While House is out of town for a few days, the rest of the Cottages tend to the patient of the week, who is coughing up blood and has a house full of crap. Literally -- he's a hoarder and his house is packed with stuff, up to and including raccoon poop. Oh, and his wife, despite her attempts to hide from the Cottages on their usual break-in inspection. The wife is suffering from the same symptoms as her husband, so both are treated for Q fever, presumably caught from the raccoons hanging out and pooping in their house. The husband recovers, but his wife, who, it turns out, is the hoarder and not her husband, continues to decline. When Masters figures out that she's had several secret miscarriages, she comes up with a diagnosis of Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. The hoarding was the wife's way of dealing with her grief over the miscarriages, and then both spouses got sick from the raccoons hiding in the hoard. The wife stayed sick after the treatment because of the Ehlers-Danlos. Somehow.
But we don't spend much time with them anyway, because Hadley is finally back and getting all the camera time. It turns out that she's been in jail for the last year, and House surprises her by picking her up at the gates and bringing her to a Spud Gun competition to try to find out what she went to jail for. Eventually, she reveals that she has a brother who also has Huntington's (that family has NO LUCK). Or rather, she had a brother. She doesn't anymore, because she killed him. That's what she went to jail for. She feels very sad and alone about this, so House generously offers to assist her death when the time comes.
House pulls his beat-up old car into the parking lot of a New Jersey Correctional Facility and pays off a cab driver to leave without the fare he's waiting for. House waits for the jail doors to open and the latest release to be set free. It turns out that this is a women's correctional facility, and the woman being discharged today is Hadley. Sigh. I'm sure there are people out there who like this character and/or the actress who portrays her, but I'm not a big fan of either and was enjoying my time away from her. I'm sad to see it has finally come to an end. I was really hoping Olivia Wilde would pull a Katherine Heigl and leave the show to shoot a few movies and just not come back. In fairness to her fans, I will try not to hate on her all over this recap. "Try" being the operative word.
Despite being in jail for the past six months, Hadley managed to get some bangs and is wearing makeup, even though all the women on those inside prison shows I watch on Discovery Channel always have bad hair and no makeup. Maybe New Jersey jails are different. Hadley doesn't seem particularly surprised to see House waiting for her as she strolls up to him and takes his offer of a freshly-poured martini. She quickly down the entire glass and makes a series of emotionless pouty faces.
While Hadley enjoys the fresh air out her car window for the first time in six months, House asks the inevitable question: what did she do to wind up in jail? Of course, Hadley is going to be all mysterious and not tell him until the end of the episode. All she'll tell him for now is the charge she went to jail for: "excessive prescribing." You can get charged for that? House and the Cottages had better watch out then, because they excessively prescribe unnecessary drugs for all of their patients every episode. House already knows what the charge was, but he doesn't know what Hadley excessively prescribed, to who, and why.
Back at PPTH, the Cottages are pleased to find out that House is planning on being away for three days, as this means they all get three days off, too. Unless, of course, Martha happens to ruin everyone's fun with a new case: a 36-year-old teacher who is coughing up blood. They don't care about him and try to pack up and leave the room, but it's too late: Martha has already called House and has him on speaker phone. House offers the phone to Hadley, who shakes her head and doesn't speak. House decides to respect her wishes and does not tell the Cottages that she's in the car. Instead, he asks for the details on their new patient. Martha says the patient is coughing blood and has other flu-like symptoms, but the ER already ruled out the most likely suspects. Foreman just wants to know where House is. He says he's on his way to the Greater Synecdoche Chili Cook-Off and Spud Gun Competition. Of course. Taub assumes this is House's honeymoon, which gets a raised eyebrow of surprise from Hadley, who apparently did not receive an invite to the wedding. House says Dominica is off somewhere with her boyfriend. Wait, when did she get a boyfriend? Wasn't she just trying to sleep with House last episode? Isn't part of her deal with House that she provides sexual favors? I wonder if we'll ever see her again, or her divorce from House will be casually mentioned in the beginning of Season 8.
Chase diagnoses the patient, Brian, with nosebleeds that ran down the back of his throat instead of out of his nose. He then coughed the blood back up, making it look like he was coughing up blood. The rest of his symptoms can be explained by the flu. That's ridiculous, but the rest of the Cottages except Martha are quick to go with it because it means they get to leave work now. Martha once again ruins everything by suggesting toxic exposure to certain chemicals, which fits Brian's symptoms better than Chase's suggestion. House agrees, and Martha smiles hugely at getting his approval while her co-workers look like they want to give her a few nosebleeds that run down the back of her throat instead of out her nose. House leaves them with orders to search Brian's home to look for toxins.
House gets off the phone, and Hadley asks him about his marriage. Instead of smiling enigmatically and refusing to answer Hadley's personal questions, House tells her it's a green card marriage. See how easy it is to share personal details with people, Hadley? Maybe you should try it sometime. Hadley starts to thank House for not telling the others about her, but he says he did it for purely selfish reasons: "some puzzles are just too good to share." Seriously? He can't just look up the details of her case? Aren't they a matter of public record? Especially since House is her boss (she only took a leave of absence, right? She didn't quit) and she's a doctor and she now has a criminal conviction for abusing her medical license. With that, House drives past Hadley's exit, which looks to be an actual New Jersey highway exit, so way to go on location or at least pay for the proper stock footage, show! Hadley watches her exit pass and sighs, wondering if three days with House is better or worse than all those months in jail. House reassures her that they aren't going to Synecdoche for the chili: it's all about the spud guns.
While Martha draws blood from Brian, Chase hopefully asks him if he suffers from frequent nosebleeds. Unfortunately for Chase and his vacation plans, Brian's last nosebleed was months ago and the result of an errant volleyball to the nose during the quarterfinals of the school team he coaches. This gives Chase an idea, and he asks if Brian's school's gym's showers are clean. Of course they aren't, so Chase guesses that he might have caught an infection from them that would cause Brian to cough up red bacteria that can be mistaken for blood. Chase is ready to pump Brian full of antibiotics and get the hell out of PPTH when Brian proves that he truly is coughing up blood by hacking up a few more cups of it. Martha loves being right.
In the car, Hadley refuses to believe that House is that interested in spud guns, because apparently she's never met him. House's interest in spud guns is well-documented and consistent with his character. House says Hadley might want to take advantage of all the potatoes and do some research while she's there, since now that she has a criminal conviction on her record, it'll be hard for her to get a job doing anything more than serving fries. Yeah, because really attractive women always have a hard time finding employment. Hadley shrugs that she only has to wait until the Medical Board Review for her license to be reinstated. Oh, really? Because I have a feeling the Medical Board might want to ask her a few questions about her crime and she's going to sit there and smirk and not answer any of them. And then they will reinstate her license anyway because she's hot. Hadley comes up with another excuse for why she can't go anywhere with House: she doesn't have any extra clothes. House says he already thought of that as he pulls the car into a mall.
While Hadley tries some things on, House makes guesses as to how she ended up in jail. He exposits that she was in jail for six months but has been gone for "about a year." I guess House-time is a little different than real time. I can only wish Hadley was gone for an entire year. Hadley emerges from the dressing room wearing a particularly unflattering outfit and asks House why he isn't going to the spud gun competition with Wilson instead of her. House says Wilson thinks spud guns are stupid. Also, Wilson and Cuddy got the week off. And most importantly, House clearly isn't taking Hadley along because he enjoys her company and thinks she'll pick up a fun new hobby; he's bringing her to find out why she was in jail and trapping her with him for three days is his best chance to do it. House makes a crack about Hadley's small boobs, then says that this is his fifth year participating in the spud gun competition and for the last four years, he has come in second place to one Harold Lam. He finds this unacceptable, and hopes Hadley's high school science fair knowledge of clean combustion (she placed fourth in the West Virginia All-County Science Fair, which isn't that big of an accomplishment when you remember that we're talking about West Virginia here) will give him the winning edge. Hadley offers to help House as long as he agrees to make a "personal stop" on the way to Synecdoche. House asks what they're stopping for. Hadley refuses to tell him. Of course.
Foreman and Taub prepare to break into Brian's house. Foreman asks Taub where he was last night, as he apparently didn't come home and Foreman was stuck watching the Bulls game with a large pizza all by himself. If you can't get your pathetic roommate on the verge of divorce and financial ruin to hang out with you, Foreman, then you probably just aren't cut out to have friends. Taub reveals that he spent the night at the house of a hot young new nursing assistant, and he'll be seeing her again tomorrow night. Foreman is clearly jealous and in awe of Taub's ability to get girls. How does he not realize that all Taub has to say is "I am a doctor?" It's not that difficult. Foreman manages to unlock Brian's front door if not exactly open it. There isn't enough room in the house for the door to open more than a few feet, as it's packed with all kinds of stuff. Brian is a hoarder
.Taub and Foreman make their way through the crowded house. Taub wonders if the hoarding is a symptom of Brian's illness. Foreman thinks the hoarding probably caused Brian's illness. The house is in such bad shape that Brian doesn't have any working utilities (I'm guessing that's from pipes and wires falling into disrepair and the house being too cluttered for a repairman to be able access it to fix them. At least, that's what always seems to happen on Hoarders. One time, the electricity went out because a goat chewed through the wires. Also the entire bedroom wall) although he did manage to keep the fridge going by plugging it into an extension cord leading to a generous neighbor's house. What neighbor is going to help a guy out who is single-handedly ruining the entire street's property values? Taub checks the freezer, where he finds a dead cat. The fridge is full of rotting food. Foreman says Brian could have caught a fungal infection from the horrible, horrible food.
The Housemobile pulls up to a house. House keeps guessing at Hadley's crime, but she won't give it up. House praises her "game face." That's not a game face, House. That's Olivia Wilde's usual blank facial expression. Hadley gets out of the car and knocks on a door. A man played by special guest cameo star Damon Lindelof answers, only to be kneed in the crotch. Hadley talks to him while he crouches on his doorstep in agony, then calmly gets up and returns to the car. Lost fans everywhere who didn't like the finale cheer at watching the man who wrote it (and, um, created the show they loved so much, although I guess they forgot about that) get fake assaulted. Hadley gets back in the car and refuses to tell House who she just kneed in the balls or why.
Taub and Foreman ask Brian about the state of his home and how he manages to exist in it. Brian says he uses bottled water and flashlights in lieu of running water and electricity. "Like camping," he says. Yeah, just like camping. I know when I go camping, I always make sure to bring my dead cat and moldy bell peppers. Foreman says they believe Brian has a fungal infection and will also need be evaluated by a psychiatrist. Brian claims that he isn't a hoarder, but a "major slob." Ah, he's just lazy. I get it. Sometimes it's easier to just put the dead cat in the freezer than bury it in the backyard.
Hadley and House have dinner, and Hadley, despite claiming that she doesn't want House to know what she did to go to jail, brings it up, saying she's kind of disappointed that he couldn't figure out what she did. She figures he would have hired "Cuddy's weird boyfriend" to do some snooping, which is the perfect way for House to reveal that Cuddy isn't dating Lucas anymore and that up until a few episodes ago, she was dating House. Hadley thinks he's kidding, but then House looks all sad until she believes him. "Are you okay?" she pretends to care. House says he's fine. Hadley decides to take House's mind off his own problems by giving him a glimpse into hers. "I killed a man," she reveals. House wasn't expecting that, even though most of the people he employs are also murderers. Cameron helped Joel Grey kill himself, Chase straight-up murdered James Earl Jones, and I think we can say Foreman pretty much murdered that girl by not noticing her bra infection until after he killed off her immune system. Unlike Hadley, though, they don't get caught.
Martha and Taub meet up with Foreman and Chase to inform them that Brian made it through the psych evaluation with no apparent mental issues and the fungal infection diagnosis seems to be wrong, as Brian is getting worse despite the treatment. Chase sighs that it's going to be difficult to figure out what in Brian's home is making him sick since there's so much stuff, but Taub says they can rule toxic exposure out at this point since Brian has been out of his home for days and he's still getting worse. Foreman wonders if being out of that house is actually hurting Brian instead of helping him; saying that if he was using a portable gas heater to heat his house and it was leaking carbon monoxide, then that would have somehow improved Brian's lung function and thus kept his lung symptoms from worsening. The Cottages like this diagnosis because if it's right, then they'll be able to cure Brian quickly and still get two days off. But it also means a trip back to Brian's house to test for carbon monoxide to prove it. Martha happily volunteers herself and Chase, saying that it's only fair since Taub and Foreman went last time.
Hadley takes a turn driving. House stares out the window in silence, apparently preferring not to talk to a murderer. Hadley asks if they can "give this whole thing a rest" since she's had a "pretty rough year." Yeah, I'm sure he's going to drop it now that he knows you murdered someone, Hadley. He won't have any follow-up questions at all. Of course, he asks her how she killed that guy. From the excessive prescribing charge, he guesses that she was driving under the influence, hit someone, and took off. The guy with the freshly-crushed testicles saw her do it and turned her in. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. They put her in jail for just six months for "excessive prescribing" because she got drunk, ran over a guy, and drove away. Not for vehicular manslaughter, DUI, or leaving the scene of an accident.
Foreman spots Ruby, that hot young new nursing assistant Taub hooked up with. He asks her a few questions about how she likes her new job before letting on that he knows about her and Taub. She's clearly not thrilled to know that Taub has been talking about her to both of their co-workers, but that's why you shouldn't sleep with someone you work with in the first place. Especially when you're new and barely know him. Now all the doctors will be expecting her to sleep with them. Foreman then tries to ask her how Taub managed to hook up with her, but she gets all freaked out and asks if Foreman is trying to tell her something abut Taub she should know. So now she thinks that Taub has herpes or something and Foreman probably ruined Taub's future chances with her. He tries to repair the damage but can't think of anything to say that won't make things worse, so he goes with wishing them a good time on their date tonight. Ruby says they actually don't have a date tonight -- Taub cancelled on her.
House wakes up from his rest stop nap to the sounds of Hadley firing off the spud gun. She has a few ideas for how he can improve it, starting with "your gun sucks." I'm disappointed. I thought House was good at everything except personal relations, but it turns out that he's good at everything except personal relations and building spud guns. Fortunately, he has Hadley with him, and the writers really want us to think she's the best at everything.
Martha finds Brian's home to be a fascinating "interactive life history." I guess she hasn't seen that episode of Hoarders where that old lady lived in a potty chair surrounded by stacks of her own dirty diapers. She might not find this kind of thing so awesome then. Chase waves off a few flies and says the air is negative for carbon monoxide, which means Foreman's theory was wrong. But that's okay, because Chase has a new diagnosis: Q fever, contracted from one of the raccoons who apparently live in the house with Brian, as evidenced by the raccoon poop Chase just found in a kitchen cabinet. Martha says Q fever fits Brian's symptoms, but she'd rather hang out in his house and look around some more before they head back to PPTH. But then Martha's snooping around reveals a set of toes peeking out from under a blue tarp. Fortunately, the woman they're attached to is alive. I guess if she were dead, Brian would have just put her in the freezer.
We go to the commercial thinking that Brian has, like, a house full of strange women he abducted, but when we come back, the woman is revealed to be Brian's wife, Nina, who is also sick. And weird. She hid under the tarp when Brian didn't come home and she apparently didn't have the ability to leave the house and look
for him. I don't know, this is all very strange. The people on Hoarders don't seem to have any trouble leaving their homes. They're always going to thrift stores and Wal-Marts to buy more stuff. Chase tells the couple that he's going to treat them both for Q fever. Taub wants to know why Brian kept Nina a secret from them. "The fewer people who know about her, the easier it is," Brian says. Nina finally speaks up to ask when she can leave PPTH and return to her house and all the stuff she hoards. Martha exposits that Brian isn't a hoarder after all; his wife is, and he's just a perfectly normal guy who voluntarily lives in those conditions.Hadley and House hit up a hardware store for spud gun improvement supplies. House tells Hadley to watch out for his nemesis Harold, who will probably try to hit on her. He hopes she turns him down quickly and coldly unless she can find a way to sleep with him and make him lose the competition. If he wanted a girl to do that, he should have brought Dominica with him. Or Ruby. While Hadley shops for more spud gun supplies, House comes up with another theory as to how she wound up in jail: she went home with a guy she met at a club, only for him to overdose and die. The guy she kneed in the balls was the dealer who sold them the poisonous drugs. Hadley ignores House in favor of looking for fertilizer to build some kind of a pipe bomb spud gun.
Foreman finds himself alone in the locker room to Taub's open locker. He grabs Taub's phone out of it and scans it for messages as Chase walks up and asks if Foreman and Taub are sharing phones as well as living space now. Chase is so jealous of their new friendship. Foreman tells Chase about Taub's date with Ruby and how he cancelled on their date tonight. He's dying to find out who or what Taub has to do that is more important than Ruby. Chase is curious, too. Foreman finds a message from someone named "RT92" about meeting Taub at their apartment tonight at eight -- which is the time when Foreman is usually at the gym.
House and Hadley arrive at the competition with House's souped-up spud gun. Hadley spits out a bunch of technical spud gun terms, but House is distracted by the arrival of his nemesis Harold, who is, of course, a college student. With a huge spud gun that he shows off by firing a potato. Hadley is impressed. House hands her his gun and walks up to Harold in an homage to Western movies. They exchange pleasantries, and House tries to intimidate Harold by claiming that Hadley is a famous Russian physicist. Unfortunately for him, that physicist is famous enough that Harold knows who she is and that she's 72 years old. Undaunted, House says Hadley is her granddaughter, and works at JPL. Harold scoffs that he interned there last summer. House decides to go with the truth: "she killed a man." At this point, Hadley nearly adds involuntary manslaughter to her rap sheet when she accidentally fires off House's spud gun, launching a potato with such force that it takes out the back window of someone's pick-up truck and the kickback sends Hadley to the ground, where she writhes around awkwardly. Harold is not impressed.
Foreman sneaks home some time after 8 o'clock and finds Taub messing around with a woman on Foreman's couch. Taub really is a crappy roommate, isn't he? I thought I was bad for eating my roommate's entire box of Lucky Charms one night, but at least I bought him a new box and never had sex on any of his furniture. Taub's lady friend sits up and says hello to Foreman. It's his ex(?)-wife, a.k.a. the woman with the worst self-esteem in the world. She's hooking up with the guy who cheated on her all the time and then asked her for a divorce. I think she has more mental problems than Nina.
Hadley and House are apparently sharing a motel room, because it's not like doctors earn enough money to pay for two motel rooms or anything. Actually, maybe they don't -- Hadley's been in jail for six months and House spent all his money on hookers a few weeks back. Hadley brings House a bunch of pies to celebrate her bright idea of replacing the gun's bad combustion valve with a disk that will somehow increase the distance they'll be able to launch their potato. They'll be using the pie tins as the disks. I know so little about what's going on with this spud gun that I have been forced to look it up on Wikipedia. And now I know way too much about this stuff and that Hadley is trying to create a Burst Disk Valve for a more powerful hybrid spud gun instead of the combustion guns that the competition uses.
House and Hadley dig into their pies/illegal spud gun supplies, but then House has to ruin things by asking Hadley who she killed and how. To entice her to tell him, he offers to pull some strings for her so her license will be reinstated sooner and give her a job as his assistant in the meantime. First of all, I'm pretty sure House doesn't have any strings to pull, since anyone who's anyone in the medical field and on medical licensing boards probably knows and hates him. Second of all, does he think Cuddy's going to go hiring yet another person for his department? Especially since they seem to be doing just fine solving cases with the four fellows? Actually, she probably will, because Cuddy sucks and has no backbone. Hadley considers House's offer, then tells House that his guess about the overdose was right after all. House claims to believe her, but I don't. But I also don't really care why Hadley went to jail, nor do I understand why the people behind the scenes of this show are so determined to have Olivia Wilde on it that they'll give her almost the entire season off to film movies. Not only do they not have their precious Olivia Wilde for seventeen episodes, but they also have to come up with a reason for her character's absence. And then she'll probably leave the show for a full-time movie career anyway.
Nina has the beginnings of a new hoard on her bed tray table, because you never know when you might need a used toilet paper roll or some wadded-up tissues. She's asleep, so Brian tells Martha about how his wife's hoarding began and slowly but surely took over the entire house and their lives. Martha asks him why he stayed with Nina, and Brian says everyone else might see the stuff in their house as junk, but Nina loves all of her items and he apparently thinks that's really cool or something? I don't know; I suspect they aren't doing a good job of explaining why Brian would stay with Nina and in that house because there really isn't a good excuse. It makes absolutely no sense. Even the most pathetic and weird spouse on Hoarders is at least annoyed by the hoarder spouse's issues, if not on the verge of leaving him/her. Martha listens to Brian's lungs on her stethoscope (even though she's just a med student and no one is supervising her so I'm pretty sure she's not allowed to touch the patient) and says everything sounds good, so it looks like the medicine is working. It's not working so well for Nina, though, who has a heart attack.
House wakes up in the middle of the night and sees Hadley sitting on a chair to the window, sobbing. Kind of rude of her to wake him up with her loud sadness like that.
The morning, the Cottages check in with House. Brian is doing fine, but Nina is worse than ever. Her heart attack is not consistent with Q fever, so the Cottages think she must have something else in addition to the Q fever. House says they should add hoarding back to the symptoms, then, since Nina is the hoarder and Nina is the only one who's still sick. He thinks Nina's other mystery illness caused her to become a hoarder, which then caused the raccoons to come over and give her and her husband Q fever. But Foreman would rather stick with the hoarding being an unrelated psychiatric issue that caused everything, and says long-term exposure to hydrogen sulfides from rotting food can cause heart trouble. That means sending people back to the house to check the hydrogen sulfide levels, much to Martha's delight and everyone e
lse's sadness. Foreman grabs Taub to do an MRI (OF DOOOM!!) on Nina's brain to make sure the hoarding isn't a symptom after all, which means Chase gets to go to the house with Martha again. That's kind of lame of Foreman not to punish Taub by sending him to the house. Chase didn't have sex on his couch. Probably.House and Hadley prepare to fire their spud gun. The fair-like environment of the competition reminds Hadley of the county fairs her father used to take "us" to. House asks Hadley who the "us" she's referring to is. Hadley says she meant her and her mother, but that doesn't really make sense what with Hadley's mother being stricken with Huntington's for almost all of Hadley's childhood and thus not really able to attend or enjoy county fairs. House figures out that Hadley must be talking about a sibling she never mentioned before and that no one else knew about. Even though she was in a serious relationship with Foreman and PPTH has, like, every personal detail in its employees' files. Oh, and we've seen flashbacks of Hadley's childhood and a sibling was never in them. But now that the writers had to come up with a reason for her to leave the show for almost an entire season so their precious star could shoot some movies, Hadley has a brother. And the fact that she accidentally mentioned him now after years of pretending he didn't exist (because he didn't) leads House to realize that the man she killed was her brother, who also has Huntington's. Wow, that's quite the unlucky family Hadley has there. Three out of four of them have Huntington's! Then again, it's entirely likely that she has like five other siblings she never mentioned before who don't have Huntington's. House guesses the guy she kneed in the balls was her brother's doctor, who wouldn't help her cover up the assisted suicide. Hadley admits that House is right about everything but the doctor. The guy she attacked had nothing to do with her or her brother; it was her cellmate's boyfriend who cheated on her while she was in jail.
In the MRI (OF DOOOM!!) booth, we have to hear more about Taub's sex life and his wife, who will apparently never, ever leave this show. She's not even in the opening credits and she's gotten twice as much screen time as Chase. Taub asks Foreman if he's mad at him and points out that he was actually being nice by having sex with Mrs. Taub on the couch because she wanted to do it on Foreman's bed with his memory foam top mattress. How would she even know what kind of mattress Foreman had unless they'd had sex on it before? Foreman tells Taub not to have sex on anything he owns. Taub says Foreman might want to buy a new kitchen table, then. I think Foreman should get a new roommate. Taub is awful, not to mention ungrateful. Foreman accuses Taub of doing his wife a disservice by sleeping with her so she can't move on with her life, then says the MRI of Nina's brain is fine. Meanwhile, Nina is no doubt trying to figure out a way to add the MRI (OF DOOOM!!) to her collection.
Chase and Martha check out the house again. Chase says Martha likes this place so much because it gives her human interaction without having to actually interact with a human. While he tries to test the air for hydrogen sulfides, Martha checks out Nina's yearbook. She's surprised to see that Nina used to be a popular outgoing cheerleader. Chase doesn't care. The test for hydrogen sulfides is negative, and he's leaving now.
House finds Hadley crying in a picturesque glen. She decides to fill him in on her crime, saying that her brother's disease progressed to the point where he couldn't control his own body enough to kill himself and only had enough of his mind left for a few brief moments of lucidity. During one of them, he told her to kill him. So she did. She injected him with something and after he died, she realized that she was "alone." Um, what about her dad? Isn't he still around? How is he dealing with all of this, by the way? I guess he already told Hadley not to even think about asking him to kill her when the time comes, since she says that now that her brother is gone, when she's as sick as he was there will be no one there to do her a solid and kill her. Is Hadley actually upset about her brother being dead? Because it kind of seems to me like she's just bummed for her own selfish reasons and not because, like, the brother I'm assuming she had a close bond with is dead or that she killed her own brother. Anyway, now that her speech is over, she turns back to House, who just stands there with no idea what to do about these human feelings that are happening near him. Hadley's kind of annoyed at House's lack of emotional response to her problems, so she says she understands why Cuddy dumped him. House just walks away.
He approaches his spud gun and aims at a target. Before he can fire, though, Harold shows up and assumes that House just got dumped by Hadley, and asks if he can ask her out. He figures if she was willing to date House, she'll date anyone. I think Harold has Hadley confused with Mrs. Taub. Mrs. Taub, clearly, will date anyone. Ruby, too. House turns and aims the spud gun at Harold. "You wouldn't," Harold says.
He would, as the time we see House, he's leaving the New York State Police station. Hadley waits for him by the car, although she brings him a soda instead of a martini. Lame. House drinks it anyway, and tells Hadley that he managed to get off with just a warning. Um, what? He's lucky he didn't kill Harold. My Wikipedia research says some spud guns can break the sound barrier. House says he was helped by the fact that the sheriff hates Harold for feeling up his daughter at the potato-mash mixer. Why would the sheriff's daughter go to that? Why would anyone? "You always get your way, don't you?" Hadley asks the guy who has to use a cane to walk. "Not always," House says; "today would've been our one-year anniversary." I guess Cuddy's off celebrating it with Wilson.
Martha walks into Nina's room after a day of exploring her home, looking for the oldest part of her hoard. At the bottom of the bedroom closet, she found baby clothes. She asks Nina what they're about.
House and Hadley are on their way back home. They get a call from the Cottages reporting that Nina has a new symptom -- infertility. Martha says Nina's hoarding began as a way to fill the void because she couldn't have kids. House says this could all be nothing, since the infertility may well be Brian's fault. Hadley has another idea, and can't help but open her mouth to say it, thus revealing her presence in House's car to all. House claims it was just the radio, but the guys recognize Hadley's voice. House says it was a "Thirteen Tribute Band," which cracked me up for some reason. Hadley decides there's no use pretending she isn't there, and starts to explain her theory before Taub interrupts to ask her where she was for the past year. House says they can talk about it when Hadley reports to work on Monday. "Monday? This Monday?" Martha squeaks, although I can't tell if she's happy to have more company at work or upset because Hadley's arrival means Martha is no longer needed and she'll be out of a job. Hadley tells them all to shut up and says when Nina said she couldn't have kids, they assumed it was because she was infertile. Maybe conception isn't her problem. She hangs up on them with that, and House happily says "the bitch is back." Yay.
Martha returns to Nina's room to tell her and her husband that they believe Nina has Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. That explains her heart problems. It also causes miscarriages, just in case Nina happened to have had a couple of them. Nina looks at Brian and says that she's had not one, but three miscarriages. And didn't tell him about it. And he somehow didn't realize something was wrong. Nina's grief over the miscarriages caused her to become a hoarder, which then, in turn, made them both sick. Martha says they can help Nina's physical symptoms, but she'll need some serious therapy to deal with the hoarding. She might also want to talk to someone about why she felt the need to hide th
ree miscarriages from her own husband, who's a little upset about being lied to for so many years. Nina says she was afraid that if he knew she couldn't have kids, he would leave her. Now Brian is offended that Nina would think so little of him. Which he should be, since he was willing to stick with her through all the crap collecting, so clearly he wouldn't leave her because she couldn't have kids. Especially since, you know, he thought she couldn't have kids because she was infertile already and he stayed with her. He leaves the room.Taub and Mrs. Taub talk. Taub says he's been selfish by sleeping with her instead of letting her move on with her life. Mrs. Taub refuses to let him leave, saying that she wants to be the one who makes the decision about if and when to end whatever their relationship is supposed to be. She says what they're doing right now is complicated and wrong, but when they were married they tried to do the right thing (well, she tried. Taub didn't really try very hard) and it sucked. This, Mrs. Taub claims, is fun. Well, so is heroin. It doesn't mean you should do it. Whatever. I hate this storyline. Wake me up with Taub and Mrs. Taub act like normal people, or we've finally moved on from them and are focusing in on someone else.
Brian returns to Nina's room, seemingly willing to forgive her.
House drops Hadley off at ... uh ... where, exactly? Her apartment? Did she pay rent for that whole time she was in jail? Maybe she owns it. House says Hadley owes him $87 for gas. Hadley doesn't say anything or leave the car, so House decides to try to make her feel better. He offers to kill her. When the time comes. If she can't find anyone better. Feeling especially generous, he says he can kill her right now, if she'd like. I would like! Do it! But he doesn't. Hadley says she'll be at work on Monday. She does not give him the $87 she owes him.
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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