My Thoughts - House M.D.: Poison (2005)

Synopsis: When a high school student, Matt (John Patrick Amedori), collapses during an exam House's (Hugh Laurie) team eventually suspects he has been poisoned, likely from a pesticide used while tending to his garden. However, that theory is thrown for a loop when another student (Ulysses Lee) comes into the emergency room with similar symptoms and seems to have nothing in common with the first patient. Complicating things is Matt's overprotective mother (Roxanne Hart), who refuses to let House's staff treat her son.

My Thoughts:

Matt's mother is portrayed as being unreasonable, but I kind of agreed with her. It wasn't as though she was simply refusing a treatment the doctors knew would cure her son. They nearly killed him, made a second wrong diagnosis that could have also resulted in him being killed and weren't 100 percent sure about the last treatment. Waiting for a second opinion from the CDC didn't seem like such a bad idea.

In fact, I'm kind of upset she wasn't more upset at the end. Yeah, they did eventually save her son's life but, again, only after nearly killing him twice. Not to mention, they lied to her about the CDC to get her to agree to the treatment, something that would have made me mad. I think a malpractice suit is still in order.

Out of curiosity, are the patients (or their insurance companies) billed for the wrong treatments? I think I'd be questioning anything on the bill that didn't cure what I came in for. And no, I don't count wrong treatments as part of the diagnosis part of things. That's not diagnosing, it's guessing.

On that note, what kind of damage did those wrong treatments cause? Drugs have side effects, some of them harsh. Pumping a bunch of drugs into a patient that doesn't have the disease they are intended to treat doesn't sound like something that wouldn't cause some sort of permanent damage.  It really makes you wonder how House keeps his license or the hospital can afford the insurance premiums.

The side story about Foreman (Omar Epps) being compared to House was more interesting than I expected. I feel like this might have been the episode that led to that character trying to be more of his own person, setting up future conflicts.

Final Opinion: I liked the mystery surrounding the boys' illness and how they both ended up getting poisoned despite having almost nothing in common with each other. However, I wasn't a fan of House nearly killing his patient then making it seem like the mom was the one being unreasonable.

My Grade: B