Tuesday Night TV

April's a television lull... Gilmore Girls, the Law & Orders, and Veronica Mars are all off, so it's just House and The Shield tonight. Spoilers for last night's episodes past the jump:

House: Two cases running in parallel this week: Old lady gone wild is about to get down to business with a hooker when she passes out, and House and Cuddy try to stop a quickly spreading illness on a plane.

On the flight, people are puking all over the place. I've seen Airplane! about a thousand times, so my immediate thought is that it's the fish, and they'd better find someone who knows how to fly a plane. And look out, House agrees with me! Sadly, the pilots had the chicken or something, so House and Cuddy don't get to play Striker and Elaine (yes, I'm going to keep making Airplane! jokes). But the fish theory goes out the window pretty quickly, and they're leaning towards meningococcus, which is bad news.

Back at the hospital (it's a big building with patients, but that's not important right now), with House gone it's up to Wilson to treat our crazy old lady (who may or may not speak jive). The hooker brought her in, and since they've been telling everyone they're friends, our prostitute keeps getting guilted into hanging around. We get our usual dose of only partially intelligible medical jargon, and eventually just as about they're about to cut into the old lady's brain, they discover that her neighbor's house was being fumigated, and there was a vent pumping poison into her home.

On the plane (a big pretty white plane with red stripes, curtains in the windows and wheels and it just looks like a big Tylenol), House figures out that everyone conversion sydrome, a totally fun non-disease, except for the original patient, who's really sick. House's theory is that he's a drug mule with a burst condom full of heroin inside him. Since they flew out of Singapore, that would make this guy pretty stupid, as they have especially harsh drug laws there, with possession of more than a half ounce of heroin leading to mandatory capital punishment. Also, I think House is secretly upset that all that good smack is being wasted on this guy's instestines. But just as he's about to cut in to search for the drug-filled condom, House picks up on another symptom and determines that he has the bends.

And we wrap things up with House asking the hot stewardess if she's "handicap accessible," Wilson asking out the prostitute who he doesn't know is a prostitute, and Cameron dumping Chase because he likes her too much.

Cool episode. I liked the two cases running side by side, House was amusing as ever, and we're (hopefully) getting to the end of the Chase/Cameron relationship drama while possibly starting up a much cooler one between Wilson and a "lady of the night."

The Shield: All sorts of stuff going on in the opening few minutes. The evidence Kavanaugh plants gets them a warrant for Vic's arrest, and Vic finds out that Guardo's hiding in Mexico. Claudette's been captain for about ten minutes, but according to Acevedo she's getting screwed by neighboring districts. Plus, a Mexican jail is releasing tons of prisoners who are likely headed to Farmington.

Dutch and Kavanaugh, still waiting for Vic, interrogate Vendrell. He helps plant the idea in Dutch's head that Vic's being framed. Dutch namedrops Occam's Razor and Chatton's Anti-Razor (I'm on fire with the informative wikipedia links tonight) to the lovely Officer Tina, and begins to investigate conspiracy theories. But of course Kavanaugh gets wind of it and tries to get Dutch off the case. Dutch and Claudette, though, are starting to piece together what Kavanaugh's up to. They bring Emolia into interrogation without Kavanaugh present, and break her in a hurry, forcing Kavanaugh to confess. He tried playing Vic's game, but he obviously isn't very good at it.

After Vic spends the whole episode hiding from cops and on a wild goose chase to do a favor that'll get him Guardo, he decides to just abduct his girlfriend and get Guardo to come to LA to pay a ransom. Vic's hard core quest for revenge has Vendrell feeling even guiltier, since he knows they're chasing down an innocent (in this case) guy, and pursuing him so strongly that they're putting themselves at risk.

Random other happenings: Danny passed the Sergeant's exam, but will have to sit on a waiting list for an open position if she doesn't come back from maternity leave right away... and does Kenny Johnson get paid every time he appears as Lem in the previouslies? Cause I suspect that he'll be in them all season long.

Now that I'm pretty sure the Kavanaugh storyline's done, I think we'll get a little more focus the nasty murder that popped up last week and was only mentioned in passing tonight. But for now, Vic's only concern is finding Guardo. "Every second he gets to breathe and Lem doesn't is unacceptable." Not as good an episode as last week, but still pretty intense.