By Sara M
Meat Loaf plays a guy with cancer-related congestive heart failure who's on his deathbed when his dutiful wife has breathing problems. Meat Loaf makes enough of a recovery to call for help, and she goes to PPTH. When she refuses to stay so she can go home to her dying husband, they bring him in, too. Then Kumar is late for work and Foreman and Hadley go looking for him at his apartment and find him dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. We immediately stop caring about the Patient of the Week and the rest of the episode is shot in blue. Since you probably weren't paying any attention to the POTW storyline, here's what you missed: Meat Loaf and his wife battle it out over who gets to die in order to save the other one until it turns out that both of them have curable illnesses -- Meat Loaf's lung cancer heart failure is actually just a fungal infection, while the wife has visceral leishmaniasis thanks to a secret trip to Rio with another man she took because she was sick of waiting for her husband to take her there. While she's able to get a transplant liver in time, the diagnosis came too late and she isn't responding to the medication. Meat Loaf the crappy yet faithful husband lives, while his cheating yet loving wife dies.
House spends most of the episode trying to figure out what happened to Kumar, searching his apartment for signs of depression and finding nothing. After accusing Kumar's foster parents of causing his death by not letting him mourn his other parents properly, he decides that Kumar was murdered by the same man who murdered his biological parents. But when that guy ends up having died in jail two months ago, he's left with a suicide. While the rest of the PPTH staff (sans Taub, who spends the entire episode avoiding feeling sad about Kumar, only to finally break down at the end) attend Kumar's funeral, House goes back to Kumar's apartment and finds one candid photograph of Kumar looking less than happy. And that's the only sign he or any of us will probably get.
I'd like to open this recap by giving the people at Fox publicity a special shout-out. Not only were they (and not, I'm going to assume, the writers of House) responsible for all the tacky Kumar in memoriam sites and Facebook pages, but their desperate need to cash in on a character's death also affected me personally when I sat down to check my email before watching this episode and found an email sent at 7:29 pm with the subject line: "House Memorial Widget - Lawrence Kutner *spoiler alert*." Gee, thanks for the spoiler alert AFTER THE SPOILER IN THE IMPOSSIBLE-NOT-TO-SEE SUBJECT LINE, you fucking morons! My viewing experience of this episode is now changed, and for what? A memorial widget? I don't even know what that is, but I'm sure it sucks.
Anyway. We open in a living room that appears to be full of dust and free of seemingly necessary items like lamps. A small group has gathered around a hospital bed with a dying man in it, and that man is played by Meat Loaf. Apparently all the electricity in the house is required for his hospital equipment and none can be spared for lighting. But you'd really think the loved ones would want to see Meat Loaf's face before he kicks it. They leave, and Meat Loaf tells the nurse that he wants to be alone with his wife, who is played by the same woman who played Yvette in Clue, not like she's at all recognizable these days. Meat Loaf weakly cries that he was a selfish husband and never got the chance to take her to Rio. At this point, Yvette doesn't seem to mind that so much, and says she loves Meat and always has. Meat's eyeballs roll back in his head, and he says he's "ready." Yvette's sobs over her Poor Dead Husband turn into gasps for air. She clutches her throat, and the Magic Schoolbus Cam makes a welcome return to show us that her airway has closed up. I think we've seen that graphic before. Meat resurrects himself enough to sit up in bed and call for help. I bet he wishes he hadn't sent the nurse out of the room now. Also, way to steal Meat's deathbed thunder, Yvette.
It would appear that the greater Princeton-Plainsboro area is having some kind of electricity problem, as the lights are off in House's meeting room when he arrives at work and gets the file on Yvette from Taub. House immediately diagnoses Yvette with being fat and developing sleep apnea that caused her airway closure and asks where Kumar and Hadley are. Taub quickly says Hadley is with the patient (get the morgue ready) while Kumar is home with his sick dog (get the morgue ready, again). Foreman supplies that Meat Loaf has been dying of heart failure for the last six months, and Meat Loaf has been credited in this episode as "and Meat Loaf Aday." Well! I always thought Loaf was his last name. Now I see it was just his middle name. And good for him for using it here, because nothing says "serious actor" like using one's full name. House lets Taub know that he knows he stole credit for Kumar's diagnosis last week, and Taub continues to insist that he somehow contributed to the idea before expositing that Meat's heart failure was caused by lung cancer, so it probably has nothing to do with Yvette's symptoms. House ignores the stuff about the patient and says he thinks Taub is making that stuff about Kumar's dog up to cover for him being late because he feels guilty about taking Kumar's credit. Taub ignores him and suggests that Yvette's illness was caused by a recent trip to Hawaii. House turns that down, saying that the Foreman-suggested disease she could have picked up there would have spread to the husband with his weakened immune system. Taub suggests a virus, and just as House is suggesting they start treating Yvette for that, Hadley enters and says Yvette refuses to be treated because she wants to get home to her dying husband as soon as possible. She adds that Yvette thinks her husband got better when her own health failed. House thinks nothing of this and is ready to send Yvette home to die when Taub says he has an idea, and didn't even need to steal it from Kumar.
If they can't bring Yvette to Meat, then they'll bring Meat to Yvette, as he's wheeled into her room so they can be together again. She's happy to see him still alive, and Taub is happy to finally be able to treat Yvette. I'm a little disappointed that this isn't quite as awesome as Taub's mind-reading computer idea last week.
First we get the Magic Schoolbus Cam, and now a Clinic patient? Is this Season One or something? House stares directly at a girl who's all done up in tacky pageant style. Her mom isn't worried about her kid's health so much as that health affecting her ability to compete in the upcoming pageant. She says her daughter is all out of it, and there's "something going on in her head." We don't want these pageant girls to have anything going on in their hairspray-coated heads, so House quickly tells Mom what the problem is: her daughter is drunk. House was somehow able to detect the smell of mouthwash underneath all the other smells from the chemicals her mother slathered on her in an effort to win an meaningless contest. "Gotta be perfect," the girl slurs. She swallowed the mouthwash instead of spitting it back out, a trick she learned from watching her mother, who now looks like she'd rather be anywhere else. Preferably her bathroom. Or the mouth care aisle of her local drugstore. Anyway, this is great news for mother and daughter, as she's now going to nail the talent portion of the pageant with her lampshade-on-the-head table dance.
Foreman and Taub report that Yvette's condition is improving with the drugs, while her husband is getting worse again. House doesn't mind that Meat is about to die, since Meat is not his patient. And with that, he notes that it's late in the day and Kumar still hasn't made it to work. Taub admits that he was lying to cover for Kumar, and House sends Foreman and Hadley off to find him while he draws up the termination papers. As for Taub, he'll be tending to Yvette, whose condition has suddenly worsened.
Taub runs into her room to find Yvette clutching her chest and moaning. The nurse says it isn't her airway this time, and Taub has move Meat Loaf out of the way before realizing that it's crazy for sick, dying Meat to suddenly be healthy enough to get on his feet and in his way in the first place. Taub says he has no idea what's going on, and obviously no co-workers who care enough to help.
Hadley and Foreman knock on Kumar's door. There's no answer, so Hadley uses the spare key that House probably had made to let them in. While Foreman calls out for Kumar, Hadley is all judgey, pronouncing the apartment "man-boy heaven." Foreman looks for clues on Kumar's computer while Hadley checks out the pictures on the wall, more about spying on her co-worker than trying to find out where he is and if he's okay. And when she looks in his bedroom, she sees a body on the floor, a pool of blood around it, and a gun. She and Foreman run in, and we only see their backs as they tend to the grisly scene in the bedroom off-camera. Foreman calls 911 to report a gunshot wound to the head while Hadley attempts CPR for a second before giving up, sliding across the room in the pool of blood, and sitting against Kumar's bed with blood all over her mouth. "He's cold," she says; "Eric." Upon hearing his first name, Foreman knows this is serious, and he gives up, too. Neither actor is really up to the challenge this kind of scene presents, but they sure did try with their very best pained open-mouth cringes.
Back from break, the meeting room is darker and bluer than ever, so any hope anyone who didn't get a "KUMAR IS SO DEAD Y'ALL *spoiler alert*" email may have had that he'd survive this must surely be gone. House expresses his grief by rubbing the back of his neck. Foreman has changed into an equally immaculate but less blood-stained suit. Taub is rubbing his forehead. Hadley's hair suddenly looks like it hasn't been washed in two weeks. House finally speaks: "He didn't say anything to any of you? Family problems? Bad relationship? Financial pressures?" Foreman says Kumar did have some family problems, seeing as how his parents were shot and killed in front of him. Did we know that before? We knew his parents were murdered, but I don't know that they ever said he saw it happen. Then again, Kumar really didn't get a chance to say much of anything on this show. House dismisses this, saying that happened a long time ago. Foreman points out that it can still be painful for someone with real human feelings. House doesn't think this was a long time coming, based on the fact that Kumar didn't leave a note and killed himself so violently. That reasoning is stupid, but whatever. The fact that there's no note is really annoying, by the way. It's selfish enough to kill yourself, but to not even leave anything for the people you leave behind? As if they won't spend the rest of their lives wondering what they could have done already. House immediately blames the Cottages for working so closely with Kumar and not noticing his inner turmoil. Hadley is kind of pissed and even surprised that House would blame them, and he almost seems apologetic when he says he's just trying to figure this out. How about this: you, House, pitted all these people against each other in the hiring process, thereby creating and encouraging an environment of hostility and cutthroat competition. If your employees don't care enough about each other or are too busy worrying about themselves to think about others, that's your fault. Foreman isn't quite so quick to refuse blame as his girlfriend, saying they should have noticed something was wrong even though Kumar didn't reach out to them. How could he reach out to Hadley and Foreman, though, since they were always off having storylines and leaving him and Taub behind to do the medical work? Hadley insists that this isn't their fault, and suicide prevention pamphlets state that one quarter of all suicides show no outward signs of depression. House thinks it's more like one quarter of all suicides had shitty unobservant friends who don't want to feel guilty after the fact.
Taub finally speaks up, and his opinion on suicide has been well-documented in the past because, unlike Kumar, his character has actually been developed. Not as much as Hadley's, but still. He says that Kumar's death means no one can do anything to help him now. Therefore, Kumar is an idiot. He feels pity, but not guilt. And he'd rather concentrate on the patients who are still alive than the co-worker who isn't. He starts talking about how Meat is definitely getting better as his wife gets worse, but no one cares because Kumar is dead and we have no idea why or any idea that this was even coming unless we're on the Fox Publicity mailing list. Foreman suggests that they pass this case onto another doctor, say, one who didn't just find out that his employee shot himself in the head. That sounds like a good plan, but House refuses to give up on this case, since that would somehow mean giving up on all the cases after it. With that, he starts diagnosing Yvette, and the rest of the team join in. Blah blah polyserositis, and now that the stuff we don't care about is done, Cuddy walks in the room with her best Concerned Sympathetic Face. She says she's hired a grief counselor, even though she knows no one will use his services, and is offering time off that she's sure no one will take. More like House won't use the counselor or take time off and won't let his Cottages do so, either. No one even talks to Cuddy. House tells them to start treating Yvette for polyserositis.
House walks off, and Cuddy follows him. He says he's fine, and Cuddy's pants are unprofessionally tight. Your power suit is not supposed to be painted on, Cuddy. Geez. She's surprised when House reveals that Wilson didn't come running when he heard about Kumar with offers to help House through his grief any way possible, hopefully with lots of hugs. House says he thinks Wilson figured out that he wouldn't want to talk about it. Cuddy clearly has not. She asks House if he had any clue that Kumar was suicidal, and he makes a joke about fantasy football. Even so, Cuddy sincerely says she's sorry for his loss, and he says it's not his loss. "I'm sorry you don't think it is," Cuddy says. At the very least, it's a professional loss to House, right? Without Kumar around to pick up his diagnosing slack, he's left with Taub, Hadley and Foreman, all of whom have proven pretty much useless.
She leaves, and Foreman and Hadley make their way back into the scene. House wants them to get back to work, but they'd rather let Taub do the real work (as usual) while they visit Kumar's parents and get more camera time. Surprisingly, House offers to join them. Even more surprisingly, Foreman and Hadley seem to think this is a good idea.
Taub explains the treatment he's giving to Yvette, who says she's in great pain. Meat tries to make her feel better by telling her to imagine being in Rio. Yvette breaks her concentration to say her husband never talks like this. "Shut up and let me do this," he says. That's probably more of what she's used to hearing from him. He sits up in bed and tells her to imagine watching the Mardi Gras celebrations, and she once again interrupts to correct him that it's called Carnival, and she doesn't want to go without him, even if it's just a trip in her own mind. Just don't eat too many Brazil nuts while you're there, Yvette. Also, does anyone really care about these people now that Kumar is dead? Except Taub, who wants to run another test, this time on Meat.
The lights are off at Mr. and Mrs. Kumar's house as well. Foreman and Hadley must struggle to see a picture of Kumar at age six when Mrs. Kumar shows it to them, and Foreman asks what Kumar was like coming to them fresh from a horrifying tragedy. Mrs. Kutner says he was very sweet and called them Mr. and Mrs. Kumar until his ninth birthday when they gave him a chemistry set and he was so happy that he called them Mom and Dad. Kumar was always so easily pleased. Except not so much at the end, I guess. Hadley says he was "special," although we never saw much evidence of that, since she stole all his screen time. Mom (she just gave me a chemistry set, so I'm calling her Mom now) says Kumar spoke highly of all of them, and knows this show well enough to ask if they had any idea that he liked them so much. Foreman starts to say the right thing, but is interrupted by House, who finally speaks up to say that the Kumars "ripped" their foster son out of his ethnic world and inserted him into their white one. Mom says they encouraged him to hold onto his heritage, but that's not enough for House, who says Kumar was Indian on the inside but had a new white last name on the outside. Hadley makes a "this is going horribly wrong... of course" face but does not step in until House starts blaming Mom and Dad for Kumar's internal conflicts that lead to his suicide. Even then, she lets him go on for way too long. Dad finally speaks up for the first time to say, "We loved that boy, you son of a bitch!" He does not punch House in the face, though. He should have. Hadley and Foreman make faces like they've brought someone embarrassing to a party while House goes on and on about how Mom and Dad tortured their son. Ten minutes later, Foreman tells House to go back to PPTH. This snaps him out of it enough to look at the expressions on his dead employee's parents' faces and apologize for their loss before somehow showing himself out of the pitch-black living room.
House slow-mo walks off the elevator to make a good shot for the previews, and Taub brings him up to date on Meat and Yvette, not like we care. Meat's tests show improvement, and Taub thinks his love for his wife has somehow cured him. Even House knows we'd rather know more about Kumar, so he points out that Taub hasn't asked him about his visit to the parents. Taub says he's sure House would have mentioned anything important, and if House thinks he can make Taub feel guilty for not "saving" Kumar, he's wrong. Taub says that Kumar's suicide wasn't a cry for help, but a complete rejection of it, so there's nothing he could have done. House says that's easy for Taub to say, since he got help after his suicide attempt. Taub doesn't deny it, so I guess he did try to kill himself once after all. Too bad he denied that to Kumar, or he might have helped him. In fact, too bad he lied that Kumar was late for work to take care of his dog, or else Hadley and Foreman would have gone to his apartment sooner and perhaps stopped Kumar from killing himself. Taub's lies are deadly impressive this week. Then again, maybe if these people knew enough about Kumar to know that he didn't even have a dog, they could have helped him. Taub focuses on the patient no one cares about, saying that her symptoms don't fit any diagnoses. House has a solution for that.
Not that anyone cares, but he heads into Yvette and Meat's room and tries to trick Yvette into admitting that she's lying about her symptoms before deciding not to drag things out and just say outright that Yvette's faking her symptoms. The windpipe closure was real, but when she saw that her husband's condition improved when hers got worse, she lied to keep it going. Just when Yvette is admitting to her lies, she has leg pain. House assumes she's lying again, but when Meat lifts up her sheets to show one leg looking all skinny and atrophied, he has to admit that it's real. Oh, just discharge them both and let us focus on Kumar. Poor guy finally gets his own episode, and not only is he not even in it except for, like, an arm, but he also has to share storyline time with patients who would be much more interesting if they weren't in an episode about a main character's suicide. I can't decide who got the shaft more, Kal Penn or Meat Loaf.
Back from break, House asks for a diagnosis on windpipe issues and disappearing leg muscle. Foreman suggests Kumar's parents, since House blamed them for everything else. House admits that he was wrong about the Kumars' whiteness being to blame for their son's suicide, as Kumar would have done more to get back in touch with his ethnic heritage before offing himself. He doesn't get right on the phone to tell the Kumars this, though, so they're probably still sitting at home blaming themselves. House did learn one lesson, though, as he claims he was polite to all of Kumar's friends when he called them looking for answers, even though none of them had any to give. Do you think he called Cole, or did that friendship end when Cole tried to screw Kumar over? Which couldn't have done much for Kumar's love of life, by the way. Taub would rather focus his energies on someone who's still alive, making him the only person on the show or in the viewing audience who cares about Yvette. He suggests MS, and House tells Hadley and Foreman to run an MRI (of DOOOM!!) to confirm it while Taub goes off and does a secret echocardiogram on Meat to see if his heart is actually improving.
Meanwhile, House has a new theory on what was wrong with Kumar: he was a sexual deviant, based on his criminal background that shows he was once arrested for indecent exposure. He lectures Cuddy for allowing him to hire someone with obvious mental problems, and she says Kumar's arrest was following a college streaking incident. Then she gets all sympathetic and puts an hand on House's arm and says it's okay to be upset, especially since Kumar was so similar to House. House says he wasn't that similar, since "if he felt like me, he'd have known that living in misery sucks marginally less than dying in it." Yeah. Until it doesn't.
Yvette gets both an MRI and girl talk at the same time, as Hadley asks her what being married to the same man for 30 years is like. "Great for me. Good for him. I hope," Yvette says. Yes, that does sound great. She says she thinks Meat loves her, but he doesn't express that love by spending time with his wife or showing any emotions or affection. It sounds so pathetic that Hadley just has to ask Yvette why she'd stay with someone like that, and I'm almost interested in the answer, although I'd still rather know more about Kumar. Yvette says that her love for Meat was enough for her. And clearly, she doesn't love herself nearly enough. With that, she trails off and the monitors beep wildly. The MRI (of DOOOM!!) has claimed another victim, and quickly. It, too, would rather we see what's going on with Kumar.
Taub spends his time with Meat, saying that while he might be determined to spend more time with his wife now if he gets better, he won't actually follow through on it. Especially not since the news from the echo is not good.
Cuddy goes to see Wilson. He's at his desk looking upset, and when she urges him to pay attention to House, he says "I can't deal with this and House." No word on what the "this" he's dealing with actually is. Cuddy says that's fine, though, since House can be there for Wilson while Wilson is being there for him. At this, Wilson snarls that Cuddy isn't here for Wilson; she's here for House, and using Wilson as House's baby-sitter ... again. Not like Cuddy really cares that Wilson is making good points. She just says House told the Kumars the suicide was their fault and leaves so that Wilson can now feel like that's his fault, too.
Yvette is suddenly having surgery for a ruptured spleen. That rules out MS. Chase sees Taub waiting in the O.R. balcony and tells him that he'll do the spleen biopsy to check for rheumatoid arthritis so that Taub can go home and mourn his dead friend properly. Taub would rather stay with Yvette, because she wants to live, unlike Kumar. "Go home and cry," Chase says, before noting that the scars on Yvette's liver rule out the arthritis as well.
House is in Kumar's apartment. Wilson comes in behind him and says he's uncomfortable with this. But he's here anyway, and House says he's glad of it. Now they can look for the cause of Kumar's suicide together. And they'll need all the eyes they can get, since it's so dark in there. House sees a nerdy Star Wars prop under glass and says Kumar had interests and passions. Wilson says Kumar was still in pain, and asks if it really matters why. House doesn't answer, just looks at a frame on the wall with two pictures: one of Kumar with his biological parents, and one with the Kumars on his graduation day. House says this doesn't make sense; if Kumar was that open about his loss and his pain, then he shouldn't have hidden it when it got worse.
House makes his way to Kumar's bedroom while Wilson asks if they can't just go to a bar and drink a lot instead. House ignores him and turns on the light in Kumar's bedroom just so we can get a good view of the bloodstain. Wilson sighs and averts his eyes, while House walks right on in and wonders what he's missing. That's when it dawns on Wilson. Not the solution, as House is hoping, but the reason why House is here in the first place: he doesn't care about Kumar. He cares about the mystery he left behind. House ignores this to share his new theory: Kumar didn't kill himself at all. He was murdered. Disgusted and done, Wilson leaves. This is why you should never listen to Cuddy.
After the break, we're still supposed to care about Yvette, whose liver is now failing. Foreman isn't there because he decided to take Cuddy up on her time off offer after all, much to Hadley's surprise. I think. Her facial expressions are hard to read, what with the lack of acting ability and darkness of the room. Taub says Meat's improvement is only temporary, not like we care. House sure doesn't, as he spins the Whiteboard O'Symptoms around to reveal a Whiteboard O'Murder Motives. Hadley reminds House that the police already ruled this a suicide, but House doesn't care. He orders the Cottages to start calling everyone who had contact with Kumar to search for clues. Hadley refuses to "chase ghosts" while Taub thinks House is being irrational, and is more curious about why than he is about why Kumar killed himself. House decides to do this himself and assigns the Cottages to test Yvette for something she won't have.
While Taub runs the test (Hadley is off somewhere not doing work, as usual), Yvette starts to wonder if she can choose who gets her organs when she dies. Um... if you die from unexplained organ failure, Yvette, I'm pretty sure no one gets those organs. The reason for her question is that she has the same blood type as her husband, and he needs a new heart. Along with new lungs from that cancer, right? He's really not the best candidate for a transplant, and she's not the best candidate to provide. She begs Taub to let her donate her heart to Meat if she dies anyway.
Hadley's at Foreman's apartment. He apologizes for not telling her he was taking time off, but he needs time alone. That's how he deals with bad things. This hurts Hadley's feelings, and she clenches her jawbone in sadness and tries not to cry.
Cuddy just can't give up, so she goes to see House again, only to find him reading through Kumar's email account, which he hacked into thanks to Kumar's lack of imagination with passwords. Wilson seems to have filled Cuddy in on House's latest theory, as she says that Kumar wasn't murdered. House thinks the man who killed Kumar's original parents had something to do with it, as he's coming up for parole soon and Kumar has testified at all of his parole hearings before. How does a guy who killed two people in front of their young child get any parole hearings? Cuddy says Kumar shot himself with his own gun and cops found all the necessary gunshot residue to close the case. Cuddy gives up and starts to leave, but House says that she didn't come here to check up on his patient because she's been checking on her to make sure he's still doing his job. House thinks she wants to transfer the case to another doctor (who? Cameron, I guess? She's the only doctor left on staff who isn't otherwise occupied) but thinks it's the only thing keeping him together. If that's true, then Cuddy should really transfer the case. She's supposed to look out for her patients' best interests above everything else. And if she was good at looking out for her employees, they wouldn't be killing themselves.
Yvette is seizing on the ground. Apparently, she broke into the nearest medicine cart and ate every pill she could find. Hadley guesses she was trying to look worse so her husband's condition would improve, but Taub knows that she was trying to kill herself in order to donate her heart to Meat. Because you know what's better than a heart from a body that died from organ failure of unknown origin? A heart from a body that died from a freaking drug overdose while it was also suffering from organ failure of unknown origin. But at least Yvette's reasons for trying to die are well-documented, so House won't go off on another wild noose chase.
After the break, Taub exposits that Yvette is stable, but her liver is pretty much dead after her little suicide attempt. House calls Yvette an idiot, but Taub thinks she was "selfless," even though a few weeks ago he was telling Kumar that there is absolutely no excuse for suicide ever. Clearly, something happened to change his mind. Or maybe he knows he can't pretend Kumar's death doesn't affect him if he's also trying to pretend that he hates his patient for trying to die. Also, tests for the latest diagnosis have come back negative, and tests for a new diagnosis of myelofibrosis will take more time to come back than Yvette and her dead liver have. Taub thinks they should try to get a liver donation for Yvette, but Hadley knows the Evil Transplant Committee won't allow that to happen without a diagnosis. House has a solution to this: a positive result for myelofibrosis that he just made up. Then he gets a call from the police and decides to take it and focus on Kumar instead of Yvette. Even Hadley is starting to think they should put their emotional issues aside and do their actual jobs, and when Hadley's the one telling you that, you know you're in trouble. Taub thinks they should tell Cuddy what's going on and see if she can figure something out with the Evil Transplant Committee, saying it's what Kumar would have wanted. Just because he tattled on House to Cuddy once, now he's being remembered in death as someone who always wanted to go to Cuddy. This is why you shouldn't kill yourself. People make all these annoying assumptions about you after the fact. House points out Kumar isn't exactly here to care. As long as they can find a way to tie Kumar into the patient of the week, I remain sort of interested in her. House gets an idea and leaves the room without sharing.
He reports to Cameron, whose help he requires. Not her expert diagnostic skills or knowledge of medicine, though: her incurable romanticism. To this, Cameron says, "Kumar wasn't murdered." I don't think he asked for your opinion, Cameron, but I'm glad you offered it, as it gives House a chance to make fun of CSI: Miami, as he asks if she figured that out by "removing your sunglasses to the strains of a Who song." Cameron won't be fooled again, though, as she says that House only thinks it's a murder because that means he has nothing to feel guilty about. Unless he murdered Kumar. House ignores this and shows her two files: one patient who needs a liver, and one who has part of one to spare. Cameron points out that the first patient needs more than part of a liver, while the second one is too sick for the donation surgery and would die on the table. House thinks that works out just fine. Meat dies on the table, thus freeing up his entire liver to give to his wife. House thinks Cameron speaks the language of love well enough to convince him to agree to this.
So, a doctor Meat has never met before tells him to agree to die a little early so that his wife, whose liver is shot after her own attempt to kill herself, may live. He seems cool with that, even though he won't be able to say good-bye to Yvette, since she can't know what he's doing or she'd try to kill herself first. Again. Meat signs the consent form, and how is he allowed to sacrifice himself to save Yvette but Yvette can't do the same for him? It was her idea first.
Cameron runs back to House and says she got the consent, but now she doesn't think House should do the transplant. She noticed nodules on Meat's fingers when he was signing the form, which could indicate that he was misdiagnosed. He might have something curable. House doesn't care, and Cameron asks why not; this is a chance for something cool to happen, a life to be saved, and, best of all, a chance to prove that whoever diagnosed Meat with lung cancer heart failure was an idiot. When House insists that Cameron is wrong, she throws the CSI: Miami joke back in his face. He opens up slightly and says that the man who killed Kumar's parents died in jail two months ago, so it wasn't a murder after all. How does that rule the murder out? Maybe the guy's family blamed Kumar for their loved one dying in jail and killed him because of that. Or maybe House never really believed it was a murder to begin with. Either way, I'm glad we're done with that, because I want to watch House, not Quincy, M.E.. Cameron softens slightly and says Kumar never let anyone in on how he was feeling inside, so they couldn't save him. House does have a chance to save Meat. Also, maybe Kumar was only staying alive all this time to make sure the man who killed his parents stayed in jail. Once he was dead, Kumar didn't have a reason to live. Oh, what am I even saying? Kumar wasn't suicidal. A few episodes ago he was scared of a death-predicting cat. He didn't see darkness in others, so I doubt he had it in himself. The writers knew this was going to happen and had plenty of time to make it make more sense without taking away from the mystery or at the very least give Kal Penn some real screentime, since his time on the show was running out before anyone else's. They didn't, and this entire thing feels like a great big waste, especially since they've dropped the ball with big shocking event follow-ups enough times for me to have little faith that they won't do it again this time.
And as it turns out, Meat doesn't have lung cancer heart failure after all. It was a misdiagnosis, and shame on House for needing Cameron of all people to figure that out. Shame even more on Wilson for diagnosing Meat with lung cancer when he really just had a simple curable fungal infection. Because you know it was Wilson who diagnosed it. It has to be. He's the only cancer doctor at PPTH, and the doctor at St. Sebastian's would have known better. Meat will be fine in three months with treatment. Meat's not exactly thrilled about this, though, since it means Yvette won't get her liver, even though they know that she could die even with the transplant. He says if House won't let him do the transplant, he'll just kill himself so she can get the liver anyway.
When Hadley and Taub find out about Meat's new prognosis, they're less enthusiastic about killing him. House says that Meat is going to kill himself no matter what, so they might as well make sure the liver stays in good condition. Hadley refuses to take part in this. Taub volunteers to help, saying they've already had one pointless death. Better make the one count extra.
Instead of murdering Meat, though, Taub just wheels him into Yvette's room and announces that he's planning on dying to give her his liver even though his heart condition is not terminal after all. He asks Yvette how she feels about this. I feel that this is all ridiculous and I can't bring myself to care when I'm wondering what's going on with the Kumar stuff. Meat is really pissed off that his doctor-patient confidentiality has been violated, but it's not like he should have expected this hospital to have great ethics in the first place seeing as how they wanted him to sign his own death warrant just a few minutes ago. Yvette doesn't say anything because she's getting worse.
Taub tells House that Yvette's fever has spiked and she's suffering from a massive infection. House is just mad that her fever didn't spike when she was in possession of a shiny new liver. He's all for Meat dying needlessly in order to give Yvette a chance to live because Yvette is his patient and Meat is not. And Meat's diagnosis has been made while Yvette's is still uncertain. It has nothing to do with what's best for everyone involved and everything to do with what will give House his best chance to solve the puzzle. The diagnoses start, and House says Yvette must be hiding something, snapping that either they have all the clues and they're idiots or they don't have all the clues. He's especially irritated because he's starting to realize that employee suicides don't follow the same rules as his patients' health problems. Hadley says something about people and places Yvette has been exposed to, and that gives House his epiphany.
He goes to Yvette and Meat's room and accuses her of a bad lie -- she claimed she went to Hawaii six months ago, and in reality she went to Rio. Meat says no way, while Yvette says, "Why are you doing this?" because it's true. House says if she went to Rio, then it gives them their diagnosis of visceral leishmaniasis, thanks to disease-carrying sand flies in the region. Despite Duran Duran's best advice, in Rio you should not dance on the sand. Or, if you do, tell the truth about it before your not-actually-dying husband tries to kill himself to save you. Yvette admits to Meat that she went to Rio with another man: "I got tired of waiting." Is Rio really this nice? I can't think of anywhere I want to go that's worth all this. Except maybe the moon. That would be so cool, to go to the moon. Yvette is very sorry, as is Meat. I'd feel a lot more for them if they weren't just big obstacles keeping me from the storyline I really want to watch. House tells Taub to treat Yvette and hope they can get a liver transplant in time. He notes that both Meat and Yvette were willing to die for each other, but it was out of guilt and not love. Taub thinks those two emotions go hand-in-hand. Especially when you cheat on your own wife.
Later, Taub reports to Cuddy's office. She says they've got a liver on the way, but Taub says there's no need: Yvette isn't responding to the treatment. They were too late. Yvette seriously failed out this week. She cheated on her husband to make her dream of going to Rio come true, only for him to be diagnosed with a terminal illness when she got back. Then she lies to her doctors, causing them to take too long to diagnose her condition, probably also thanks to accelerating her own failing health in an attempt to save her husband, whose condition isn't terminal after all. And then she manages to get a miracle when the Evil Transplant Committee agrees to spare one of their precious organs, but it's too late. With that news, Cuddy offers to give Taub a ride to Kumar's funeral. He'd rather stay with Yvette. Cuddy tries to make someone feel better by saying that Yvette's death bought Meat enough time for PPTH to save his life, so that should give her death some meaning. "No. It won't," Taub says. All death probably seems pretty meaningless right now.
Wilson checks in on House. He says he was wrong that House was only interested in solving the puzzle of Kumar's death. House never saw this suicide coming, and he thinks of himself as the expert in human nature who can predict every reaction to everything. He's not trying to figure out what he missed with Kumar; he's trying to figure out why he missed it. And he's not mourning the loss of Kumar; he's mourning whatever he must have lost in himself, because that's the only thing that keeps House going. I'd feel a lot more sorry for House if any of this was about Kumar and not just himself and if he hadn't made Kumar's poor suffering parents feel even worse. Wilson goes to the funeral. House stays behind. And for him to care about Kumar's death to the extent that it affects himself makes House such an inhumanly selfish prick that I really don't want to watch much more.
They used a publicity photo of Kumar for his funeral. Everyone except Taub and House is in attendance, although Chase did not see fit to shave for the occasion. And the producers did not see fit to give Kal Penn one last appearance on this show with an open casket. I mean, I guess you really can't do that for someone who shoots himself in the head, but still.
House goes back to Kumar's apartment, still looking for clues.
Kumar's pallbearers are four men we've never seen before and Foreman and Hadley. Hadley? Foreman? Really? Were they even friends with Kumar, really?
House stares at the picture of Kumar's two sets of parents.
Meat forgives Yvette in time for her to die. He holds her hand and kisses it for the first time in probably a long time. She manages to smile as she flatlines.
House has found Kumar's stash of photos and looks through them. Kal Penn had a few awkward teenage years, but he's smiling in all the pictures.
Foreman holds Hadley's hand. She's wearing her bracelet. I'm so glad those two have managed to work through this trying time. Also, way to muscle in and stand to the deceased's parents, you two. Like you were that important to Kumar. The crowd watches as smoke vents out of the crematorium.
There's no patient for Taub to use to keep his mind off of Kumar. He sits on the bench and breaks down, and does it better than anyone else in this episode.
House finds one picture where Kumar isn't smiling. It's a candid shot. When Kumar thought no one was looking, apparently, he let his inner demons out. Or maybe he just didn't happen to be smiling when the picture was taken. It's the only clue House is going to get. What House still hasn't figured out but everyone else has is that he's never going to get all the clues. Even if Kumar had left a note the size of War and Peace, there would still and always be questions. How can you care enough about human behavior to torture yourself with them but still not care about humans themselves?
And how good of Fox to tack on a suicide hotline number at the end of this episode right before advertising their cheesy new Kumar memorial website. Which, by the way, doesn't even get his date of birth correct. Foreman said on the phone with 911 that Kumar was 28. The site gives his year of birth as 1975. All that work and they still couldn't get it right.
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You can read more from Sara Morrison at L.A.me, which she occasionally updates when she has something to complain about. Or you can email her at saramorrison@gmail.com.