I love House, and have recently started watching it on DVD from the beginning of the series, as I am not predisposed to scheduling my day around television schedules. This being so, I have the advantage of being able to compare the most recent season with earlier seasons without benefit of easing gradually into them, which would make comparisons a little fuzzier. And I have to say, there is a huge difference between this episode and episodes from seasons one and two, which I just finished watching. It's not a good difference. I thought at first that it was just the new cast members, but it became clear by the end of the program that House himself has lost some of his edge. The banter aimed at witty, but missed. The pace was too slow, and the entire episode gave me the overall impression that the show had lost more than a few IQ points. Hopefully the sub-par writing is due simply the recent writer's strike and is a temporary problem. But I fear that the director is also part of the problem. And if it's also the cast, I'm afraid I'll probably just have to stop watching altogether.