By Sara M
House's latest patient is a pro football prospect with strange face-bashing rage blackouts. He begs House to diagnose and treat him in time for a game where he'll get a chance to impress NFL scouts. Yeah, that's not going to happen. Especially since the game is in just a few days and the team needs at least a week of incorrect diagnoses before House can figure out the real problem. In the end, he has skin cancer that was cleverly disguised by the fact that he's black and the Cottages mistook the melanoma on his foot for a football injury. Onto the more important stuff! House and Wilson appear to be engaged in yet another prank war until it turns out that there's a third, unknown perpetrator behind it all: Lucas, trying to get revenge on both of them for stealing the condo Cuddy wanted. Because using a cripple's handicap against him is great good fun! Even though House kind of deserves it for being his usual jerk self to a Clinic patient who wants a medical reason to prevent his deployment and ends up having a foot amputated. At least his jerkiness to Foreman's fresh-out-of-jail brother had an ulterior motive of niceness, to give the Foreman brothers a common enemy they could bond against. But first, he must antagonize Foreman by hiring his brother to work as his assistant to pump him for embarrassing li'l Foreman stories about bed-wetting and car-stealing.
Watch the full episode now and check back soon for the recap.
A gigantic man wearing a football uniform with the number 77 on it performs various football drills in front of a small crowd of scouts and his mother. She's really pushy, telling a nearby scout why her son is totally awesome at football and should be drafted immediately. Because if there's one thing that scouts take seriously, it's the player's mother's opinion. Even #77's coach has good things to say about his performance, and coaches almost never have anything nice to say. But things go wrong when 77 lines up for a play and gets a little too aggressive, shoving and yelling at a defending player well after the whistle. He then grabs the guy by his helmet and starts dragging him across the field until he removes both the other player's helmet and his own, making it easy to beat himself in the forehead with the other guy's helmet so hard that the music comes to an abrupt end. I hope the scouts didn't see that!
The morning, Wilson gets out of bed to find House enjoying a soak in Wilson's private bathtub. "This is not okay," Wilson says, although he doesn't seem to mind the view of the presumably naked House. House says his bathroom doesn't have a tub and he needs to soak his leg because this is one of those increasingly rare times when it hurts. I'd have an easier time believing that if he hadn't just been singing a merry tune, seemingly pain-free. Wilson tells House to stay out of his bathroom, totally unsympathetic to the guy who has a pretty good reason for needing to borrow the tub.
At work, the Cottages are huddled around a laptop watching the footage of 77 attacking his own forehead. Hadley describes their newest patient as 6'7" and 310 pounds. That is tall, but still an inch shorter than Bull from Night Court! 77 has no recollection of the helmet incident, so there's obviously something wrong with his brain, but the CT scan showed no evidence of a brain injury. Not even after he tried to destroy it with the helmet? Damn. House instadiagnoses 77 with 'roid rage, saying the fact that drug tests came back negative just shows that he was able to get his hands on undetectable steroids. Foreman wants to look at other possibilities, including a pituitary adenoma. Hadley supports this idea because she's cool with him this week. House sends the Cottages off to check 77 for the adenoma. But first, he must do that awkward thing with Hadley where they're both in each other's way and each time they try to step aside to let the other person by, the other person steps aside the same way. Hadley is able to break out of the cycle with a well-timed spin move. If only her mother wasn't dead, she'd be able to talk up Hadley's juke skills to the NFL scouts! [I can hear it now! "Did you see Thirteen? The way she deftly avoids awkwardness? That's a talent that you just can't learn. -- Angel] House calls Foreman back to talk to him about how his brother Marcus is being let out of prison today and needs Foreman to pick him up, per the message left on House's phone. Apparently Marcus had no luck getting Foreman to call him back after leaving messages at his home and on his cell, nor was he able to get their parents to take care of this. So he called Foreman's boss instead. House kindly (and surely, ulterior-motive-free!) gives Foreman the day off to reunite with his brother, but Foreman would rather work, obviously having some serious issues with his brother. House is pleased, as he now has a new project.
Just to be mean, they put li'l Taub in front of Gigantic 77 and had them both stand there for a minute for comedy purposes before 77 sits back down on his hospital bed. Taub explains the pituitary theory, but all 77 cares about is if they'll be able to treat it in time for some big game on Saturday that will basically determine whether or not he gets drafted into the NFL. "This is a job interview for the rest of his life," Pushy Mom says. Um, no, Pushy Mom, it isn't. Best case scenario, it's a job interview for the 15 years of his life. Taub says if all goes well, 77 will still be able to play.
House has Clinic duty!! Between that and the leg pain, it's like someone who has actually seen this show before wrote this episode. He examines the eyes of a patient who insists that he's seeing spots, then instadiagnoses him with being in the military, about to ship out, and looking for a medical excuse to get out of it. The patient says he's been deployed three times already and now, with his wife close to giving birth to their first child, the Army decided that even though his contract with them ended last week, he's going back for a fourth time. House doesn't care and won't help the guy because he's apparently big into war. Army can't believe it; he assumed that House would know how he feels because he decided that House's limp is from a Vietnam injury. Seriously? That limp could be from anything! House, meanwhile, is offended. "How old do you think I am?" he asks. "I don't know, Vietnam age?" Army says. House says something about Vietnam draft dodgers being brave enough to run to Canada or shoot themselves in the foot. I'm sure Army didn't pay any attention to that comment.
House emerges from the exam room to find Taub with 77's MRI (OF DOOOM!!) results: no pituitary adenoma. That means 77 must be taking undetectable steroids as far as House is concerned. He orders Taub to put 77 on something that will clear the steroids from his system in time for the Big Game. So he's willing to help cheating football players but not military men who have already served their country three times? Ew.
77 does not take the news of his steroid abuse well. Nor does his mother. He claims he's innocent and the tests must be wrong. Suddenly, his heart goes all funny. But the good news is, that rules out the steroids! And thus, his chances of survival are actually better, because I have a feeling his mother would have killed him for the steroids. The tachycardia won't. Yet.
Foreman marches into House's office, only to find him in the middle of an interview with a prospective new assistant. By sheer coincidence, it's Foreman's brother, Marcus! House happily offers Marcus the job (as House's assistant) that up until now didn't exist, much to Foreman's obvious horror. House beams that he's just trying to help a guy who paid his debt to society (although not a guy who served in the military for three deployments) and needs a job as part of his parole. Foreman updates House on 77's condition before calling his brother out into the hall for what promises to be an unpleasant conversation, since he can't say Marcus's name without gritting his teeth.
In the hall, Marcus takes a second to sulk about how his brother hasn't even asked him about prison before Foreman lightly pushes him against a wall and orders him not to work at PPTH. Marcus says that appears to be House's decision, not Foreman's. And this way, they can work together and Foreman can help Marcus get access to the hospital pharmacy. Foreman does not think that is funny. Foreman doesn't think anything is funny, though. He stays silent, glaring at Marcus as he complains about how Foreman couldn't be bothered to visit him in jail or pick him up when he was released before saying it's "justified" and he's determined to win Foreman back over. Foreman doesn't respond to any of that, just saying that House didn't offer this job to Marcus to be a nice guy. "He only wants to use you to screw with me," Foreman says. "You know how you could screw with him? Act like your brother getting a job doesn't screw with you," Marcus says. Good point, but Foreman thinks the best thing that could happen right now is for Marcus to refuse House's job offer. Sorry, Foreman, but once House gets his hooks into someone, he doesn't give up. So you're screwed whether Marcus takes the job or not. Marcus says he doesn't have the "luxury" of being able to turn jobs down. Funnily enough, neither does Foreman.
It's a bright new day when Wilson stumbles into his bathroom for his morning pee. He suddenly finds that he isn't alone, although this time instead of House in the bathtub, he finds a nasty possum. I think it roared. Twice. Wilson lets out a series of "oh!"s and "HOUSE!"s before running away.
Back at PPTH, Taub reports that 77's heart appears to be working fine just before Marcus walks in with a Frappuccino made to House's exacting specifications: light whip, two extra shots. Foreman is not pleased about this, naturally. House, meanwhile, will have plenty of time to pump Marcus for information about Foreman since he and his new assistant will apparently be sharing all of their meals together. Their breakfast proved to be a goldmine for House, who eagerly lets the other Cottages in on an embarrassing moment from Foreman's past: when he wet the bed during a sleepover at Bobby Sampson's house. While the others laugh, Foreman maintains that he just spilled a drink. The fact that he feels the need to defend himself even now tells me that he totally did wet the bed. Foreman tries to change the subject to medical stuff that he hopes Marcus won't be able to be a part of, but even then he is thwarted when Marcus mentions Hank Gathers, a college basketball star who collapsed and died during a game due to a hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. House says it's consistent with 77's symptoms, although Foreman thinks he's more into the person who thought of it than he is the diagnosis itself. "I don't care where an idea comes from as long as it makes sense and embarrasses someone,'" House says.
With that, Wilson walks in to yell at House for putting a possum in his bathtub. House claims to have no idea what Wilson is talking about, while the Cottages sit there and mostly likely think "another prank war between House and Wilson? Haven't we seen this like six times already?" I know that's what I'm thinking! Wilson says the possum "broke tiles, gashed the walls, and pooped everywhere." Aside from the pooping part, I think he's exaggerating. Possums look gross, but they're really not all that dangerous or destructive. For example, when I accidentally ran one over with my car, it didn't even puncture the tire. "Expect a bill for repairs. And payback," Wilson promises. I think he should send that bill to the people who made his condo, as they obviously built it out of paper for a small rather docile rodent to be able to do so much damage to it so quickly. Wilson leaves on that dramatic note, and House orders the Cottages to test Marcus's diagnosis by putting 77 on a treadmill to stress his heart "until it stops." Yes, because that worked out so well for Hank Gathers. But House thinks this is the only way they'll be able to prove to 77 that his heart simply can't handle the demands of football. If he survives it, I'm sure he'll be grateful.
Foreman runs to Cuddy to tattle on House for hiring his brother. Seriously, when has that ever worked? People are consistently telling on House to Cuddy and it only screws them over. How has Foreman not yet learned this? For her part, Cuddy doesn't see how Marcus getting a job can be a bad thing and thinks the problem is more that Foreman is letting House get to him. Foreman sighs and tells Cuddy that he can't trust his brother, since the last time he got out of prison, he stole money from their parents to buy drugs, robbed a liquor store, and stole a bunch of expensive cars. This is his brother's pattern of behavior, and Foreman is not about to give him an opportunity to screw up again. Which I'm sure he'll have since the PPTH Security guards totally suck and lawsuit-terrified Cuddy isn't going to fire a guy because of his past actions. I just want to know why she approved of House getting an assistant in the first place. He doesn't need (nor has he ever wanted) one, and I thought PPTH was all about saving money? Surely he only wanted an assistant to screw with someone, and Cuddy should have realized that and turned down House's request.
Wilson returns to House's office to report that the possum did over $1700 worth of damage. A possum? Really? I wonder if the writers originally put a wild boar in the script but the animal casting department could only get a possum and they forgot to change it. What Wilson really came to talk to House about, though, is something that's none of his business: why he's jerking Foreman around. House says it's fun, then blames Wilson for the possum because he apparently left his window open. Right, because possums are always climbing into people's homes to hang out in their bathtubs. Sure. Wilson begs to differ on the first point, saying House must have a deeper motive than simply enjoying himself. House claims he's trying to get information on Foreman's past that he'll be able to use against him somewhere down the line. Wilson thinks House's motives are much more pure: he's trying to bring Foreman and his brother together. House protests this as Chase and Taub enter to tell House that they failed at the treadmill test off-camera, as 77 is in such good shape that they couldn't get his heart rate high enough to cause cardiac arrest. He's in good shape, and yet he's fat? How does that work, exactly? "Your boss is secretly a very nice man," Wilson informs them on his way out the door. "I know," Taub says, always eager to suck up.
House finds 77 dressed and ready to discharge himself against medical advice. He says he feels fine and wants to get back to practice, but House ignores him and gets ready to inject him with something that will raise his heart rate, thus causing his heart to stop. Even though there are no people or machinery around to work on getting it going again. Good plan! Fortunately, before House can kill 77, he notices that 77's palms are pale. He's concerned, but not so much that he can't make a crack to 77's mom that if the skin-whitening continues, 77 will no longer needs football to get a good job. Yes, but even we white people have to use our brains, which I'm not super-confident 77 is good at. He seems as dumb as the pile of bricks he resembles. Well, a pile of bricks with slightly pale palms.
Back in the meeting room, 77's white palms have ruled out hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. The team gets to figuring out a new diagnosis. In House's office, meanwhile (which Foreman has the best view of), Marcus is having his new desk and nameplate delivered. You know what would be awesome? If Foreman stopped showing how much this bothered him and then Marcus stole all of House's stuff to sell for drug money. Then House might learn it's best to leave these things alone. Chase helpfully distracts Foreman with another possible diagnosis, to which Foreman says he thinks lymphoma is a better fit with 77's symptoms and wants to remove 77's spleen. Chase thinks he's being a little hasty with the organ removal, but Foreman says it's the only way 77 will be able to play in his big game, as the biopsy results will take too long. Has Foreman never had major surgery himself? How does he think 77 will be at all recovered enough to play in a freaking football game? I had my tonsils out recently and it took like a month before I was well enough to exercise again. House says they can prove Chase or Foreman's diagnosis with an ethanol drip: if 77 loses his radial pulse (whatever that is), the culprit is Chase's Takayasu arteritis diagnosis. If he gets itchy, it's lymphoma. If it was that easy, then why do they even do biopsies in the first place?
Hadley and Foreman arrive at 77's room with the ethanol drip at the same time as Marcus, who is holding a digital recorder as part of his latest assignment from House to shadow Foreman and document everything he says to the patient. Shockingly, Foreman doesn't like this, and Marcus gets angry back, saying this new life he's creating for himself will mean nothing if his own family doesn't believe in him. Marcus, it's been like a day. Give it some time. Geez. Foreman points out that Marcus's family believed in him before, only to be let down again and again and again. He has a good point there; I don't know why Marcus can't understand and accept that his past mistakes might have something to do with his brother's reluctance to have anything to do with him. Foreman brushes past Hadley and enters 77's room. Hadley stays in the doorway and looks at Marcus but says nothing, remembering that she's Hadley and not Cameron, and thus doesn't need to butt into everyone's business.
Wilson finds House alone in the cafeteria and asks where his "minion" Marcus is. Clearly, Wilson is insanely jealous of Marcus for getting to eat lunch with House and thus stealing some of Wilson's precious alone time with House. When House tells him about Marcus's latest assignment, Wilson says House is trying to "escalate" what he's pulling with Foreman and Marcus in order to prove that Wilson is wrong about his nice motives. Wilson says this only proves that he was right. I think Wilson needs to stop viewing all of House's actions as responses to everything Wilson does or says. Cuddy walks up with a file for House, saying it belongs to a newly-admitted ER patient who requested House specifically. House hopes the patient is a hot young woman with big boobs, but Cuddy says it's a guy who "accidentally" shot himself in the foot. Right after he cut off his nose to spite his face.
House finds Army in the ER, looking uncomfortable but definitely satisfied with himself. It doesn't last long, as House informs Army that he'll just fix this up and Army will be good to get deployed again. "Don't patch it up," Army says. House acknowledges that what the government is doing to Army "sucks," but he's not going to get out of it this easily. Yes, because shooting yourself in the foot is easy. Army desperately says that he was "just a guy" when he enlisted, but now that he's about to be a father, he needs to be there for his kid and can't risk dying in Afghanistan or wherever he's being deployed to. House grew up with his father there and it still sucked, so he isn't sympathetic. "You got a girl pregnant. You're still just a guy," he says. What is his problem? Shouldn't helping someone rebel against the government be right up House's alley? Instead, he just walks away.
Foreman hangs out in 77's room, waiting to see the results of the ethanol drip. While they wait, they chat. 77 figured out that Marcus is Foreman's brother because of "the way [Foreman] looks at him." It certainly isn't because of any family resemblance, since Orlando Jones and Omar Epps look nothing alike. Also, Orlando Jones looks and acts nothing like the hardened criminal/junkie Marcus is supposed to be. I like Orlando Jones just fine, but he's been miscast here. 77 says he knows how Foreman feels because he and his two older brothers "always want to kill each other." So much so, apparently, that neither one bothered to visit their little brother in the hospital. With that, 77 complains of feeling itchy. Foreman says that means he has lymphoma and will need to have his spleen removed, but that's "good news" since it means 77 will still be able to play on Saturday. 77 is thrilled and wakes his mother up with the news: "I'm itchy! Means I can play!" She smiles and laughs, as she was not awake to hear the part where her son has cancer and will soon be minus one spleen. Although I'm not sure if she'd care about that even if she did know as long as it meant 77 became a rich football player.
House is lounging in bed when his leg starts to hurt. So he strips down (for the ladies!!!) and soaks in Wilson's tub. By the way, Wilson's bathroom looks remarkably free of possum damage. His mood improved by the warm water and the knowledge that he's doing something that would piss Wilson off, he sings to himself as he scrubs his back using one of those long bath brushes. The only person I've ever known who actually uses one of those is my Nanny. Who is 79. And lives in another country. Also, when I looked up bath brush to find a picture of one to make sure I was using the right terminology, a bunch of pictures from blog about spanking naughty adult women came up. So don't do that. Anyway, House grabs the self-installed handicap rail to help him get out of the tub, only for it to rip out of the wall, sending him flying back into the tub and the rail flying into his face.
He's lying in wait on the ugly orange couch when Wilson finally returns home, startled to find House lying on the couch in the dark while holding a large metal pole. House flicks the light on to reveal that he has a nice cut on his cheek, a wound from his battle against the rail. Wilson denies having anything to do with this, even though he did promise to get revenge on House for the possum thing. Wilson chalks it up to "karmic justice" instead. House doesn't believe him, and declares war. Then he easily rolls off the couch and walks away even though his leg prevented him from being able to get out of the bathtub without a malfunctioning helper rail.
Meanwhile, Chase is removing 77's spleen when he sees that 77's liver is inflamed, meaning that the itching was not caused by 77's spleen after all and Foreman's diagnosis was wrong. Oops!
When House arrives at work the day, Hadley's first concern is what happened to his face, even though it's just a small cut and it's kind of rude to ask people about their face wounds. House says it's a war wound as Foreman informs him that 77's biopsies came back negative for lymphoma. Um, what? They got the biopsy results that quickly after they just said they couldn't do a biopsy because it would take too long? As Marcus hands House his daily Frappuccino, he delights in telling the group another story from Foreman's past, this time about the time he took his mother's birth control pills on a dare and got swollen nipples, thus causing his high school classmates to give him the nickname "Erica." Hadley and Taub grin and turn in unison from House to Foreman, who denies that this ever happened. Taub and Hadley turn back to House expectantly. I kind of love those two together, I must admit. House turns to Marcus, who admits he made the story up in the hopes that his brother "still had a sense of humor" and "play along." Um, why? Who wants everyone to believe you took woman hormones and your entire high school gave you a girl's name because of it? And how is that a way to win your way back into your brother's heart? Foreman ignores him and suggests a diagnosis of polymyositis. Why are we pretending that anyone cares about 77 anymore? He's gotten the least amount of camera time for a patient of the week in the history of this show, I think. In the end, Taub's viral hepatitis diagnosis is the most likely, saying it was introduced to 77 by a team doctor who accidentally used the same needle twice. Even Marcus knows better than to re-use a needle. House asks Marcus if he likes Taub's diagnosis based on whether or not Taub looks like an idiot. "I don't think he's an idiot," Marcus says, in a way that suggests that he thinks Taub is other things. House sends the Cottages off to test 77 for hepatitis while he and Marcus have lunch.
House, meanwhile, stops by Wilson's office to announce "I had an epiphany." Wilson knows how this show usually works and expects House to turn around and walk right out of the office to save his patient's life, albeit much earlier in the episode than usual. But this time, House's epiphany moment has to do with their condo and the flat-head screwdriver the prankster would have needed to loosen the screws on House's tub handrail. And he knows for a fact that they don't have a flat-head screwdriver in the condo because he had to borrow one from 3B to install it in the first place. This had the added benefit, he says, of giving him a glimpse of her sans bra when he returned it later that night. Men are weird. "Whoa, wait. Wait a minute! Wait a minute!" Wilson says, astonished that the writers are doing such a good job with the condo living continuity. Especially since their last living situation had that cranky guy living below them we'd never heard of before or after that one episode. But House continues, despite Wilson's request for more information about 3B's braless-ness, that this means that Wilson did not loosen House's handrail, which also somehow means, in turn, that House was not responsible for the possum. They aren't engaged in a prank war with each other after all! Instead, someone else is breaking into their apartment and doing these things. Wilson thinks that person is trying to screw with them both, but House summons up all his grit as he says, solemnly as the camera moves in on his face, "the opossum was meant for me."
And so, they camp out in the kitchen (which is STILL full of unpacked boxes, like, haven't they lived there for months now? Come on, guys) behind the island and wait for the mystery prankster to show up under the cover of darkness. They're armed with a flashlight (Wilson) and a cricket bat (House). Because House can't unpack his dishes but he made damn sure his cricket bat was easily accessible. Wilson starts to wonder if this is all part of a prank on House's part to trick him into staying up all night waiting for something that will never happen. Perhaps he was the one who loosened his own tub rail to make it more convincing. A "self-prank," as Wilson describes it. "I don't master-prank," House says. Wilson doesn't believe him, though, and retires to his bedroom -- just as the fire alarm goes off and the sprinklers start spraying all over the apartment. Wilson runs back into the kitchen screaming about "the flat screen!" which he tries to save from the water with, like, two dish towels. Yeah, that's not going to work. Why is the TV so close to their kitchen anyway? And why does their sprinkler system go off as soon as the fire alarm? What if they simply set it off by accident while cooking some bacon, like I always do? This seems like a serious design flaw. Wilson decides that House is innocent of the pranks, as he'd never do something to their precious TV. "This guy is good," House says admiringly.
The morning, the Cottages, Marcus and Cuddy have been called into the meeting room. As Cuddy wonders aloud what's going on, House enters with a French accent and accusations, figuring the perpetrator of the condo pranks is in the room as everyone there had both "motive and opportunity." I think it's 3B. She's probably still mad at Wilson and House and we know she has the necessary flat-head screwdriver. Cuddy, meanwhile, stupidly believed that the emergency House paged her here for was an actual emergency. She will never learn. "Not zo fast, Mademoiselle Cuddy! No one leaves here until zhey can account for zheir whereabouts zhe evening last." No one except Cuddy, who totally leaves without accounting for her whereabouts the evening last. House switches back to his American accent and reminds the rest of the room that he's their boss and thus they don't have the same freedom to leave. He abandons the French detective for a Clue theme. "Professor Chase," who House says has the motive of blaming House for his marriage falling apart, says he was at PPTH all night with Hadley as they treated the patient no one cares about. "Colonel Taub" was having dinner with his wife. "Really?" House asks. "Yes. Really," Taub says. House decides that's good enough because the real focus of his investigation is Foreman, who denies his involvement by saying he doesn't even know House's address. House says he can't believe that, since he now knows that Foreman is a liar "by omission." Uh oh. Marcus knows where this is going, and lets out an angry warning "House! Don't." But of course, he does. He tells everyone that Foreman's mother died, which comes to a surprise to them all. Wilson pipes up that this might not be the appropriate time for any of this. Foreman admits that his mother died three months ago. Weren't Hadley and Foreman still dating then? I guess not. "I'm so sorry," she says, sounding sincere. "Why didn't you tell anybody?" Taub asks, because that's important now. I know that when I want to express sympathy to a friend or co-worker who has lost someone, the first thing I do is buy them a card that says, "why didn't you tell me?" on it. House adds that Foreman "refused to say anything nice about her at the funeral." Well, that's not exactly true. Marcus just said he "heard" that Foreman didn't give a eulogy. Foreman says he didn't think it was anyone else's business. About ten minutes too late, Marcus jumps up and tells House to stop and that Foreman doesn't owe his boss any explanations. House tries to goad Marcus into hitting him, thus forcing Foreman to show how much he cares by telling his brother to calm down. Marcus dramatically quits his job (which didn't really exist in the first place anyway) and leaves. Hadley urges Foreman to stop Marcus because "he needs this job." Foreman decides that 77 needs a new IV more.
I thought he was just using that as an excuse to run after his brother, but no, the time we see Foreman, he's heading into 77's room with a fresh IV. 77 is packing up to leave, deciding that he's all better just one night into this two-to-three-week treatment regimen and ready to play. He points out that his color is coming back and everything. His mother protests weakly, but I think she actually wants him to play. Foreman realizes there's no way he can stop 77 from doing whatever he wants and lets him leave. 77's mother begs Foreman to go with him just in case anything goes wrong, like Foreman doesn't have anything better to do.
Meanwhile, House goes to visit Army for a follow-up on his foot wound. His little toe is turning black and the wound is seriously infected-looking. House thinks the antibiotics aren't working and says they'll switch Army to different ones, but that little toe is a goner. Army reacts to this with laughter, figuring he is now off the deployment hook. House takes a great deal of pleasure in telling him that the Army still takes nine-toed infantrymen, so this was all for nothing and Army should have done his research before he let this happen. House says they can keep Army on the non-working antibiotics and let the infection spread until they have to amputate something that truly will get Army out of active duty. How about the fact that just based on the fact that he shot himself in the foot, Army is either mentally ill (if done on purpose) or has poor gun-handling skills? Doesn't that make him unfit?
Foreman follows 77 through the locker room tunnels and towards the field, asking him why he's doing this when his mother doesn't even want him to. 77 says his mother "sacrificed everything" for him and if he gets drafted he'll have the money to take of her for the rest of her life. Really? Because a lot of professional football players don't make enough money to take care of themselves for the rest of their lives, let alone someone else. 77 might be great at what he does, but the fact remains that he's just another fat lineman, and that's not exactly the kind of glamour position that gets the multi-million dollar contracts and endorsement deals. "Who am I if I don't sacrifice for her? That's family," 77 says. Yes, well, family is also about not doing something that has a good chance of killing you and leaving your mother to bury her son. But it sure did teach Foreman a lesson! He takes a moment to reflect on The Meaning of Family as 77 suddenly takes a knee before he ever reaches the field. He's having trouble seeing, enough so that he won't be able to play and agrees to go back to PPTH. He sounds more disappointed than, you know, terrified about the sudden loss of vision.
In the meeting room, Taub tries to add blindness to the list of symptoms, but Foreman announces via speakerphone that it's not a symptom at all, but the result of him drugging 77's water bottle with something that dropped his blood pressure low enough to cause the blindness so he wouldn't be able to play and thus, not die. Foreman dropped him off back at PPTH and is now hanging out on the Fox city scene backlot. "Well played!" House says as Hadley smirks in what I'm guessing is approval. These people are the worst doctors ever. They drug people like all the time. House has done it at least three times now, and Hadley has done it twice that I can remember. And she's only been on the show for two and a half seasons! Your chances of getting slipped something are better at PPTH than they are on Spring Break. House asks Foreman where he is. "Busy," Foreman says, hanging up. He cares enough about 77 to drug him into going back to PPTH, but not enough to continue to work on his case. House notes that 77 only lost one pound after so many days of hospital food, which is unusual. Someone as big as 77 would be expected to lose 10 pounds in that amount of time. House thinks this could be a new symptom. Chase suggests the old favorite paraneoplastic syndrome, and House sends them off to test 77 to find out which cancer the paraneoplastic syndrome is reacting to.
Meanwhile, Foreman stops by the local halfway house to visit his brother. The sirens we hear in the background and the creaky floors are supposed to make the place seem less-than-nice, but it seems like great place to me. Much nicer than my apartment. No cracks in the walls, and I'll bet his bathroom isn't on a slant like mine is. Seriously, my bedroom looks like that Vincent Van Gogh painting he did right before he went to the mental hospital. Marcus asks Foreman why he's there instead of just being grateful that his brother is speaking to him at all. Foreman offers to help Marcus get his job with House back, but Marcus knows that if House realizes that Foreman is okay with him being there, he'll have no reason to hire Marcus back. Foreman knows that too, and offers to help Marcus find something else. Marcus promises not to let Foreman down, but Foreman doesn't want to hear his promises because they don't mean anything to him except another way for him to be disappointed. "Let's just see how it goes," he says. And then he offers to let Marcus live with him. Marcus seems to accept the offer, getting all emotional as he hugs his brother, who hugs him back.
House, meanwhile, walks towards a seat in the cafeteria with Wilson, annoyed that his fun times annoying Foreman seem to be at an end with Marcus's departure. At this point, House makes a departure of his own, from the floor. Now he finds himself flying through the air, and then on the ground, along with his tray and various food items that Wilson probably paid for. He turns and sees the reason for his fall: Lucas tripped him. Because tripping handicapped people is hiLARious! I know that when I want to cheer myself up I always head to the nearest senior center and hit the old people with bats, right after I rig their wheelchairs so they fall apart as soon as an old person sits on them. Lucas apologizes insincerely, saying he must have forgotten to remove his leg from House's path because he's distracted trying to think of a way to top the fire sprinkler prank that we all knew was his fault almost from the beginning because the actor who plays him's name was in the credits. House gets to his feet, looking like he's about to shove his cane somewhere in Lucas's little body that won't be comfortable, but Lucas tells him to settle down because he knows where House lives. "My girlfriend and I tried to buy that very same condo," he says, turning serious. Um, I think it's more like your girlfriend tried to buy it, Lucas. I don't think you have the money to go halvsies on it with her. Or even ten percentsies. Anyway, for this, Lucas says House and Wilson "deserve to suffer." House says Lucas is going to be the one suffering soon enough, but Lucas says he is going to stop his stupid illegal prank wars now that his "superiority" has been established and his point has been made. I'm pretty sure that putting a possum in someone's bathtub isn't a measure of superiority unless said superiority is in the category of "best possum bathtub placer." Which it wasn't. Lucas is confident that House and Wilson won't do anything in return because if they do, he'll tell Cuddy that they stole her apartment. So what? All's fair in love and real estate. If Cuddy really wanted that condo she could have placed another offer. And yet, the threat seems to work for House and Wilson, who look ashamed.
Later that night, House limps into the lab to find the Cottages, who have run a battery of tests on 77 and come up with no cancer, not even in the breast! And yet, 77's kidneys are starting to fail, which Hadley says means he must have cancer somewhere. So why don't they just give him chemo like they do to all the other patients who they think have cancer but have no idea where? "Why can't we find it? We've looked everywhere inside this guy," Foreman complains. House says the cancer might not be inside and takes off.
77 watches the Big Game on the flat screen TV he has in his room. Both 77's hospital and Marcus's halfway house rooms are nicer than my apartment. This is pathetic. Anyway, a freeze frame of the TV screen shows that archaeologists have uncovered another Roman era settlement near London on the news ticker. Such exciting news on WKBG's All Star Football coverage! I wish we could learn more about that settlement than we did about 77 or Cuddy's psycho boyfriend. House walks into the room and opens with this gem: "you know why you're black?" "Cause God loved me more than he loves you," 77 says, clearly having had to use this retort in instances in his life. But House was actually asking a scientific question, and the answer is melanin. Black people have a lot of it, thus making their skin dark and protecting them from the sun's evil rays. Unlike my stupid near-translucent skin that turns an angry red and then blisters and peels anytime the sun gets near it. I inherited that skin from the English side of my family, while my mother's side gave me lots of moles. This combination means I get to go to a dermatologist once a year to make sure my moles aren't turning into cancer. 77 does not have to do this because skin cancer is so unusual in black people that doctors usually forget to include it in a list of diagnoses. On the rare occasions that a black person does get skin cancer, the melanoma is usually found in the paler parts of his skin, around the palms or soles of the feet. Because 77 plays so much football, his palms and feet are smashed and bruised, so the melanoma was even harder to notice. House finally finds it in between 77's big and second toe and explains, along with the Magic Schoolbus Camera (which we really don't see enough anymore) to illustrate, that 77's body created antibodies to fight the cancer, which then apparently got a little overzealous and fought various non-cancerous things as well, causing all of 77's symptoms. House says as soon as they remove the cancerous mole, "everything should be fine." Well, except for the fact that 77 has cancer. That kind of sucks. But 77 is more upset about the fact that he missed the game and somehow the only chance he had to get drafted. "What kind of life am I gonna lead now?" he whines. "The same crappy life that the rest of the guys you'll be graduating with are gonna lead -- minus the student loans," House says, unsympathetic. Yeah, because there are tons of jobs out there for new college graduates. He leaves the room as 77's mother smiles and pat her son's leg. Apparently, his cancer diagnosis has put her in a good mood.
Lucas stops by Cuddy's office because he obviously has nothing better to do with his time ever. Cuddy packs up to leave for the day while asking Lucas if he knows anything about Wilson and House's mysterious phantom prankster. Lucas denies it, saying Cuddy told him he couldn't do anything to retaliate against House and Wilson for stealing their condo, which she's known about all along. "It's just a condo," Cuddy says, as she is apparently the only sensible person involved in this entire mess. Lucas thinks she still has feelings for House. He would think that, since he is clearly obsessed with House himself. Cuddy doesn't deny it, just says they'll buy a condo somewhere else. Lucas might find it difficult to afford the down payment once Wilson sues him for the thousands upon thousands of dollars in damages he caused to the condo, though.
Wilson finds House at a nurse's station and says he heard that Foreman and his brother are trying to work things out (how did he hear that?? Who even knows about it, and who would tell Wilson?), and he gives House the credit for this, saying he was successful in his effort to be a common enemy that Foreman and Marcus could bond over. "You are the diabolical yet benevolent puppet master," Wilson accuses. House denies all of this, of course, but when he says he has no plans to get back at Lucas, Wilson decides that he won the argument and House truly is a nice guy. He takes off just before he can see Army being wheeled out of his room, about to be discharged after having his infected foot amputated. He seems pleased with his decision, although I have to wonder if he's going to feel that way a year or ten down the line. There was no guarantee he'd die in that fourth deployment or that he couldn't get a discharge any other way, but he'll definitely never get that foot back.
You can read more from Sara Morrison at L.A.me, follow her on Twitter, or you can email her at saramorrison@gmail.com.