This week's patient saves a woman from being hit by a train and then collapses. House assumes there's something wrong with his brain or else he would never have risked his own life to save some random woman. Martha M. Masters, of course, believes that people can be selfless and heroic and that the patient has some kind of bacterial infection with no brain involvement. They're both wrong, although House stops caring about any of this after about ten minutes in order to focus on Cuddy's mother being in town for her birthday and his presence being requested at a celebratory dinner. Wilson, whose post-breakup whining House was hoping to avoid for one night, is also invited. House deals with both Wilson and Cuddy's mother (played by the always-amazing Candice Bergen!) by slipping sedatives in their wine. Ma Cuddy believes she got too drunk and passed out, and apologizes to House the day for her behavior and for being an overbearing, judgmental mother. She seems to approve of Cuddy's boyfriend, showing that she is a terrible judge of character, and gives House his flash of diagnostic brilliance: the patient of the week has chicken pox. Also, Taub's wife's horniness causes them to separate.
We open in what appears to be a New York City subway station, so if someone ends up all the way in a New Jersey hospital from here, when there are plenty of great hospitals in New York to go to, I will be suspicious. Unless there's a Princeton-Plainsboro subway system I don't know about, and that's where we're supposed to be?
A father and his daughter wait for the train, with the father played by Matthew Lillard at his most Lillard-ly. He crushes his daughter, Daisy's, dreams of pizza dinner with her dad by reminding her that he's "going back on the road" and so won't be joining them for dinner, which seems to be a fairly common occurrence in Daisy's life. Before their conversation can turn into a Harry Chapin song, some woman has a seizure and falls down on the train tracks. Various people standing on the platform call for someone else to help, but no one makes a move to do so until Matthew Lillard jumps on the tracks and carefully walks towards her. He doesn't know what to do after that, since she won't snap out of her seizure just because he asks her to and there's a train coming and no one else on the platform looks remotely interested in helping them up. They do wave at the oncoming train, but that's about it. Lillard ends up lying on top of the woman as the train runs them both over and comes to a stop in front a bunch of hilariously overacting extras.
The extras order the train driver to move it forward, because all they seem to be good at is telling other people what to do, and there's Matthew Lillard still lying on the tracks over the woman, seemingly untouched. The crowd on the platform assumes they're both dead until his hand moves and then he stands up to the applause and relief of everyone watching. Including his daughter, who no one thought to, like, grab and pull her away so she didn't have to witness her father's train-shredded body. Matthew Lillard notes from a medical bracelet on the no-longer-seizing woman's wrist that she has epilepsy and therefore will not be our patient of the week, as if we ever thought she would be when Matthew Lillard is guest-starring, and then, sure enough, just after he tells his daughter he's okay, his eyes roll to the back of his head and he passes out.
Oh, in the month since the last new episode I forgot that Martha M. Masters existed. But she's back and urging House to take on a case she found in the ER (yes, the ambulance took Matthew Lillard all the way from NYC to PPTH) which is only exciting to her because it's the Subway Hero. This is also interesting to House because he does not believe in Subway Heroes and thus considers that to be a symptom along with the abnormal EKG and passing out. Um, isn't House the guy who went under an unstable building in the last season finale to save that woman? And risked his own life several times for her? How is that any different from what Matthew Lillard did? Of course, Martha M. Masters believes that people can be heroes and therefore that it is not a symptom. Oh, good. Those two can fight over morals again. For the third episode in a row.
House shoots down all of her attempts to argue that people are selfless heroes, with Taub saying that one time when he was mugged, he was unable to do anything heroic because he fainted when he saw the mugger's gun. Chase makes fun of him for this, as if he's never done anything cowardly in his life and we all forgot about when he sold House out to Vogler in Season 1 because he was scared of losing his job. Anyway, House takes Taub's story as a show of support and orders them off to look for masses in Matthew Lillard's brain.
Chase and Martha M. Masters find Lillard, whose character is named Jack, basking in the glow of being a hero and beloved by all, even the PPTH employees who are either useless (security guards), sociopaths (that woman who worked in the pharmacy), or jaded by working in and around House (everyone else). Actually, they aren't so much in love with him as they are standing outside his glass-walled room and taking pictures with their cell phone cameras, which has got to be some kind of HIPAA violation. Jack says he doesn't remember much about the incident as his wife, Eva, finally arrives. She asks if he's okay before laying into him about how his heroic actions traumatized their daughter. Eva is mad at him because of this, like, would Daisy have been less traumatized if her father hadn't done anything and she watched a seizing woman get run over and killed by a train? Give him a break, lady.
House reports to Cuddy's office to try to get out of having dinner with her and her mother (!!!) this week. It's Cuddy's birthday dinner, though, so he must be clever about it. He says he's definitely coming to her birthday dinner, but he needs her advice on what to tell Wilson, since he made plans to see some film festival with him months ago and doesn't want to disappoint him too much since he's still getting over his break up. Cuddy falls for it and urges House to spend time with his sad friend and skip her dinner. She's doing this both to help Wilson and because she's just as willing to keep House away from her "handful" of a mother as he is to avoid her.
But then! House uses the same ploy that worked on Cuddy to get out of going to the film festival with Wilson, saying he really wants to go to the film festival with him and would never dream of canceling for something so unimportant as his girlfriend's birthday dinner with her mother. Of course, Wilson insists that House go to the birthday dinner instead of the film festival. Hmmm! What could House be up to? And does he really think he's going to get away with it when Cuddy and Wilson are sure to compare notes?
That night, Taub is on his way home when he sees a billboard with his face on it. Yes, PPTH is doing a little bit of advertising and he has been chosen as the face to represent them. "Be better," is PPTH's motto, which is fitting because PPTH really should be a better hospital than it is and Taub should really be a better person in general. But I'm not sure if it's a great motto for a hospital. Taub returns home to find his wife on her laptop, no doubt composing an email to her long-distance emotional affair. She comments on seeing Taub's billboard, and he says he couldn't even see his face past the nose. The people who write this show hate Peter Jacobson, I swear. Taub says they took a picture of the entire staff, so he has no idea why he's the only person in the ad. Mrs. Taub thinks it's due to Taub's good looks, as she has apparently never seen any of his co-workers' faces. Taub is confused as to why his wife seems to be flirting with him, since things have been tense between them since their fight at that wedding. Mrs. Taub doesn't think there's a problem anymore, since "Phil" isn't her boyfriend and she's never even met him, so there's no reason for Taub to be jealous. She says Taub is "still" her husband and she "still" loves him, so the fact that she's having an emotional affair with some other guy and refuses to cut it off shouldn't be a problem. I think Taub has a lot of nerve to have a problem with his wife emotionally cheating on him after he has physically cheated on her so many times, but whatever. I've long since stopped trying to understand the Taubs' relationship.
Even though Martha M. Masters isn't a real doctor yet, she still gets to perform procedures on patients, albeit under the semi-watchful eye of Chase, who doesn't understand why Martha M. Masters isn't more confident doing a procedure she's never actually attempted before. Is this part of PPTH's "be better" program? Because I don't see how letting someone who isn't even a doctor perform procedures is better. Guess what? As soon as Martha M. Masters tries to inject some dye into one of Jack's arteries, his blood pressure and heart rate rise and then his heart stops. I think that's a fail.
The differential diagnosis session takes place outside in the middle of January just because House wants to do it in front of a bus stop ad for PPTH featuring Taub's face. He whips out a black pen and starts using the ad as a Whiteboard O'Symptoms, which we haven't seen him use in like three years. Nice to see it again. Maybe the Magic Schoolbus Cam will say hello ? Taub tells House to mock away, since that ad made his wife have sex with him last night. House finds it interesting that when Taub isn't on billboards, he sleeps with everyone but his wife. But when he is on a billboard, he sleeps with his wife. This seems backwards to House. Chase notes that his elbow is in the corner of the picture, so perhaps Mrs. Taub will want to have sex with him, too.
Martha M. Masters and her social weirdness innocently note that the marketing people put Taub in the ad and cut Chase off, then says that Jack's cardiac arrest shows that her theory that he has a heart problem is correct and House's that it's a brain problem is wrong. While the Cottages throw out a few possible diagnoses, House can't resist but use his black marker to draw on Taub's face, giving him a little moustache and advancing his hairline a bit. Taub now looks like either Charlie Chaplin or Hitler. I think we can all guess which one House was going for. Between that and Taub's big nose comment earlier, does writer Sara Hess have some kind of problem and/or obsession with Jews? Is she related to Rudolf Hess?
Anyway, House decides to go with Foreman's theory because it lets them do a test on Jack's pituitary gland and thus confirm House's belief that there's something wrong up there. The Cottages manage to talk House down to a less invasive and pituitary-poking set of tests first, and House tells them to go ahead and do them, then do his pituitary biopsy when their tests are negative.
Chase starts to explain the tests and their latest theory to Jack, only for Eva to cut him off and ask if they can have Taub as their doctor instead, since Chase has already been wrong once and Taub must be an awesome doctor since he is the "face of the hospital." Ha ha! Chase's ego deflates slightly as he goes to the hallway to call for Taub to take over. Taub is more than happy to oblige.
Cuddy and Wilson find House stealing food from the doctor's lounge. Sure enough, they did have a chance to talk to each other and discovered that House was trying to get out of pla
ns with both of them. House defends his actions by saying that dinner with Cuddy's mother would force him to act like a "decent human being," which is very difficult and stressful for him, and doing anything with Wilson these days is no fun because he just mopes and whines about his breakup all the time. House just wanted to spend one night by himself on his couch watching The Real Housewives of New Jersey, because he is my mother, apparently. "Is that so much to ask?" he concludes. "Yes," Cuddy and Wilson say. Well, if Cuddy and Wilson wanted a boyfriend/friend who wasn't an asshole, they should date/hang out with someone who isn't House. This is their own faults. They demand he pick one of them. House goes with Wilson, only to be told that he will not be attending the film festival after all, but Cuddy's birthday dinner. And thus, so will House. Awesome.Taub and Eva spend some time discussing Jack and how his "job" as the bassist of a band that is still looking for its big break 16 years on. That's why he's away from his wife and daughter all the time, which Eva doesn't like but apparently has to deal with because she loves him "so much." Taub tells her to stick with him because, assuming that his life-saving stunt wasn't because of a brain problem, Jack is a pretty great guy. I'm sure Taub thinks he's a pretty great guy too, but that doesn't seem to stop him from cheating on his wife all the time.
Boring! Let's see what Foreman and Chase are up to instead. While they look at things under a microscope, Chase wonders why Taub was picked to be the face of PPTH over Chase. Foreman knows why: Chase is a "pretty boy," and that's not what people want to see on an ad for a hospital. Which is absolutely correct; I probably wouldn't want to go to a hospital with a 12-year-old doctor. Foreman says his face wasn't used in the ad because he's black and the Princeton area is 80% white. Oh, please. If anything, Foreman being black would work in his favor with the marketing team, which always seems eager to show off a diverse workforce. But the PPTH marketing team is probably just as competent as its HR department or the security force, so there you go. Anyway, the tests come back normal, which means Jack is going to have his pituitary biopsied. While Chase sticks a needle up Jack's nose, he says he thinks they didn't use Foreman's picture because he always looks really angry, not because of the color of his skin. Foreman looks really angry but ignores him, and then Jack stops breathing and gives them something more important to worry about. Chase ends up sucking a "mucus plug" out of Jack's lungs to get him breathing again. That sounds disgusting. It also rules out both House and Martha M. Masters' theories.
Back in the meeting room, Martha M. Masters cheerfully reports that brain involvement has definitely been ruled out and they can now focus on other diagnoses that involve the heart and the lungs. House would rather not, as his new theory is that Jack didn't jump on the tracks to save a stranger, but someone he already knew -- he was having an affair with the woman, Chloe, and her seizure was not caused by epilepsy as they all assumed, but by the same thing Jack has. Martha M. Masters would rather take a culture of Jack's sputum (ew) and look for an infection, but House decides the lack of white blood cell count elevation rules that out and it also doesn't fit in with his Jack-is-not-a-real-hero-because-those-don't-exist theory. Some kind of toxin in Chloe's apartment, however, does.
Chase and Taub break into poor Chloe's apartment, as if she hasn't had enough to deal with lately, and Taub immediately complains about how ridiculous this is. Chase assumes Taub's crankiness is due to another fight with Mrs. Taub, but Taub says that, on the contrary, they've been having lots of sex lately. Which actually bums Taub out because Mrs. Taub hasn't been this horny in years and he's starting to suspect that Phil is who she really wants to have sex with, but since he's not there and Taub is, she's settling for him instead. Chase, whose marriage ended after like three months in divorce, doesn't see the problem in any of this. And while he finds a CD from Jack's band that proves he and Chloe had a relationship after all, Taub finds a can of roach spray that could be the toxin that made them both sick.
House does Clinic duty. His latest patient is none other than Murphy Brown, although he doesn't seem very impressed by her or her complaint of feeling tired and having pain in her shoulder when it's cold, especially since all of her tests say that she's perfectly healthy. House is typically short with and condescending to her, causing her to ask why doctors always seem to think they are so much better than everyone else. House thinks it has something to do with how they save people from dying and stuff. Murphy Brown keeps talking, saying that her daughter is a doctor and acts the same way, always dismissing her mother's concerns. "She sounds smart," House says, still not knowing where this is going. Murphy Brown waits for him to almost reach the door before dropping the bomb: House is "shtupping" her daughter. Because Murphy Brown is totally Cuddy's mom! Hooray! A rather shell-shocked House makes his way towards Cuddy's office, but she isn't there. He leaves a message on her phone instead: "we have a situation."
Chase and Taub confront Jack over their new theory that he's suffering from toxic exposure to the roach spray in Chloe's apartment. "Who's Chloe?" Jack asks. Taub and Chase aren't buying it, and then Chloe herself appears, lead to Jack's room by Martha M. Masters. It's obvious that Chloe and Jack are not having an affair and never met before the train incident, as Chloe tearfully thanks him for saving her life and calls him her "guardian angel," saying that one of her nurses gave her one of Jack's band's CDs when she was held overnight at another, much better, hospital for observation. While Chase and Taub are forced to look ashamed of themselves for thinking the worst of Jack, Martha produces a cup to take a sputum culture from him, smugly saying that with the toxic exposure theory ruled out (apparently Jack couldn't have been exposed to toxins unless it was in Chloe's apartment?), her infection diagnosis is looking better and better. Jack is unable to cough anything up for her, so Martha M. Masters pats him on the back to try to loosen something up. This causes Jack to lunge forward and scream in pain, holding his head. Um, why are we even letting Martha M. Masters near patients? She's almost as bad as the MRI (OF DOOOM!!). Jack is able to stop moaning long enough to tell the doctors that it's not his head that hurts, but his ears.
House reads the latest Subway Hero article in the New York Press (which I believe means that this did happen in New York and therefore Jack was ambulanced to PPTH's ER for some reason) before showing off the back of the paper and another PPTH ad featuring Taub. Martha M. Masters is pleased to ask House to admit that he was wrong about Jack, but while House will admit that Jack doesn't have a brain problem or a prior relationship with Chloe, he still won't call him a hero because jumping on train tracks is stupid. Martha M. Masters thinks that Jack's new ear pain symptom proves her infection theory and that the infection must have spread to his ears. Like, in one second. Because that happens. House says they can confirm that in a week when Martha M. Master's "secret cultures" have grown to testable levels. "Am I in trouble?" Martha M. Masters immediately asks, of course. House says she is not, because by taking those cultures she wasted her time and not his. He then decides on a diagnosis of acoustic neuroma, which sounds like some kind of nasty ear cancer, and Foreman says this somehow also explains the heart and lung involvement. While Chase, Foreman, and Martha M. Masters leave to test Jack for that, Taub gets an urgent page and runs off.
House finally gets a chance to talk to Cuddy, saying he sacrificed so much to be nice to old Jewish ladies for the past couple months just in case they were her mother, only for Cuddy's mother to trick him by being decidedly not Jewish-looking. Cuddy explains that her mother converted when she married her dad, which explains how Candice Bergen can look so very Nordic yet still play Lisa Edelstein's mother. Also, does Cuddy not have any pictures of her mother floating around her house for House to look at? Although I guess this is the woman whose favorite picture of her father is one he took of her. That he isn't even in. And has both old and new world primates in it. Cuddy says she isn't mad at House for being mean to her mother (and also not, apparently, mad at him for being mean to PPTH's Clinic patients. Worst boss ever) because Murphy Brown ambushed House to find out what he was like because Cuddy's descriptions of him apparently weren't good enough for her. On the upside, House says, this gets him out of the dinner, since Cuddy's mother "is crazy and she hates" him. Not so fast, Cuddy says. She demands that he attend the dinner for two hours, which he will spend with his mouth shut acting like an adult. Um, if she wanted that, she should have stayed with Lucas. "You will be in hell, but I will feel better having you there. That is what a relationship is. We average our misery." House is left slack-jawed with nothing to say but the softest of whimpers. For all he professes to know about humans and their behavior, Cuddy and her mother can still throw him.
Meanwhile, Taub's urgent page was his wife wanting to have sex with him in the exam room. She attributes this to having a "good day" now that her fight with her sister has been resolved. Taub had no idea Mrs. Taub was in a fight with her sister, to which she says she "talked a lot about it with Phil," like, what is Mrs. Taub's problem? Either rub Phil in Taub's face to get back at him for cheating on you and know that's what you're doing or stop bringing him up to the guy who you know doesn't want you to talk to him anymore. But bringing him up to Taub and then acting like Taub has no reason to be upset makes no sense to me.
Jack's ears test normal, which Martha M. Masters smugly says means that House was wrong about the tumor. She decides to set Jack up to have his ears drained in the hopes that the fluid will give her better cultures closer to the source of infection. She leaves to do this as Chase childishly mimics her behind her back. He then loses a rock paper scissors match with Foreman and has to follow her out to supervise.
Jack is back in his room still basking in the glow of his awesomeness. Eva does, too, saying she's really proud of him now that she's apparently gotten over her anger at him for upsetting their daughter. Jack says he's starting to think about changing his life, saying he spent so much time away from his family with his band because he was afraid of screwing things up with them. But now he thinks he might be a better man than he thought he was. So he's going to quit his band. And ... do what? Is he employable after 16 years with no job? Either way, Eva is thrilled with this and thinks Daisy will be, too.
With that, Chase and Martha M. Masters arrive to take the fluid samples. For some reason, we're still letting Martha touch the patient. She injects Jack's back with something to numb him, but this time, instead of almost killing him like usual, he says his ear pain is suddenly gone. He wonders what that's about. Chase and Martha obviously have no clue, and Taub is off doing some post-coital sulking and cannot be reached for comment.
And now, the moment I think we've all been waiting for: House has dinner with Cuddy's mom. And also Wilson and Cuddy and the child, who will only eat cheese and crackers for dinner, much to Murphy Brown's obvious disapproval. Cuddy says Rachel is "going through a picky phase" and eating cheese and crackers for dinner "won't kill her." "You're her mother," Murphy Brown says in that way that she and most overbearing mothers have. She adds that when Cuddy was a child, she and her sister ate what her parents ate, no matter what. House drops his fork and appears ready to strike, but a warning look from Cuddy keeps him at bay. Cuddy feels the need to defend herself to her mother, saying that Rachel already ate plenty of delicious and nutritious eggs and fruit this morning, so she'll be fine with cheese and crackers tonight. But Murphy Brown has something to say about that, too, saying it explains why Rachel was such a "little vilde chaya (wild animal for you non-Yiddish speakers) when Murphy Brown took her to the park that afternoon. Murphy Brown figures it was because of all the sugar from the fruit and not because, you know, Rachel is two or because Murphy Brown doesn't strike me as a particularly good grandmother. Wilson pipes up to disagree, saying that it's actually just a myth that sugar makes kids hyper. Murphy Brown stares at him. "It's a study," he says nervously. "I'm sure it's very interesting. I didn't read any studies. I just raised children," Murphy Brown says, shutting Wilson up but good.
But Murphy Brown will not be stopped, saying that Cuddy can't possibly keep track of what Rachel eats since she's never home anyway. House is obviously thrilled to get a call from the Cottages at this point, and begs them to tell him he has to come in. "Jack doesn't have cancer," Chase says. "God, that's awful! I'll be right in!" House says immediately. There is no way in hell Cuddy's going to allow that. Every single patient at PPTH could be dying right now and it wouldn't get House out of this dinner. Foreman says they don't need House to come in, just to tell them why Jack's ear pain went away when Martha M. Masters injected him with lidocaine. House has an answer: Jack has referred pain due to some of the wrong nerve connections being developed when he was a fetus. Uh, or something like that. Anyway, this means that Jack does have pain, but it's supposed to be somewhere else and not his ears. And also somehow Jack's back/spine is involved with all of this because the pain started and stopped when Martha M. Masters touched it. Anyway, this leads them to two new diagnoses: hyperthyroidism and liver problems, both of which somehow were not detected in Jack's initial bloodwork. Um, okay. Martha M. Masters pipes up to say that just because Jack's ears don't hurt doesn't mean that her infection diagnosis is wrong. House, now thoroughly annoyed, starts making fun of her, only to be hung up on. Which means it's back to dinner for him!
House somehow managed to make it through the dinner portion of the evening and it's now time for coffee. That's when Murphy Brown brings up the possibility of marriage and whether or not House would convert to Judaism. "Wehaven'tgottenthatfarmom," Cuddy says. Wilson, not helping, says "that's actually a really interesting question." House speaks up to say he's an atheist. Murphy Brown says that's cool; half the Jews she knows are atheists, too. She just likes the whole community aspect of the religion. Cuddy says things like community don't appeal to House. Now Murphy wants to know why Cuddy keeps calling her boyfriend "House" instead of by his first name, which is a fair point. Wilson nods along with Murphy, their earlier tension over sugar studies now apparently forgotten. Murphy says it's important that Cuddy settle down, what with her being old and having far fewer choices in boyfriends anyway. "Settling down isn't all it's cracked up to be," Wilson sighs; "week is Sam's birthday. I was gonna take her to the Pocono's." Fantastically, Murphy Brown is here to not give a shit: "that's very sad," she says unconvincingly; "perhaps not the best choice of topic for a festive occasion." And then, this happens: "I just don't want Rachel growing up thinking you're a slut." House has had enough and can be silent no longer! But before he can rip Murphy Brown to shreds, she dies. Oh, no, wait -- House's lack of concern tells Cuddy that her mother is very much alive and now under the influence of whatever House slipped in her coffee to shut her up. "Kicked in just in time!" he says proudly, adding that this is his birthday gift to Cuddy. While Wilson and Cuddy cannot believe this, even though House has done this shit plenty of times before, House says he didn't think he had a chance against Ma Cuddy if she was conscious. Wilson weighs in on the issue, saying that he's kind of relieved that Murphy Brown is snoozing because she's "quite a handful." Except he has trouble getting the words out because -- oops! -- he, too, has been drugged! He stays conscious long enough to be pissed at House for it, and House apologizes, saying he really thought Wilson would be more whiny and annoying than he actually was. Wilson face-plants on the table. Cuddy is horrified, even though that was awesome. I'm just sad it's over.
Especially since we have to go back to PPTH and Taub. House just drugged his best friend and girlfriend's mother during her birthday dinner and his relationship with Cuddy still makes more sense and appears to be less dysfunctional than whatever is going on with Taub and his wife. Taub is sitting in the cafeteria by himself. Martha M. Masters walks up to tell him that Jack's thyroid levels are normal and his liver is currently being biopsied. Taub claims he's feeling "peachy" at the moment, though it's clear that he is not. Martha M. Masters tries to make him feel better by comparing his deal with his wife to the time when her family got a new puppy and their old dog was sad about it. "Have you ever had sex?" Taub asks. And yet, he can't resist a sympathetic ear and tells her his problems: his wife's sex drive is insatiable, but it's because of Phil, not Taub. "She likes someone else. And you've slept with other people. Uh ... why are you still together?" Even genius Martha M. Masters has no idea what the Taubs' deal is. Taub claims his loves the woman he can't stop cheating on and they've been together for 22 years, so he doesn't even know "how to not be with her." He seems to be good at not being with her when he's cheating on her, but whatever. Oh, and he can't even promise that he'll never cheat on her again. "That seems kind of selfish, doesn't it?" Martha M. Masters says. And then she gets a text message on her iPhone (I guess students don't get pagers?) saying that Foreman found evidence of autoimmune hepatitis in Jack's liver. Good times! Martha leaves Taub with his turkey sandwich and another PPTH ad, because PPTH apparently feels the need to advertise in its own (glass) walls.
While Murphy Brown and Wilson remain unconscious, Cuddy and House do the dishes in happy silence.
Daisy visits her father, who tries to teach her how to play the bass guitar. She's not interested. And then Jack has a seizure, which is going to get him yelled at by Eva for being so inconsiderate as to traumatize the child like that.
The day, Jack has had three seizures thus far, which means that whatever he has is now, finally, in his brain. House and the Cottages watch him from the hallway because House would rather not use his office because Murphy Brown is in there and "she looks mad." Ha! Taub says Jack now has a fever, which means Martha M. Masters was right all along and he does have an infection. They just have to wait for Martha's secret cultures to develop to find out what kind of infection it is. House doesn't think they can afford to wait that long. They decide to go with leptospirosis that Jack caught from rat pee on the subway floor, even though it's extremely unlikely. House volunteers to set Jack up with antibiotics for that while the Cottages guard House's office and wait for Cuddy's mother to leave.
Jack wakes up and finds House sitting in his room. House is his usual friendly self and even decides to downplay Jack's heroism, saying people will stop giving a shit about it in a few days anyway and Jack isn't any better or worse of a person today than he was before he saved that woman. Jack points out that House is hiding in a sick guy's room, so he wouldn't know much about heroism anyway. House leaves.
Murphy Brown has made herself at home in his office, looking through random patient files like there's nothing wrong with that. I guess the questionable medical ethics apple doesn't fall far from the questionable medical ethics tree. House reluctantly enters his office and starts in on his excuse before Murphy can rip into him. She interrupts him to say that ... she owes him an apology? And just like earlier in Cuddy's office, House is speechless as Murphy Brown says she must have had too much to drink at the dinner because she doesn't remember most of it. She says she knows she can be "difficult," and House presses his luck by saying that she was "a little bitchy." Murphy Brown says he was a shmendrik in the Clinic, although much more pleasant to her after he learned that she was Cuddy's mother. Oh my god, Jewish convert, put down the Yiddish dictionary. You are trying way too hard. She says House must love her daughter, which is fine with her even though she still thinks he's a "pain in the ass with a god complex." You know she isn't a real Jew because if so, she'd be beyond thrilled that her daughter was dating a doctor. She warns House that she'll kill him if he hurts Cuddy. I kind of hope he does now just so she'll come back. With that, she leaves for the train home, saying she's cutting her visit short because she's coming down with a cold due to too much time spent with children. "Children are awful," she concludes. I think House should date Cuddy's mother instead of Cuddy. But he's too busy getting his epiphany to consider it.
He heads for Jack's room and finds Eva and Daisy there. He starts examining Daisy, asking Eva if she's had any rashes recently. She hasn't, so House wants to know why she's even here when it's a school day. Um, maybe she wants to be at her father's bedside since he's kind of dying right now? That doesn't seem too far-fetched. But it turns out that Eva is keeping Daisy out of school because there's a chicken pox outbreak. And she doesn't want her kid to get it? So she can get it later when she's an adult and suffer more? That's not a good idea, since, as it turns out, that's exactly what happened to Jack. Daisy didn't get chicken pox, but she was a carrier. She spread it to Jack, who happened to be one of the 5% of people who don't get those itchy blisters, making it harder for the doctors to figure out that's what he had. House says Jack will be fine with some magic chicken pox curing drugs and his life will be saved -- though that does not, House says, make him a hero.
It also doesn't make Jack a better husband after all. Eva stops by with some coffee to find him feeling better and with some news: all the attention he got for saving Chloe seems to have gotten the band a bunch of gigs, and he wants to play them. He says it will only be three weeks, and then he'll be home for good like he promised. Sad Eva walks out of the room, where Taub is waiting, having somehow overheard their conversation. He says three weeks isn't that bad, but Eva knows it won't be three weeks -- he's done this "one more tour" thing many times before. Eva says she really thought he had changed this time, but he hasn't and he never will. "There's nothing worse than loving someone who's never going to stop disappointing you," she says. And then she just walks away and leaves Taub with that important lesson.
Martha M. Masters' cultures came back and he did, in fact, have chicken pox. She thinks she's awesome for sort of coming up with the answer, although House thinks Jack would have been dead by the time her cultures came back if he hadn't figured it out earlier. Also, he says, Jack isn't a hero after all because he's going back on his word to his wife and staying with his band. Martha says that doesn't mean he didn't heroically jump on those tracks and save Chloe. House shrugs that that was an "impulse," and those are easy (so easy that no one else on the platform did it, but whatever) -- dealing with your family is hard, and Jack obviously can't do that.
Neither can Taub, but he's going to try. He comes home to his wife and asks for a divorce. Oh. I guess he's not going to try. He can't handle that she has feelings for someone else, and he can't seem to stop hurting her. They love each other, but they aren't happy. Great. Maybe now this storyline can end and Mrs. Taub can find someone worthy of her and hopefully get some therapy and grow herself a backbone, too.
House gives Cuddy another birthday present: a bottle of sedatives wrapped in a little bow she can use the time her mother visits. Cuddy asks him to come over tonight, but he has plans to go bowling with Wilson. He says he'll cancel, but Cuddy thinks that House owes Wilson after drugging him the other night. House says his chances of sex are "considerably lower" with Wilson. Yes, but not, apparently, impossible. And then a thought occurs to him. He dashes into Wilson's office and starts to give him an excuse for why he can't make it out to bowling night after all.
On his way to a hotel for the night, Taub stops by one of the PPTH ads. He then throws a bunch of blue-paint-filled water balloons at it. That is a lot of work for a symbolic gesture, filling all those balloons with blue paint. He should've just grabbed a black sharpie and Hitler'd himself.
So, what did House have to do instead of have sex with Cuddy or bowling with Wilson? Exactly what he wanted to do in the beginning: drink scotch and watch some New Jersey housewives. Even though the Beverly Hills housewives are far more entertaining.
You can read more from Sara Morrison at L.A.me, follow her on Twitter, or you can email her at saramorrison@gmail.com.
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