In this episode, filmed entirely in bright, shiny, white-o-vision, House decides that CTB is just a sleep-deprivation-inspired hallucination of his own subconscious and goes on with his day, starting with a new patient in deaf Seth, who heard explosions inside his head during a high school wrestling match. Following CTB's advice, House uses a brain biopsy to give him a cochlear implant that he thought he never wanted, but his mother isn't too upset that he got. When he rips it out, House and CTB figure out that he has MS and all is well, just in time for Chase's bachelor party. You see, Cameron went from not wanting to get engaged to willing to get married in the two weeks, so House has little time to throw something together. But he manages, and manages well, even forcing Wilson to attend by holding it in his apartment. Wilson loses his pants and the Cottages get too drunk to be of much assistance when Seth's lungs give out, meaning that the MS diagnosis was wrong after all. At this, House decides to go to sleep and give up on Seth, forcing the Cottages to do the work. Amazingly, they do, with Foreman figuring out that Taub's earlier rejected diagnosis of sarcoidosis was correct after all when he sees Seth's tobacco-stained teeth. It turns out that Seth used to chew tobacco, which suppressed his immune system and kept the autoimmune disorder dormant. When he stopped chewing for wrestling, his immune system got better and the disorder roared back to life. So House pretty much failed this week, but at least he finally got a good night's sleep. Too bad that when he wakes up the morning, CTB is still there.
We open at a high school wrestling match. One kid, Seth, gets ready for his match in silence because, as we'll find out later, he's deaf. His girlfriend walks up and signs him some encouragement, and since when were girlfriends allowed to just walk up to their boyfriends during sporting events? Maybe she's the team manager or something. She spots Seth's mother in the audience, who opens her cardigan to reveal an embarrassing T-shirt that says Deaf Pride. "You're not deaf," Seth signs, apparently forgetting the signs for "Jesus Christ Mom YOU ARE EMBARASSING ME IN FRONT OF MY FRIENDS." With that, Seth's match begins. Seth seems to be doing well from what little I know about wrestling, with his coach signing him moves. Suddenly, there's a loud zapping sound and Seth holds his ear and screams. After a few more zaps, he falls to the ground holding his head.
House is lying in bed, but he can't be asleep, as CTB is calling out his name and she only exists in his hallucination. He exposits that she's just the result of him not being able to get enough REM sleep. CTB says that explains the hallucination, but not who the hallucination is of. House tries to play that off as a secret desire to sleep with Wilson, but CTB knows that this episode wasn't written by Doris Egan and suggests that perhaps Kumar's suicide has reminded House of his guilt over her death. Also, Kumar couldn't appear as the hallucination himself because he has that new job and all. House tries to get some sleep to make her go away, only to get called into work. CTB smirks that she'll be sticking around for a while. Hooray!
House walks into the meeting room, where either I am having vision problems or everything is supposed to look really bright and glow-y. What's up with that? Are they all in heaven now? Heaven is distracting. And the light is making one side of House's face appear almost translucent while Foreman has changed races. Hadley gives House the case, and apparently the zapping sounds Seth heard in his head are called Exploding Head Syndrome. That's one syndrome that sounds worse than it actually is. And I know that without knowing anything about it because there's nothing worse than an exploding head. Taub says Seth went deaf at age four after a bout of meningitis. CTB appears by the Whiteboard, wondering why Seth never got a cochlear implant. She attempts to write the symptoms down, only to realize that hallucinations can't use the Whiteboard, not even when they're holding a hallucination marker. House tries to ignore her and asks where Seth's father is. Foreman says he was a sperm donor with clean medical records, so that's out of the way easily enough. House guesses a temporal lobe seizure. "Wrong!" CTB says. Hadley agrees with the non-existent person in the room, saying someone would have noticed Seth was having a seizure since he was in front of a large audience and seizures are kind of hard to miss. House decides they aren't and orders the Cottages to take Seth down to a place called The Seizure Lab, and PPTH is just full of silly, one-use gigantic rooms, isn't it? They go, but CTB stays behind to scold House for essentially ignoring his own subconscious. "Gonna be the limp leading the blind," she warns. Meanwhile, someone really needs to close the shades in the meeting room. It's so bright that I can't see half of House's face.
The blinds in Wilson's office are drawn, but the brightness is still there. Great. I know I complained that it was too dark a few weeks back, but this is ridiculous. Bring back Deran Serafian! He might have shot up people's noses, but at least he lit them properly. House walks in on Wilson and Cameron bent over a folder and demands a prescription for sleeping pills that Wilson is only too happy to provide. In fact, as CTB notices, he's a little bit too happy. And too quick to close the folder he and Cameron were looking at as soon as House entered the room. But first, House must exposit that Cameron and Chase are getting married in two weeks. WHAT? Wasn't it just last week that Cameron was all about not getting engaged at all because she was afraid of commitment or whatever? And now she's getting married in two weeks? Is Chase dying of a terminal disease or something? Cameron just says it's a "small ceremony" so "why wait?" Um ... to plan it? To make it a little bit special? Even my parents waited two months for their wedding. Of course, they eloped first, but still. I guess they didn't have the season finale dictating their schedule for them, though. Wilson hands over the prescription, and House asks what's in the folder. Cameron quickly says it's a possible prostate cancer case in the ER, but CTB ain't buying it. She quickly advises House to knock over Wilson's pencil cup with his cane. He does, and when Cameron gets up to pick it up for him, House uses her eagerness to please against her and grabs the now-unguarded folder. Inside, he finds pamphlets for a generic cigar bar and a billiard room. Cameron sighs and explains that Wilson is planning Chase's bachelor party since his best man isn't arriving until the day before the wedding. Probably from Australia, and probably on a plane that cost him an arm and a leg to get a ticket on thanks to the short notice. While Cameron's scrubs positively radiate in the light, House says that Wilson will not plan a proper bachelor party. House, however, will. "Nononono!" Cameron says, rightfully dreading whatever House has cooked up. But it's no good. House is determined to plan this party, and CTB is eager to help.
Hadley and Foreman sit in the Seizure Room booth, which looks an awful lot like the booth of every other silly room PPTH has. Foreman comments that House didn't have any mocking to do over Seth's refusal to put in a cochlear implant. Hadley doesn't think there's anything to mock; Seth is happy being deaf and comfortable with his disability. Didn't he go deaf at the age of four? And they're trying to tell me that as soon as he went deaf, he was like, "oh, this is just fine. I don't miss hearing at all!" and was allowed to make a decision like that? Foreman points out that being deaf is a disability, not an identity. Hadley says it's kind of both, since deaf people have their own culture and their own language. A culture and language that Seth couldn't have known anything or cared about when he made the choice not to get the implant in the first place, right? I don't get it. Anyway, the lights are flashing in Seth's face and he's not seizing, but what Foreman and Hadley fail to notice is that something else is happening. Mom reports that Seth is now blind in his right eye. He's ¾ of the way to being Helen Keller!
When House hears the news, he remembers what CTB said about the limp leading the blind, which makes a lot more sense now that his patient has gone half-blind. He mutters it and Hadley asks what's up, but his response makes no sense and that's kind of par for the course for him so Foreman moves onto listing off Seth's current symptoms. Taub has a diagnosis, and House tells them to do whatever they want with Seth while he grabs his bottle of prescription sleep aids and takes off for an empty exam room.
Instead of going to sleep, he has a chat with CTB, asking her how she knew Seth would go blind before he did. CTB says she noticed Seth's C-reactive protein levels were slightly elevated, so a round in The Seizure Lab would probably make the inflammation worse, thus causing the blindness. By the way, the exam room has no windows, but it's still bright as hell in there. I'm beginning to wonder if this is leading up to a storyline about PPTH being built over an old toxic waste dumping site. House realizes that his subconscious is capable of remembering things that he couldn't access -- until the hallucination of it started talking to him. "Cool. An all-access pass to my own brain," he says, severely underestimating what that brain has to say and do. CTB recommends playing some music for Seth.
While Foreman sets up to do an angio to test Taub's earlier diagnosis of some kind of vascular malformation in Seth's arm that won't be right anyway, House walks in with a huge boombox from, like, 1984 blasting some Public Enemy. Also, he has sunglasses from around the same time. Apparently the Fox prop closet is also one of PPTH's silly rooms. He manages to perform a little dance despite his supposedly sore leg before resting the boombox on Seth's chest and telling him to feel the vibrations with his hands. He gets in a dig at the fact that his mother isn't insisting on a cochlear implant, and she calls him an ass and starts to turn the music off, but Seth stops her and signs that he can feel the vibrations in his chest, but not his hands. That means neuropathy, which is serious enough for House to remove his glasses, if not the boombox on Seth's chest. With that, he tosses the prescription pills, telling CTB that the case just got too interesting for sleep. Why not take them later, then? Don't just throw them away!
After the break, Seth's girlfriend is visiting and the two are signing away while House bangs his cane on the glass wall. They don't hear it, of course. House compares this to a zoo except for the fact that you're allowed to bang on the glass, and I hope the writers of this episode are looking forward to an onslaught of angry letters from deaf people. Foreman asks House how he knew about the neuropathy. House doesn't know himself, so he can't answer. He walks past CTB holding three bowling pins. "Think wrestling record!" she says. "Juggling," House mutters. The Cottages are puzzled. He gets the right answer -- pins. Three pins, because Seth was pinned in his last three matches. Which makes him 0-4 after that opening credits match, right? Apparently, Seth was a good wrestler before that, with 15 pins in 15 matches. Yeah, that's pretty good. Like, All-State good. House figured the losses were caused by balance problems from the diminished sensation of neuropathy. Foreman guesses increased ICP as the cause, and I love it when they talk about intracranial pressure because calling it ICP lets me make jokes about the other ICP, Insane Clown Posse. Foreman gives a brain tumor as the cause of the Insane Clown Posse, which House rejects since there was no tumor on the head CT. Apparently those invisible microtumors he's always talking about don't apply here. Hadley has another diagnosis, but House sticks with Foreman's because CTB tells him to. She also tells him that if it's NF2 cancer, then the deafness could be another symptom that they missed ten years ago because they assumed it was from the meningitis. And Seth's had that cancer for ten years but it only started getting worse now? Doubtful. Taub goes off to talk to Seth about his possible cancer while House has a special assignment for Hadley and Foreman.
Cut to Hadley and Foreman in a strip club equally admiring a dancing woman. Apparently, they're allowed to leave work to check out possible strippers for Chase's party. It's also possible that a strip club is in one of PPTH's silly rooms. They wonder why House would care so much about Chase's party briefly before Hadley sticks some of Foreman's money in the stripper's ridiculously chaste underwear, like, use your own money, Hadley. Foreman wonders if House is doing this to ruin Chase and Cameron's marriage because he can't stand to see other people happy, but Hadley points out that if Chase is going to cheat on Cameron with a stripper at his bachelor party, then he shouldn't be getting married in the first place. Fair point. With that, one stripper slides down the pole while holding onto it with just her thigh. Foreman and Hadley are suitably impressed. So much so that they don't seem at all disappointed that no strippers are actually getting naked and all of them are wearing granny panties because this show is on during the family hour.
Taub explains NF2 cancer to Seth while his mother signs it out for him. The bad news is, it's cancer. The good news is that taking the tumor out means that Seth will be able to hear again. Seth frowns and signs something to his mother that causes his girlfriend to stare at him in disbelief. Mom explains that Seth wants to treat the cancer without losing his deafness. Seth and his girlfriend finally get subtitles as the girlfriend signs "it'll be okay" and Seth signs that he'll have to change schools and won't be able to see her anymore. The deaf school would really kick a kid out just because he got undeaf? That seems kind of unfair. The girlfriend points out that if Seth dies from cancer, he won't be seeing anyone at all. Seth isn't pleased, making him more upset about the fact that he might not be deaf than his mother is about her son possibly having cancer. What a weird family.
Taub shows the films to House and CTB. There is some Insane Clown Posse, but no masses. House sees a bowing in the wall of the fourth ventricle (apparently brains, like hearts, have ventricles) as Foreman and Hadley return with some pictures of their own, from the strip club. I've never been inside a strip club, but I'm pretty sure you're not allowed to take pictures there. Hadley tries for an invite to the party, but CTB says no and House goes with her. Then she says that if she gets drunk enough, she could make out with a stripper or strip herself. House revises his no-skirts policy to allow her to go, and Foreman gives Hadley a wink, so either he's into this or they've got something planned. I'm just annoyed because it means that Hadley has somehow managed to shoehorn herself into yet another scene where she doesn't belong. Meanwhile, Taub keeps trying to focus on the actual case. House sees a picture of a stripper and he and CTB say "oh, god, not her" in unison, which leads to a joke about Bernie Madoff that was probably timely when this episode was written. With that, Foreman agrees with Taub that they shouldn't do the brain biopsy without evidence of cancer and House orders them to do it anyway. They don't think the mother will agree to a risky procedure on her son's brain on just House's hunch, but CTB remembers that Seth broke his nose a few years ago and they can use the MRIs taken back then to look for cancer. I'm not sure how older MRIs would show a tumor that newer ones do not, but okay.
Wilson decides to council Chase about marriage and bachelor parties. He's kind of an expert, having been married multiple times. He eloped the third time, he says, solely to avoid House's bachelor party. He may also have eloped because let's face it -- it's not easy to get guests to buy presents and waste a weekend attending your third marriage ceremony in like five years, especially if you haven't returned their gifts from the first two. House interrupts with films of Seth's brain from now and back when he broke his nose for Wilson to look at. While Wilson studies them, House figures out that Chase is there to be discouraged from letting House throw his party and argues for it, saying that only by looking at strippers and getting wasted the day before his wedding will his vows truly mean something. Chase calls this evil and leaves the scene just as Wilson has finished looking at the films. There's bowing in the fourth ventricle of Seth's brain that wasn't there a few years ago, which means there is definitely something recent causing the bowing. This also explains why they needed the old MRIs in the first place. Now that they've got a reason to do the biopsy out of the way, Wilson informs House that he will not be attending the party because House parties only lead to embarrassment for Wilson. Last time apparently involved a duck somehow. Tragically, there is no flashback to this event.
While Chase does the brain biopsy, House watches from the OR balcony with CTB, who is bored with Seth and has moved onto bachelor party planning instead. She recommends hiring a stripper House used for one of Wilson's bachelor parties, as she lets her clients do body shots off of her. House says no way, since that party was nine years ago and strippers don't have much of a shelf life. This stripper, CTB reminds him, loved cats. And since Chase also has a cat, they should bond. Since when did Chase have a cat? And why would he ever have any kind of conversation with the stripper about his pet anyway? And whatever happened to the cat House stole from that retirement home? With that, Chase has noticed House talking to himself in the OR balcony and calls him out. He also says that the biopsy results are instantly back, and it's not cancer. With that, CTB suddenly gets all upset on Seth's behalf for having to go through life deaf because his mother is a moron who won't force him to have a cochlear implant. House decides that he loves hearing, and orders Chase to stick a cochlear implant in Seth's head before closing him up, because we can just immediately throw one of those in a brain on a whim, no problem. Chase doesn't want to do anything that isn't in the paperwork since he knows House that well, but House says they must have forgotten to put the cochlear implant in the paperwork and he wouldn't be lying to Chase since giving Seth the ability to hear again isn't diagnostically relevant and would improve Seth's quality of life, so obviously House has no reason to lie about it.
After the break, it's silent. We're getting Seth's POV and POH. Chase types something into a computer nearby, and suddenly, there's a lot of sound. Seth is startled, then upset. Which makes sense, since no one likes a surprise cochlear implant. "What did you do to me?" he signs.
Shockingly, we cut immediately to Cuddy's office. House kindly offers to take the implant out once Seth has had time to adjust to it. Mom wants it removed right now. Of course, that's not possible while Seth is recovering from his recent brain surgery. CTB appears to the mom as Cuddy tries to make excuses for House yet again. CTB wants to know why Mom is sitting down when she should be angry enough to stand and yell and carry on like most people who encounter House do. With that, House is caught not paying attention to whatever stupid arrangement Cuddy just made up. He agrees to it so he can focus on the mother, saying she isn't mad enough. He figures it's because the implant is what she wanted all along -- she just didn't have the guts to force Seth to get one. "I want that thing out of his head," Mom says calmly. She leaves, and Cuddy asks House why he did that. His explanation that he basically wanted to give Seth what his mother wouldn't tell him he was missing isn't good enough for Cuddy, so he gets worked up and yells that Seth is choosing to have a handicap, and that doesn't sit well for someone like House whose handicap was chosen for him. This makes House appear sensitive and vulnerable, and Cuddy accepts it. And it turns out that the arrangement House agreed to was for Foreman to be in charge of the case from here on out. Yes, I'd much rather have a doctor who killed a woman with a bra infection in charge of my son's health than a doctor who gave him a free surprise cochlear implant.
House leaves the office and finds CTB waiting for him in the hall. He pops in a Bluetooth headset so people won't think he's talking to himself when he talks to her. Very clever. And right now, Cuddy's probably wondering where her Bluetooth headset is. CTB asks if House can really be okay with Foreman being in charge now. Of course he is, since we all know by now that Foreman is an impotent leader who is not capable of going up against House. CTB wonders if the cochlear implant was the wrong thing to do, and I'm sure House appreciates her sudden change in attitude from the OR balcony when she was all for it. He says he doesn't know why he put the implant in or if it was the right thing to do in the first place.
House enters the meeting room, where the Cottages want to know why he gave Seth the implant. House says he was just doing God's work, and everyone rolls their eyes and gets back to work, figuring that if House is comparing himself to God, then he must be fine. Taub reports that Seth now has a fever, which Hadley thinks is probably just a result of his operation, because why add new symptoms when we can simply discount them outright? The Cottages shoot around diagnoses, but House is too busy paying attention to CTB to listen to them. CTB is trying to remember the name of Wilson's stripper. Something sweet, she thinks. Candy is a good suggestion. Lolly sucks, because no one is named that. Then she suggests Taffy, which is just ridiculous. What's , Reese's Peanut Butter Cup? Lame, House's subconscious. In the middle of all of that, CTB agrees with Hadley and Taub's diagnosis that Seth caught the Epstein-Barr virus from his girlfriend, who was sick a few months back. That lead to viral meningitis and thus the Insane Clown Posse. So they're saying that Seth has managed to get meningitis twice in his short life? Come on. But since CTB likes it, House does too. Foreman orders them to treat Seth for Epstein-Barr because he likes to pretend he's in charge now.
House reports to Wilson's office to find out why Wilson isn't getting all on his case for giving Seth that cochlear implant. "It was nice," Wilson non-explains, which only makes House more confused. House doesn't think he was nice, since he claims he was only trying to prove to Seth that he was an idiot for refusing the implant for this long, but Wilson thinks that since House did it to make Seth's life better, it's nice. He does acknowledge that the way House went about this caring act was illegal and immoral, so there is that. And then he says House can't make him go to the bachelor party, even though House didn't say anything about the party in the first place. Does Wilson want House to force him to go or something? House doesn't seem to care and starts to leave, which seems to bother Wilson. See you at the party, Wilson.
Seth signs that he wants the implant out ASAP. Mom signs back that it has to stay in until he gets better. Exasperated, Mom stops signing and starts talking to her son. Or maybe her fingers are cramping up. Either way, it's the first time Seth has heard his first name. Except that he lost his hearing when he was four, so you're trying to tell me he can't remember back that far? He asks her to say it again. She does. They hug. Taub walks in just in time for Seth to wet the bed. And when Seth wets the bed, he does it hard. Pools of pee flood the floor.
As the Cottages return to the meeting room, House reports that Seth's incredible peeing rules out their latest diagnosis while putting out a few pints of ice cream for them to sample for the bachelor party. They start eating without questioning it until Taub, in the middle of diagnosing Seth with sarcoidosis, realizes that his ice cream flavor is vodka. Yes, House knows a place where you can buy alcohol ice cream. Upon hearing this, Hadley goes for samples of everything while House puts his Vidocin in a spoonful of limoncello. Has too much time passed for me to make a joke about Danny DeVito here? While the Cottages eat way too much alcohol ice cream and diagnose, with Foreman ruling out Taub's sarcoidosis diagnosis immediately, CTB appears to remind House of a time in med school when he saw a guy who peed liters during grand rounds. Hadley passes the scotch ice cream to Foreman, and then they all go black and white and muffled while House and CTB stay in color. CTB tells House that the peeing happened at night with BP changes and when the body was in a recumbent position. House figures out there's a heart problem, allowing the Cottages to go back into color again so House can order them to run a test on Seth's heart and hope their breath doesn't smell like alcohol, or else Cuddy will get another scene.
House retires to his office and asks CTB why everything faded away like that. She says he must be getting better at focusing on her. Or worse at focusing on reality. With that, an angry Chase arrives, and CTB warns House he might get a punch in the face. From Chase? Please. Chase says Cameron isn't going to like House's party plans, and since he's spending the rest of his life with her, he wants to do what will make her happy. But since Chase really does want a bachelor party after all, he tells House to kidnap him so that he'll get the party he wants and not get blamed for being there. House loves this plan so much that he gives Chase a pint of alcohol ice cream. As soon as he's out of the way, CTB remembers the stripper's name -- Caramel. Better than Lolly and Taffy, I guess. "With a K," House says. Sorry, make that Karamel.
Guess who's jealous of Seth's implant? That's right -- it's the girlfriend. Seth signs that implants are unnecessary, but the girlfriend says implants are great, and this will open up a whole new world for Seth. Are we sure this girl is fourteen? How ridiculously mature of her. Seth says he liked his old world just fine. Girlfriend thinks for a second, then says she'll be back in a minute. She turns and asks Hadley where the bathroom is, actually speaking "bathroom." Hadley gives her directions, and maybe this is some kind of lesson in how Seth can do some things, like, hear, that his girlfriend can't, while she can do things that he can't, like put her pee in a toilet instead of on the floor? Seth speaks out loud to Hadley, although I can't tell you what he actually says. His girlfriend is better at speaking than he is. Hadley understands him, though, and says "it takes time."
House guzzles what appears to be his fifth can of K-Blast energy drink. Taub is concerned about House's lack of sleep, to which House responds with a giant burp. Obviously, he's doing his best to stay awake to keep his subconscious super-diagnoser around even though she hasn't done much good so far. Foreman says the test results are back and Seth's heart is fine. CTB says no way, so House says that while Seth's heart was fine during the test, that doesn't mean it's fine all the time. Foreman loses his patience, and Hadley and Taub quickly come up with non-heart diagnoses. CTB suggests sticking Seth on a treadmill and House forwards that along to Foreman, who doesn't think it's a good idea to give a patient who just had brain surgery a stress test. And since he's sort of in charge, he won't let House do it. He tells Hadley and Taub to test their latest theory that will be wrong instead.
House asks CTB how to give Seth a stress test without Foreman's consent. CTB suggests killing Foreman, then gets distracted by a hot blonde hospital employee. House orders his subconscious to focus on the task at hand, and they try to figure out a way to stress Seth's heart without a treadmill. CTB wants to tell Seth his girlfriend dumped him, then suggests killing the girlfriend. What's up with House's subconscious wanting to kill all the black people? Then she comes up with giving Seth asthma medicine that will cause his heart to beat faster and therefore expose the arrhythmia they don't even know he has.
Just when House is about to give his patient heart trouble, there's a commotion coming from Seth's room. He's yelling, monitors are beeping, and various medical personnel are running in. Hadley explains that Seth just ripped out his implant like a moron. CTB turns lemons into lemonade, looking up at the monitors that have exposed Seth's arrhythmia.
After the break, Foreman admits that House was right about the heart. Hadley starts diagnosing blood-related diseases while Taub thinks it's a pulmonary embolism. House doesn't say anything, as he's obviously waiting for CTB to appear and tell him what to do. Instead, she lights a lighter and waves it in the air like she's in a concert before people used to use cell phones instead, which is really lame by the way. House can't figure out what she means and everyone is staring at him, so he orders them off to scan Seth's lungs.
Down in the morgue, House is pouring off a row of shots, just like CTB said he did at Wilson's party. Why is Wilson's party the example House is always using? Can't he do something new and different? Oh, I guess the shots were grain alcohol at Wilson's party while House is going for Flaming Sambucas for Chase. Such variety. Anyway, he lights a bottle on CGI fire and tosses it around before lighting a shot glass and raising it for a toast. Except a flaming shot glass is really hot, so House burns his hand and drops the glass, which sets the morgue on fire. But it's only blue CGI fire, so I'm not too worried. I'm pretty sure it doesn't leave burn marks on corpses. While House tries to put the CGI fire out, CTB does the work for him, noting that Seth got worse every time his body temperature rose -- while wrestling, under the lights of the Seizure Lab, when he got a fever, etc. House puts the fire out and gives Foreman a call to tell him that Seth has Uthoff phenomenon, which is a sign of MS. They'll put Seth on interferon while House puts a note in the corpse's file that those burns were there all along. Then it's time for everyone to get his party on.
The original Cottages de-elevator. Foreman exposits that Seth is improving with the interferon, which isn't really good news at all since it means he has MS at the age of 14. Two officers appear and say they're from the Department of Immigration and when he applied for a marriage license, they noticed that his work permit expired. If I didn't totally know that this was part of House's plan to kidnap Chase, I'd say that's probably the reason why Chase wanted to get married so soon. The officers start to take Chase with them, and Cameron steps forward, offering to come as well. The officer says real citizens are not allowed. PPTH security stands by and watches one of their doctors get kidnapped. As soon as Chase is out the door, Cameron turns to Foreman and tells him to make sure Chase behaves at the bachelor party she knows he's headed to.
Flaming Sambuca time! House, dressed in a velvet suit jacket and tie, lights a pyramid of shot glasses on CGI fire. At the top of the pyramid is a snifter on its side, which looks very pretty with the blue fire inside of it. Taub and the strippers who dwarf him applaud appreciatively. Those strippers are so tall, in fact, that I'm not sure they're actually women. Foreman and a rather conservatively dressed Hadley watch as House pours the flaming snifter out into a glass. Chase extinguishes the fire with his hand and drinks. House lays down the ground rules, but no one is paying any attention to that because we're watching as Wilson walks in from a long day of work to find a bachelor party in his apartment, which is hilarious. He asks House where his furniture is (by the way, it's not his apartment or his furniture -- it belonged to CTB and he totally stole it from her after she died. And I'm sure she approves of this party anyway), only to hear a familiar voice call out his name. "Karamel?" he asks. Wow. She must have been good. And still looking great nine years later! She gives Wilson a big hug and they discover that he's divorced and her cat is dead. Nine years is a long time. Wilson decides he and Karamel have some catching up to do.
Later on, Chase samples some alcohol ice cream from a stripper's finger while Taub dances awkwardly with the tall strippers. Chase dances with some strippers of his own. Wilson licks his way up Karamel's belly to drink a shot from the glass in between her breasts. Then he takes a slice of lime from out of her mouth. He is so drunk. And so goofy. And when he's done, Hadley decides it's her turn with Karamel. "You're okay with this?" Wilson asks Foreman. "I paid fifty bucks for this!" Foreman says. Duh, Wilson. He says they make a great couple while Hadley sucks the lime out of Karamel's mouth. Wilson turns and goes outside for some air and we see that he isn't wearing any pants. Heh heh heh heh.
House, meanwhile, is hanging out in Wilson's bath tub, because he'd rather plan the party than actually participate in it. CTB joins him in there and says he should be outside with the strippers, then both decide they like it better in the bathroom alone. CTB proposes a toast to solving the case. They drink to themselves, which is never good luck, and House wonders what his team did this week since it appears that he and his subconscious did everything. "Look good in their lab coats. Except for Taub," CTB says. Also except for Foreman, since he never wears one, but whatever. Between the short sight gag and the not looking good in his labcoat, I'm thinking that whoever wrote this episode hates Peter Jacobson.
Drunk Chase is holding a kangaroo stuffed animal and deciding not to drink anymore when Foreman grabs him for one more shot ... off of Karamel. Chase decides he'll be okay with one more drink and licks some alcohol off of her stomach. He manages to wonder if he just tasted strawberry before gasping for breath and falling to the floor.
House's bathtub time is interrupted with an urgent knocking on the door from Foreman, who exposits that Chase is allergic to the strawberry body butter Karamel was wearing and went into anaphylactic shock. Fortunately, one of the party-goers came through with an epi pen, but they're taking Chase to PPTH just to be safe. House realizes that he knew Chase was allergic to strawberries, and that Karamel wore strawberry body butter. Which means that CTB knew that, too. He wonders if he just tried to kill Chase, and why. CTB suggests that House doesn't like it when other people are happy. But what an old romantic House must also be, to think that marriage makes people happy after all he's said about it making people miserable. To make matters worse, he gets a call that Seth doesn't have MS after all. He's dying, and his doctors are all wasted. Whoops.
Chase is wheeled into PPTH, where Cameron is there waiting for him and wanting to know what happened. "There was a girl," Chase starts. Foreman puts the oxygen mask on Chase's face for his own sake and tells Cameron it's a long story. While Chase and Cameron go off to the ER, Cuddy approaches the Cottages with the latest films from Seth, who is suffering from lung failure and is now on a ventilator. After explaining this, she realizes that the entire team is drunk.
House goes back to his apartment to sleep. CTB wants him to go back to work, but House isn't a big fan of CTB since she tried to kill Chase. Not to mention that she sucked out on the diagnosing. House answers the phone. It's Cuddy, standing over a team of sheepish Cottages with IV fluids being pumped in them in an effort to sober them up in time to save Seth's life. CTB has a diagnosis of eosinophilic pneumonitis. House has lost his faith in his own subconscious and will only tell Cuddy that it isn't eosinophilic pneumonitis and he can't think of anything else until he gets some sleep. Cuddy begs him not to hang up, and CTB urges House to work with her to solve this case. House hangs up on Cuddy.
Foreman likes eosinophilic pneumonitis, but Hadley figures that House rejected it because it affects the larynx, then realizes that they have no idea if Seth's larynx is affected or not since they've never heard him speak normally. All three Cottages get up to treat Seth. Cuddy tells them to stop. But not to let another, more sober doctor (like, say, Cuddy. Or Cameron) do the treatment. No, they just get breath mints and are sent on their way.
Hadley and Foreman seem remarkably sober when they enter Seth's room and tell his mother to tell Seth they're going to remove the tube and then listen to his larynx. This all goes according to plan, except that Foreman doesn't hear any hoarseness. They were wrong, but when Foreman opens Seth's mouth to put the tube back in, he notices that Seth's teeth are looking seriously yellow. He asks Seth to explain the tobacco stains on his teeth, and Seth signs to his mother that he used to chew tobacco, but quit for wrestling. As usual, Mom is just as unfazed by her son's drug use as she was by his possible cancer and his surprise implant. Hadley doesn't see how chewing tobacco explains Seth's symptoms. Foreman says it's the not chewing tobacco that caused them, and that Taub's sarcoidosis diagnosis (the one he gives every episode) is actually right this time. When Seth was chewing tobacco, his immune system was being suppressed. As soon as he quit, his immune system came back, allowing a dormant autoimmune condition to come back with a vengeance. Only on this show is quitting tobacco dangerous.
House enters Cuddy's office to ask for sleeping pills. See? I told you he shouldn't have thrown the other ones out. He says he can't ask Wilson for them because he won't answer his phone, which gives Cuddy the chance to say that's because Wilson was picked up while trying to walk home from his own apartment without wearing any pants. Heh. Heh heh heh. CTB is still there, but doesn't have much to say about this so we'll never know how House's subconscious feels about the thought of a pantsless Wilson. Cuddy exposits that the Cottages (well, just Foreman, really. And Taub. So everyone except Hadley) solved the case without him and Seth is recovering, not like House cares. Before Cuddy will give him the prescription, she begs him to talk to her. He decides to give a little bit of himself away in order to keep the bigger things secret and says he hasn't gotten a good night's sleep since Kumar killed himself. That gets him the prescription and the Cuddy Concerned Face.
Back with Seth, his mother says she wants to put the implant back in. Seth signs that he thought that was his decision. Mom says it was until he decided he'd rather rip it out of his head than live with it for a few days. That would tell me not to put the implant back in, but Mom says that this is her call to make. And since the girlfriend hasn't come back from the bathroom in like three days, there's no one left to convince him otherwise.
The morning, House wakes up to find himself feeling refreshed and no CTB in sight. He washes his face and allows himself to smile in relief that there's no CTB in the mirror staring back at him. But that's only because she's standing behind him, and when he turns around, she's right there to smile and ask if he slept well. Hooray!
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.
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