, so imagine my surprise when I discovered I was only about 30 minutes into the episode (it just FELT like I had been watching for 90+ minutes).

There has to be other plot lines they can use besides the "patient lying to the doctor" one ... they do seem to like that one on this show (as House himself often points out).

The patient suing at the end seems like the very definition of a frivolous lawsuit. But it sounded like everyone felt sorry enough for the patient, that they were just going to roll over.