Episode Report Card Sara M: B | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT It's All In Your Head
By Sara M | Season 6 | Episode 5 | Aired on 10.19.2009
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.A nearly-40-year-old man named Donny assumes he's going to die at age 40 from a heart problem because that's what killed his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather at that age. Cameron convinces the others to agree to try to find out what's wrong with him before it's too late, only for them to conclude that he's fine and those other deaths were just coincidences. They send Donny home only for him to collapse and die hours later. Whoops! His body goes back to PPTH for Foreman and House to autopsy, only for Donny to come back to life on the table while Foreman is in mid-saw. Whoops again! It turns out that Donny wasn't dead after all -- his heart rate and blood pressure were just so low that it really seemed like it. He's re-admitted to PPTH and House and the Cottages take his case seriously, especially after his tooth is in such pain that he rips it out of his mouth and he loses control of his bowels. House finally figures out that the problem isn't Donny's heart, but his brain -- namely, an aneurysm (apparently those are hereditary?) that grew slowly over time until age 40, when it was big enough that it pressed against the part of the brain that controlled heart function. The aneurysm is removed and Donny will be fine.
Meanwhile, Chase continues to have trouble dealing with that whole murder thing, and a trip to the confessional booth doesn't help matters, thanks to a priest's refusal to absolve him. House has his own past misdeeds to confront when he thinks he's hearing things while sleeping in what used to be CTB and Wilson's bedroom (where Wilson has so sensitively left a hundred pictures of CTB on the walls for House to be haunted by), but it turns out to be Wilson talking to CTB about his day. But the really boring stuff, like pea soup, daily exercise routines, and how House is doing. Good thing she's too dead to hear any of it.
Discuss this episode in our forums, then see vlogger Sean Crespo's idea for a House prequel in No Prior Knowledge.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Guys, it's official: I liked House's hair better when it was longer. Okay, onto the show. Police officers attempt to chase down a criminal who is wise to the ways of parkour. Oh, House, no. The Office just made fun of how passé parkour is like four weeks ago. This is embarrassing! Also, show me one criminal in America (or even Europe) who actually uses parkour to escape the police. Anyway, the guy runs through various warehouses and actually seems to make his getaway more difficult than it needs to be by jumping across stacks of pallets rather than just running on the ground. Finally, he appears to be at a dead end and the cops draw their guns. And then they just watch him slide through a partially-open window. Shoot him, idiots. Anyway, the guy keeps running and the cops keep chasing him and this is just embarrassing for the cops. It's one guy being chased by like thirty cops through two warehouses. Once again he appears to be surrounded and once again, he climbs away to escape as the cops watch him with their guns drawn. In the end, the criminal is on one roof and the rebel bad-ass cop is on the other (we know he's the rebel bad-ass because he's wearing a leather jacket and street clothes while the others are wearing suits or uniforms). Unfortunately, his name is Donny, which is not very bad-ass at all. While the perp watches in disbelief and his partner yells for him to stop, Donny gets a running start and tries to jump to the other building. He doesn't make it. Not even close. He lands on his back about two stories below where he started.
And yet, he lives! But with two broken bones, a collapsed lung, and a severe concussion. And he's under Cameron's care in the ER even though I thought she worked for Foreman now. Also, way to not cut off Donny's clothes there, EMTs and ER staff. He has a broken leg and his pants are almost entirely intact. Maybe PPTH ran out of hospital gowns? Donny's partner, who is nursing some kind of ankle injury due to his inability to climb stairs, tells Cameron that Donny thinks he's going to die soon, hence the life-threatening stunts. Donny explains that his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather all dropped dead from heart problems just after turning forty, and he's turning forty in a week. But all the doctors he's seen about it say his heart is fine. He just thinks that means they can't find whatever is waiting to kill him. Cameron says she knows a doctor who can.
Wilson walks into his living room in the morning to find his roommate fiddling around under the covers. Horrified, Wilson promises to come back in ten minutes when House has finished jacking off on Wilson's couch. House claims he's just picking lint out of his belly-button. Wilson doesn't care -- just the idea of walking in on House pleasing himself is enough to make him realize that House needs his own bedroom. Fortunately, the apartment has a spare room that Wilson was using as a study. Unfortunately, said room used to be Wilson and CTB's bedroom, which House says is a "shrine" to his dead girlfriend. And rightly so, I'd say, since I'm pretty sure that Wilson is living in CTB's old apartment because of squatter's rights. While Wilson is clearly thinking about CTB, House proudly admits that he really was jacking off under the covers, just to put that image in Wilson's head alongside the dead ex-girlfriend. Wilson says the room is House's and runs away.