For months I've slowly been working through seasons of medical drama House, a few eps per week, and am currently well into season 6. The producers ran out of ideas a long way back and the writing increasingly dabbles with increasingly misanthropic behaviour by Greg House, that are supposed to be amusing but are quite horrible, alongisde the weary formula of the differential struggle to a genius diagnosis. But I keep watching. As I sometimes falter on abandoning the show there usually comes along an episode that delivers a moment of drama that haunts one for days afterwards.
The Down Low: Season 6, Episode 11
The entire plot is of little consequence. The guest appearance patient is by actor Ethan Embry, as an undercover cop admitted after fainting, and unexpectedly ends with one of the rare failure to save a life denouements. The last minutes show his path to death and Embry gives a highly convincing intensity to a performance that has been flat to this point; through a face expressing initial doubt, to the pleading eye to eye contact with his wife, to the suffering of choking on blood to finally the stillness in the minutes after life has gone, all are fully believable. It is a lesson in what it might be like to die.
Strangely a clever emotional contrast follows with the very final short scene which is of House and his doctor pal oncologist James enjoying their evening, sat watching TV together, bantering as they usually do.
