"Painless" was sure a lackluster way to welcome House back onto our television screens. There were a few good character moments, but very few great lines and little in the way of exciting plot moments.

Perhaps it has to do with my personal experiences, but my favorite moments of "Painless" were those involving Cuddy, the baby, and the home visit. I loved her dragging the team into the nursery because she was pissed at House. Not to mention her sharp criticism of the team for letting the patient of the week attempt suicide again, which was the only sanity on that issue in the entire episode.

(I agree with Cuddy. What part of "suicide watch" did the staff of Princeton-Plainsboro Hospital miss?)

In any case, I really enjoyed the subplot of Cuddy and her home visit. I can just imagine her terror that they might take the baby away, after everything she's been through. (I vividly remember my fear after my daughter was born that someone would come and take her away. It must be significantly worse for a foster mother.)

I thought Wilson's lecture to Cuddy at the end was spot-on. It's absolutely true that most men in her situation would have a dozen people helping, but it's also typical for a woman in our society to try to do all those things alone. That was easily the most realistic thing in the episode! And Cuddy's "I passed by their meager standard. I failed by mine." was perfect. I'm just glad Wilson was there to snap her out of it. (Although it might have been interesting to see House's response...)

Having said that...that was pretty much the only thing I really enjoyed in "Painless." Usually House episodes hang together fairly well, with the subplots relating back to the PotW, but the connection between the Cuddy, Foreman/Thirteen, House plumbing, and PotW plots...well, it's tenuous enough that I can't really articulate it.

I suppose the writers were going for something about how we don't see what's hurting us? Or, um, maybe just something meta about pain? I'm honestly not sure.

The House plumbing subplot didn't do much for me, although I really liked the plumber and the way he acted with House. I'd like to see him again.

When it came to the PotW, House's reactions were really the best part of the entire plot, which was otherwise fairly forgettable. I liked when the PotW asked House to let him die and House just said "No" and left the room. Contrast that with his reaction when the wife tearfully asks him to help her husband get home. No mocking, no jests, just simple agreement. House looked so defeated at that moment, which was rather telling.

Moving back to subplots...so, was Taub the guy who tried to kill himself or not? He said no, but then he and Kutner exchanged this significant look, as if there was something I should have understood.

And the whole Foreman/Thirteen storyline did actually tie back to the main plot (having something to live for, etc. and so on) but somehow it annoyed me more here than it did previously. I couldn't decide who was acting more like a jerk--Foreman, Thirteen, or House--so I just rolled my eyes and left it at that.

I also wasn't that impressed by the dramatic "OMG, Thirteen isn't getting the experimental treatment" revelation at the end. So? If it's proven that the treatment can reverse the effects of Huntington's (as Janice apparently shows) then Thirteen can just get that treatment when the trial is over. And if she's getting better due to the placebo effect...so what? The placebo effect can be very powerful and getting better is getting better, no matter how it happens.

But that brings me to some of the dreadful medicine of "Painless." I know I usually stick to critiquing the characterization, but there were a few medical aspects of this show that were significantly worse than usual. In fact, I strongly suspect their medical advisors had to have a few drinks before they could let these things go through for plot purposes.

Less important were the actions of the wife in the teaser, which I can dismiss as the woman being distraught. But really, starting CPR without checking her husband's ABCs (airway, breathing, circulation) is completely useless. And once again I'll note that you don't bring someone back with CPR, you just keep them alive! If he'd just stopped breathing and she'd done rescue breathing, that might have helped.

However, of significantly more importance was the absolute incompetence of the nurse (and apparently the doctor who designed the clinical study) in the final Foreman scene. Any study designer who made it that easy to tell the study medication from the control...has no business designing clinical studies. And if the nurse knows how to tell them apart (which she shouldn't) she sure as hell shouldn't be telling Foreman about it!

This issue has nothing to do with whether or not he knows the patient. The entire point of blinding a study is that the patients and doctors shouldn't know who is getting the new treatment, in order to isolate how much of any changes in the patient is the placebo effect! Bad writing. Bad bad writing.

A minor point in that same scene was the nurse's use of the word "placebo". With a well-known disease like Huntington's, they're really using an actual placebo? If there is a standard treatment, the usual protocol as I understand it would be to compare the new treatment to the old treatment. I believe the word they wanted was "control."

Now, to go from the heavy to the very lighthearted...let me note one more thing I enjoyed about this episode: House in a bathtub. I can't entirely condemn any episode that gives us naked House not once, but twice. But that's pretty much all "Painless" had going for it. Let's hope next week is a little more substantial.