House TV Show - Last Temptation - House Recaps, House Reviews, House Episodes | TWoP

Aired 2011-04-18

It's early morning in a bedroom full of pretty and intricately-folded paper airplanes that hang from the ceiling. At the ungodly hour of 4:30 am, the alarm goes off and Martha M. Masters sits up in bed and starts reciting various medical terms and differentials as she gets ready for her day. Her roommate appears and tells her she can stop drilling herself; now that they're in their third year of medical school, they don't have exams to worry about. Martha reminds her that she may not have exams, but she does have House. The roommate exposits that after today, Martha will start her internship and thus be free of House forever. Martha says that as horrible as working for House was, she's almost sad it's coming to an end. Her time in med school will be coming to an end, too, if she doesn't do the one last required lumbar puncture so she can hand in her procedure log that is due today.

Martha runs into the ER and is pleased to see a lumbar puncture waiting for her. But when she approaches the patient, she finds another student, known as "Cruz," preparing to do it instead. He's an asshole, so even though he has plenty of lumbar punctures in his log, he won't let her do this one. The roommate walks up and says she just turned in her own procedure log and saw an internship opening in House's department. House has never had an intern before, which means this position is basically for Masters. Good; I hope she stays. House needs more than one female Cottage. Especially since the one female Cottage is Hadley. And since I want Martha to stay, I'm sure this will be her last episode.

Martha walks into the meeting room and finds Hadley being a good assistant and setting up the flatscreen TV for today's differential. "You must be Dr. ... Thirteen?" Martha says. Hadley introduces herself with her real name, and then the rest of the Cottages pile in and cheerfully greet her with hugs and smiles. Well, except for Foreman, who angrily asks where she was for the last year. House suddenly appears in his office to answer the question for Hadley: she "bottomed out" and went to rehab. This comes as a surprise to the others, who had no idea that she had a drug problem. Because she didn't. Is it really better for people to think you had a serious drug problem than that you mercy killed your sick brother? Just tell the truth already, Hadley.

Now that the Cottages have been reunited and given all of five seconds to see each other, they get right back to work as House introduces them to their newest patient: sixteen-year-old Kendall, who is trying to set the record as the youngest person to sail around the world. Unfortunately for her, she collapsed during a practice run. Fortunately for her doctors, she did it on camera, so they can watch it on the flatscreen Hadley just set up. House says they have just three days to get Kendall better and back on the water before she'll be too old to set the record. I'm confused - isn't the record based on your age when you finish the sail and not when you begin? How can they predict exactly how long it will take her? Looking at other youth sailing records (solo, non-stop, and unassisted), it could take her anywhere from 210 to 327 days to finish the trip. That's a much bigger window than three days. House points out that there's another time limit: Martha only has one day left with them before she starts her internship. Martha says that's true, then suggests dehydration. House invades her personal space and says they already ruled that out, then asks where she's planning on interning in an uncharacteristic show of interest in someone else's life. Martha claims that she's still deciding. Um ... doesn't her internship start tomorrow? Shouldn't she have, therefore, decided this like months ago? I guess it makes sense that PPTH's medical school program is run as terribly as the rest of the hospital. Taub points out the Kendall hit her back right before she fell, possibly damaging her adrenal glands and causing the collapse. House likes this, and orders the Cottages to draw blood from Kendall every fifteen minutes and check her cortisol levels to prove it. But first, he wants to talk to Martha about her internship. The Cottages catch on and realize that House is thinking of taking Martha on as an intern. Taub can't believe that Martha is even thinking about saying yes to this. Taub, who left a lucrative career as a plastic surgeon twice to work for House, doesn't understand why Martha would want to intern with him? Martha says she has to finish her last LP before she can decide anything and asks if she can go to the ER to do that. Instead, House sends her and Hadley off to draw blood from Kendall.

By Sara M

Hadley prepares Kendall's arm for the blood draw, saying if they're right about the adrenal glands thing then she'll be able to sail in time for the record. I think we all know that's not going to happen, since this show loves to take people who are really good at something and make them have to choose between that thing and curing their horrible mystery illness. Basically, if you're really, really good at something and want to keep being good at that thing, it's best to go to any hospital but PPTH. Kendall's mother quizzes her with flashcard pictures of parts of her boat. I'm not exactly sure why it's so important that Kendall be able to identify the wall of her cabin, but whatever. Kendall's dad calls Mom out into the hallway to deal with sailing-record-related media attention, and Martha takes over the flashcards, infusing them with personal stories about her own experiences on boats. She says the last time she was on one was for her college freshman mixer, and she spent most of that barfing. Kendall asks if she was drunk, which gives Martha the chance to say she was only thirteen. Kendall and Martha bond over their shared prodigy-ness and Kendall asks if there's anything they can do to speed the tests up so she can get back to her sailing. Martha suggests sticking Kendall on a treadmill and seeing how her adrenal glands respond to stress. But Martha won't be doing it, as she gets a page about an LP in the ER. Hadley tells her to go get it; she'll handle the treadmill test on her own. I guess Hadley's medical license is back, then?

By Sara M

Martha joins the Cottages in the hallway. Hadley exposits that Kendall's hands turned blue on the treadmill and they had to give her drugs to restore the blood flow. This rules out the adrenal gland diagnosis. House isn't in his office to consult, as he's down the hall near the elevators using a little stamp at the bottom of his cane to make little chicken footprints on the floor leading to Wilson's office. House explains: "Wilson got a hold of an Australorp." The Cottages look clueless except Martha, who at least seems to know what an Australorp is, if not why House cares. House explains that the Australorp is "the quietest and calmest of all the chickens." Oh really? Because the BackyardChickens.com forum posts I found while trying to figure out how to spell "Australorp" beg to differ. The Cottages decide they don't want to know what's going on between House and Wilson and chickens right now, so they put out a few diagnoses before House agrees with Foreman and Hadley's cerebral vasospasm diagnosis and tells them to do something involving calcium channel diffusions to Kendall. They take off, but House calls Martha back, noting that she's still hasn't turned in her procedure book.

She stands outside the office of her dean or professor or whoever it is that medical students turn their procedure books in to but doesn't go in or hand in the book. Her roommate sees her and recommends that Martha intern with House, saying that Martha is weird, what with her obsession with making paper airplanes, the Einstein Museum, and facial symmetry, but House seems to be okay with Martha's eccentricities, inability to talk to people, love of arguing with anyone over any point, and "peculiar fashion sense." Martha seems to disagree with her roommate's last point, somehow thinking that the stuff she wears is mainstream even though no one else in all of PPTH is wearing, like, a giant novelty clown necktie and purple leggings, and the roommate's insult speech is cut short by the arrival of a large white chicken down the hall. Wilson runs after it, grabs it, and runs out of sight. "I think it's an Australorp," Martha sighs. A white Australorp? My research on BackyardPoultry.com (why are there so many websites devoted to raising chickens in your backyard? Can't these people just get a dog?) says that white Australorps are very rare. They're usually black, so Wilson probably paid a pretty penny for that thing.

By Sara M

Martha checks on Kendall. Hadley and Foreman are doing some procedure on her. Martha asks them why House and Wilson both have chickens, and Hadley explains that they have a bet to see who can keep a chicken in his office the longest without being caught by security. Ha! Do they have ten years to wait for this bet to play out? Because it will be at least that long before PPTH's useless security team notices farm animals in the hospital. Foreman is uncharacteristically nice to Martha, saying he's glad she's interning with them because they could use the fresh perspective she brings by refusing to play by House's rules. Martha says she has to play by House's rules if she wants to become an intern; either she lies in the procedure book and takes credit for the LP House did, or she lies to House by getting a real LP to put in the book. Hadley says lying about a lie is "almost telling the truth," and Martha agrees that would be the better option. You see? If you're determined to tell the truth at all times, you can rationalize almost anything in your own mind. Martha says she just needs to find a patient who needs an LP. Hadley says she knows of someone.

Cut to Martha doing an LP on Hadley, which is shockingly nice of Hadley to do. I guess she's feeling generous since Martha isn't telling the others that she didn't go to rehab? She will have to field questions from Martha about it, though, as she asks Hadley why she lied. Hadley says she doesn't want the others to know the real reason she was gone, but if she just told them she didn't want to tell then they would dig and dig until they figured it out, so she had to lie. "House's people have personalities that range from nosy to 'pardon me while I do this cavity search,'" Hadley says. Martha asks if someone who isn't like that will fit in on House's team. Hadley pauses before saying probably not, unless House wants his team to have that kind of person on it. That's not really an answer, Hadley. But you are being much more likeable than usual this week, so I will let it pass.

By Sara M

Foreman shows a calcified pineal gland he found in Kendall's brain that proves their cerebral vasospasms theory. Hadley says they can start Kendall on hormone therapy and she'll be better in time to set sail into the record books. Martha adds that she handed in her procedure log, but House isn't impressed as he already figured out that she gave Hadley an LP on her way to the Dean's office. So poor Hadley had to endure that LP for nothing. Martha admits the truth but still thinks House should be impressed with her since she did, after all, break a rule. House says the rule she broke was his, which is bad. Martha still thinks that she can do her job without compromising her principles. We've heard them argue about this many times, and it ends the same way it always does: Martha is fired. House rescinds the internship offer.

Martha wakes up the morning and starts drilling herself on terms that apply to her new surgical internship. I'm sorry, but didn't she sign up at the very last minute? So wouldn't only the crappiest internships still be available? Like proctology? Surely the surgical internship was one of the first to fill up. But I have no idea how this stuff works. Martha goes to work and has her picture taken for her new security badge, not like those really matter at PPTH. She happily tells the security guard that she's going to be a surgeon. He doesn't care. Maybe he should spend less time taking pictures of new hires and more time patrolling the hospital for chickens and gun-wielding psychopaths. Martha meets with her fellow first-year interns and the surgeon who will be supervising them and then she's off to observe her first surgery. Well, her first as a surgical intern. She's seen plenty as part of House's team. The surgeon is having trouble seeing his work with all the bleeding going on, so Martha speaks up and recommends injecting the patient with calcium chloride to activate the platelets and thus reduce the bleeding. Interns are supposed to be seen and not heard in the OR, but the surgeon gives the order to push calcium chloride anyway. It works. She's either impressed her new boss or seriously pissed him off. Probably both.

By Sara M

Afterwards, Martha studies the list of upcoming surgeries and sees Kendall on it. The surgeon comes out and says interns usually don't talk during surgeries, but they also usually don't have anything to say. Martha seems to have won his respect for what her calcium chloride suggestion and no residual bitterness for showing her supervisor up in front of everyone. She's incredibly lucky, but she just wants to know what's going on with Kendall, saying she thought Kendall was diagnosed, treated, and discharged. The surgeon doesn't care, saying it's House's case and he could be up to anything. He tells Martha to scrub in for another surgery happening in fifteen minutes.

Martha heads back to the OR, passing Kendall's surgery on her way. She watches it for a second, then heads up to the OR balcony to talk to Kendall's observing father. She asks him what happened to Kendall, and he says she was discharged from PPTH but collapsed in the parking lot. So now they're going to going to cut out some of Kendall's nerves because they believe that they are overstimulating her. Martha says it's a very basic surgery and Kendall should still be able to sail in 36 hours. Which is insane, but whatever. Maybe the salty sea air will help heal those fresh incisions. Dad feels guilty about basically sending his minor daughter off a day and a half after surgery, and says he and her mother are just trying to help Kendall realize her dream. "She's different, so you have to be different," Martha says. Is Kendall really that different, or does she just have parents who are way too permissive? Martha promises the father that she'll make sure Kendall is okay, then is paged to her surgery.

She stares into a lung and gets the chance to hold the incision open until a nurse asks to pull some personnel for a "train wreck in OR 10." I thought she meant there was a victim of a train accident there, but it's actually Kendall's surgery going horribly wrong. Martha just has to be there, so she lies to the surgeon and says she has to go to the bathroom right now and even does the pee dance until he believes her and lets her go. She heads right on over to Kendall's surgery, where Kendall is having some kind of hypotensive crisis. House sees her from the OR balcony and asks what she's doing there when she has her own surgery to attend to. Martha admits that she lied to get out of it, and House is pleased. Martha says she only lied because she cares about Kendall and promised her dad she would take care of her. House says those are lies, too. Kendall is still dying, so Foreman interrupts to say that Kendall has restrictive periocarditis, which means that their other diagnosis was wrong. Hadley thinks it's Wegener's granulomatosis, while Martha goes for sarcoidosis. House agrees with Hadley but offers Martha the chance to consult on the case and stay on his team temporarily. "Welcome back," he says. Martha quickly says she's only back for one case, and House calls her a liar again.

By Sara M

Martha finds her surgeon supervisor after his surgery and says she just happened to run into House when she was out peeing for a few hours and he requested a "surgical consult" from her for his current case. The surgeon doesn't know why House needs a consult from someone who was a med student yesterday or why his new intern is already asking to work somewhere else, but he signs off on it anyway.

In the locker room, Martha, her roommate, and the horrible Cruz prepare to go home. Um, since when do they let interns go home? Shouldn't they basically be living at PPTH? Cruz offers to take both women out for drinks, but the roommate says she doesn't want to go anywhere with Cruz and Martha has to stay behind and do some work for House. Cruz is so jealous of Martha, saying he would kill for the chance to work for House. He adds that he would actually kill Martha so he could disguise himself as her by wearing her skin. He's clearly done way too much thinking about this, and Martha and her roommate leave quickly.

Martha spends the night running tests in the lab. Then she heads for the meeting room with a pile of books and starts reading them without even turning the light on. Also, there's a chicken in House's office again. Later that night, Wilson creeps into House's office holding a burlap sack. He sees Martha and waves at her before lifting the blanket over the chicken coop to find a fake chicken playing chicken sound effects inside. At this point, House locks the door, trapping Wilson inside. He takes a second to gloat before limping off to Wilson's office to do something horrible to his chicken. Martha doesn't seem willing or able to unlock the door for Wilson, so he has to run out onto the balcony. Martha watches him climb over walls and run into trees before coming up with a diagnosis for Kendall.

By Sara M

She heads for Kendall's room and asks her if she's gotten sick after eating poultry lately. Kendall says she actually did after eating a "pheasant in a can" her dad bought her as a joke. First of all, that is a stupid joke. Second of all, just because you happen to own a pheasant in a can doesn't mean you should eat it. And they're trying to convince us that this girl is mature enough to sail around the world when she can't even figure out that pheasant in a can is the food of nightmares? Martha says she thinks the pheasant gave Kendall salmonella enteritis and if she's right, it will still be hanging out in Kendall's bones somehow. She feels around for tell-tale tender bones while telling Kendall that if it is salmonella, Kendall will be "shipshape" after some antibiotics and still able to sail. She then asks Kendall if she's always wanted to sail. Kendall says that she didn't start until she was 10 years old, and didn't even like it at first. So why did she continue? Did her parents make her do it? She says there are still a lot of things she hates about sailing, but "doing what you love means dealing with things you don't." She has yet to tell us what she actually likes about sailing, though, other than getting that world record. Suddenly, she cries out in pain when Martha touches her left arm.

For this, she gets an MRI (OF DOOOM!!) to find the salmonella. In the booth, Chase finds it in his heart to praise Martha for her diagnosis, then asks if she's going back to her surgery internship once the case is over. "That's the plan," Martha says. Chase says she's making a mistake and should definitely go back to surgery. Saying "that's the plan," he says, makes him think that she's going to end up back on House's team. Martha points out that Chase himself chose House over being a surgeon, and Chase says working for House changed him, and not necessarily in a good way. Then he finds something in Kendall's arm on the MRI, but it's not salmonella after all. It's cancer.

So here's how Martha decides to break the news to Kendall and her parents: "you have lymphoid sarcoma. A cancer in the bone in your arm." Maybe Martha should be a surgeon, because that was a terrible, bordering on cruel, way to break that kind of news. Especially when, last Kendall heard, she had food poisoning. Kendall asks if she'll be okay, and Martha says it is treatable, but her arm will have to be amputated. Her parents look kind of upset about this, but not as upset as they really should be. Like, I'm pretty sure if my mom just found out that I had cancer and would have to have an arm amputated, she would do more than just gasp. She would probably cry. A lot. Kendall, meanwhile, matter-of-factly asks if there's anything else they can do and if her cancer can be cured in like five minutes so she can go out and break that stupid record. "I feel fine," she says. Yeah, except for the collapsing and heart problems and sore cancer-filled arm bone, she's awesome. Martha says delaying the surgery until after the sail runs the risk of the cancer spreading, possibly to the point where it can't be cured. Mom agrees, but Kendall says she's wanted to do this sail since she was ten years old and begs her parents not to take it away from her, like it's their fault she got arm cancer. "It's just a month," she says. Really? What the hell boat is she planning to sail with? Because the current youth solo circumnavigation record was done in 210 days. That's seven months. Kendall says she'll talk to her parents over Skype every day and can always end the sail and fly home if there's a medical emergency. You mean a medical emergency like cancer? Because Kendall certainly doesn't seem particularly eager to let that affect her sailing plans now, so I doubt she'd call the sail off for it later. Also, she's 16 and 16-year-olds think they're immortal. Mom asks Martha to leave the room so they can discuss this without the nosy doctor lady trying to influence their decision. Martha can't believe there's anything to discuss.

By Sara M

Sometime later, Kendall's dad emerges from the room and tells Martha that Kendall is refusing to have the surgery and wants to set sail tomorrow. Martha says it's not really Kendall's decision since she's a minor. Dad says Kendall managed to convince her mother to agree with her to delay the surgery, but Martha says that still doesn't matter since the consent form only needs the signature of one parent. Yeah, but I'm pretty sure you can't force a child into surgery against the wishes of the other parent. Dad says that Kendall threatened to emancipate herself once and he's sure she'll go through with it if he signs the consent form. He seems to think she has a good shot of winning emancipation, like any court would agree to let a kid with cancer put off treatment just to break some stupid record.

By Sara M

Martha returns to House's office, where she finds him trying to train a dog to fetch an Australorp. He's having some success, too. Martha says she doesn't know what to do about Kendall. House says there's nothing to do; they diagnosed Kendall. The fact that Kendall refuses to accept treatment for her diagnosis isn't his or Martha's problem. If Martha wants to make it her problem and "help" Kendall, then she'll have to break the rules, as House so gleefully tells her. If Martha thinks that following the rules is more important than saving Kendall's life, then she is not so exceptional after all, House claims. Haven't we seen him make this argument to Martha before, only for her to decide that following the rules and doing things honestly was the most important thing? Why would she change her mind about that now? Are the people who wrote the beginning of this season still working on this show, or is this show now being written by totally new people?

Martha seeks out Wilson's advice, but he's having trouble giving any because he keeps crying out in pain due to having a chicken hiding under the desk pecking at his feet. He finally lets the chicken roam around the office freely and says the only thing Martha can do is keep trying to convince Kendall and her family to have the surgery. And then he produces another chicken from underneath his desk - House's. Why is he stealing House's chicken anyway? Isn't the goal not to get caught with chickens in his office? And wouldn't having two chickens instead of one make it that much more likely he'd get caught? In the end, Wilson proves to be helpful when he tells Martha about how House was once in the same situation as Kendall: he needed surgery and refused to have it. So his girlfriend just waited for him to be put in a medically-induced coma and signed the consent for the surgery he didn't want and probably saved House's life. "So she did the right thing?" Martha asks. "Depends on who you ask," Wilson says. I have a feeling the person who the surgery was actually performed on would say no. With that, House's dog comes charging into the office and grabs what the prop department apparently didn't have enough time to make look like Wilson's chicken and runs out.

Wilson chases the dog down the hallway, and several employees and patients or their family members watch as a dog with a chicken in its mouth runs down the hall. Worst hospital ever. Amazingly enough, PPTH Security finally figures out there's a chicken in the hospital when House's strolls out of Wilson's office. So they didn't notice the fucking dog carrying the panicking white chicken in its mouth, but they did spot the small quiet brown one? Okay. The security guard asks whose chicken this is, because the first thing you do when you see a farm animal in a hospital is ascertain ownership, and Wilson happily reports that it belongs to House. Martha just shakes her head and can't believe she just asked that guy for advice about anything.

By Sara M

She heads home for a night of paper airplane folding.

The morning, she's back in Kendall's room holding an IV bag and begging her to go through with the surgery. Kendall refuses. She says that this isn't just about a record but about how amazing she is at sailing and how much better she is at it than all of her peers, so I guess only a solo sail around the world can satisfy her now. "When you're at the top of the game, you play by different rules," she says as Martha stares at her, trapped in yet another unflattering shot. Up until her guest-starring role on this show, I always thought Amber Tamblyn was pretty. But then the directors insisted on sticking her in terrible lighting and camera angles and wardrobe gave her awful, awful clothes. She nods and hooks Kendall up to some medicine, then returns to the meeting room to wait. Sure enough, her pager goes off. She runs back to Kendall's room and finds the Cottages already tending to her, saying there's something blocking her heart and it's probably paraneoplastic syndrome. She'll have to go back into surgery. Martha sees Kendall's parents making their way to the room, grabs a consent form, and shoves it in their faces while telling them that Kendall's cancer is affecting her heart and she will need surgery, and if this had happened when she was at sea she would have died for sure. Way to send the parents on a world record guilt trip, Martha. She says that while they have Kendall in the OR, they might as well chop her arm off, too. The parents sign the consent form.

Martha marches into the OR without so much as washing her hands. She tells Chase not to bother poking around in Kendall's heart - all she needs is some calcium chloride to clear up the heart blockage that Martha's secret medicine created. And then they can cut Kendall's arm off, too, now that the consent form has been signed. The Cottages dutifully prepare Kendall for an amputation.

By Sara M

And so, Kendall wakes up having been robbed of both her freedom of choice and her left arm. Surprise! Kendall is not happy about this. Even Martha telling her that they found more cancer in Kendall's neck lymph nodes and so if she had waited until after the sail it would have been too late doesn't make her feel any better. She's understandably furious with her parents for consenting to the surgery they knew she didn't want, and says she hates them. They expected that. She lets them hug her as she cries over losing her arm, and Mom thanks Martha for saving her daughter's life when Mom was too shitty of a parent to do it herself.

But Martha can't sleep that night. She's sulking in House's office when he arrives for the morning and tells him that she did all the bad unethical things he's wanted her to do and she did them for the right reasons, but she doesn't feel good about it like she thought she would. "You can't always get what you want," House Jaggers, handing Wilson a twenty dollar bill for winning their bet. The men agree that week's bet will involve ferrets. House thinks that's it for this episode, but Martha has something else to say: she now knows she can't do the things she's supposed to do as a member of his team, so she's leaving. Leaving House, leaving surgery, and leaving PPTH. Ha! Didn't Cuddy put Martha on House's team in the first place because she thought Martha was a star and wanted to make sure Martha was a PPTH doctor? And now he's driven her away! And Cuddy had her chance to help Martha but chose to blow her off, so whatever. "Nothing will ever be simple again," House says. Really? Because it seems to me that Martha now knows for sure that she can't deal with shades of gray and will happily return to her simple world of black and white thinking forever. "I'm fine with that," Martha says. She walks away, crying but happy with her decision, as the "You Can't Always Get What You Want" angelic chorus sings. She trips over a chicken on her way out, just in case you thought a female character on this show would actually get a dignified exit.

You can read more from Sara Morrison at L.A.me, follow her on Twitter, or you can email her at saramorrison@gmail.com.