I was under the impression that House was taking Vicodin for his pain, yes, but also whenever he was bored and generally way more often than he actually needed it for pain management. Once he got over withdrawal, Advil was for the actual pain and diagnostic puzzles were for the psychological dependence. But I am reading between the lines an awful lot for that interpretation.

Oh, and the gall of Cameron, telling House he's an unredeemable sinner who has corrupted her husband past the point of any hope of forgiveness and then holding out her hand for a goodbye handshake. Being all sanctimonious is who she is, but holding out her hand like that really pissed me off.

Yeah, that makes, like, narrative-type sense. but it seemed like it makes the kind of medical sense that's not, even outside the realm of "Polite Dissent" But maybe not.

I'm using "ketamine rewired his neurons" to la-la-la my way past "Advil works even better than Vicodin OMG!"

Though I have to admit, Vicodin does nothing but give me a headache. Advil actually DOES work better for me than narcotics. I, however, have not had a large chunk of my thigh muscle DIE and be removed, so - yeah. I dunno. Basically just don't want HL giving himself an real limp from faking it too well.

It works in my head, but I am way more familiar with the addiction side of House's drug use than the pain management side - that there was a mix is what made it interesting, though, and that it's ambiguous exactly how much of either makes up the total package.

Re: Criminal Minds. CBS is supposed to be thinking about a CM spinoff. I just figured they were setting Morgan up to lead the new crew.

I'm with Hil on the 'WTF? Advil?' thing. Although I know it works for some people with chronic pain, House was having to use apparently massive doses of Vicodin, and there were other signs that he was in very significant levels of pain. I can't see Advil doing very much at that level. The pandering to the anti-painkiller-addition lobby makes me angry. It's not good disability rights and its not respectful to people in pain. As much as that doesn't have to be the show's priority, medical fiction should surely not be totally irresponsible about this.

(I'm probably very biased and expecting too much from a work of popular fiction here. But it's irritating. Some of us have quite enough increased pain to deal with, what with all the idiot doctors who swallow propaganda and panic unnecessarily about painkiller addiction. Which is actually very rare among people with chronic pain.)

Thirteen makes Cameron look like Sarah Bernhardt.

I disagree. She's the anti-Cameron. Plus, hot. She can stay.

Well, having said that, everything I can find indicates they'd use a whole new team for the spinoff, so I may be entirely off base.

The last press I saw said that it would be like the CSI spinoffs in that they didn't spin off any of the cast. I hope that's how they go. A Garcia/Morgan rift wouldn't make me a happy puppy. AJ Cook and Thomas Gibson seem a bit defensive.

medical fiction should surely not be totally irresponsible about this

But hasn't House been totally irresponsible about a fair amount of other stuff? I know that disability is an important topic for you, but is House much worse than any other genre show in misrepresenting its actual science? It's not like Dr. House even gives doctors a good name, much less disabled people, or people in chronic pain.

And I speak as someone with a chronic pain problem, but who got turned off House partially because of the idea that it's acceptable for it and genius to make someone a prick. Someone who needs to deal with people as an integral part of their job to boot.

I love Hugh Laurie, but not enough to make it past the unpleasantness.