My story: you don’t have to have the rash to have Lyme disease, but if you *do* have the rash you almost certainly have it. I went hiking last Sunday; felt not very good the days afterwards but thought I had just overdone it. On Thursday I noticed what I thought was an unusual mosquito bite; on Saturday morning I had the idea – thanks to this episode! – to take a look at Lyme rash photos on the internet. Had to spend all of Saturday afternoon at an emergency room but am now on antibiotics. So, despite its flaws, am grateful for the episode because it helped me catch this relatively early!

the series started lacking emotional deepness… i remember a whole lot of episodes on season 2 and 3 had me about to cry my whole eyes out… because the themes had so much meaning, you could relat to the drama…. issues like paternity, emotional bonds between lovers, even family dealings that were portrayed so realisticly that one could feel with the characters

don’t know if fox decided to switch the scope because the actual scheme draws more views to the show, but i think it was a loss, i expect these kind of peisodes to come back

Remember the bit about the Documentary paying for the surgery? Maybe they just couldn’t AFFORD the surgery previously.

I agree with Deborah, and that’s the reason why I’m so down about this season. There’s just too much stuff going on, it’s like the writers used a shotgun across a board of ideas; whatever had buckshot in it, was in the episode. It’s like the last episode of season 2 and the beginning of season 3 – House gets shot but, woops, the guy got away before anyone could stop him and nobody even cares to look for him at all. It’s just bad writing, the episodes themselves were fine on their own (hell – I LOVED the nod to Holmes with naming the character Moriarty and all, but I doubt they’ll have him back on in a future episode,) maybe even great (as it seem the last and beginning season show always are.)

And what ever happened to showing House watching his soaps – I always found those amuseing, because of the fact that House makes oh-so coy remarks on the diagnoses that they come up with.

Don’t get me wrong though, I’m still a rabid fan of this show, but the writing is just getting worse and worse – they’re taking each season and cutting it into two seperate parts (to which the first half just goes out the window in the second half) and it seems like the second halves are the worset.

As far as picking on the little medical mistakes and why it bugs me – it just does, being that I work in the field (and that it’s been slammed into my head so many times throughout my schooling.) I hate to do this, but I see no other choice – look at the show ER, they hire in REAL doctors to check the writing of each episode to make sure that what’s happing in the show, is mostly correct (as far as medicine goes and so forth.) I’m not saying that they’re 100% accurate or anything as far as that goes; just that I think that the production staff of House should do something like that. I say that, because either the writers are just dartboarding their episodes, or googling them (and not reading more than the first page that pops up.)

Ok, sorry for the rant – just had to get that off my chest.