Acceptance

"House" was never about the medical cases. Its about the characters and the complex sociophilosophical problems the series constantly discuss. Here we have somebody not worth for living, on a death row but still getting serious medical attention, while somebody who deserves every empathy doesn't, or only just some. This episode tells a lot about House's and Cameron's character, how their past, their life philosophy affects their present decisions. The episode discusses serious topics, like discrimination, prejudice, how people deal with death, what is right and wrong, how crime should be punished, what responsibility a criminal holds. Tons of deep topics, and each worth a long talk. While most of them aren't discussed in depth (that would be impossible to do in an hour), given the previous episodes we are introduced to a lot of opinions and values, but thanks to the characters it wasn't done in a preconcluded, black and white (huh) manner, but in a more nuanced way delivered buy humans. Its like a sitcom, but it is serious.

House gets interested in the deteriorating condition of a death row inmate while Dr. Cameron deals with a terminally ill patient who doesn't know she is terminally ill. LL Cool J plays the inmate. Things get a little silly when House discovers not only the cause of the inmate's illness, but also a possible answer for the inmate's deadly behavior. House has a mild dustup with the two women in his life, Cuddy and Stacy, but otherwise sails through the episode without a care in the world. The best bit of business has Dr. Wilson discovering House eating his lunch next to a comatose patient. "You're dropping crumbs on him!" declares an outraged Wilson, who proceeds to sit on the other side of the patient's bed and asks House to pass a bag of potato chips. Wilson also has a couple of tense moments with Cameron, as he reminds her to stop trying to make friends with patients. House briefly gets to watch GENERAL HOSPITAL.

This is a tough one. If one feels capital punishment is the appropriate punishment for heinous crimes, this man's plight would seem ridiculous. Why would one have to be in good health in order to be executed? When the principle character, played by L. L. Cool J collapses during an exercise period the day before he is to die, House pulls strings to get him to the hospital. Of course, the implications are far reaching. One of them is his disregard and dismissal of a young woman who comes with a cough which turns out to be lung cancer. He talks about all patients being equal, but he could have shown the same care for both. Cameron is the one who takes the fall and must tell her. It is a gripping episode where there are certainly no winners.