Spoilers for “Alone” below.

Things that happened

House is still alll alone, having lost Chase, Foreman and Cameron in last season’s finale four months ago. He is, of course, pretending to be totally unaffected by this turn of events, because he’s House and, House doesn’t care about anything. At least not initially, anyway. He usually ends up caring by the end.

Without his team, House has pretty much given up on the whole diagnostic medicine thing. We open with him jamming on his electric guitar, and we’re led to believe that that is pretty much all he’s done for at least the last few months. He has no interest in replacing the dearly departed, so he’s just rolling on by himself.

Cuddy and Wilson both really believe that House needs a team to function well, however, and so they both hatch somewhat nefarious schemes designed to get him to start interviewing, and eventually hiring, new applicants.

Cuddy’s scheme is the most straightforward, and leads us right into our medical mystery of the week. After a woman is crushed in a collapsing building and then develops a mysterious fever, Cuddy enlists House to figure out what’s ailing her — aside from the building. She bets him that he can’t diagnose the crushed girl without his team which, of course, motivates House to try to do exactly that. If he can’t do it soon, they agree, he’ll start looking for a team.

Wilson’s scheme is a little more inspired, and ultimately hilarious, as he kidnaps House’s guitar and holds it for ransom. This leads to a procession of pasted-together ransom notes and muffled phone calls. He tells House he won’t get the guitar back until he starts interviewing applicants.

Neither plan meets with a great deal of success.

With the crushed girl, House keeps diagnosing her only to discover another, separate, ailment. At first he’s convinced she’s taking anti-depressants and the medication is conflicting with something she was given in the ER, so he treats her for that. Then she develops symptoms of alcoholism, with the DTs and everything, so House treats her for that. Then she develops bleeding problems which end up being due to her having an abortion recently and being on the pill. So House treats her for that.

All the while, her devoted boyfriend, who had no idea his wife was depressed, alcoholic and abortion-having, looks meek and occasionally offers weak protest to House’s diagnoses.

Rest easy, though, because there’s a happy ending to this one. A happy, depressing, soul-crushing ending. See, the woman House and the staff at Princeton Plainsboro thought they were treating turns out to be some other woman completely. Another woman who was crushed in the building collapsed! And she was an abortion-getting, alcoholic, depressed woman! So House’s diagnoses were all bang on, despite all the skepticism.

Thus, everybody wins. Except for the boyfriend, whose real girlfriend was actually killed in the building collapse. And the family of the girl who was a depressed alcoholic and, also, crushed by a building. And the two crushed women themselves, one of which is dead, and the other of which has several problems caused by anti-depressants, birth control and alcohol withdrawal — and, oh yes, a building falling on her — but about whom we never hear anything again.

Wilson’s scheme also goes off the rails when, in a masterful show of taking things to the next level, House gets revenge on his whiny oncologist friend by kidnapping one of his cancer patients. Well, he doesn’t so much kidnap him as much as he does move him to another floor. But still, in order to ensure his patient’s safety, Wilson is forced to give up, and House gets his guitar back.

And, also, somewhere in there, House learned that maybe he actually does need a team. The episode ends with him hiring over 30 candidates on a temporary basis. The idea is that they’ll all work for him, and then he’ll whittle them down to the ones he wants to keep. I guess that’s one way of doing it.

Things that were good

• It’s House! House is back! That’s good!
• The House/Wilson story was very funny, particularly Wilson’s total ineptitude when it comes to being evil. It wrapped up nicely, too. That old asian man with cancer was particularly hilarious.
• I didn’t mention it in my recap above, but the few scenes where House was using the hospital janitor to sub for the doctors on his team were inspired. I can’t be sure, but I am pretty sure that janitor was at least as talented as Chase was.
• And, also, the janitor suggested Lupus. Which has to be a wink-wink reference to this, doesn’t it? That’s pretty cool.
• The building premise, where House wages a reality-style campaign to find his new team, is an awesome one. I’m cautiously optimistic, even if this show has a tendency to build to great premises and then kill the hell out of them.

Things that were bad

• The need to one-up themselves with each successive season opener is starting to weigh on the show. I mean, really, that was a rather convoluted medical mystery, wasn’t it? And the wole “it wasn’t even her!” resolution left a lot to be desired. It’s hard to feel any sort of sympathy for a patient who never speaks and her family who is, in reality, not even her family.
• No Chase, Foreman and Cameron at all? Come on. At least give us some hint of what they’re up to.

Worth Watching If…

All told, this wasn’t a bad season opener for House. The worst I can say about it is that, as House is a procedural, there’s this sense that all that’s different about the show now will be reverted back to the status quo within the next few episodes. I kind of like the idea of the show evolving — though, sure, hopefully still including Chase, Cameron and Foreman — but I can’t say I’m hopeful that it will. Last season, after all, started out with House jogging, only to bring the cane back by sweeps.

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