<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"This Week... A marriage counsellor (Jake Weber) collapses during a speaking engagement, but the team soon begin to notice changes in his behaviour that conflict with his motivational message. Meanwhile, House (Hugh Laurie) and his Ukrainian &amp;quot;wife&amp;quot; Dominika (Karolina Wydra) make a deal to convince Immigration that they are a happily married couple. House Viewing... Following a terrific couple of episodes - the double whammy of &amp;#039;Nobody&amp;#039;s Fault&amp;#039; and &amp;#039;Chase&amp;#039; - it was perhaps inevitable that &amp;#039;Man of the House&amp;#039; would be something of a comedown. This is definitely a case of &amp;#039;back to formula&amp;#039; for TV&amp;#039;s medical maverick... The &amp;#039;patient of the week&amp;#039; storyline doesn&amp;#039;t quite gel this week. After suffering an assault, which included a few swift kicks to the groin, motivational speaker Joe (Weber) suffers from masculinity issues, or - as House succinctly puts it - his &amp;quot;testosterone level is just below Bieber&amp;quot;. This story arc has two major issues. For one, it seems to suggest that a man can only empathise with women if he&amp;#039;s suffering from a medical condition. It&amp;#039;s the kind of sweeping statement that we&amp;#039;d expect the character of House to make, but the episode ultimately confirms this to be true in Joe&amp;#039;s case.  Secondly, Joe&amp;#039;s transformation is far too extreme. As soon as he&amp;#039;s dosed with more testosterone, he becomes a raging, masculine beast, ogling his wife&amp;#039;s ass and shouting down every one of her opinions. And when we get a glimpse of the pre-assault Joe in one of his motivational videos, he&amp;#039;s basically Wall Street&amp;#039;s Gordon Gecko, complete with slicked hair and power suit. The difference is so over the top that it verges on the comic. A strong guest cast - the solid Weber and Heroes actress Rena Sofer - do their best with under-written roles, but they can&amp;#039;t quite salvage this week&amp;#039;s medical mystery. &amp;#039;Man of the House&amp;#039; also reintroduces House&amp;#039;s green card wife Dominika. The marriage storyline that introduced the character was one of the low-points of season seven, so bringing her back seems ill-advised.  Sure enough, it leads to little more than a series of strained &amp;#039;comedy&amp;#039; sequences - the low point being a photoshoot, complete with green screen, to fake honeymoon pictures in House&amp;#039;s meeting room. I mean, really?!  A few moments raise a smile - Wilson (Robert Sean Leonard) posing as House&amp;#039;s stuffy English neighbour is good fun - but, for the most part, Dominika&amp;#039;s return is an unwelcome development. And it looks like she&amp;#039;s sticking around... The episode&amp;#039;s final thread concerns House&amp;#039;s hunt for a new team leader - someone to serve as his second-in-command. For once, it&amp;#039;s Taub (Peter Jacobson) that won this writer over as he urges his competitive colleagues not to play House&amp;#039;s games, calling them &amp;quot;lemmings marching off the cliff of competitive humiliation&amp;quot;... It&amp;#039;s particularly unlikely for Chase (Jesse Spencer) to suddenly be vying for the position - have the writers forgotten that, just last episode, he was on the verge of quitting House&amp;#039;s team forever? If it seems like we&amp;#039;re being unfairly harsh on &amp;#039;Man of the House&amp;#039;, that&amp;#039;s only because it comes as such a letdown after what came before. It&amp;#039;s not terrible, but given the unusually strong episodes that preceded it, it can only be considered a disappointment. Let us know what you thought of this week&amp;#039;s House below! "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.digitalspy.com/tv/house/review/a366980/house-man-of-the-house-recap/>