By Sara M
Six people were the lucky recipients of donor organs when a man's head was cut off in an industrial accident. Five years later, five of them are dead, with one of their non-donated organs suddenly crapping out. The last transplanted standing seems fine, but who knows for how long. The Cottages do little except whine that the mystery illness doesn't make sense. Kumar at least offers a diagnosis, but that just ends up with an explosion of dead man poop all over Foreman. Meanwhile, the last transplanted is having problems with her brain and going downhill fast. House decides it's cancer, and chemos the patient up. This seems to work, which is even more puzzling to House, since he's convinced it isn't actually cancer. Now he's looking for something that acts just like cancer but isn't actually cancer.
With no one to give him his life-saving end-of-show epiphany, House swallows his pride and goes to Wilson, who has no epiphanies to give and slams the door in House's face. Fortunately, House has made a new friend in a private investigator he hired to check out the donor's background and also spy on Wilson, and he gives House the epiphany he so desperately needs: it's not cancer, but cancer stem cells. Apparently, the donor had them and spread them to the transplantees. The stem cells took root in various parts of the body where they looked just like normal tissue but didn't work, causing the organs to blow out when they were needed most.
That means the patient has non-working brain tissue sitting in her brain preparing to kill her -- unless they can chop off the top of her head and cut it out. But Cuddy says the chemo is working, so there's no need for a delicate brain surgery for something House has no proof of. After the usual rule-breaking and ethics-violating, House is able to endanger the patient's life to the point where her only option is the brain surgery. It works and she'll be fine. And House puts the PI on retainer because he's that lonely.
Can I just say that I hate Fox's "So (Adjective)" campaign? Last week they called House "So Fresh" and I had flashbacks to recapping 7th Heaven during The WB's "Fresh" campaign. Also, it's lame. Anyway, someone had fun with the opening segment this week! Two women play tennis, and there's all kinds of cool tricks where the tennis ball slows down and speeds up and flies towards the camera. I like it! If I find out my archnemesis Deran Sarafian directed this episode, I am going to be so embarrassed. The tennis player who actually looks a lot like Cuddy suddenly clutches her heart and falls to the ground while her opponent wonders if that counts as a point for her or not.
Over at a construction site, a guy operates a crane to lift a cargo container high up in the air. Suddenly, the container drops, almost crushing his co-worker. Well, he's fired. Actually, when they open the truck, he's dead. Either way, he's not working there anymore.
And two men are fighting in a kick boxing or mixed martial arts match or whatever is popular with the kids nowadays. The crowd roars as the bald guy appears to be winning. Suddenly, he falls backwards on the mat, bleeding from his ear. That's not going to do his win-loss record any favors.
But if it's real high-intensity action you want, look no further than this guy playing a tuba. There's another guy watching him, and the only question now is which one of them is the goner? Also, with the tuba guy playing while the soundtrack plays, it reminds me of Lisa in the opening of The Simpsons. Except that she didn't hack up a spray of blood onto her sheet music.
And now a woman is leading a class in some kind of horrible math problem (all math problems are horrible) when Hadley bursts in with a paramedic behind her. "Class is over!" she announces. There must have been a less dramatic way to do that, Hadley. Perhaps her Huntington's is affecting the drama center of her brain. The teacher asks what's going on. "I'm a doctor," Hadley claims, before telling her -- and her entire class (nice patient confidentiality there, Hadster) -- that the person who donated her cornea five years ago also donated organs to several other people, all of whom are either dead or about to be. "I feel fine," says the teacher, stunned. "I don't mean to scare you, but so did the others," Hadley says, because she totally meant to scare the teacher.
After the credits, Foreman exposits that the four organ recipients we saw in the beginning are dead, some old guy who didn't merit his own pre-opening credits segment is dying, and the teacher is wandering around the ICU scared out of her mind, although I don't know what she could possibly be scared of. House and the Cottages, on the other hand, are chilling in the morgue with the bodies of the dead, because why be with the living terrified patient when you can surround yourself with decomposition? In a bizarre twist, the guy who got both a heart and a lung (why did he need both? Greedy.) was killed by his liver. The tuba player, who got a liver, died because of his lung. The tennis-playing woman who got a kidney died because of her heart. The random old guy who isn't dead yet got some kind of intestinal graft, but it's his pancreas that's going now. And we are not told what organ the fighter got or what killed him, although judging by the bleeding, I'd say something brain-related. Foreman continues that they all died in the last eight months, which means some of those bodies have got to be pretty ripe by now. The construction guy especially is looking like a closed coffin funeral is going to be necessary. Besides receiving organs from the same guy, the only thing all four bodies have in common is that they had no symptoms before suddenly kicking the bucket.
Kumar, who is looking more and more like the New Chase in every episode he actually gets screen time (which is, like, two episodes), gets right down to business and tosses out a few diagnoses. House, on the other hand, doesn't care that at any moment and without warning, the math teacher could fall down dead and talks about Wilson, wondering what he did for House. I think the bigger question is, what did House ever do for Wilson? Ignoring this, Taub guesses the organs could have had some kind of infection that the screening process missed and lay dormant for five years, but Kumar says for all of those different parts of the body to be affected like that it would have to be five different infections. The chances of five infections slipping through the screening process are pretty slim. At this point, even Hadley is more professional than House, who interrupts his whining about Wilson to say that whatever affected the victims, it didn't come from the organs themselves, which were not affected, so it must have come from the donor's blood. The good news about that is that since corneal transplants are bloodless, the math teacher (I think Hadley calls her Apple? Oh, hold on -- one website is calling her Apple. Apple must have been so pissed when Gwyneth Paltrow stole her unique name and gave it to her daughter) will be fine. As for the old guy, Hadley apparently couldn't care less. Foreman asks her if she's confident enough in her theory to send Apple home. "I guess we could wait 'til we figure out what's wrong with Frank," Hadley mutters, refusing to actually admit she's wrong and has no faith in her abilities, which is good because she doesn't really have any.
House pipes up to say that Wilson may have made him laugh, but so does Gilbert Gottfried. Really, House? Gilbert Gottfried? Really? I mean ... I'm sure his stand-up is okay and he usually hilarious on Howard Stern, but he sucks in everything else. Like when he kept showing up in the last season of Night Court as the stenographer's fiancé. Not funny and annoying as hell. Kumar is fed up, so he just tells House that Wilson "paid for your lunch, liked monster trucks, and was your conscience." How does Kumar know all of that? Monster trucks are so season one. I guess House talks about them a lot when the cameras are off. Speaking of so season one, Foreman's diagnosis is vasculitis. My old friend, how I've missed you! Taub dismisses that diagnosis immediately, of course, and Hadley says it must be cancer. Foreman hates that diagnosis, since the mystery illness affected all different organs. "It's cancer," House says.
Foreman chases him down the hallway to protest, saying there's no cancer that blows up organs and herniates brain stems, which is how the fighter died. House thinks they should forget about the fighter, whose brain injury could just as well have happened during the match. Even so, Foreman says "thousands" of tests and four autopsies were done and they all ruled cancer out. House orders Hadley to do the four autopsies again as well as those thousands of lab tests. Well, her life sucks this week, and she knows it, as she rolls her eyes and walks off. Kumar and Taub get to investigate the donor and find out what type of cancer he may have had before an industrial accident took his head off by checking his home and office for toxins and carcinogens. Kumar leaves while Taub whines that after four years (um, it's actually five, Taub. PAY ATTENTION), they're not going to find anything where the guy used to live. Way to give up before you even try. This just gets him an extra assignment as House tells him to investigate whoever lived in the house after the donor and see if they have cancer. That just leaves Foreman to take a look at Apple's eye.
Oh look! There's Hugh Laurie's producer credit! Actually, he's an Executive Producer. Him and half the country, but still.
House won't be participating in the case again this week because he needs to find a new friend. He reports to the cafeteria, where he sees a friendly and unassuming doctor paying for his meal. House promptly throws some things on the tray and tells the cashier to charge them to Dr. O'Shea. Dr. O'Shea rolls his eyes but pays for House's food. Why do people give into him like that? Is it because they feel sorry for him? I wouldn't care if both of his legs didn't work -- I'm not paying for a doctor's lunch. House follows O'Shea to his seat, much to his chagrin, and says he heard a rumor that O'Shea likes monster trucks. Wow, PPTH must have some scandal-free employees if O'Shea liking monster trucks has made it into the grapevine. O'Shea says he likes the Predator but thinks the California Crusher is overrated. I'll agree with him since I have no idea what they're talking about. But the answer seems to satisfy House, so he takes a seat. "Are you ... checking me out?" O'Shea asks, looking worried. "You're astute," House says, his friendship test entering phase three as he whips out a bottle of pills and downs several of them. O'Shea asks him how many pills he just took. House says he takes Vicodin and B12 for that afternoon kick and asks if O'Shea has a problem with that. O'Shea just shrugs. "I think I'm in love," House says. I'm pretty sure straight men don't talk like that, not even in jest. But it will make the fans happy, so there you go.
Before House can take things to the level, Foreman walks up and reports that Apple's right eye is failing. House insists that it's fine. All the others' transplant stayed perfectly healthy while an unrelated organ shut down. They're looking for anything but Apple's eye to be affected. Even so, Foreman wants to take the eye out just to be safe. House points out that it's her only working eye and turns to O'Shea and asks if he has an ethical problem with what House is doing right now (what, trying to save the patient's sight? How dare he!) that he can express in a unique way that will cause House to question his diagnosis but not admit it to anyone. "Yes," says O'Shea. With that, House invites him over. "I'm not gay," O'Shea says. Heh heh heh. "Neither am I," House says; "if you don't want to have sex, that's cool with me." For some strange reason, O'Shea doesn't accept the invitation. "I'll grow on you," House threatens. I like O'Shea.
Poor old Frank and his failing pancreas. He suffers in bed with his wife standing at his side, tending to him with tears in her eyes. Heartbreaking! But we don't care about Frank and the camera quickly moves off of him and over to Apple. She stops halfway through reading the eye chart to request room change, preferably a room with no dying old guy in it. House tells her to pay close attention to him since whatever he has, she'll have sooner or later. That's what you get for trying to engage House in any kind of conversation. "Am I gonna die?" Apple asks. For a math teacher, she's a little slow on the uptake. House tells Apple to stop being selfish and start reading the eye chart. The line says "PECFD." Apple reads "FEOSP." Those are not the same. House actually looks like he gives a crap for once and sighs a "damn." Foreman tells Apple she can kiss her right eye good-bye. Apple's upset, but House tells her to look on the bright side: at least she isn't dying (yet). Not only that, but she also can keep her eye. You see, Apple read the line without squinting, which means she could see just fine. Her brain, on the other hand, can't tell F's from S's. That means it's too late to remove the eye. They'll have to remove Apple's entire head. Well, that should be an interesting medical procedure. I'm looking forward to seeing what questionable medical science the show can use to explain this. Oh, I see they won't be using any medical equipment at all -- House whips out a cleaver and starts hacking away. Of course, he didn't really cut her head off. She was just hallucinating/sort of telling the future (spoiler alert!). The hallucination proves that the problem is in Apple's brain and not her eye.
The PI admits that he's not very good at disguises. Foreman doesn't even blink before asking House who this guy is. House says he's a "very bad" private investigator. Taub asks why he's undercover. House non-explains that he wanted to hear what they found out about the donor before hearing what the PI found out about the donor, so he'd know whether or not he needed the PI in the first place. Then ... just ask them without the PI there. Or have him there, but let Kumar and Taub speak first and him second. Whatever. Kumar says the donor came up clean with no history of infections or international travel. At this, PI giggles again. It turns out the donor went to Madrid and the Bahamas, both of which are a den of bacteria, I'm sure. The trips didn't show up on donor's credit card receipts because his girlfriend paid for them. The donor was a kept man. Kumar says the guy didn't have a girlfriend, but it turns out that she was his best friend's wife. And she gave birth to a kid who was conceived right before the donor died. Guess whose? Foreman asks if the PI found out anything medically relevant. "The kid has a tummy ache?" PI says. Oh, and the donor and his cheating girlfriend's "sex pad" was full of toxins. And with that, he hands House a receipt for $2300. House says he'll pay by check. The PI isn't stupid; he only takes cash. House admits that he had no intention of actually paying the PI so much, but the PI says his fee includes footage of the MMA bout from several different camera angles that he got from attendees' camera phones. House folds his arms and falls in love.
Later, they've watched all of PI's footage and found that the fighter's pupils were dilated before he went down. But he didn't drop his hands, which Foreman says means he was able to keep his muscle tensity. House just wants Foreman to admit that he was right. Foreman does, then continues that the fighter had a temporal lobe seizure. Kumar just wants to know if the new PI means they don't have to break into people's homes anymore. Not bloody likely. As House points out, the Cottages are free. The PI costs big bucks. With that, House orders Foreman to biopsy Apple's brain. Foreman refuses, since the procedure could turn Apple into a vegetable. At least she'll stay in the same food group. House just shrugs and suggests biopsying the brain of the patient who is "almost finished" with his life as the camera pans over to Frank's side of the room. Hadley is furious and accuses House of ageism because she's a moron. House has to explain that this has nothing to do with how old Frank is and everything to do with how little he has to lose at this point if the biopsy goes wrong. He'll die if they don't do anything. "Get the widow to say yes," House says, leaving. Word of advice to the Cottages: don't address the wife as "the widow." She probably won't like that, since her husband is still alive and stuff.
Taub drew the short straw, so he gets to try to convince the wife to sign the consent forms. She's understandably reluctant to do so, but Taub explains that if they can find out what's wrong with Frank in the biopsy, they could save his life. The wife points out that the biopsy could kill him anyway. The camera needs to settle down a little. This isn't a documentary and doesn't need to be shot like one. Apple sits up and begs the wife to sign, which is so unfair of her, especially when she tries to pull the husband and kid card. Awesomely, the wife totally sees through Apple's bullshit and points out that she hasn't had one visitor since she's been here or even a phone call, so there's no way she has a loving husband or a child back home. Not even a phone call though? Damn. Why is Princeton filled with people who have no friends or family? Almost every patient is alone in the world. Too bad Cameron doesn't get any camera time anymore or she could bond with Apple because it's not fair that people die alone. Taub admits that Apple doesn't have a daughter. The wife says Apple's life isn't more important than Frank's. Apple suddenly turns a bit nasty and says she lied to save her life, and the wife is "robbing" Apple of her only chance to live so that her husband can have a few more days of gasping for breath before he dies, too. For some reason, the wife doesn't appreciate this. Frank is sick of listening to two woman fight and dies.
Taub reports back to House that he didn't get the consent. House's Plan B is to send Foreman in to get it, banking on old people being scared of black people. I normally don't like House's racist jokes but that was pretty funny. Not always true, though: my grandpa went through a phase were he wore a dashiki and grew out a Jewfro. He walked around Hartford like that and didn't get shot, but that was in the 70s. Taub says there's no consent to get anymore: Frank is dead. Delighted, House says they can now study his brain without a consent. Hooray!
After the break, Taub studies pieces of Frank's brain. Somehow, his training in plastic surgery qualifies him to do this. I have my doubts, since all we see him do is eyeball a chunk of brain and twirl it around some tongs. I'm pretty sure you're supposed to at least look at it under a microscope. House enters and Taub tells him that Frank's brain was clean. House says they'll have to move on. "To where?" whines Hadley. Apparently, she's ready to give up. Taub and Kumar wonder if the donor had more than one thing wrong with him, and the transplantees managed to each catch a different one of his illnesses, all of which made it past the donor screening process. Although, come to think of it, it is run by the Evil Transplant Committee so they may well have given the patients infected organs just to teach them a lesson about asking for organs. House is sticking with his cancer diagnosis, saying that it's the only possible diagnosis that doesn't specialize and would therefore explain why all these different organs were affected. The Cottages aren't buying it. Foreman accuses House of wanting it to be cancer so he has an excuse to talk to Wilson. Since there are no other oncologists in PPTH. Sure. House fires back that Foreman doesn't get to call him an ass unless he's got a non-cancer diagnosis to offer. Foreman doesn't, but Kumar's got one: a perforated intestine that caused the intestinal bacteria to enter the blood stream. House has to admit that that's a possibility and that he is an ass. He tells the Cottages to give Apple a colonscopy if and when she has stomach pain. Wait, what? I thought Kumar saying that the donor had the perforation and the bacteria entered his bloodstream and therefore the transplantees. Although that wouldn't explain why Apple got it from her bloodless cornea transplant. But that's still better than what Kumar was actually saying, which is that either all six patients happened to have the same anatomical anomaly, or that receiving one of the donor's organs somehow caused them to develop that anomaly. And now House wants to find someone with the same DNA as the donor to colonoscopy to see if he has that anomaly, too? Does getting a transplant somehow change your DNA and give you someone else's hereditary conditions? This makes no sense, so I'm just going to pretend it does since that's more fun for everyone than me complaining for two more pages. Speaking of fun for everyone, House wants to bring the donor's four-year-old (who they're only guessing is his, by the way) in for a colonoscopy. After all, she was complaining of a tummy ache. Hadley says the theory is too much of a longshot to scare the hell out of the little girl's mother and expose the kid to a freaking colonoscopy. Well, I'm sure House will see your point and agree with you, Hadley. Oh wait -- he just says Hadley can get the mom to agree to the colonoscopy by threatening to tell her husband who his daughter's real father is. They should offer to throw in a free paternity test so the mother can know for sure.
If you were wondering what a four-year-old (although, really, the girl looked much older than that. Like, twelve) getting a colonoscopy without anesthesia looks like, be sure to pay attention to this scene, which unnecessary and horrible. The mother watches from outside and asks Hadley why her daughter has to be awake. "We need her to tell us when it hurts," Hadley says. Um, it's a colonoscopy. On a four-year-old. It ALL hurts. Hadley just says the kid will "get over it." Her husband, on the other hand, might not have recovered from hearing that his wife had an affair and his daughter isn't biologically his. See, ladies? That's what you get for cheating on your husbands: a tube shoved up your baby's rear. And I know kids are supposed to be resilient and all, but I don't think you just "get over" having a colonoscopy at four. Poor thing. Her life was going to be tough enough when she entered kindergarten and her classmates made fun of how freakishly tall she is. Now she'll have a lifelong fear of doctors and possibly ass issues, too.
Meanwhile, House is using his new PI resource to spy on O'Shea from the vantage point of an ice cream truck. Yes, an ice cream truck randomly parked on the side of the road with a "closed" sign on it. That's not at all suspicious. PI says O'Shea isn't "right" for House. House asks what he found out about him, but a kid bangs on the door of the truck and demands ice cream. PI yells at her for not being able to read. Oh, just give her some ice cream. She's had a long hard day of colonoscopies without anesthesia. PI decides to give House a life lesson on friendship, saying that instead of having a potential friend investigated, House should trust O'Shea. House says PI is currently taking pictures of a guy who's having an affair with his own sister, so I guess PI is not staked outside O'Shea's house. Or maybe he is and O'Shea has got some ISSUES. Why cheat on your spouse with your own sibling? If that's how you feel, you should a) get therapy (lots and lots and lots) or b) not get married in the first place and live with the sibling but please don't have children. PI says that House doesn't want him to check out O'Shea. He wants him to check out Wilson. House gets all defensive and asks PI how he knows about that. The PI says that's his job. He checks out his clients as much as he checks out the people those clients ask him to. The PI continues that House wants to know if Wilson is "pining" for him, or if there's a hint that he'll come back to House - or if, more likely, there's something House can do to "make" him come back. "Is there?" asks House. "No. No, there's nothing," PI says. House is sad. The PI charges him nine hundred dollars. House is sadder. Fortunately for House, he gets a page before he has to pay up.
House returns to PPTH to find Kumar and Foreman standing outside, which is a nice change of scenery. Kumar says the colonoscopy was clean. House says it must be cancer, then, but Foreman says a clean colonoscopy proves nothing. But it traumatizes forever. Foreman says the kid might not have inherited her dad's condition. Even if she did, it's an intermittent thing and only opens right before the person dies. So then why do the colonoscopy at all? House hates children. House points out that the only way they have of knowing when the condition strikes is after the patient's already dead. Speaking of people who are already dead, Kumar thinks they can make Frank's colon work again and see if there's a perforation by shooting a high-pressure water jet up poor Frank's ass. Foreman protests, but House interrupts him to give Kumar the word. I don't even know what's going on anymore. Stuffing a dead man's ass full of water can't be legal or medically relevant. It just can't.
Kumar's having trouble shoving the tube up poor dead Frank's ass. Foreman, who's wearing a permanent look of disdain for this entire procedure, points out that six hours after death, bowels tend to close up. With that, Kumar breaks out the water spray device and shoots it around the room. I'm not sure if he's doing that by accident or on purpose. Either way, it gives me little faith in his competence. Kumars the water spray opens up the bowel, much to Foreman's surprise. And disgust, as he has to push Frank's torso area back as it fills with pressurized water. When he does this, there's seepage. Brown seepage. What's worse than watching a little girl have a colonoscopy? Seeing shit pour out of a dead man's Y incision. Kumar thinks he's reached the end of the colon and found nothing. Foreman wonders if it only looks like the end. Perhaps the dark area is some kind of lesion. Kumar increases the pressure of the water to find out. Foreman warns/begs him not to increase it too much. I think we all know what happens . Yes, shit explodes out of Frank's abdomen and all over Foreman. And his mouth is open when it happens, too. I can't believe they let this on network TV during the eight o'clock hour, but the look on Kumar's face makes it all worth it. Foreman's is pretty great, too. But I'll bet the look on the widow's face when the body of her husband is returned to her will be even more amazing.
Meanwhile, Apple's not doing well. "It's finally accelerating," Hadley says, as if she's pissed at the mystery disease for taking its sweet time. Apple is having trouble breathing and her heart is racing. But her colon is free of leaks, so there's something. Taub wonders if they should revisit the autoimmune diagnosis. House does not want to do that. He says four out of the five dead transplantees died suddenly and without warning. Frank and Apple, on the other hand, experienced a much slower progression. But it won't be that slow, so they can't waste time on old diagnoses. "Nothing fits!" Kumar says. I'll give him a pass for whining since he at least brought the (completely insane) intestinal diagnosis to the table. And got dead man shit all over Foreman. House institutes a new rule: no one can talk unless he has a new diagnosis. The conference room is silent. House gets up and tells the Cottages to look for markers in Apple's spinal fluid and sequence her genes while he starts treating her for the cancer he's not sure she has. Hadley points out that chemo is toxic and not such a good idea for someone who doesn't have cancer. Um, Hadley? I think House knows that chemo is toxic. He says he'd rather treat her for something she doesn't have than do nothing. Meanwhile, I'm pretty sure each cancer has a specific type of treatment so it won't do any good if you don't know which type of cancer you're dealing with.
Upon entering Apple's room, House is greatly annoyed to find her chart missing. So he rings the emergency button. A nurse comes running and is pissed off when House tells her he used the emergency button because he needed someone to fetch him a chart. Meanwhile, PPTH is a pretty damn good hospital if its nurses actually come -- and quickly! -- when a patient presses the emergency button. In House's defense, the chart is not at the end of Apple's bed where it's supposed to be and his leg hurts when he has to limp around looking for it. On the other hand, when the nurse does give him the chart, he asks her to bring him some peppermint tea. Cute, but I can't help but think how much better that scene would have been if it was Evil Nurse Brenda House bossed around. She would have taken that chart and shoved it up House's ass and then thrown scalding hot peppermint tea on his crotch. Whatever happened to her? I miss her so.
House tells Apple he needs her to sign a consent form for chemo. Apple is alarmed to find out that she has cancer, to which House says she doesn't. Instead of lying to her that they definitively found evidence of cancer, he goes the confusion route and says that he won't tell her anything one way or the other because he's worried there will be a placebo effect if Apple knows for sure that she has cancer. But Apple goes for it, thinking she has cleverly figured out that there are tests saying she has cancer but House won't tell her so that the chemo can work on its own and they don't think it's working when it isn't. Apple signs the consent form. That was way too complicated. He should've just lied that she had cancer.
As Apple signs the papers, she decides to chat with House about her life before the transplant. She had 20/200 vision and was practically blind. House tells her he doesn't want or need to hear anything about her even though that's what always solves the case for him. He says she's a math teacher now and he figures she was a blind math teacher then. Oh, but wait -- Apple says she was an architect before the transplant. This seems to get House's interest why would she give up an architect career after she was able to see? Apple says the world she saw was ugly. And therefore didn't deserve her building designs, I guess. She asks House if he thinks the world would be any different if his leg was fine, or if he would be any different. He says no to the first question and doesn't have an answer to the second. Apple continues that the doctors told her the world would be amazing once she could see, but it wasn't. Her parents were still dead and she was still alone. Yeah, but those parents named you Apple, so they kind of deserve to die. "You're fun," House says. Ha ha ha. "You don't seem all that different," Apple says. "I haven't given up," House says. Except for all those times when he kinda did. Three cheers for House actually spending time with his patient and connecting with her! I always like that, unless it's a rape victim. Then it sucks.
House meets with the PI again. He says Wilson found a new job (he didn't move out of New Jersey ... not smart) and he has a crush on some girl on the other side of the street. As they follow her down the sidewalk, PI says that Wilson is attending a grief-counseling group (where they "cry about who's dead" hee hee hee) and Cameron visits him often. Aw, that's sweet of her. They spend their time talking about dead loved ones. Ugh. Grim. With that, the woman turns around and PI and House have to turn around to follow her. I guess the filming permit ran out of street. The PI says he attends the grief-counseling group with Wilson and says he lost his mother. House says he should say he lost a kid to get the ladies, but the PI can't do that since he didn't lose a kid. He did lose his mother. See? He's a PI who isn't very good at lying. SPIN-OFF!!!! PI continues that Foreman and Cuddy have checked in on Wilson, and he spends the rest of his time reading meditation books. With that, the girl turns around and asks the two men if they're following her. She's not too bright. If they are following you, then they're up to no good and there are two of them and one of you. If they're not, you look paranoid. Just duck into a police station and wait for them to leave. "No," they answer in unison. "Are you lying?" she asks. "No," House says. "Yes," PI says. House is disgusted with him. The woman tells them they're making her uncomfortable. The PI apologizes and looks at the ground like a chastised child. She walks away. "You're very pretty!" PI calls out after her. She says now she feels even more uncomfortable. Ouch. Well, at least now the PI has something he can talk about at the grief counseling session. House asks the PI what Wilson's been saying about him and is shocked to hear that Wilson hasn't mentioned House once in any of the three bugs PI put in his apartment or the one he put in his car. House looks hurt, too. But he deserves it because he's an asshole. I don't feel sorry for him. The PI says this could be a good sign. Either House isn't important to Wilson or Wilson just wishes House wasn't important to him. And that never works. House gets a page.
Apple barfs as House enters her room. Foreman, looking disappointed, says Apple's been feeling better despite the chemo side effects. "It's cancer," Foreman says. "It's not cancer," House says. And with that pronouncement, he leaves.
House walks into the meeting room and tells the Cottages that since the labs show Apple is getting healthier, she will soon be getting sicker. And then she'll die. Also, he brought Thai food for everyone, which is the most shocking of all. Understandably, the Cottages are confused. Foreman says that the treatment working proves it's cancer. House says none of the labs have said it's cancer, and the chemo working only proves that it "might" be cancer. Taub asks why House made the cancer diagnosis, then. House claims he never thought it was cancer. He was just hoping that since whatever it is was acting like cancer then it would respond to treatment like cancer as well. "It did. Because it's cancer," Hadley says. And ordinarily and if House was any other doctor, I'd agree with her. But this is House and they should all know better than to doubt him. House just says they're now looking for something that acts just like cancer but isn't cancer. "No, we don't. Better is better. Who cares why?" Kumar asks. Uh, duh, Kumar. Because he just said she'll only get better temporarily. It turns out that House's convictions come from something he knows that the rest of them do not -- the tuba player was taking a medication for arthritis that is also used for cancer. No one knew about it because he'd gotten it from a Canadian student because Canada cares enough about its citizens to give them free healthcare while the tuba teacher was struggling to afford his health insurance and needed to hide the fact that he had arthritis. For this, House was charged $700 from the PI, and he intends to bill that back to Apple somehow. If she lives through this, I'm sure she'll be glad to pay. "This makes no sense," Foreman says. Okay, Cottages, we get it. This doesn't make sense. You don't all have to say it in every scene. Get over it. House says they're looking for something that's cancer, but not cancer. "Something's missing," he says.
That thing, apparently, is Wilson. House goes to his apartment and says he needs an epiphany and he'll even pay one hundred dollars more than Wilson's billing rate to get it. Wilson doesn't say anything, so House crumples up the money and tosses it in his apartment. Which, by the way, was CTB's apartment. House admits that Wilson's "sloppy" and "undisciplined" thought process contrasts nicely with House's and causes him to think of things he normally would not. While House says this, he looks everywhere but at Wilson. Wilson tells House to go away. House ignores him and starts saying he's got a patient who has "cancer, but not cancer." Wilson tries to close the door, but House blocks it. He sighs and asks Wilson how he's doing. "Don't do this. Please. Please, don't do this," Wilson says; "I'm trying to move on." And then House does something stupid and gets angry. He asks Wilson if talking to Cameron, Cuddy, Foreman and everyone but House is part of the moving on process. Wilson looks at him like, "how and why do you know that?" House realizes he's caught and admits to hiring a PI to spy on Wilson. That's just scary. House justifies this by saying that Wilson has to talk to House and "deal" with him if he wants to move on, as opposed to having nothing to do with him, which is how most of us move on.
Wilson says House has no right to do this. House says if they're not friends anymore, then he has the right to do whatever he wants. There's no trust between them to breach. House can tell everyone Wilson's secrets and have him followed. Oh my god, House is such a child. A child! I think I pulled something like this (in terms of telling an ex-friend's secrets, not the PI part. But only because my allowance wouldn't cover that) when I was eight. With that, House starts talking about his patient again like nothing happened. Wilson says he has rights, too. He has the right to walk away from House and live in the wide world that exists beyond House. And House should realize that world exists, too. "The time you knock, I'm not answering," Wilson says. "Nothing yet. Keep talking," House says. This is definitely the way to rescue a faltering friendship. And by that I mean getting "the door slammed in your face."
A defeated but not ready to admit it House limps down the sidewalk past the PI. "I'm sorry," he says, having listened to the conversation that just transpired. House asks the PI how many friends he has. "Seventeen!" the PI answers immediately. He doesn't really have seventeen friends; he just pulled out a number because he knew House was only asking the PI the question to refer back to himself. "I have one," House says; "had one." What about Cuddy? Why aren't they friends? The PI says friends are important, and House asks if he's charging him for this. The PI says he is if they aren't friends, but when House asks if they can be friends (because he's cheap) the PI declines, saying House scares him. House doesn't understand why Wilson has to be his friend for them to talk. At this, the PI says something that makes no sense but gives House the epiphany he needs: "friends are friends. Customers are customers. And everything else is everything else. If it's not, nothing is nothing."
And finally -- FINALLY! -- we get to see Cuddy. House barges into her office and says "cancer but not cancer." He whips out an MRI of Apple's brain and says Apple's eyes suck, but her occipital lobe looks normal. It shouldn't. Which means there's "something" in there that shouldn't be. "Brain but not brain!" House says. "Why are you in my office?" Cuddy asks. Heh. Well, it's simple: House needs to chop off the top of Apple's head, for which he will need Cuddy's approval. Cuddy would rather continue the chemo, since that seems to be working and it doesn't involve digging into the patient's brain. Incidentally, Cuddy has some questionable bills she'd like to ask House about, like why the coffee machine repairman is charging $2300. House doesn't answer, but says there's such a thing as "cancer stem cells," which is a terrifying thought. As we see the triumphant return of the Magic Schoolbus Cam, House says the donor had cancer stem cells and gave them to the transplantees, in whose bodies the cells floated around for a while before landing on an organ and "partially" differentiating. This caused the tuba player to get some "lung but not lung," the tennis player (who is looking rough these days. Also, you can show boobs on TV as long as they belong to a decomposing corpse. Good to know. Not really) got "heart, but not heart." They looked like normal tissue but couldn't perform like real tissue. So when they were really needed -- like the heart when playing a rough game of tennis or the tuba player while playing a rough game of tuba -- they blew out. The chemo worked because it shrunk the bad cells. The autopsies didn't catch the non-working organ cells because they cleverly disguised themselves (although you'd think someone would have looked at a few slides and seen that something wasn't right). "You have no proof," Cuddy says. House says the normal brain scan is all the proof he needs. Cuddy asks House if he wants to remove Apple's head to treat her or to prove he's right. Good point, Cuddy. But House says that the chemo won't actually kill the cancer stem cells, and eventually, Apple will crash. If they wait that long, it could be too late.
Cuddy's read the script, so she asks House if his plan if she says no is to turn around and do something that will make the patient crash in order to get what he wants. "I would never do that!" House says, even though it's written all over his face that he was planning on doing just that. "No, you won't," Cuddy smiles. Except that we all know that Apple's head is getting cut open because a) it'll give Chase something to do, and b) we all saw Apple with a bandaged-up head in the promos.
When House returns to Apple's room, he finds two security officers have been posted at the door. I wouldn't be too afraid of them, House. PPTH's security officers have been known to allow gun-wielding madmen into the hospital to shoot unsuspecting doctors, and then let them get away. But House has to turn away, discouraged, as music starts to play.
He sulks in an empty office. As the camera pans to reveal that it's Wilson's empty office, he makes a phone call.
Someone screws around with Apple's IV bag. She starts to crash and the mystery man walks away and nurses run in to save her. We don't see his face and the nurses don't wonder why he's walking away from a code, and in slow motion. We do see his argyle socks, which is all we need to identify him. Kind of like Nanny from Muppet Babies!
Skull drilling happens. Someone carefully removes the top of Apple's skull while Chase observes. Foreman the neurologist is nowhere to be seen, but House is observing from the OR balcony. He yells to Chase to check Apple's IV, since it looks like someone switched her chemo with saline. It takes Chase a minute to figure out what he's getting at. "You switched her meds?!" Chase asks. "How could I? I wasn't allowed access," House says. Chase gives the order to close Apple's head back up since there's no reason for the surgery anymore. House shrugs that they've already done the dangerous stuff, so they might as well see it through. The brain surgeon seems to agree: "we're ready with the neural net," he says. Aw, he just wants to use his neural net. Chase is pissed, but trusts House enough to continue the surgery.
As they do that, House gets a visitor: the PI. He's thrilled to see an actual brain down there until he realizes that the surgery is being performed on Apple. House apparently told him that swapping someone's meds wouldn't hurt her at all. "I'm a better liar than you are," House says. You think that when Apple crashed PI didn't get a clue that this wasn't harmless? House explains that the neural net will show them if the neurons aren't firing though a certain part of Apple's possibly-cancer-stem-cell-ridden brain, and then the surgeons will be able to cut that part out and she'll be all better except for the inevitable brain damage. "Cool," says PI, although he doesn't really think it's cool. He's just telling House what he figures he wants him to say, since House is basically paying him to listen. With that, the neural net finds the not-brain-brain and PI charges House five thousand dollars. House doesn't seem to mind that too much.
House has been allowed back into Apple's room. He hovers over her bed. She can't see with the giant bandage covering the top of her face, but she smells his presence. I wonder what he smells like. House takes a moment to abuse the nurse and order more peppermint tea via the emergency button. She asks House if he ever heard of the boy who cried wolf. House says no matter how many times a boy cries to his mother that he's being eaten by a wolf, she'll come running every time. Or move to a wolf-free neighborhood. The nurses leave. Evil Nurse Brenda would have killed House for that. House pushes the emergency button again, and yet again, the nurse comes running. "Just proving a point!" House says. She should know better than to give him attitude. Now she'll be running back and forth to Apple's room for the rest of Apple's stay at PPTH. At least she's getting exercise.
House tells Apple that the world is ugly, but not as ugly as Apple thought. Her eye works and the cornea works, but her brain didn't. With that, House unwraps the bandage and says that whatever Apple was seeing before, she was seeing it differently that the rest of the world. "And now? Things are gonna be ... beautiful?" Apple asks. "Things will be what they are," House says. Aw, he almost cares. Apple looks around, and then at House. "How do I look?" he asks, hoping for "beautiful." She gives him "sad." She should be more grateful. Now she can be an architect again, and House has saved her from a fate worse than death: life as a math teacher.
Back in his office, House calls the PI and hires him to be his new friend. Aw, what about O'Shea? He's free and pays for lunch!
You can read more from Sara Morrison at L.A.me, which she occasionally updates when she has something to complain about. Or you can email her at saramorrison@gmail.com. She's still on the lookout for a few good lentil soup recipes, so don't be shy, now!
What ails the staff at PPTH? We've got the diagnoses.