Cuddy's mother is back, but this time she's a patient at PPTH. Cuddy insists that House treat her, but he insults her almost immediately and she demands to be treated by someone else. Cuddy then asks her boyfriend to secretly treat her mother, but when he and the new doctor have a difference of opinion over a diagnosis, House has to resort to sneaking around and switching out her medications, which could get everyone fired and sent to jail. This means keeping Martha M. Masters occupied with another case, but she quickly figures out what's going on and tells on House to Cuddy. When she realizes that House and Cuddy are in cahoots, she wants to tell on them to Murphy and give new doctor the truth. House threatens to ruin her burgeoning medical career. She does it anyway. Just as Murphy is being loaded into an ambulance to be taken to a different hospital where these kinds of shenanigans don't happen, House convinces Cuddy to stand up to her mother for once in her life. She does, and insists that she stay at PPTH and be treated by House. With that finally taken care of, we have like five minutes left in the show, so House quickly figures out that Murphy's cobalt hip replacement is poisoning her. All is well between Cuddy and her mother and, it seems, House and Cuddy. And House decides not to ruin Martha M. Masters' medical career after all and keep her on the team. She, in turn, decides to stay on the team for some reason. And in subplot land, Taub gets a side job with his soon-to-be-ex-wife's brother's law firm that he immediately blows because he thinks he's saving a kid's life. Yawn.
After an unnecessary and pretty cheesy (although I think that was the intent. At least, I hope so. Because there were page-turn wipes, and those should never be done sincerely) montage of high-end clothing, gold mannequins, and champagne, we go to a dressing room where Cuddy is trying on a low-cut leopard-print top in front of her mother and sister. Yes, that's right -- Murphy Brown is back! After seven years of never seeing or really hearing anything about Cuddy's mother (including her apparent refusal to join her daughters at a recent Thanksgiving dinner), we get her in two out of the last three episodes! Even better, she's telling Cuddy something I think we've all been waiting to hear: that she dresses completely inappropriately. Cuddy's sister is no help, commenting that at least Murphy isn't telling them they look fat, like she usually does. "If you didn't want to be insulted you wouldn't have invited me," Murphy says with no remorse. She's right, though -- if my mom regularly told me I looked fat or whorish, I wouldn't go shopping with her no matter how much champagne the store offered.
Some girl wanders in and asks if they want champagne. Murphy is quick to take her up on the offer, much to her daughters' outrage. "It's not even lunch," Sister Cuddy says. Murphy offers to drink a mimosa instead, then takes a look at her daughters' latest fashion choices. To Sister Cuddy: "perfect for a night on the town." To Cuddy, who has yet to learn not to try on low-cut tops in front of her mother: "perfect for breast feeding!" Soon, karma catches up with Murphy, and she comments that her heart is doing "that weird thing again." "Beating? It's normal for humans," Cuddy retorts. Which is funny, except that you'd think a doctor would be a little bit more concerned when an older woman (and her mother) complains of heart issues. Sister Cuddy has to ask her to check Murphy out. She feels Murphy's pulse for like two seconds before she looks very concerned and says Murphy needs to go to the hospital.
House and the Cottages watch cartoons on the morgue's ancient TV, surrounded by uncovered bodies that PPTH apparently just leaves lying around to rot. Seriously -- put them in a fridge at least. I worked at such a terrible hospital once, and even it was good enough not to leave dead bodies lying all over the morgue. It doesn't seem to affect any of the guys, though, who happily eat chips and watch TV while Martha M. Masters wonders what's going on. Chase, Taub, and Foreman already figured out that House is hiding from someone, although they disagree on who. Taub is betting on Wilson, like he ever actually appears on this show anymore. Chase thinks it's Cuddy. And Foreman's money is on anyone else. Taub and Foreman are idiots. It's obviously Cuddy, and she finally tracks them down and walks in, wearing a rather conservative outfit for her. Perhaps her mother's wise attire advice finally sunk in? While Chase collects payment from Taub and Foreman, House argues with Cuddy on whether or not he should treat her mother. Because he is reasonable, he thinks it's a terrible idea. Cuddy is her usual selfish self and stands right in front of the TV, blocking the view to the viewing audience's obvious displeasure. House doesn't think there's much of anything wrong with Murphy other than a long history of being a hypochondriac, and if anything is wrong, it's a heart thing that a cardiologist should deal with. Neither he nor Cuddy should be involved with treating Cuddy's mother, he says, for once agreeing with medical ethics. "This will be a disaster," he warns. Cuddy doesn't care.
And so, she throws a labcoat and a tie on House to make him look somewhat presentable and sends him to her mother's room. He puts on a fake smile and says all tests have come back normal and he thinks Murphy just needs some pills and her atrial fibrillation will go away. That's not good enough for Murphy, who asks if the heart issue is connected to her other symptoms. Cuddy asks what those are, and her mother rolls her eyes and says Cuddy has obviously been a Dean of Medicine for so long that she forgot how to be a real doctor and read Murphy's medical file. You know, the more we see of Cuddy's mother, the more it makes sense that she's dating House, who says the same horrible things to her. I guess it's what she's used to. House is forced to look through the last fifteen years of Murphy's medical history, none of which seems particularly interesting to him. In fact, he doesn't see a legitimate medical complaint anywhere in there except for a hip replacement that I'm sure won't come in handy later or anything. He's about to diagnose her as a complaining bitch when Cuddy interrupts to say they'll test Murphy's thyroid and House's team will inspect her house for possible environmental toxins. Murphy is satisfied with this, and feeling well enough to criticize the fact that House's labcoat is too small for him. And that surprises her? No one on this show wears clothes that fit properly.
Taub and Martha M. Masters are sent to Murphy's house (isn't it far away, by the way? She had to take a train to visit Cuddy last time). Martha looks for toxins in earnest while Taub just wants to find Cuddy's yearbook, as he was ordered to locate it by House. This leads to a conversation about high school days between Taub and Martha, who says she was crowned "Homecoming Geek" by her high school, which is incredibly cruel, especially since Martha was like 10 when she was in high school.
Taub brags about his days as a big man on campus, only to be interrupted by the sight of some Polaroids, which feature "certain parts" of Murphy's anatomy along with that of a "muscular Hispanic gentleman." I don't see how those could be relevant, since people haven't taken Polaroid pictures since like 1991. Less gross but possibly more helpful to their case, they find a vial of some Mexican herbal medication.
House hands the vial to Cuddy, saying Murphy was taking it for stomach problems and it apparently contains lots of lead. Cuddy says she'll start Murphy on chelation therapy and that will be that, case closed with none of the House-predicted disasters. Not so fast, House says, informing Cuddy that his team also found some saucy photographs of Murphy "doing the help." They then apparently found Murphy's diary and read that "the help" in the photos is a subcontractor named Jesus. Why is Murphy writing in a diary at all? And about her sexual exploits? Is she a 14-year-old girl? "Go, Mom!" Cuddy says, not as horrified by the news as House was apparently expecting her to be.
Cuddy hooks up an IV and asks her mother where she got the idea to take a Mexican herbal medicine. "A friend uses it," Murphy says. Cuddy says she knows that Jesus is more than a friend to Murphy, and lectures her for not telling them what could have been important medical history information that Murphy is sexually active. "At my age, he's more the active one," Murphy shrugs. Cuddy turns to her sister, all "can you believe this?" Sister Cuddy can believe it because she's known about it for five years now. Sister Cuddy also disapproves of the relationship because Jesus is married to someone else, but Murphy says she has needs and if Jesus's wife won't have sex with him then why shouldn't she? Meanwhile, Cuddy is a bit put out to find out that her mother has been hiding this from her for such a long time while seemingly having no issue with seeking advice about it from her sister. "We don't have that kind of relationship," Murphy says. And that upsets her? That's not the kind of relationship I want to have with my mother. Plus, the Hispanic gentlemen who work for Cuddy tend to almost die rather than sleep with her, so Murphy probably just thought she wouldn't understand.
Meanwhile, Taub is moving to a cheaper hotel room. He can't just rent an apartment? Hasn't it been like three weeks now? Also, why are we still being sucked into the Taub marriage vortex? I just want it to end already. We
didn't spend nearly this much time on Chase and Cameron's entire relationship, and they were both original cast members. Taub somehow got Foreman to agree to help him move, which is very uncharacteristic considering that Foreman is probably the most selfish person on a show filled with selfish characters. Almost Ex Mrs. Taub drops by to talk to Taub, leaving Foreman with basically all the moving work to do by himself. The non-couple head for Taub's bedroom, and he calls her "Rach" and tries to hold her hand like he wasn't the one who asked for this divorce in the first place. She's quick to pull away and say she doesn't want to talk about getting back together because they both need to move on. It seems that she already has, although she won't tell Taub any details. Ha! Go, Rachel! I knew she could do better. She says she's here to help Taub out with his money situation, as he's apparently having money problems again. How is he having money problems and she isn't? They aren't divorced yet, so unless she socked a bunch of money away in a hidden separate bank account she should be struggling just as much as he is, right? Or maybe he's just anticipating the alimony payments. Anyway, she got Taub a gig as a medical consultant on lawsuits for her brother's firm. Taub doesn't know if that's such a good idea, since the last time he saw the brother, it was five years ago and Jamie, having just found out that Taub was cheating on his sister, broke Taub's nose. Wait, Mrs. Taub knew about Taub's tendency to cheat on her before he confessed to sleeping with the nurse that got him kicked out of his plastic surgery practice and sent him to PPTH in the first place? Because originally it seemed to me like Mrs. Taub had no idea that he was a cheater and he left plastic surgery and became a Cottage to keep it that way.House has been summoned to Murphy's room by a barrage of emails, texts, and phone calls. He informs her that one message would have been enough, but she says apparently not, since even though she sent him all those messages, it still took him longer than she'd like to report to her room. House really wants to bite her head off, but instead settles on saying "it's a crazy mystery. It's not like I have a department to run" and leaves it at that. Murphy wisely drops it and says her Macbook Air and WebMD tell her that House's lead poisoning diagnosis is wrong, since it doesn't explain all of her symptoms. I would say it's wrong because it was made based solely on a vial of Mexican folk remedy, but whatever. House says the only symptoms that lead poisoning doesn't cover are the ones that are figments of Murphy's imagination. Murphy denies being a hypochondriac, then suddenly points out her trembling hand and how it must be a side effect from her arthritis pills, as is listed on the label. Ah, but this is a trap! It turns out that both the label and the pills are fake, and House is now certain that most of Murphy's symptoms are all in her head. This still doesn't prove to Murphy that she's a hypochondriac, but it does get him kicked off her case, which is a good consolation prize.
Later that night, House is in Cuddy's office being chewed out for putting her through having to spend an hour convincing her mother to stay at PPTH and be treated by some guy named Dr. Kaufman instead. House doesn't think it matters if she leaves PPTH or not since she's already getting better and now that he's proven that most of this stuff is all in her head she won't be able to prolong her stay by convincing herself that she has six different forms of cancer. Oops! Cuddy gets a call from Dr. Kaufman that begins "it's going to be okay, but ... " which you never want to hear. Although I guess it's better than "it's not going to be okay, and ... " Murphy's atrial fibrillation is back. House sincerely says he's sorry that Murphy is sick, but he's not sorry to be off her case. Cuddy says he isn't. He'll just continue to try to diagnose Murphy without her knowing about it. Even though both Murphy and House have made it very clear that they do not want this. Cuddy is being really unfair to House, not to mention Dr. Kaufman and every patient at PPTH who isn't under House's care, since Cuddy seems to think that none of her other doctors is capable of treating patients as well as House. She's perfectly happy to subject other people's mothers to a lesser doctor, but not hers.
As it happens, Dr. Kaufman doesn't really feel like taking House on as a silent partner. He doesn't care what his boss says; his patient specifically requested that House have nothing to do with her care and he knows that if House does interfere, it will be a losing proposition for him: if Murphy recovers, House gets all the credit. If Murphy dies, Kaufman gets the blame. He won't even let House sweet-talk him by saying he's a "perfectly competent, bordering on good" doctor. "Please stay away from my patient," Kaufman says, naively thinking that will work.
House brings his listening devices out of Season Six storage and has Murphy's room bugged so he and his team can keep track of her case. Martha, of course, has to comment that this is illegal, to which House cites the Supreme Court case of "Bite vs. Me." Ultimately, though, House decides to turn the audio off when Murphy starts in on Cuddy about dating nice, Jewish, Harvard-educated Kaufman instead of House. Murphy Brown is really mean to her daughter and stuff, but that is good advice. That's not good enough for Martha, who demands that House stop bugging the patient's room or she won't be able to work with him. House exasperatedly says he'll take the bug out and just get a recap from Cuddy twenty minutes later instead.
Whatever. With that, Chase diagnoses Murphy with leukemia. House says it fits, but he's disappointed because that's already Kaufman's diagnosis and he's doing a bone marrow biopsy on Murphy to prove it. WHAT! Kaufman is running tests to prove his theories???? No wonder Cuddy wants House to stick around and make sure that bozo doesn't screw something up.
House says that's it for Murphy, then, and sends Martha down to admitting to find a new patient. She takes his word for it and leaves, and House calls his remaining Cottages into his office for a special secret diagnosis session. He says what they just did was a fake session, designed to test Martha's ethicalness and see if she can be trusted not to be trusted. She can't. House's working theory is not leukemia, but a thiamine deficiency, which is apparently closely linked with alcoholism. House tells the Cottages about his recent dinner date with Murphy and how easily she believed that her passing out was the result of too much to drink and not her daughter's boyfriend being a sociopath with access to prescription knock-out pills. This makes House think that Murphy has alcohol-induced blackouts fairly often. That's his only evidence, and now he wants the Cottages to test it by sneaking some thiamine into Murphy's IV and seeing if she improves. Foreman isn't opposed to it, but says they have to ask Cuddy for permission first. Which means convincing her that her mother is an alcoholic. Enh, I think I'd rather my mom be a secret alcoholic than secretly sleeping with some married guy named Jesus for five years and telling my sibling but not me.
House tells Cuddy his latest theory, handing her some thiamine pills in a bottle labeled as an antacid, all the better to sneak them into Murphy's body. Shouldn't Cuddy be concerned that her boyfriend is so good at making fake prescription bottle labels? This is his second one in like ten minutes. Cuddy is loath to do anything without talking to her mother first. House doesn't think that will accomplish anything, since Murphy will just deny it. Maybe Cuddy should ask her sister instead, since she seems to know everything that's going on in their mother's life. But Cuddy believes that she and her mother have a relationship where they tell each other the truth as long as they are asked for it directly. "Addicts lie," House says knowingly.
Cuddy, pills in hand, tries to kick her sister out of her mother's room to speak to her one-on-one. But Sis won't leave, so Cuddy plows on ahead and says she thinks Murphy's drinking is the cause of her heart problems. "Is it about the champagne?" Sister Cuddy asks, only to be silenced by a glare from Cuddy. I guess we know who the older sister in that family is. Cuddy says she heard from Murphy's friends Patsy and Anne that Murphy "lost control" at a recent museum luncheon that I am very sad we didn't get to see. Also, how does Murphy even have friends? She's so hateful. I wonder if Patsy and Anne are related to Wilson? Murphy angrily denies being an alcoholic. Cuddy says she believes her, but then hands her a bottle of thiamine pills masquerading as antacid.
When House goes to check on Cuddy, she asks him to just proceed with any and all of his wacky theories and treatments without consulting her, because she's too emotionally invested to make the right decisions. "Congratulations. You were right, as usual," she says, all pissed off at House for trying to give her good advice. She's so upset about everything that she doesn't seem to realize that she just basically gave House permission to hang her mother from the balcony by the ankles and call it a diagnostic tool.
Ugh, back to the Taub vortex. Taub meets with Jamie, who apologizes for hitting him five years ago, saying he was going through some stuff and has been through years of therapy to manage his anger. Do you really have an anger problem if you punch a guy for cheating on your sister? That seems pretty reasonable and well-deserved to me. "I kinda deserved it," Taub says. "That's for sure," Jamie fires back, still clearly angry at him for breaking his sister's heart time and time again. With that, Jamie gets down to business: his law firm needs a medical consultant for their medical malpractice cases. If Taub does well on this one, he can expect to work about 15 hours a week and make $50,000 a year. "I'll take it," Taub says immediately. Jamie gets out some paperwork while Taub explores the office, noticing an MRI of someone's skull. Jamie says it belongs to a kid who was hit by a delivery man from a pizza company he represents. They're about to give the kid a few million dollars for the damage to his legs, but Taub thinks he spots a bleed in his brain on the MRI, too. Jamie says none of the other doctors noticed anything like that and the case is about to be settled, so he snaps at Taub to mind his own business.
House is called back into work by a panicky Cuddy, who says her mother now has a fever. House says he must have been wrong about the alcoholism and the thiamine, then, and that Kaufman's leukemia diagnosis is looking more and more likely. Yes, she must have one of those cancer fevers. Cuddy says the biopsy results came back negative, so it's not that either. House, always one to see the silver lining, says this is good news, since Kaufman was wrong, too.
House calls the Cottages to the bedside of some guy in a coma, saying this is their new patient now that they've b
een fired off Murphy's case by both Cuddy's mother and now Cuddy herself. House refuses to speak any further, claiming that this is a test to see if the Cottages can properly diagnose the man without his assistance. The Cottages buy it and start diagnosing the coma patient, although Foreman takes one look at the file and says it's obviously an overdose and not worthy of them. Martha comes up with a different theory, although this one still doesn't seem like their type of case. Chase speaks for House to say it makes for the kind of interesting case House likes, so Martha stays behind to draw some of the coma guy's blood (and probably kill him, as she usually does when touching her patients with sharp objects) to prove her theory while the others leave the room to talk about their actual case without her around.Taub goes first, diagnosing Murphy with an autoimmune disease that Kaufman already thought of and started treating her with prednisone for. That's not good news, since if Foreman's diagnosis of endocarditis is correct, those steroids will suppress Murphy's immune system and thus kill her. Taub thinks they should bring this up to Kaufman, but House says he's been listening in on his bug and knows that Kaufman's assistant already came up with the same endocarditis theory and made the same argument and if Kaufman didn't listen to him, he certainly won't listen to them. So, House says, the only solution is to switch out Murphy's prednisone with some antibiotics. Of course. Oh, and House can't do it because Murphy hates him and would obviously notice him in her room messing with her IV bag, so it will have to be one of the Cottages performing this incredibly illegal act. Chase and Taub sit in the back and let Foreman fight this battle for them. There is shouting, but neither man is really mad at the other one because House knows what he's asking his employees to do and Foreman knows why House is asking them to do it. Oh, wait, nevermind -- he threatens to fire them if they don't do his bidding. So he's still a horrible person. He leaves, and Foreman tries to mobilize the three of them against House, saying he can't fire them all if they refuse. Chase breaks rank immediately, saying he's doing it because he truly believes the endocarditis diagnosis is correct and Murphy will die if they don't act. Also because Chase is a coward when it comes to House and will pretty much do whatever he asks.
This leaves Taub and Foreman sitting around the meeting room waiting for Chase to return. Taub whines about how he's just sitting back and watching as Chase risks being fired and/or jailed to save Murphy when he used to be a good doctor who did good things for people who needed him. This is more about Taub's conflict over whether or not he should do something about that kid's brain bleed than it is about Murphy, obviously. Foreman knows about this and tells him not to interfere; plenty of other doctors looked at the scan and didn't see a problem, so Taub has a lot to lose and nothing to gain by going to the kid's parents. Chase returns to the room, his mission a failure after Cuddy's sister saw him in the hallway and recognized him from some charity function they both attended. If he goes to Murphy's room and switches out the bags now, he's sure to be recognized. Either Foreman or Taub will have to do it instead. Foreman says he can't; he was at the same charity event so Sister Cuddy will know him, too. Taub says he won't because he doesn't know what to do about anything anymore. Fortunately for him, he doesn't have to make a decision because Jamie texts him, summoning him to his office to look over another case. He leaves Foreman and Chase to deal with House's mess.
In the end, Taub doesn't help Jamie or House. Instead, he waits until, like, the day (it's light outside now when it was dark in the last scene) to go to the kid's house and tells his mother (the kid, named Timothy, as all sickly children must be named in works of fiction, can't get to the door because he's stuck in a wheelchair thanks to that pizza delivery man and his mother apparently moving the furniture too close together for him to wheel by) that he's a doctor who saw Timothy's medical records and thinks she should get him to a hospital for a cerebral angiogram right now. Unfortunately for Timothy, Taub recommends taking him to PPTH, so he will die.
After the break, House rounds up his Cottages (sans Martha, who is still drawing blood from the coma guy, I guess?) to insult them for their apparent inability to switch out a simple IV bag. He tells them to wait for Murphy to take her afternoon nap and then think of a way to get her sister out of the room and switch the bags.
Meanwhile, we find Martha in Cuddy's office. "Is now a good time to talk?" she asks. "Not really," Cuddy says. Martha talks anyway. "Why are you still here?" Cuddy asks. Martha doesn't seem to realize or care that Cuddy and House are dating and so telling on him to her is useless and stupid, and says that she thinks House is still treating Murphy even after Cuddy ordered him to stop. "I'll look into it," Cuddy assures her. How can she look into anything when it's almost pitch black in her office? Martha says Cuddy might want to look into this now, since she checked with the pharmacy and saw that Chase ordered prednisone and antibiotics (I guess he needed the prednisone label because House's label-maker isn't working anymore?) for the coma patient even though he doesn't need either medication. Murphy, on the other hand, might. Martha thinks House is planning to switch out her IV meds.
Cuddy heads for House's office, which is just as dark as hers (seriously, guys. Turn a light on. One light won't destroy the environment) and confronts him. He doesn't understand the problem; she told him to do whatever he needed to do, and he is. Cuddy is a moron, so she didn't realize that that meant he would actually do whatever he thought he needed to do, and that such things could be life-threatening even though House does life-threatening and ethically questionable things to his patients every single week. House says Cuddy intentionally didn't think about what he would have to do because she doesn't want to make any tough decisions, which is true. She seems to realize this, and asks him if he's 100% sure that it's endocarditis. House says she knows he can't be, but that endocarditis fits better than any other diagnosis. Except for, you know, whatever the actual diagnosis will be, since we all know it's too early in the show for House to be right. He asks Cuddy for help with the IV.
Cuddy messes with Murphy's IV bags and asks where her sister went. "She's got a family," Murphy says. Cuddy points out that she, too, has a family. That just sets her up for Murphy to say "three kids and a husband -- that's a family." Cuddy decides this is a good time to ask her mother why she has always been harder on her than her sister, like when she made Cuddy be her high school yearbook editor but let her sister do whatever she wanted. Murphy's like, "um, that was decades ago." Cuddy says she still treats her that way. Murphy says if Cuddy wants her to tell her that she loves her and her sister equally, she does. "Okay," Cuddy says, and starts to leave. But Murphy isn't finished. She feels the need to add that she likes Cuddy's sister more. Why would she even say that? So unnecessary.
Taub finds Foreman relaxing in the light-free doctor's lounge. Foreman says the angiogram results on that kid came back. He points something out on a film that I don't know how anyone can actually see since, again, there is no light in the room whatsoever, and says the thing Taub thought was a bleed in Timothy's brain was actually just an "anatomical variant" that Timothy was born with. That means Taub risked everything and there was nothing wrong with Timothy after all. Oops.
There is, however, something wrong with Murphy. She's having trouble breathing and all the symptoms of an allergic reaction. But, Kaufman says, that's impossible since Murphy was on prednisone, which is used to treat severe allergic reactions. Way to switch Murphy's prednisone out for an antibiotic she's allergic, too, idiots.
By the time the commercial break is over, Cuddy has switched the IV back to actual prednisone. Murphy's allergic reaction stopped, but her symptoms are back. Kaufman, having no idea what's really going on, figured that the prednisone wasn't working and decided to change his diagnosis to endocarditis. He then put her back on the antibiotics he didn't know she was taking before and she had another allergic reaction and almost died. Wow, that's about as wrong as things could have gone. And yet, House thinks they should switch Murphy's IV bags again, this time with an anti-fungal treatment. Foreman says no way -- the anti-fungal treatment is a dangerous poison that will cause her to develop more symptoms. House says that's okay, since the symptoms it causes are the same as the ones she has now anyway, so no one will know. Cuddy doesn't know what to do. Foreman argues against House's suggestion, saying it backfired on them once already. Chase and Taub finally speak up to agree with Foreman. Cuddy apologizes to them for getting them involved in all of this and says they can leave. They race each other out the door. "I'm right," House says. Cuddy says she thinks he is and she'll switch the IV bags, but -- oops! Martha just snuck into the office through the door the escaping Cottages left open. I guess they were so intent on leaving that they didn't see her or bother to let out a warning of her presence to Cuddy or House. Thanks, guys. Now Cuddy and House will have to kill her to keep her quiet. Lying is so complicated.
Martha looks over Murphy's file and says she agrees with House's diagnosis of fungal endocarditis. But she thinks the best course of treatment is a giant dose of the truth. Cuddy is shocked at Marta's inconvenient ethics, even though she was the one who forced Martha on House in the first place. She kind of deserves this, really. Martha babbles on about the patient being the highest priority. House heard all of this many times before, so he cuts her off and tells Cuddy to leave her own office so he can deal with Martha alone. Sucks to be Martha! Cuddy leaves almost as quickly as the Cottages did earlier, happy to let someone else do her dirty work yet again. House takes her spot behind the desk and informs Martha that if she tells anyone what's going on, he will have her kicked
out of medical school and her career will be destroyed. Martha says she's willing to take the risk and hope that no one will believe any of House's lies about her. House says he's on a truth-telling kick himself, so all he'll say about Martha is the truth -- she drew blood on the coma patient even though his file had a form in it that expressly forbid anyone from treating him without permission from his family. Therefore, what Martha did was both unethical and criminal. Oops! "You told me ... " Martha says. House says he didn't, actually, since he made it a point not to say a word the entire time. "You set me up? Why?" Martha asks. Duh, Martha. "This patient is the highest priority," he says.Martha finds a bathroom and pukes.
Taub is also in a bathroom, although he is merely peeing. Oh, wait, no -- now he's having his face smashed into some plumbing by Jamie, who finally managed to track him down. While Taub bleeds and groans on the floor, Jamie says Timothy's mother backed out of the settlement and reported him to the bar. Taub is fired and can look forward to being sued for anything and everything Jamie can think of. And Mrs. Taub wants nothing to do with him. Jamie leaves Taub to go back to his anger management therapy.
Martha walks into Murphy's room and asks to speak to Kaufman and Murphy alone. "Oh shit," Cuddy's face says. Cut to House and Cuddy being reamed out by Kaufman in front of Murphy and Martha. He threatens to report House to everyone for everything, then says Cuddy is actually worse because she knows House is "an insane lunatic" and lets him do this stuff anyway. True. Murphy speaks up to fire everyone, including Kaufman, and demand to be taken to another hospital where shit like this doesn't happen. She should have done that an hour ago.
In the darkness of her office, Cuddy sobs to House. "What just happened?" she asks. I think she meant that rhetorically, but House decides to answer her anyway with "you just killed her." Shocked, Cuddy says if they want to point fingers, this is actually House's fault because he pissed Murphy off in the first place and was kicked off her case. The case that, you know, Cuddy forced him to take. House says he never should have agreed to secretly treat Murphy, and that she's only leaving PPTH because Cuddy is letting her. Cuddy denies that her mother has control over her, saying she's been rebelling against her mother for her entire life. Really? Because I'm pretty sure the time to rebel against your mother begins at, say, 12 and ends somewhere around 22. After that, you're supposed to get over it and be an adult already. House says it doesn't seem that way to him, since Cuddy complains to him when Murphy insults her instead of confronting her mother about it and does everything behind her mother's back. "You never confront her. And it pisses me off!" he says. "Are you taking this personally?" Cuddy gasps. Well, why wouldn't he, Cuddy? You're the one who dragged him into this by taking advantage of your personal connection with him. He says if Murphy leaves PPTH, she'll die. And if she dies, then sooner or later, Cuddy will blame House for it and their relationship will be over. "Get me my patient back," he orders.
Cuddy's not going to stand up to House, so instead she goes running outside in the dramatic rain and opens the door to her mother's ambulance. Cuddy's sister is in there, and she starts to protest Cuddy's shenanigans, but Cuddy is clearly having none of it. So Cuddy's sister just runs out of there and leaves Murphy to her lesser-liked, soaking wet daughter. Cuddy doesn't exactly tell Murphy off though, instead saying she knows her mother was tougher on her because she saw something in Cuddy that she didn't see in her sister or herself. "A type of ambition. A type of brains," she says. Wow, way to make this into a Cuddy Flattery Minute, Cuddy. But I guess if you want to make peace with your mother's abusive criticism by saying it's because she knew how awesome you were, why not?
She claims that her mother made her into the overachiever she is today and is clearly proud of what she does for a living, even though she never, ever says it. In fact, Candice Bergen, much as I love her, doesn't seem to be able to pull off infusing this role with the tiny bit of maternal warmth it needs so that when she calls her daughter an Italian whore, it doesn't seem so cold and hateful. Cuddy says her mother comes to Cuddy for her medical care because, in the end, she trusts her judgment. Possibly also because the Clinic is free. And Cuddy's judgment is that if Murphy leaves PPTH, she'll be treated well and die. If she stays at PPTH with House as her doctor, he'll treat her like shit but she'll live. And just in case Murphy still chooses the other hospital option, Cuddy would like her to know that she will slash the tire of every ambulance in the bay to keep her here. Once again, any of PPTH's patients who might need an ambulance can go fuck themselves because Cuddy's mother comes first. That makes her a decent enough daughter and a terrible hospital administrator and doctor. She's not much of a girlfriend, either.
Murphy is back in her PPTH room and House is back as her doctor. He's about to hang an IV of the anti-fungal poison medicine when Murphy, whose condition has deteriorated quite a bit in the last three seconds, asks him why, if he's such a great doctor, doesn't he run his own department anymore? House says he does, and he only said he didn't earlier because he was being sarcastic. Murphy says he wasn't, which stops House for a moment. Then, he very sarcastically tells Murphy about his love of A-Rod, his modesty, and his interior decorating skills. "Do I like A-Rod?" he then asks Murphy. She says he does. Apparently, the inability to recognize sarcasm is more than just a lack of a sense of humor -- it's a symptom! And it started before the fever, which means House was wrong about endocarditis. At this, Murphy decides to pass out as her heart rate shoots up, and Cuddy frantically calls for a nurse and looks for the crash cart, although she's not having much luck since it's across the room and the lights are off again, so it's probably going to take a few minutes of blind stumbling to find it.
While Cuddy and the nurse fuss over Murphy, House gets his Epiphany Face on and announces the real diagnosis: heavy metal poisoning. The chelation therapy they did earlier when they thought she had lead poisoning actually made her better for a while, but as soon as she was off of it her symptoms returned because she was -- and is -- still being poisoned. But by what? House grabs a scalpel and slices into Murphy's hip to reveal black muscle. I'm not sure if it's actually black or if that's the lack of lightning, though. Cuddy asks if it's necrosis. House says it's not, but metallosis from Murphy's hip replacement, which has deteriorated over the years and was leaking cobalt into Murphy's body, making her sick. All they have to do is replace the hip and she'll be fine.
Taub, who did nothing to help Murphy this week, sits in his hotel room sulking about his busted nose and shitty life. His wife walks in, apparently being in possession of a key to the room somehow. Taub says he thought she didn't want to see him again. She says she didn't until Foreman called her and explained what really happened, and how Taub wasn't trying to get back at her through her brother, but simply trying to save a kid's life. What's up with Foreman being Taub's guardian angel this week, by the way? First helping him move, now this. Maybe the less camera time he gets, the more selfless and likable he becomes? "I will kill my brother if he messes with you again," she says. "What do you care?" mopes the guy who cheated on her repeatedly and suggested the divorce in the first place. "You were a crappy husband, but you are a good person," Mrs. Taub believes, despite all evidence to the contrary. She gives him a friendly side-hug.
Martha cleans out her locker, which is probably a daily ritual at this point. House finds her and says she is no longer fired. Again.
He says her desire to tell Murphy the truth even with her med school career on the line is "kind of impressive." Martha doesn't believe him. She's right. House says the truth is that he thinks Martha will protect him from doing something that will force Cuddy to protect him and thus get everyone fired. Um, I think that's what he said. Due to the fact that there's only like 30 seconds left in the show, he kind of had to spit it all out pretty quickly. Martha should really tell House and Cuddy to take this job and shove it, but she doesn't. Apparently, like Cuddy with her mother, Martha would rather take House's abuse than confront him about it.Oh, and speaking of Cuddy and her mother, let's check in on their relationship, shall we? Because it's very important to me to get closure on the relationship between a horrible woman who doesn't appreciate her own daughter and has been nothing but nasty to her for two episodes and a woman who can't manage a hospital or a relationship to save her life. Murphy is out of surgery and recovering. She has her Macbook Air out again and is looking up cobalt poisoning symptoms, many of which coincide with all of those symptoms she complained about over the last fifteen years that House dismissed as hypochondria. Meanwhile, wasn't Cuddy her doctor all that time? And she also apparently dismissed her mother's complaints, allowing her to get sicker and sicker and nearly die. Why does Murphy trust her to be her doctor again? Also, this still doesn't explain why Murphy flipped out at that museum luncheon. She grabs her daughter's hand and holds it, as if that makes up for anything.
You can read more from Sara Morrison at L.A.me, follow her on Twitter, or you can email her at saramorrison@gmail.com.