By Sara M
An environmental activist named Doug loses his sense of balance at a protest and comes to PPTH via Cameron, who just has to postpone her vacation with Chase in order to make sure House follows through on it. He spends most of his time trying to figure out why Cameron is so intent on hanging out with the old crew, and Cuddy and Chase worry that Cameron's feelings for House have returned. When Chase decides he's had enough and dumps Cameron, House comes to the relationship rescue and gets her to admit that she knows he was planning on proposing during the vacation and she was trying to avoid it because of her Poor Dead Husband and Poor Dead Kumar. And so she has no choice but to actually communicate with Chase, and he proposes and she says yes, and even with my cold dead heart, I smiled and maybe even cheered a little bit. House figures out that Doug is suffering from a commercially-grown-rose-borne fungal infection that he got when he compromised his principles to buy his wife some flowers after missing their anniversary. But first, House has to wallow in self-pity because he thinks he can't figure anything out anymore. Wilson snaps him out of it via healthy foods, and just when House is playing both the piano and the harmonica in relief and as close to joy as he ever gets … CTB COMES BACK! As a hallucination!! How freaking cool is that?
We zoom over a computer graphic of a construction site in the middle of a forest. On the ground, an environmental group has chained itself around a dump truck and put a "What Would Nature Do?" sign over the vehicle. I'm sure that sign is made out of recycled materials and the environmentalists biked their way to the site. The construction workers are absolutely furious that the environmentalists are preventing them from doing their jobs even though they probably get paid whether they work or not, to the extent that they have to be held back by a line of police officers. Those construction workers are that eager to destroy the environment. One worker says he wants to work to feed his children, and the head environmentalist says if he really cared about his kids, he'd want them to grow up in a clean environment. This makes the worker ridiculously angry. Some hippie chick says that the workers should be thanking them for stopping them from being exposed to the evil coal dust. The head environmentalist says coal is the dirtiest energy on Earth. For this, he gets a rock chucked at his head. It doesn't hit anyone, but the hippie chick slumps over anyway, and a police officer checks on her and say she needs a hospital. The head guy disagrees, saying she's just dehydrated and one of their environmentalist medics can take care of her. "She has no pulse," the officer says. Whoops! There's cage-free veg-fed egg all over your face, head guy. He begrudgingly releases his arm so the woman can get medical attention. But all the officer does is sprinkle some water on her face. She comes to, and it turns out she was just dehydrated after all and the officer was lying. The head guy is pissed, but it could be worse. Once, a police officer lied that the ticket he was giving me was for just $25. Then it came in the mail and it was $92! Lame. The head environmentalist yells that they'll be back, but his threat loses something when he stumbles and falls on the ground. The construction workers are amused by this, but the guy has trouble getting to his feet and is seeing double. He falls on his back and says he can't stand.
Over at PPTH, Cameron visits her post-surgery boyfriend and says she has to push back their upcoming getaway, at which they'll either be snowboarding or surfing, depending on what Chase meant by getting her a board to learn on. It doesn't really matter now, as Cameron claims that a Philadelphia doctor she owes a favor to wants her to help get one of his patients to House, and Cameron can only do that if she isn't on vacation with Chase. "Babe, can't you repay the favor on another case?" Chase asks, adding that after Kumar's recent suicide, now is a better time than ever to get away from PPTH. But Cameron won't be moved, saying they'll go on vacation as soon as she's sure House is taking on her case. Chase smiles and agrees because he knows he has no choice. Cameron always gets her way.
thing we know, she's hovering over Kumar's empty chair in the meeting room and bringing the non-dead members of the group up-to-date on their new patient, Doug, who has seen three different specialists already. House accuses her of trying to get Kumar's job. Cameron insists that she's repaying a favor to another doctor. Hadley displays a heretofore unknown hatred of environmentalists, saying Doug is a "nutcase" who spends most of his time protesting at toxic waste dumps, which could account for his problems now. "Tox screen's negative," Cameron says. Uh ... Cameron? I know it's a "tox" screen, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't scan for toxic waste. Just drugs. Meanwhile, Foreman displays a heretofore unknown love of the environment, asking Hadley why someone who's trying to make the world a cleaner place has to be labeled a nutcase. Taub agrees, saying he's sure Doug is only into environmental causes because he's hoping to pick up hippie chicks. Because they don't smell like patchouli and have way too much armpit hair or anything. Taub thinks Doug is faking in an effort to sue the cops and get some money, because that non-diagnosis means that Taub doesn't have to do any more work this week. Cameron doubts it, since Doug wants to be seen by "the best diagnostician in the country." Like we haven't seen patients fake illnesses in front of House before? House decides that Cameron is in love with him and recommends a test that only Cameron is allowed to run. That means Taub got his wish after all and doesn't have to do any work.
Cameron gets ready to inject ice water into Doug's ear to see if his balance problem is related to an inner ear problem, but he'd rather get his knickers in a twist over the fact that his bedside table has been decorated with a lone flower in a vase. Cameron says all PPTH patient rooms get this and Doug acts like this is some big bad evil anti-environment thing, clearly not realizing that PPTH is only a two-bed hospital. Cameron tries to get the ice water in his ear, but it's difficult when Doug keeps talking about how fucked our planet is unless he can stop it by chaining himself to a dumptruck. Then he complains of feeling disoriented and barfs on Cameron's gown. Which means she'll have to have it washed, and that means wasting water and putting all kinds of chemicals into the sewer. Way to kill the environment with your inability to keep lunch down, Doug.
House reports to the cafeteria to brag to Wilson about how Cameron totally wants back on his team. Wilson thinks she's happy in the ER and then orders an egg-white omelet with no bacon and whole wheat toast. This doesn't escape House's notice, and he guesses that Wilson is dieting for his new girlfriend. Wilson accuses House of talking about his diet to avoid talking about Kumar. "He's no longer on my team. I'm sorry he's no longer on my team. There's nothing else to talk about," House says, looking everywhere but at Wilson. Wilson is looking at House's wrist, though, and notes that he's wearing the watch Kumar gave him for Secret Santa. It's almost like House is being sentimental or something, although he claims he's only wearing it because it's a good watch and will be able to time how long it takes for Wilson to ask if he's okay. With that, he doesn't order any food for himself, preferring to swallow his Vicodins on an empty stomach.
Meanwhile, the Cottages are wondering why House made Cameron do the test. Hadley has apparently forgotten everything about her boss, as she guesses that House wants someone to "mother" him after Kumar's suicide, while Foreman thinks the only mothering House wants involves "a bullwhip, leather diapers, and a credit card." Huh? Since when was House into that kind of scene? And since when did that kind of scene take credit cards? With that, Cameron walks into House's office to report that Doug's inner ear is fine, but his balance is still off. The Cottages walk in from the meeting room, and Taub insists that Doug is faking it, but House knows he wasn't because Cameron changed her shoes. Apparently, when people are faking an illness they're always polite about it and make sure to barf away from their doctors. When they aren't faking, they barf towards them and some shrapnel hits the doctors' shoes and thus they have to change. Foreman decides that all the stress of being an environmentalist could have caused carotid atherosclerosis, which explains the balance problem. Hadley says if that's true, Doug could have a massive stroke at any moment. It's enough to make House spit out the rubber band he's been chewing on. He orders Cameron and only Cameron to do another test to confirm the diagnosis.
Cameron does some kind of ultrasound on Doug's carotid artery, and he does not get all pissy about the electricity she's using to try to save his life. Instead, he hiccups, noting that he's been getting the hiccups fairly often in the past week. Cameron takes note of this, unlike all the other doctors Doug saw who told him the hiccups weren't related to his balance problem. The doctor Cameron owes a favor to is a moron.
Cameron rushes past Chase to make a note of Doug's pathological and possibly serious hiccupping problem. Chase doesn't care about Doug or his hiccups and asks why Cameron is apparently skipping out on the vacation he planned to treat another doctor's patient for hiccups. Yeah, that does look bad. Cameron says she does have a reason for needing to stay with this particular case, but she can't tell Chase what that reason is. Chase says this means that Cameron lied to him in the first place, only to ask him to trust her when she gets busted. "Yes," Cameron says, looking guilty as hell. "Okay," Chase says. Sucker.
Cameron walks with House down the hallway and updates him on Doug, just like the good old days. His carotid artery is fine, but he has the hiccups. House says he is now interested enough in the case for Cameron to leave it with him and go on her vacation, then wonders if the fact that she's all up in this case and doing the tests he told her to do without complaint means she's still in love with him. Let us all hope not, for that storyline is very much played out. Cameron doesn't deny it, just says that she cares about Doug as well as the Cottages, who have been through a lot with Kumar's death. House calls bullshit on that, since she would have been caring and concerned back when the death actually happened, not a week later. He says the only explanation for why she's here now doesn't actually make sense, so he's not going to elaborate on it.
Cameron breezes past House and into the meeting room, where she tells the kids about Doug's latest symptom of hiccups. Hadley suggests a brain problem, but House says Cameron already did a CT of Doug's head and it was "as empty as [Cameron's] boyfriend's calendar." If Doug's head is empty, that sounds like bad news, but I guess House only said that to needle Cameron. Nosy Taub asks what Doug's case has to do with Chase. House says he doesn't know, but it must be something and Cameron deflects nicely by coming up with a new diagnosis of organophosphate poisoning from exposure to all the nurseries Doug has picketed. Foreman turns that down only for Taub to come up with MS based on the fact that Doug has a Scandinavian last name and apparently Scandinavians are slightly more likely to get MS. That's pretty weak, but House orders Cameron to do a lumbar puncture to confirm it while the real Cottages get restless with all the inactivity and Cameron wonders how to do an LP on a guy with the hiccups. I'm gonna go with very carefully.
In the end, Cameron just recruits Foreman to help hold Doug steady while she does the LP. I think he's only helping her to stick it to House and to try to find out what she's doing back at her old stomping grounds. Pettiness and curiosity have overcome Foreman's traditional lazy selfishness. Cameron tries to claim that she's just trying to see how House is doing following Kumar's suicide, but Foreman sees right through that, saying that even if the suicide did mess House up, it wouldn't change his already negative outlook on life, and misery only makes his diagnostic skills better. Foreman's guess is that Cameron wants her old job back now that there's an opening, which is fine with Foreman since he needs someone to help him stand up to House. Also, he can copy her journal articles when he isn't trying to infect her with a mystery illness while also convincing himself that being a Cottage is a sound lifelong career goal. I see right through you, Foreman. He then gets all concerned about the damage Cameron is doing to her relationship with Chase, as if he ever cared about that before. Maybe now that he is also involved with a co-worker, he has slightly more empathy. But I doubt it. Cameron decides that the LP is impossible to do with Doug's hiccups even with the mighty Foreman holding him down and goes to get some drug that will stop them.
Chase finds Cuddy in the Clinic and asks about the newly-opened position on House's team. Cuddy thinks he's interested in it, but he suspects Cameron's the interested one. And he's worried enough to risk looking like an unprofessional jealous boyfriend to tattle on Cameron to the Dean of Medicine. Fortunately for him, Cuddy is just as unprofessional and jealous, so she tells Chase that Cameron hasn't expressed an interest in getting back on House's team to her. "Do you think Cameron's in love with House?" Chase asks his boss. "That is a ridiculous question. She's in love with you," his boss says. "Are you in love with House?" Chase asks. Cuddy says that's an even more ridiculous question. Chase says he asked two questions and got zero answers. He also got way too personal with his boss, so, great effort all the way around, Chase!
House searches the fridge. There is Sunny D there, but he skips over it when he sees Wilson's carefully-labeled lunch. Before he can eat it, a woman walks in asking for him. She introduces herself as Doug's wife Franni, which surprises House since Doug's medical history said he was single. Instead of being really insulted, Franni figures that Doug didn't want her to worry about him, and didn't even tell her he was sick and in PPTH in the first place. He lied that he was in jail with some protestors instead. She eventually searched his email yesterday and found the referral to House and PPTH, so here she is. House notes that Franni certainly took her time getting to her husband's bedside, then takes a bite out of Wilson's lunch, only to be disgusted by the fact that it contains horrible kale. Franni's excuse is that she had to find a baby-sitter for their four-year-old son, because unlike some patients on this show who are perfectly happy to expose their children to sick parents, only to traumatize the kids for the rest of their lives because one of Daddy's symptoms is that he calls his daughter stupid, she figured it'd be best to see what she was dealing with before letting the son in to visit. House says he doesn't know if Doug will be okay, but he does know that Doug is both a liar and an idiot. Then he realizes that patient family members don't often wander into the doctors' lounge and asks how she knew he'd be in there. A little bird named Wilson told her.
House finds Cameron and Foreman still trying to do the LP. He says he's figured everything out, by which he means what Cameron is doing there, not what's wrong with Doug. His brilliant idea is that Cameron has been sent to House by Wilson to see how House is coping with Kumar's death. Cameron denies it, noting that Wilson has more opportunities to see and check up on House than she does and she wouldn't have cancelled her vacation just to play Grief Spy. Except that she totally would, but House buys it and wonders aloud about Wilson's new diet. At this point, Franni gets a bit annoyed at the fact that there are three doctors standing over her husband right now and none of them are actually treating him. House introduces Franni to the others, and only gets a chance to insult Doug's parenting abilities once before Foreman calls him over to look at Doug's neck, which has three bumps sticking out of it. Cameron thinks it's a muscle spasm from the drug she gave Doug to stop the hiccups, but House decides to find out for sure by pressing on Doug's neck. It makes crunching sounds that were a lot louder when we saw this scene in the previews.
Hey, everybody! Lisa Edelstein wants you to know that on the set of House, they make a real effort to recycle with on-set recycling bins! And when they go on location, I'm sure they don't have huge, pollution-spewing, gas-guzzling trucks that tow all the equipment and the stars' luxury trailers. Save the Earth, y'all!
Foreman exposits that the crunchy neck was caused by an air leak between Doug's lungs. Cameron thinks that was caused by the hiccups, while Taub thinks it's a neck spasm. Yeah, one of those crunchy neck spasms. Sure. Taub is useless this week. Foreman still wants to find a way to relate Doug's protests to his illness, saying he picketed a lumbar mill last fall, and could have developed sarcoidosis, which has been linked to pine forests. The important thing to remember about that is that pine forests can somehow cause sarcoidosis, and thus they should all be chopped down so they don't hurt us. Those construction workers Doug was protesting were only trying to help. House turns that theory down, while Hadley steals Cameron's immunologist thunder and guesses an autoimmune disease caused by more protest exposure to industrial waste. House tells the real Cottages to treat Doug for systemic sclerosis with steroids while testing to confirm the diagnosis that will ultimately be wrong anyway. Notably, Cameron will not be doing the work this time. He tells the Cottages they're at bat while Cameron can "grab some pine," as in, sit on the bench. Although now I just hope she doesn't catch any metaphorical sarcoidosis from that metaphorical pine. Cameron smirks and asks why House won't let her participate anymore. He says she obviously wants to be there and he can't figure out why. So he's going to see where she goes when she can't stay with him. Cameron walks out with that smirk still on her face like she won something.
And where does she go? The Clinic. Suffice it to say, the Clinic is not where Chase was planning on spending their vacation. Cuddy finds her there, and decides to butt into Cameron's relationship with Chase in order to save her own non-existent one with House. Cameron basically tells Cuddy to butt right on out and that she can talk to Chase herself, which is kind of ridiculous since she obviously hasn't and won't. Cuddy decides to keep stepping over the line and asks Cameron if she's in love with House. Cameron doesn't answer, instead deflecting by accusing Cuddy of trying to mark her territory. They might as well get in a cat fight right here and now, since they've already crossed all the other professional boundaries. But Cuddy just says that no one should be involved with House. Not Cameron, not Cuddy, not anyone. And Cuddy thinks Cameron and Chase are good together, so she shouldn't screw that up. I just love getting unsolicited relationship advice from my boss who is transparently trying to save her own chance at a relationship with my former boss, don't you? And this might shock you, but Cameron's reaction to all of this is another smirk.
Hadley's trying to treat Doug while Franni yells at him to stop his tree-hugging activities that have obviously put him in the hospital. Foreman and Hadley lecture Doug that he should take some time off of protesting to recover from the autoimmune disease they still don't know that he has, and Doug says he won't quit. They didn't ask you to quit, Doug. They said take some time off. It's kind of hard to make a difference in the world when you're dead. Franni thinks Doug must hate his family, and he says he loves her and their son, but he loves everyone else on the planet, too, and his family shouldn't matter more than any of them. Franni, of course, doesn't really know what to say to that. Doug wheezes that the fact that his son is biologically connected to him isn't a "rational reason" why he should matter more. "He's our son!" Franni keeps saying, horrified and tearful that she even has to try to explain this to her husband. Doug says their son will need clean water and air, so his environmental activities are for their son as well as everyone else. Whatever. That's so insane that there's nothing I can really say about it.
That night, there's a knock at Wilson's door. He doesn't have to open it to know that only House would be knocking at his door at 10:30 p.m. to look through Wilson's kitchen in an effort to find out what's up with his new diet. House overthinks Wilson's invitation to search his kitchen and decides that Wilson is hiding something but thinks that by offering to let House look, House will think there's nothing in there to find and not search. Therefore, he will search. House thinks he's very clever, but Wilson says he just wants to go to bed, and House doing whatever he's here to do as quickly as possible will allow this to happen. House says he looked through Wilson's medical records and found no evidence that this diet is for medical reasons, and Wilson is actually surprised that House went that far. This leaves Kumar as the reason for Wilson's diet. Wilson doesn't see how eating healthy has anything to do with preventing suicide, especially since, if anything, eating healthy usually makes you more suicidal, not less. To this, Wilson opens his fridge to reveal non-healthy food stuffs such as ice cream, bacon, and potato chips. That's not enough to convince House, who notes that they're all uneaten. Wilson offers to let him look through his toilet if he wants evidence of food Wilson has eaten. I hope you're serious about that, Wilson, because he'd do it if he got desperate enough.
With that, House gets a phone call from work. Foreman has decided to put it on speaker so that House can get an earful of Doug's screaming in agony over sudden leg pain. They attempt to do a diagnosis over the screaming of Doug and Franni, whose faith in this hospital has got to be at an all-time low. They come up with a bone infection that got exponentially worse thanks to those steroids they gave Doug before confirming that he even needed them. House tells them to give Doug antibiotics and do some X-rays, then calmly hangs up on the entire scene. He takes a seat on the couch to Wilson and offers him a potato chip. Wilson turns it down, and House eats the chips in Wilson's face like a child, which Wilson seems to enjoy.
Doug's pain seems to have subsided enough for the screaming to stop, although he's not looking very happy while the X-rays are taken. Hadley complains that they're showing just as much nothing as they did when they took X-rays before Doug's pain. She decides to chat with Taub instead, who has to be less-than-thrilled about this. He didn't even like talking to Kumar when they did all their work together. Now that Kumar's gone, he must have been just a little happy that this meant no more conversations. But no, now there's Hadley. She asks Taub if he and his wife talk about stuff. I suppose they do, when Taub tells his wife the truth. Taub guesses that Hadley's asking for her own benefit, saying "I'm gonna go waaay out on a limb here: Foreman not a Chatty Cathy?" Hee hee. Chatty Cathy. Hee. Hadley says that's usually okay, but it wasn't last week. Taub says that's the breaks when you date men. Then he finds another break -- in Doug's femur, which is the hardest bone to break in the human body. And Doug broke it while lying down.
While House guzzles the Vidocins, the Cottages wonder how Doug's femur could have broken. Hadley guesses a brittle bone disease, but the symptoms don't match. House decides it must be cancer. Foreman thinks he means bone cancer, but that doesn't cause hiccups. House says it could be some other kind of cancer, then, and Hadley agrees, noting Doug's exposure to every carcinogen under the sun. Including the sun. Chase will do surgery to repair the broken leg while the Cottages prepare Doug for chemotherapy to treat cancer even though they don't know what kind of cancer he has or if it's even cancer at all. Foreman doesn't think this is a good idea, so he pouts.
Foreman walks in on the surgery to do a last-minute bone biopsy while the leg is all open and stuff. Hilariously, he walks into the OR with no gloves on or evidence that he even washed his hands and one of his possibly unsterile hands holding a surgical mask up to his mouth. Way to contaminate the entire room, Foreman. Chase asks if Cameron agreed with House's mystery cancer treatment decision, which gives Foreman the chance to say she isn't on the case anymore. We can only see Chase's eyes, but they pretty much say it all.
House finds Cameron down in the ER, working on her day off. He wants to know why she's still at PPTH. If she wants to monitor Doug, she can do that just as easily from home as she can at work. "You're not at my home," Cameron says teasingly. Actually, House says, it's more like Chase is at her home. Except that he's actually at PPTH now, since House called him in to do the surgery. "You and Chase are over," House says. Cameron wants to dump Chase and is using House to do it. The smirk leaves Cameron's face, and she says that Chase is going to propose on their vacation. She found the ring while she was packing. It's not that she doesn't want to marry him; she doesn't want him to ask right now. So avoiding the vacation entirely makes things a lot easier. For Cameron. She thinks she just doesn't want him to ask right now, because it'd be a fear reaction to Kumar's death rather than a genuine desire. I guess the second time around, Cameron wants to make sure she getting married for all the right reasons. Meanwhile, House was not expecting all this emotional stuff and doesn't know what to do or say. He goes with "oh" and leaves.
Quick, House! To the emotional bankruptcy of Clinic duty! A husband and wife are there, and while the wife's the one with the fatigue and sore breasts, the husband's the one who won't give her a chance to say anything. House instadiagnoses her with a hot tub-related problem, but the husband denies that his wife has had any exposure to a hot tub. House tries to give the wife a chance to say she used a hot tub during a business trip, but she speaks up for the first time to deny that as well. Cuddy walks right on into the exam room to talk to House, and he's happy for the chance to think of more ways to give the wife an excuse for how she was in a hot tub without her husband but not having an affair. He says this out loud, but it still manages to go over the wife's head. Cuddy's big important question that she had to compromise a patient exam to ask? "What's going on with Cameron?" As soon as House says Cameron doesn't want to sleep with him, Cuddy is satisfied, and House notes that Cuddy didn't really want to know what was up with Cameron -- just that whatever it is has nothing to do with House. Cuddy's busted. The husband loses his patience and asks how this is a medical crisis more important than whatever's going on with his wife. "A lot of STDs hang in the balance!" House says. But he'll pay for turning around to make that clever quip, as when he turns back to Cuddy, she's gone. As for the wife, she'll need vinegar compresses four times a day on her breasts for the skin infection she picked up in the hot tub she used without her husband. I think the wife's "I'm busted!" face is actually better than Cuddy's.
Doug is in the post-surgery recovery room that looks an awful lot like the Coma Barracks from a few episodes back. Foreman walks in and hits Doug and Franni with medical jargon before simplifying that the biopsy showed no signs of cancer. He sounds all smart until he asks Doug how his leg feels. Duh. "It hurts," Doug says. Foreman removes the surgery bandage to reveal that the scar isn't very scar-y at all. In fact, it's still bleeding. A lot. Foreman looks at Doug's other leg and sees it's all discolored and calls out for some fresh frozen plasma, which everyone knows is much better for you than canned plasma. Doug's eyes roll back in his head as he suffers from blood loss. Great post-surgery care there, PPTH.
After the break, House is still convinced Doug has cancer despite the results of Foreman's biopsy. Since Doug's symptoms say cancer, House says, it must be cancer. Hadley points out that if they don't know what cancer it is they still can't treat it, but House thinks some magical total body irradiation will do the trick even though the steroids have weakened Doug's immune system to the point that the radiation could kill Doug before the mystery illness does. Foreman knows from experience that if Doug doesn't have cancer, the irradiation will wipe out his immune system, causing something as small as an infected toenail or bra scratch to become fatal. Taub has an idea: they'll shoot Doug up with something that will make the cancerous tumor they don't even know he has grow so they'll be able to locate it. If it exists. This will also make Doug's cancer a lot worse, but that's okay since he might not even have cancer at all. Hadley would rather do the irradiation, so House agrees to go with Taub's plan after begrudgingly admitting that it's better than his idea. Taub heads for the nearest mirror to high-five himself.
House heads for Wilson's office and whines that he's lost his mojo. He had no idea that Kumar was suicidal, he was wrong about why Cameron was hanging around, Taub is coming up with better ideas than he is, and he still doesn't know why Wilson is currently munching on carrot sticks. He thinks he's losing his mind, but Wilson thinks this is a good thing. House is looking for reason and meaning in Kumar's death where Wilson doesn't think there's any to find. As for House's mojo, Wilson is sure it'll come back soon enough. He leaves and offers House all the carrot sticks he can eat. House doesn't appear to want any.
Surprise, surprise -- Franni isn't thrilled about the make your husband's cancer worse plan. As for Doug, he's kind of thrilled that all the crap he exposed himself to in his quest to clean up the Earth have finally taken their toll on him and if he's really lucky, he'll die a martyr. That might happen sooner than he thinks, as he suddenly goes into V-tach. Taub defibrillates in honor of Kumar.
Cameron and her outfit that doubles as a cricket uniform are in the cafeteria when Chase walks up. He looks tired and done, which Cameron doesn't seem to realize. He takes a seat and says he's done everything she asked and more, only for her to lie to him over and over again. Cameron thinks Chase is jealous of House again, but Chase says he has no idea who or what he's supposed to be jealous of and he's sick of wondering because his girlfriend won't communicate with him. "I need a little more time," Cameron says. Chase finally says no. "This has nothing to do with House," Cameron says, still not getting it. "It has nothing to do with me either. Not anymore," Chase says. Guess who just got DUMPED! And couldn't deserve it more. Chase put an entire season's worth of acting into that scene. Cameron did not.
The tests on Doug's heart have come back, and they're normal. But his heart is still beating irregularly. House goes over the symptoms again and asks for diagnoses. He doesn't get any. Annoyed, he orders them to shove a permanent defibrillator inside Doug to take care of the tachycardia, which Foreman doesn't like at all. But House thinks it's the only way that Doug will live long enough for them to figure out what's wrong with him, so they set off to do it.
House finds Wilson at the vending machine and goes over Doug's symptoms again. It doesn't seem to help, so he focuses instead on Wilson's vending machine selection, which he has yet to make. This is odd considering the fact that Wilson already put his money in. Wilson says House distracted him, but House realizes what's really going on: now that House is watching, Wilson has to pick something healthy. Which isn't easy at a vending machine. You're basically forced to pick the breathmints. Wilson goes for gummi bears, which are the healthy choice for the dieting movie theater-goer. House thinks Wilson only chose them because he knows that House hates gummi bears, and what kind of asshole hates gummi bears? They're awesome. Please don't email me if you don't like gummi bears. I don't really think you're an asshole. House, on the other hand, thinks Wilson is a "manipulative bitch," and says so with a smirk on his face. Wilson smiles and leans against the vending machine to watch House piece everything together. Wilson is only eating healthy to screw with House, taking his past experience with CTB's death and his attempts to change things and withdraw from the people who love him to try to help House through Kumar's. He says you shouldn't try to change things. You have to stay in the here and now, and Wilson thinks the here and now is him and House screwing each other. I mean "screwing with each other." Yeah. "You manipulative bitch," House says appreciatively. And now that he's solved the mystery of Wilson's healthy eating habits, he can solve the mystery of Doug's illness. It's two-for-one Tuesday!
House bursts into the exam room, where Cameron is just wrapping things up with a boy and his mother. No doubt she's just diagnosed the child incorrectly and he's heading home to die. He says he solved the case she gave him, and Doug is gearing up for Earth Day as we speak, taking no time to recover and hang out with his poor neglected family. Trauma only changes people who wanted to change before the trauma, House says. Cameron thinks House is now talking about Chase, but he says he's talking about her. Kumar's death reminded her of Poor Dead Husband, which is causing her to balk at the idea of another husband. And with that, House is sick of talking to Cameron so he wraps it up by saying "don't try to dump him by dumping cases on me." Cameron attempts to sound tearful and says she never wanted to dump Chase. House says that's right -- she wanted him to dump her. That way she can get out of the relationship and not feel guilty about it. Until she gets called out by her former boss. "You're out of reasons to avoid him. Kumar was a pretty dumb one to begin with," House says. That's as close to doing someone a solid as House ever gets, and Cameron seems to finally get it.
She appears in Chase's locker mirror as he's getting ready to leave. She apologizes for screwing up the vacation, and Chase apologizes for planning it in the first place. She finally tells him the truth, that she found the ring and was afraid he was proposing just because of what happened to Kumar. But now she's decided that she wants Chase to propose after all. Because now it's sort of on her terms, right? Cameron is a relationship control freak and needs to learn how to communicate with her partner. Chase still seems annoyed and sighs before walking towards Cameron ... and getting down on one knee. Aw, she may be a terrible girlfriend and this scene is kind of weird to see when you remember that the actors involved used to be engaged to each other but aren't anymore, but it's still sweet and it still made me smile.
Wrap-up montage! As a piano plays, Franni's wearing the earrings Doug gave her when she kisses his forehead and leaves him, presumably for good.
Wilson and House eat unhealthy cafeteria food, with House mooching off of Wilson's plate just like old times. There is much slow-motion giggling by both parties.
Chase and Cameron tell Cuddy the good news, and her happiness is no doubt linked to the fact that House is now hers and only hers.
House plays his piano, then manages to play piano and the harmonica at the same time, which is just ridiculous. By Season Ten, shows will be wrapping up with him playing a one-man-band. House works himself up into a bad case of harmonica/piano face, and it looks like everything is fine again in his world and the writers totally blew the Kumar suicide storyline ...
... until House opens his eyes and suddenly stops playing. He looks like he's just seen a ghost. Because he has -- CTB is leaning over his piano!!!! CTB is back!!!!! She's BACK!!!! A++++!!! FANTASTIC! "Solved another case. Busted Wilson," she says seductively before suddenly appearing to House's head and whispering in his ear, "looks like you're not losing it after all." As for the rest of us, we may have lost a Kumar, but it looks like we've gained a CTB for a few episodes, and that's almost worth it.
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.
Discuss this episode in the House forums, and take a look back at the show's most ridiculous cases ever.