In this week's episode of House M.D., the young geek/hip Dr. Kutner is trying to reach out to the older Dr. Taub. "Come on, man, I'm just trying to help," he says. "We're friends."

At which point Taub shoot him a look and says, "There were 400 Japanese teenagers you were playing Halo with last night that you're better friends with. Your avatar should ask their avatars how they're doing."

Okay, let's take this apart a bit. Although Halo is a mostly Western game, I suspect 400 players is lowballing the series' popularity in Japan. However, no one -- at least certainly not a working doctor -- is going to play with 400 people in one night. What's more, you don't have avatars in Halo. And even if you did, I don't think I've ever experienced idle chit-chat like "How are you doing?" in a typical Halo game. The game to reference if you want to riff on personal online connections is World of Warcraft.

However, this was an excellent instance of gamespotting because the point is clearly that Dr. Taub has no idea how to engage Dr. Kutner. So he fumbles with a reference he doesn't understand. Do the writers of House know how people talk about Halo? It doesn't matter. They know how a middle-aged physician with a lot on his mind would throw out a videogaming reference.

(Thanks Felipe!)