The theme of this week's episode is, as evident from the title, punishment and reinforcement. Discipline. The case of the week is a Marine drill instructor running a camp for troubled youths who collapses while running them through an obstacle course. Medical mystery ensues, heightened when one of the youths, the one he rides the hardest, is admitted to the hospital with identical symptoms. As such, the case of the week is, once again, rather boring, and the main mystery is in figuring out how the two cases are related. And they are related, because the Marine is really the kid's long-lost father. I guess they made him black as a red herring?
Mostly, however, the drill instructor is there to prompt the House vs. Someone on the Team ethical dilemma of the week. This week it's the annoying new girl who is at this point rivaling Cameron for the most annoying House character ever. At least Cameron used to be interesting before she became such a bleeding heart whiner. This girl, well, not so much. So they have to squeeze as much annoying out of her before the return of Thirteen, whenever she comes back. So, Annoying Girl thinks that the drill instructor is a big bully. She attempts to connect with the kid by bleeding her heart onto him, and he tries to steal her car. Natch.
House isn't quite as gloaty as last week, however, because he has his own concerns. Cuddy wants her daughter to get into a nice preschool and House, like the audience, knows that poor Rachel is as dumb as dirt. So he begins his own training regime in line with the theme of the episode with some old fashioned behavioral conditioning to teach her the toys she'll be playing with when she "auditions" for the preschool. I guess we're supposed to be appalled that he's using a dog training device on her, but for House this was pretty tame. And it's not that he cares about the kid, it's that he doesn't want to console Cuddy when Rachel gets rejected. Because House is so emotionally stunted he can't (or more likely won't, due do his being such a steadfast ideologue) admit that he cares about anyone. And in the end, he's not so much impressed with the fact that Rachel is able to wow the preschool as he is that she's able to lie so easily about her training to Cuddy. So already, the full machinations of House's cancerous and cynical personality are at work on her young mind. And he's so proud of himself.
The "other" plot of the week, since last week centered around Taub and his impending divorce, involves Chase and a "revealing" picture of him that some mysterious person posted onto his social networking page. He figures out that it happened the night of the wedding reception when he had a foursome and tracks down the girls one by one. You see, actions have consequences. That's the point of discipline. That's the lesson of the week, children. You have to take responsibility for what you do, and having a foursome is clearly a bad thing that will bite you in the ass and humiliate you in front of everyone. Eventually. So it turns out that the person who took the picture is one of the girls' sister, or something, and she's doing it because Chase talked to her at the bar and wasn't interested after she said she doesn't fuck on the first date. And clearly this is reason to punish him by hacking his account and locking him out of it, posting a nude and doctored picture of him, advertising his love for large women, and using his credit card to make a 2,500 dollar donation. Because he wasn't interested in her at the wedding reception. After talking for only a few minutes. And what is Chase's response to this overt act of flagrant psycho bitch syndrome? Well, he asks her on a date, of course. I don't know . . . were we supposed to think she was clever? That Chase's punishment was justified? The guy just had a good time with some no-strings fun and no one got hurt. I have a feeling this plot line isn't over yet. To great detriment, I'm afraid.
One thing that really bugged me, and it always bugs me, is at the end the psycho bitch uses "negative reinforcement" wrong. She means punishment. Negative reinforcement is when you remove something negative, and serves as a reward to increase the likelihood of a behavior. Punishment is causing something bad, to decrease the likelihood of a behavior. I would expect the writers of House, since it is a medical show and all, to know the difference. But no, they fall into the trap of using a phrase that sounds like it's a fancy way of saying punishment. It's not. The only person allowed to make that mistake is Peter Venkman.
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