Episode Report Card Sara M: B- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Sex Kills, Again
By Sara M | Season 2 | Episode 16 | Aired on 04.03.2006
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Our Patient of the Week is an immunocompromised teenage girl whose supposedly overprotective mother won't let her outside, which makes a lot of sense once we find out that, the last time she did, the girl ate a cookie and had an allergic-reaction comedy of errors that ended with her getting a heart transplant. Thus, the immunocompromisedness. It doesn't stop the girl's boyfriend from paying her a visit, though, which leads to a mysterious allergic reaction no one can figure out the cause of. Then her heart starts to fail, and no one can figure that out, either. And then her body slowly becomes paralyzed and she's twenty minutes away from dying and still, no one can figure out what's wrong with her. The parents decide to cut their losses, run away from crazy useless Dr. House, and put their daughter under the care of the even more useless Cuddy and Wilson. Of course, House figures out that his patient is suffering from a now-standard case of Sex Punishmentitis as soon as he doesn't have the power to do anything about it and his credibility with the parents and Cuddy has been shot. That's why he has to trap her dying body in an elevator to be able to freely rifle around in her vagina, looking for the tick he's sure was introduced to it when her boyfriend shoved his pants up there while they were losing their virginity to each other in what must have also been a comedy of errors. Lo and behold, House finds it just in time to save her life. Meanwhile, Cameron sasses everyone, Foreman vainly tries to find someone who will listen to his story about a childhood illness, and Wilson pisses on House's couch. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
We open on a teenager desperate to see his girlfriend after a week-long absence from her. Her mother lets him in to see her daughter, but he has to wash his hands for forty-five seconds first. Either Mom's got some OCD-by-proxy going on, or the daughter has immunity-system problems. The guy, named Dan (which I only know because I looked it up afterward, as I do for every other name on this show that never gets mentioned nearly enough for me to take note of it during the show), totally screws up his sterilization efforts when he sneezes at the conclusion of his handwashing, but Mom lets him into her daughter's room anyway, although he has to wear one of those sterile masks that SARS made so popular. The girl, played by Michelle "Dawn" Trachtenberg, here named Melinda, complains to him about how evil her mother won't let her out of the house unless it's to go to the hospital, and Dan quickly grows tired of the whining and starts staring at her boobs. This makes her self-conscious, since she has an impossibly small scar there from a recent heart transplant surgery, but she orders him to take his mask off so that they can make out anyway. That's when he notices that she's got some funky-looking hives on her arm. He asks her about them, but she doesn't answer. This is because she's rude, although it may also have something to do with her throat closing up, leaving her unable to breathe. Melinda handles the situation a lot better than I would, immediately going for a syringe in her dresser drawer, but panic soon sets in and she flails around, leaving Dan to have to try to inject her. Unfortunately for Melinda's chances of breathing anytime soon, he doesn't know how to and doesn't have time to learn. Melinda starts looking really unattractive with the eyes rolling back in her head, and I think Michelle Trachtenberg would have a promising future in zombie movies if she so desired. Suddenly, Mother runs into the room and saves her daughter's life, taking the time to accuse Dan of causing her attack.
After the credits, we get to spend a morning in House's apartment. He limps over to his oven and takes out the bunch of dirty dishes he hid in there in order to get out of doing them, which is never really a good plan when the dishes are in YOUR apartment and they're YOUR dishes. Just use all your doctor bucks to buy a dishwasher, House. Wilson enters and informs House that Cuddy called about a girl in anaphylactic shock -- a call House would have preferred that no one had answered. He gets his revenge, though, when Wilson sees that the sink is full of dirty dishes just in time for it to be his turn to do them. If I were Wilson, I'd just stick them right back into the oven for House to do tomorrow. Or wait for that maid to do them. Anyway, House takes a nice big swig out of bottle that is clearly and anally-retentive labeled "property of James Wilson" on it as Wilson says he knows that House doesn't want Wilson living with him, but that the apartment he was going to move into mysteriously fell through and all the rest of New Jersey's apartment building apparently don't have any vacancies. I mean, you'd think that a Chief of Oncology wouldn't have much trouble getting a place, but then, it's not like Wilson really wants to leave House or that House really wants Wilson to leave him. And now we go back to the real purpose of the show (sorry, Wilson/House lovers! But it's not actually their mysterious homoerotic relationship after all), as House asks Wilson what's so special about the little girl with allergies, and Wilson says that the girl is immunocompromised and was in an allergen-free room when she had her attack.