TV Show: House
Company: FOX
Released: October 12, 2009
Nominations: NA
Location: Season 6 Ep. 4
Target Audience: High School +
Cultural Impact: Answers the question of reality ... Karma is real.
Scene: 31:45-34:00, 37:15-38:07 and 39:57-40:21
In this season of House, Dr. House is back from the psych ward! Foreman, however, has House's job until he can get his license back. In the mean time, House is "sitting" in on cases giving his “two cents”. In one of the new episodes, “Instant Karma,” a very wealthy businessman has an ill son. For years private doctors have tried to figure out why the boy’s health was so poor. Finally, the father wises up and goes to House.
At first, the team would not take him. Then House and the team become interested in the young boys case. After the typical guess and fail, House figures out what the boy has. House diagnoses the boy with Dego’s disease, a rare disease that causes micro blood vessels in the brain, skin, and GI track to break down. Sadly, there is no cure.
As you can tell by the name of the episode, Karma has a major influence. The businessman believes that his successes in life are the root cause of his son’s health. He opts to forfeit everything that he has in hopes of leveling out the universal balancing scale. When the camera cuts into the room with the lawyers begging him not to sign the final papers because he will lose everything; House cut’s in to enlighten them, “That’s the point! The Billionaire thinks that the gods will treat him better if he’s broke.” Roy, the billionaire father, replies, “There has to be some kind of balance. You can’t have all the good fortune in just one area of your life. It’s not how the world’s supposed to work.” When Foreman tells the man that his son isn’t dying from bad Karma, but of an incurable disease, Roy replies by saying that his son isn’t dying and he’s not going to allow it to happen. Shortly after he signs the papers, his son flat lines.
While Wilson confronts House about trying to keep 13 around, House has an epiphany and figures out that it’s not Dego’s disease. The team starts the boy on a new treatment, and the boy is back to his old self!
In this episode it’s a lot easier to see the worldview that is being promoted. Spiritualism is one of the fastest growing belief systems worldwide. It is the belief that the spiritual realm is all that exist and everything else is an illusion. But my questions are: Who is in control of the scale? Why is the scale unbalanced? What makes the scale balanced? Why does the scale have to balance? Who decides when the scale is balanced again? What is the scale? What is good? What is evil?
Can Karma and Spiritualism answer these questions? Can this belief system give satisfactory answers to the ultimate questions of good, evil, and purpose? Instead of relying on one aspect of reality to answer these questions, could we look to a mixture of both the natural and spiritual reality to give us answers?
By: Jared1
Notes
- Jared is currently a student at the Focus Leadership Institute (FLI) and will be going back to finish up his degree at College of the Ozarks in Point Lookout, MO. Every semester, several FLI students are able to be interns with AXiS and research for us as well as travel around the country ministering to students.
Here are the clips mentioned above. *Warning* There is mild abusive language in the clips *Warning*
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