“House” (8 p.m., Fox, TV-14) deviates from formula tonight and offers an entire episode as seen through the eyes of Dr. Lisa Cuddy (Lisa Edelstein), the hospital’s beleaguered dean of medicine.
Over the course of her day, Cuddy contends with a sick baby, a young lover, House’s impetuous immaturity, a turf war between surgeons, suspicious activity in the pharmacy and a battle with a major insurance provider.
This last tussle dominates the proceedings and allows at least this episode of “House” to comment on the fiasco of health care funding and delivery.
One patient demands to avoid vital surgery, not because he doesn’t need it but because it will drive him into bankruptcy. And when Cuddy threatens to turn her insurance battle into a public-relations war, an indifferent CEO dismisses her between bites of his Kobe steak and quips about his private jet. “I don’t care if you paint me as a rich (expletive). As long as I stay a rich (expletive).”
The episode’s strident arguments about the destructive place of profit in medicine take a back seat to its central message. In some ways, Cuddy is to Princeton Plainsboro Hospital what Liz Lemon (Tina Fey) is to TGS on “30 Rock” – the sane den mother who keeps the lunatics in check. Those two shows, and to some extent “The Good Wife,” portray work and life as a constant struggle between responsible women and the overgrown and impulsive babies they must forever nurture and protect from their darker impulses.