House TV Show - House of Lies - House Photos & Videos, House Reviews & House Recaps | TWoP

Recapped by Monty Ashley · Aired 11-28-2011

The case this week involves a prosecutor who suffers a heart attack right before winning a case. Except it's not a heart attack! Also, his house hides a secret bunker filled with guns, which his wife didn't know about. This leads to a lot of scenes where Park and Adams argue while House encourages them to fight for his amusement. He also tries to make Park think that nobody respects her medical abilities, but her self-image seems to be strong enough to repel that assault. Anyway, the prosecutor turns out to have diphtheria, which he got as a result of not getting vaccinated.

Park, meanwhile, eventually gets fired up enough by the House-instigated fighting that she asks Chase out for a drink. That kind of came out of nowhere, and I admit that I don't really care. It would be fun if it were never mentioned again, but I guess we're going to have a Chase-Park thing to deal with when the show comes back.

We've got a couple more tiny subplots to deal with. Taub thinks Foreman should be dating more, which results in Foreman seeing a married woman. But she's really, really fit, which I guess is what happens when you date people you meet at the gym. And Wilson thinks House has a gun but can't find it, which leads to a pretty funny scene where Wilson's trapped in a net, hanging from House's ceiling. I said it was funny, not plausible. I'll take what I can get.

We start with a trial. Uh oh! I think this show has jumped the tracks and turned into a lawyer show! Well, let's get into it. The witness is providing an alibi for the defendant. His story is that they were at his place watching a hockey game, which was won by the Devils when Martin Brodeur got a shutout. But the lawyer has a sports page! Unfortunately, it just says what the witness already said. But then he's got another one that corrects the other sports page. So the witness apparently got his information from the sports section of the newspaper, which misidentified a different goalie as Martin Brodeur. This will teach the defendant to research his alibis a little better. Maybe check the Internet rather than just glancing at an old sports page? It's just a suggestion. The prosecutor demands to know if the witness and the defendant really watched the game on television. But before the witness answers, the lawyer approaches the bench and says he's having a heart attack. And an inconveniently timed one, too. He did manage to ask for a continuance first, which is a good sign. The guy's pretty professional, at least!

Foreman tells House it wasn't really a heart attack. House says it was an anxiety attack. But the patient's wife says he's been feeling fine. And the medicine has failed to cure his problem. Foreman lied to the patient, telling him he had an easily cured problem, but it stuck around, proving that it wasn't anxiety. House admits that he's interested.

House sets up an espresso machine in his office while his team throws out the traditional round of wrong ideas. I choose to believe that his espresso machine is a reference to the still in M*A*S*H. Adams has a story about somebody poisoning his cellmate with chlorine gas while trying to stay safe on the top bunk. House says to alkalinize the patient's urine in case he's being poisoned. He sends Adams to the house and Chase to check on the wife on the grounds that that's who normally poisons people. He encourages them to bring whoever they want, and they both want to take Taub. Adams ends up with Park, apparently reluctantly. Park is not delighted.

In the elevator, Chase and Taub greet Foreman and make a big deal out of him lying to the patient. They think he should get a girlfriend. I'd like to see more scenes of them ribbing Foreman. They worked together for a long time, so why not explore the changed dynamic a little?

Adams is driving Park to the house. I would like you to know that I keep wanting to capitalize the word "house" even when it's not supposed to be. Adams tries to talk about her car's fancy curve control. Park would prefer to address the way Adams didn't want to bring her. Adams says that House is just causing trouble. Yeah, probably.

By Montykins

Mrs. Patient tells Taub the patient never eats or drinks anything not made at home because he's afraid of cockroaches. Meanwhile, the patient is telling Chase he worked in the Health department and has seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion, and so on. And he says there are definitely no accidental poisons at home. Chase outright asks if his wife could be trying to kill him. He says that there's no way. At the same time, she's telling Taub the same thing. They're a happy family.

Park and Adams are nosing around in a big house and find no chemicals. They broke in, but Adams says they've got five minutes before the police show up even if someone saw them. Park says cops protect prosecutors, so they'll probably be there earlier. Say, if they're really breaking in to do this, isn't that the sort of thing that could reflect poorly on their boss, the guy who's constantly in danger of going back to prison? Adams is all set to run out, but then Park spots an area that might be a secret wall. She brusquely orders Adams to go get her a magnet from the refrigerator and uses it to open the bookcase.

House is napping or something when he gets a call from Park. He thinks she's calling to tell him about the poisons they found, but instead she's reporting the cool bunker they found. It's full of gas masks and guns. Lots and lots of guns. It's an armory, is what it is.

Mrs. Patient says Park and Adams must have broken into the wrong house, since she certainly doesn't know anything about any suspiciously well-stocked bunkers. Adams says there were pictures of her and her kids all over the place. Mr. Patient finally admits that he had it done during a remodel. And it's not on the plans because he didn't want the government to know about it. So it's probably not much of a bunker, really. I guess I was thinking of a fallout shelter with two-foot-thick concrete walls, but it's really more of a weapons cache. Good to get that cleared up. Mrs. Patient is pretty freaked out at the revelation that her home had all that in it. She should try thinking of it as buried treasure. I wish I had a secret room that you got into by swinging a bookcase out of the way.

When Adams and Park go to tell House about it at his clinic hours, he's already assumed that the patient is worried about the government collapsing. Yep! He concluded that because that's the usual reason for people to stockpile weapons. To be fair, the word "stockpile" isn't entirely accurate; the guns were actually hung neatly on hooks. Park thinks it's not necessarily paranoia to plan for the collapse of society. Adams says that's stupid, which Park takes offense at. So the question is whether his weapons cache is the result of a symptom, which might be because of cocaine. This show sure has a lot of patients with weird behavior that might or might not be the result of medical problems. Adams goes with sleep apnea. House says to check for cocaine abuse and sleep problems. Then he calls on the hottest woman in the clinic.

Park asks Taub what he thinks, and he says that stockpiling weapons doesn't rise to the level of mental illness. And he encourages her not to freak out about being picked last for dodgeball. She thinks nobody respects her. Foreman interrupts their postapocalyptic planning. He would like Taub to stop telling nurses he needs a girlfriend. Taub denies doing any such thing and suggests that everyone's suddenly asking Foreman out of their own accord. Foreman leaves and Taub cheerfully admits to Park that he was lying.

House and Wilson at the cafe. House insists that he doesn't have a gun. Wilson thinks he does, based on his firm belief that House likes dangerous things. He pretends to take House's word for it, but he doesn't. So this is what the two of them will be occupying themselves with for the rest of the episode. Fine.

Chase and Adams compare notes. Both tests came up negative, and Adams insists that the whole team disagrees a lot, so it's not just a thing between her and Park. Chase, in a refreshingly direct way, explains that the only reason he didn't want to partner up with Park is because she's weird. But, he points out, lots of good doctors are weird. For example, House himself, who's loopy as a loon. Anyway, Adams is also weird, but Chase allows some latitude because she's hot. The talk drifts to guns and Chase speculates that Adams has a gun, but not for protection. He thinks she has one because they're fun. She admits it. Chase claims to have guns back in Australia, which he uses for hunting kangaroos for their meat. It's a wacky lie! See, there are lots of lies in this episode, which totally justifies the title "House of Lies." Plus, the patient's house wasn't what his wife thought it was. I stand by that title and I resent your attempt to make me second-guess myself!

Park tells Mrs. Patient that she doesn't have to stay all night. Then Park retreats to the monitor room so the Patient family can have a scene. He says that having a well-stocked bunker is just like having a spare tire. You'd rather have a bunch of automatic weapons and not need them than the reverse, right? He's got a lot of colorful wires attached to his head. But the real problem is that he's suddenly bleeding from his knee!

Everyone convenes in House's office. The patient has a fever now. If he's paranoid (which Park still says he's not), it's been that way for a year. They speculate that it might be systemic sclerosis, so Taub wants to biopsy him and start on medicine. Park wants to wait for the results of the biopsy before starting the treatment, which leads House to dare Adams to disagree with her. She doesn't, so House calls them both idiots. Everyone but Park scurries off to start the latest plan, but she stays behind for a showdown with House. Essentially, she objects to being manipulated. Not to being called an idiot, mind you, because she doesn't think House really thinks that. But she thinks that if House feels the need to manipulate her into being useful, that's a real problem. House says he's harassing her partly to make her useful and partly to amuse himself. He assures her that people respect her, although they don't like her. It didn't seem to me that she was worried much about what the rest of the team thought. I think she just wants House to stop trying to cause trouble. Good luck with that!

By Montykins

Chase and Taub hook the patient up to tubes. He insists he's not a nutcase. He's very short of breath. But nothing interesting happens right away, so we go to a different scene.

House is still doing clinic hours. He's looking at the hands of some dude who thinks he has frostbite even though he hasn't been in the cold. House's diagnosis is that the silver nitrate on the petty cash the guy stole has dyed his fingers blue. So he recommends a vacation until his fingers look normal. I should mention that this guy looks exactly like Murderface from Metalocalypse. As opposed to all the other Murderfaces out there, I guess.

Foreman sees House leaving and snaps at him for leaving before his clinic hours are done. Then he's kind of mean to the nurse. House was leaving because he got an emergency page (seriously? These guys still have pagers?) from Wilson, who is caught in a net dangling from House's ceiling. House enters his home and triumphantly orders Wilson to admit he couldn't find the gun. Then he makes Wilson call him "clever," not "devious."

By Montykins

Foreman works out on the heavy bag. Someone named Anita introduces herself, but Foreman tells her to tell Taub to shove off. She claims not to know who Taub is. He tells her he's not interested. She insists that she just moved here. Then she leaves. She's very fit. Foreman calls Taub, who's busy trying to restrain the patient, who's having some sort of Hulk situation, throwing a chair through the glass door to his room. This hospital goes through a lot of glass doors.

Apparently he was hallucinating a bear attack. Have we ruled out the idea that PPTH is home to a lot of invisible bears that never attacked anybody until just now? Never mind. The disagreement between Adams and Park centers on whether the hallucinations are a new thing (Park's theory) or associated with pre-existing paranoia (Adams's theory). Chase pipes up that the whole thing could be psychiatric, which would require him to have dug into his knee himself. But on the plus side, they'd be able to just ship the whole case off to a different department and forget about it. Park insists that it's an infection that has spread to his brain and recommends lots of antibiotics. Adams says that will kill him if it's her theory. House says to treat for Adams's diagnosis, which has the entertaining name of "Gad."

Park follows House to insist that everyone likes her. She says he doesn't even think it's Gad, since he's probably just trying to create more conflict.

House comes home. He looks suspicious, then points a desk lamp at the floor, where he sees a tripwire. He looks around suspiciously and sees a door ajar. He hits the tripwire with his cane. A net flashes out, and Wilson jumps out with duct tape, yelling "Gotcha!" House calls him a poor, dumb bastard, and leads him out. Then House goes into the bathroom, where he discovers that Wilson has disabled the doorknobs. He's trapped. "Touché."

Foreman and Anita make out in the entryway to her apartment. But they're interrupted by a man's voice. She says it's not her boyfriend...but her husband. Out goes Foreman!

The patient's fever is going through the roof, which Park says means it can't be Gad. Adams says they might just have started their treatment too late. On the phone, House says to do more steroids. Park says it could kill him. She rejects his plan! House backs off and says to check for some DNA problems that sound complicated to spell correctly. Adams is outraged, but House says he changed his mind. Then he hangs up, because, as you should have realized, he's still locked in his bathroom at home. Wilson opens the door and, waving a metal detector around, says that there is no gun. But he did find his sunglasses and tennis racket. And his money clip. House wants to go to bed, unless Wilson wants to do a cavity search. He apparently does not. Make up your own joke about fanfic and put it here. I can't do everything for you.

By Montykins

Adams thinks it's ridiculous to look for an infection when they could be treating the patient for Gad. Park says that it can't be Gad because the patient would be having seizures. Adams says the infection doesn't show up in his blood, but Park thinks it's just a matter of time. Chase is getting annoyed by them. Foreman sticks his head in to call Taub an ass. He blames Taub for him ever getting the idea to go on a date. He tells Taub to stay out of his business, but Taub thinks he's blaming the wrong guy. Foreman leaves and Chase calls Taub an idiot.

BEEP BEEP BEEP! The patient is anaphylaxing, which I did not realize was a word. It's time for a tracheotomy, and it's being done with a scalpel, not a pen. That's a nice change! Normally on television, tracheotomies are done with random junk. Like that one House did in prison where he used a shiv. But it doesn't work because the trachea is blocked below the incision point. Taub tries Racemic Epinephrine. The nurse says they've already tried that, but Taub says they're trying it again.

House is back. The patient is barely breathing Adams is glad that the tracheal edema can't be from something they did. House thinks he might still be getting poisoned. But by whom? Park suggests squamous cell carcinoma in his epithelium, which wouldn't show up in the chest X-ray, and Chase admits that it's possible. I'd like to take a moment to enjoy the word "squamous" which I always thought was something H.P. Lovecraft made up. But it wouldn't cause hallucinations. So she tacks on paraneoplastic syndrome. House says to get a biopsy. He's not signing on 100 percent, but the biopsy is the plan.

House goes into his office and Wilson smugly shows him the gun he found in his closet. He cleverly pretended to stop looking. House denies that it's a gun and also denies that the bullet is a bullet. He says that it's all a prop from a magic act. The barrel is plugged, so it's not a gun! He puts the bullet into the chamber and dares Wilson to pull the trigger. He insists that it's a blank. Wilson will not. House offers to shoot Wilson, and Wilson is also not happy. House again pokes a pencil into the barrel to show that it's plugged, so it's not a gun, so Wilson hasn't proved he's got a gun. Wilson says that House wins and leaves, grumbling. Then House drops the pencil the rest of the way into the barrel and happily drops the bullet he palmed. Then he looks thoughtful and contemplates the pencil.

By Montykins

He enters the room where the team is doing medical stuff to the patient. He announces that the trachea wasn't swollen; it was blocked by a pseudomembrane. The patient is not paranoid, but is an idiot who was poisoned by something. He disconnects the doohickey from the patient's chest and pokes a giant machine down his throat hole. It's diphtheria! Because the guy didn't get vaccinated. The audience is left to connect the dots between "won't eat or drink anything he didn't make," "has a lot of guns," and "doesn't believe in vaccinations."

Taub is at the nurse's station. Foreman thinks the diphtheria thing is cool. This scene didn't go anywhere.

Park is working with the patient when Mrs. Patient comes in. She's glad the antitoxin is working, but she and the kids have moved out. She says she can't live in that home. But she isn't leaving him; she won't let him live there either. "It's not worth living in fear." He agrees and apologizes. They hug, but I think he's figuring out where to bury guns in the new backyard.

Foreman works. The nurse encourages him to go to Rudy's and eat nachos with everyone.

Park gets on the elevator with Adams and Chase. She asks Chase out for a drink after work. Not Adams. Just the two of them. Chase thinks Taub might have put her up to it. Nope. He claims they shouldn't because they work together. She points out that he married someone he used to work with. Fine. Drinks tonight, then. Everyone stands in the elevator, looking awkward.

Foreman works. There's snow outside. He grabs his phone and says that he's changed his mind.

House returns his gun to the cigar box in his closet. Then he checks the cool sword that says "John House" on it. It's a cavalry saber, right? I admit that I don't know all the complicated backstory he's built up. That's why I didn't know last episode that Chase had once hypnotized him.

Foreman's at the bar. Anita greets him. Foreman! Making time with a married woman!

Follow Monty on Twitter at @montykins and read his blog, Mysterious Exhortations.

House TV Show - House of Lies - House Photos &amp; Videos, House Reviews &amp; House Recaps | TWoP

House TV Show - House of Lies - House Photos & Videos, House Reviews & House Recaps | TWoP