By Sara M
A Cuban husband and wife are so desperate for House's mad skillz that they brave the Atlantic Ocean to get to him. At PPTH, they're disappointed to find that House doesn't care enough about the wife's mystery disease to see them, instead sending his Cottages out to do his dirty work for him. And then Marina doesn't even get all three Cottages, as Chase is randomly fired when House tells him he's learned all he can from House and it's time for a change. I spend the rest of the episode waiting for House to change his mind. It doesn't happen. Wow. Foreman and Cameron react in the most unprofessional way possible by mentioning their dissatisfaction with the situation in front of their patient during an angiogram, at which point her heart stops. Three hours of CPR doesn't get it going again, nor do the electric salad tongs, so Marina is put on a bypass machine, effectively dead. House refuses to accept this until Cuddy tells him to, still looking for a way to get Marina's heart beating again. It turns out that the best way to do that is to turn the bypass machines off, because she comes back to life as soon as he does. Everyone thinks this is a miracle, but House doesn't want God taking his credit, so he keeps trying to figure out what made Marina's heart stop and then restart. He finds a congenital heart defect and Marina is saved again. This leaves House open to apologize to Foreman and tell him what he needs to hear to stay at PPTH. He tries...but he can't quite make it without telling Foreman off for being more of a selfish bastard than House ever was. Foreman leaves. Wow. That's two Cottages down, one to go. Cameron starts liking Chase as soon as he seems to be moving on from her (well, of course), and they get back together and it's...sweet, okay? I admit it! I thought their kiss was sweet. Then she goes to House's office to hand him her post-coital resignation. Wow. And though Wilson claims that House hates change, House seems relatively at peace with all three Cottages leaving him. Whether or not the audience will like change -- and whether that change is even going to happen -- remains to be seen. In the fall, goddammit.
We open on a spending-the-Season-Three-surplus-budget scene where a Coast Guard helicopter tries to save a man drowning in the ocean. This is made more difficult when the man won't let go of his suitcase. The helicopter is running out of fuel, so the rescuer pulls a House-style making-you-worse-to-make-you-better move of dunking the man underwater until he lets go of the case. The rescuer quickly hooks the man up, and the helicopter reels them both in. I'm not exactly sure why they couldn't have reeled him in with the suitcase. Maybe it's just the principle of the thing. Anyway, the man gets in the helicopter, where he joins his already rescued wife. He tells the rescuers in Spanish that she's sick and that the suitcase had her medical records in it. "She needs to go home," a rescuer translates. "No home -- House! I need to see Dr. House!" the man says, suddenly remembering how to speak English.
The couple makes it to PPTH after the credits, but Cuddy can't find House to have him treat them. That's because he's refusing to answer his cell phone while he sits in the cafeteria, spying on Foreman's going-away party. He's wearing his special Stealth Hat and hiding behind a newspaper, but Wilson spots him immediately. Wilson says he's got a patient with "ten different things wrong with her" who risked her life to see the famous Dr. House. Realizing that House is more interested in Foreman's goodbye party, Wilson asks him what he's going to do to stop Foreman from leaving. House says there's nothing he can do -- Foreman is leaving because he doesn't want to turn into House. Why would House want someone like him to stay anyway? Wilson says House can show Foreman that House isn't the evil, uncaring person Foreman thinks he is. I hope not -- I like my House evil and uncaring, for the most part. I don't want him all mushy and heartfelt. Gross. House doesn't think he needs Foreman in his life that badly, but Wilson reminds House that he's had the same guitar since eighth grade, he's lived in the same apartment for fifteen years, and he drives a ten-year-old car (except when he's driving the motorcycle or that car he got from the mob that I guess Wilson forgot about). "You're not good with change," Wilson says. Although...hasn't House had other Cottages? Obviously, they've all left for one reason or another. If House didn't care enough to keep them from quitting, why would he care now?
While Cameron and Chase go over their new patient's symptoms, Foreman sits at a computer and giggles over the latest hilarious email forward he's been sent. I hear there are some really funny ones about Bill and Monica going around. Still. House walks in and makes a point of looking disgusted with Foreman's goodbye presents strewn about the conference table before proceeding with the case. The lack of medical records will make things more difficult, not like they ever really use those things anyway. Chase's guess is a tropical parasite, courtesy of the "dirt-poor country" she came from. Oh, don't underestimate Cuba, Chase. That's how things like the Bay of Pigs happen. House says that Castro's top priorities are "looking great in green" and training doctors. Oh, looks like someone saw an advance screening of Michael Moore's new "documentary"! House thinks they can eliminate anything that would have been treated by antibiotics and focus on stuff that would need high-tech scanning equipment to see, as apparently, high-tech scanning equipment is not one of Castro's top priorities. House sends Cameron off to do an MRI of the woman's head and tells Chase to check out her husband, saying they can rule out any of the woman's symptoms that are the same as the husband's, since those would be from their insane ocean voyage to New Jersey. They leave, and House takes a moment to move closer to Foreman. Foreman turns around and looks at House expectantly, which seems to be enough to make House turn around and walk out without saying anything. This is like the fifth time we've seen House come close to apologizing or whatever to Foreman and then chicken out. I don't care anymore.
Chase checks out the husband, Esteban, who wants to know if House is checking out his wife, Marina, right now. Chase says Marina is with Cameron. Esteban protests that they had permission to see House and went through a lot to see him. I'm not exactly sure why they had to raft it to New Jersey if they had permission, but, whatever. Chase says that House doesn't care what they did to see him. "That's who you risked your life to see," Chase says, "and you made the right choice."
Cameron prepares Marina for the MRI of DOOOM! She tries to engage Marina in conversation by saying "it must have been difficult on the boat." No, Cameron, I'm sure it was really easy what with the having to be rescued by the Coast Guard and all. It looked like a fucking picnic. Marina says that her husband can "fix anything" -- except the boat's motor, which conked out after the first night, and Marina. But he was sure that House could fix her. As for the motor, I'm guessing it's going to some boat repairman who doesn't play by the rules or treat people well, but always gets results. Marina says Esteban refuses to "worry or pray," because he says that if you don't worry, you don't need prayer.
Chase runs down Esteban's symptoms with House for three seconds, then says that Foreman's not going to leave PPTH -- he doesn't want to, and House doesn't want him to. Chase predicts that House will cave to keep him, just like he caved to keep Cameron. "Foreman's not as easy as Cameron," House says, "but, of course, who is?" The camera pans over to the heretofore unseen conference table, where Cameron is sitting with the perfect pissed-off expression on her face. "I'm in the room," she says. BRILLIANT! Things like this are why I love this show.
The conversation is cut short when Foreman enters the room and says that Marina has MS. It explains all her symptoms, although Chase points out that some of those symptoms were crossed off because they were consistent with Esteban's. Foreman shrugs that off, saying they might have the same symptoms for different reasons. Chase says they might as well just put all of Marina's symptoms back on the Whiteboard if they're going to go with that. Foreman says they can do something "productive" and put Marina on interferon to see if she improves. If she does, it's MS. Yeah, that treatment-to-prove-a-diagnosis technique works really well. Just ask Lupe. Except that you can't, because she's DEAD. Much to Chase's obvious disgust, House gives Foreman a "well done" and sends him off to give Marina some interferon. Chase is super-jealous that Foreman gets praise while he gets punched in the face, but House just tells him to go do his job. Meanwhile, House seems to be trying to hack into Foreman's email account and see what he thought was so funny.
While Foreman prepares to give Marina the interferon, Esteban says he's sure she doesn't have MS. The Cuban doctors would have found that, he says. But Foreman hates communism, so he ignores Esteban and administers the drug anyway. Of course, the warning bells of doom, a.k.a. the monitors, start tolling, and Marina starts whimpering, saying her pain is getting worse. Foreman stupidly turns her wrist over and asks if that hurts. The answer is a scream of agony and an X-ray of Marina's freshly broken wrist. Nice one, Foreman.
House asks the Cottages for suggestions about why someone's wrist would break at the slightest touch. They rule out everything except Foreman's suggestion of bone cancer. House likes this, so, of course, Chase hates it. He doesn't think they should rule out infection just because House assumes the Cuban doctors treated her for that already, especially since they don't have Marina's medical records to prove it. Chase angrily accuses House of kissing up to Foreman by agreeing with all his diagnoses, while Cameron makes an "awkward!" face. If Chase is going to start getting all bitchy and personal and unprofessional, then I'm going to start hating on him like I do Cameron. Leave the personal shit out of the workplace, people. It's really not that hard. Foreman and Chase squabble until House overrules Chase and tells them to give Marina a PET scan to confirm the cancer. You know, like they gave her interferon to confirm the MS and ended up breaking her arm. House starts to leave, but Chase ridiculously spins around and says that House's agreeing with everything Foreman says for two days won't erase Foreman's hate for House over the last three years. Meanwhile, Cameron and Foreman are standing there, like, "What's up Chase's ass? This is the most he's spoken all season." House just tells Chase that if he has nothing else to add, he can go do the PET scan.
While Cameron and Foreman run off to do that, Chase goes to see House in his office. His attempt to apologize or at least explain his outburst is cut off by House firing him. For real. Shocked like the rest of us, Chase stammers out the question why. House says that Chase has been there the longest and has either learned everything he can from House or learned nothing. "Either way, it's time for a change," he concludes. Chase doesn't know what to do except stop himself from crying as he utters a "Fine." He leaves the office. Well, I wasn't expecting that to happen.
Cameron and Foreman are finding nothing on the PET scan when Chase walks in with all his stuff packed up, including an umbrella and, oddly, a ping-pong paddle. He tells them that he's just been fired, so he'll be going now. Cameron doesn't think this makes any sense, but Foreman thinks House is taking out his anger at Foreman on Chase. Cameron remarks that Foreman is making this all about him, which would be a good point if it wasn't coming from the woman who usually makes everything all about her. While they bicker, Chase does the job he no longer has and sees a hotspot on Marina's humerus. That's humerus, not "humorous." There's nothing funny about arm bone cancer, people. When Cameron turns back around to talk to Chase, he's gone without even an "It's Tuesday; I like you."
House celebrates his loss with a bad case of guitar face while he air-guitars on his flame cane, dancing around a lot more than his bad leg should allow. Hey, you know what isn't sexy? A man in his later forties pretending to play guitar on a cane with flames on it while making all manner of weird faces. I'm just saying. Fortunately, the session is quickly interrupted when Cameron and Foreman march into the office with shared angry expressions on their faces. They hold the PET scan results hostage, demanding that House tell them why he fired Chase. That's great news for Marina, whose treatment is now being delayed by office personal bullshit. Treatment that she wouldn't have gotten at all if the guy who just got fired didn't see the hotspot on her PET scan, by the way. Foreman asks whether House fired Chase to make him stay, which makes Cameron think that Foreman told House to fire Chase. Foreman immediately says no to this while House says yes, flashing Foreman a "ha ha, now she'll hate you and give you attitude and stuff" smile of victorious work-relationship sabotage.
Cuddy suddenly appears behind Foreman and Cameron, also wanting to know why Chase has been fired. She sends the non-fired Cottages out of the room, and they leave without telling House about the PET scan, much to his annoyance. Ha! Cuddy accuses House of destroying his department because he doesn't know how to deal with Foreman quitting. And then Wilson marches in, demanding to know what the dinner special in the cafeteria is. Just kidding! He wants to know why House fired Chase. Wow, word sure did spread fast. Did Chase run around PPTH putting up "I'm fired!" posters with a photo of him looking super-sad or something? House asks Wilson if he knows what's on Marina's PET scan. Even if Wilson wanted to answer that question, I doubt he could. We all know that Wilson, the worst oncologist in New Jersey, if not the world, can't read a PET scan. Cuddy orders House to call Chase and un-fire him. House just leaves a message telling Chase to call him back if he knows what's on the PET scan. Considering that Chase was the only one to notice anything on it, that's a good idea. House tells Cuddy that this is his office, and he makes the hiring and firing decisions. She counters that this is her hospital, so she has the ultimate authority. Then the phone rings. It's Chase. He tells House about the PET scan and the arm hotspot. House thanks him and says he's "indispensable." Still fired, though. We don't get to hear what Chase says to this on the other end of the phone, which is a pity. House hangs up and notes that that was awkward, and now that Marina has a blood clot in her arm, he'll be off doing his job.
Foreman tells Esteban that Marina appears to have a blood clot in her arm, so they need his consent to do an emergency angiogram. Esteban is quickly losing faith in these pretenders with their incorrect MS diagnoses and arm-breakings, and he demands to see House, but Foreman says House is gone for the night. Esteban has no choice but to sign the consent. Foreman has an idea and decides to burn his PPTH bridges by giving Esteban House's home number. He says that House doesn't always pick up, so Esteban should just keep calling until he does.
House ignores Esteban's many answering machine messages and stares at his guitar.
Foreman tries to do a medical procedure while Cameron totally pouts and slumps against the wall like a child, refusing to assist him. You see, she's mad at Foreman for getting Chase fired, so Marina's health must suffer. Marina asks if everything is okay, sensing the tension in the room. Great patient care, PPTH. To make things even better, House suddenly enters the room, yelling at Foreman for giving an "angry Cuban" his home phone number. Cameron accuses Foreman of being worse than House, while Foreman scoffs at House coming into PPTH rather than picking up his phone and talking to the patient's husband for five minutes. Or just turning the ringer off, which would take five seconds. By the way, Marina's chest hurts. Then she goes into V-tach, and the monitor beeps out Morse code for "Way to go again, Foreman!" Cameron accuses Foreman of hitting an artery. Foreman says Marina has no pulse. And yet, she's still conscious, which has got to suck for her. House confirms that there's no pulse and tells Marina to cough over and over again in order to keep blood in her head and keep her awake while Foreman starts CPR. In between coughs, Marina asks if this will help. House says it won't, but it's "amazingly cool." That's the last thing she hears before passing out. I guess I'd rather go out doing something amazingly cool than something amazingly lame.
Cameron rushes over with an oxygen mask, saying they need to do a bypass on Marina. House says no -- a bypass could force the clot into Marina's brain, killing her. And that would not be amazingly cool. Cameron says if they don't do something to resume the blood flow to her brain, Marina will have brain damage. House thinks that the answer is to figure out what caused Marina's heart to stop in the first place. If they assume that Foreman didn't screw something up in the angiogram, then what did it? No one knows, so House leaves the room, telling the Cottages to keep the CPR going while he figures out what happened. That doesn't seem very medically sound, but I'm no doctor.
When we come back from commercial, Wilson is admiring a man's colon (no surprise there, really) on the operating table. Suddenly, House appears on the monitor, thereby compromising both Wilson's patient, by taking away the image of the surgery, and Marina, by wasting precious time hooking the camera up to the OR feed. But it looks cool, so it's worth it. He asks Wilson for advice on why his patient's heart stopped. Wilson says that human error during the angiogram is the only thing he can think of, but House refuses to accept this. Frustrated, Wilson turns to the monitor and yells that House doesn't want to blame Foreman and risk having him leave. House responds to this by making fun of Wilson for yelling at a monitor. Meanwhile, no one else in the OR seems to think what's going on is at all unusual. Maybe House does this during all of Wilson's operations and this is just the first time we've gotten to see it. Wilson tells House to leave him alone and talk to his team. House says that they're too busy doing CPR. Wilson says that House shouldn't have fired Chase, then. "Change is fun, huh?" he chides. Yeah, I'll bet Marina is having a blast.
Back in the angiogram room, people are taking shifts doing marathon CPR on Marina. Cameron and a sweaty and exhausted Foreman wonder what to do . No one can reach House on the phone, and Evil Nurse Brenda isn't around to put Marina out of her misery with a well-placed karate chop.
Meanwhile, Esteban wants to know why his wife isn't out of the procedure yet. It's been two hours (!!!).
And Cuddy is leading a group of medical students around PPTH when House calls out from the second floor balcony to ask the students why his patient's heart stopped during a routine angiogram. He'll promises an A to whoever gets the answer. Cuddy's weak enough to actually deliver on that promise, too. The first student suggests human error, and House shuts her down embarrassingly. Another suggests Marfan syndrome, but House says that the structural abnormalities associated with that would show up on an X-ray. Also, the patient would be like seven feet tall. He gives the guy a C for trying, though. The last student confidently suggests Botox injections, and House just as confidently gives her an F. But she continues that if the Botox injection had live botulism in it, her diagnosis would fit. The girl in front of her hurriedly takes notes, most likely including, "Copy off of her paper during exam." House awards the student a B+, but he says her diagnosis won't work for his patient since a "boating accident" forced her to miss her last Botox appointment. Meanwhile, Stacy Frozenface may want to watch out, hmm? "Send me your résumé," House tells the student. Could she be Chase's replacement? I hope not; she's an awful lot like Cameron, and we already have one too many of her as it is. After that ultimately pointless exercise, Foreman comes running up and tells House that they need to put Marina on a bypass. Cuddy's super ears pick this up all the way on the first floor, and she can't believe they've been doing CPR on this poor woman for three hours without a bypass. She orders House to put Marina on it.
Esteban is sitting around wishing he was Milo Ventimiglia when his wife comes rushing out on a stretcher with a team of people doing CPR on her. Nobody will tell him anything more than that her heart stopped.
So Esteban shows up at House's office (no doubt having gotten directions from Foreman), and House mistakes him for a janitor and says he can vacuum the floor later. And this is how House gets Sirhaned by yet another angry husband in yet another season finale. Not really. Esteban just asks what happened to his wife. House doesn't know and doesn't want to talk to people who don't speak perfect English, because he's an asshole. I hope time his leg has a blood clot in it, he's stuck in a non-English speaking country where the doctors laugh at him for not knowing their language instead of treating him. Esteban desperately says that he risked his life to see House after looking him up and seeing that after every other doctor gave up, House fixed people. He's the only person who can save Marina, but he's just ignoring her and making fun of Esteban. "How do you fix something if you don't look at it?" Esteban asks. This gives House an idea. He leaves Esteban standing in his office. Maybe Esteban will do some vacuuming while he's there.
House walks into the OR while they've got Marina's chest open to hook her up to the bypass machine. House asks to see her heart, being uncharacteristically careful to observe sterile procedures while doing so. But, like the surgeon, he can't see anything physically wrong with it. He tells the surgeon to "give her a jump start" and someone hands the guy some electric salad tongs. He zaps the heart a bunch of times, but nothing happens. The surgeon pronounces the heart unstartable, saying it doesn't matter why it can't start. It does to House. The surgeon says they'll keep Marina on bypass so her husband can say goodbye. They won't, apparently, bother to close her up, as everyone just walks away from the table while Marina's chest is still open.
Unlike Chase, who packed up his stuff in like three seconds, Foreman's still packing his stuff up in the most conspicuous of locations when Cameron walks in with a goodbye present for him. I hope it's a needle infected with an unknown deadly disease, like the last present Foreman gave her, but it's actually a framed table of contents of the Midwest Journal Of Experimental Medicine with Foreman's article highlighted. In yellow, not pink. And there are no flowers or hearts drawn around it, nor is there anything about plagiarism. I would have at least included a page from the dictionary with plagiarism highlighted in a matching frame, but Cameron's more decent than I am. "I'll miss you," she says. Even though she knows he won't miss her. Man, she is just too nice. Foreman says he will miss her, and they hug. Aw, but it doesn't matter since there's no way Foreman's actually leaving. House walks in and does not remark that Cameron is moving onto her conquest. Instead, he says that the surgeon found nothing wrong with Marina's heart.
Marina's essentially dead, so there's nothing more the Cottages can do. House sends them home, but not before noting that Foreman's gift will be a nice reminder of intellectual theft in his new workplace (oh, snap!) and that Cameron can say hi to Chase for him -- he knows that's where she's headed, since she's wearing lipstick (oh, snap snap!). Cameron offers to stay and do another differential, but House doesn't see how they can be of any use when they've already made it clear that they have no idea why Marina's heart stopped. Foreman thinks they should tell Esteban that his wife is dead. House bristles and says they can't tell someone there's no hope if they don't know why there's no hope. Foreman says that House just doesn't want to admit that he failed. House says that if Foreman is okay with failing, then he can go. Foreman leaves. Cameron follows him out.
House was right about the lipstick thing, because Cameron now finds Chase at what I'm guessing is his nightly dinner hangout. He's eating a sandwich when she walks in, and he's surprised, yet pleased, to see her. "You look great!" he says. Ah, but so do you, Chase. Cameron says that she's sure House will get over himself and hire Chase back, but Chase says he's okay with leaving. Maybe it is time for a change. For that matter, Cameron was right that Chase telling her he liked her every Tuesday was silly. Cameron cocks her head at this, and I do believe that's disappointment I see on her face! It's hard to tell with that harsh shade of lipstick, though. Chase claims that PPTH is the best thing that's ever happened to him, although I cannot fathom why. Have we seen any evidence that Chase enjoyed that job? Wasn't he always trying to get out of work and complaining about the grunt work House made him do? Didn't he get treated like absolute shit? Sounding less sure of himself, he adds that losing the job could be a good thing for him, too. "I'll miss you," Cameron says, like he's Foreman or something. He asks her to share a drink with him, but she "thinks" she should go. So then...who's the lipstick for? Has anyone seen Cuddy lately?
Esteban waits for Marina to wake up while she lies in her room, surrounded by bypass machines, being dead.
Cuddy stops by House's office. She finds him staring at the Whiteboard and thinking. Apparently, kidney failure makes House horny, as he claims that the security light looks good on her legs. Cuddy thanks him for the compliment and asks him when he's going to tell Esteban that Marina is dead. There's no reason to keep her on the bypass machine, especially when they don't have medical insurance and bypass machines look pricey. House says he's sure Esteban would prefer Marina alive, and Cuddy accuses House of being a hopeless romantic who wants to give Marina and Esteban's story a happy ending. House says he doesn't care about them. Cuddy wants to believe that he does, but he firmly says he doesn't, and I see no reason to doubt this. What he does care about is solving the mystery. He doesn't want to discover that they missed a way to save Marina during her autopsy. "It's time to let go," Cuddy says.
House finds Esteban praying in the chapel. He's surprised to see him there, as he was "told" Esteban didn't believe in God. Who told him that? And why? And how would House, who can't remember patient's names, remember that isolated fun fact? Anyway, Esteban says he doesn't believe in God, but he told Marina he'd do everything he could to fix her, and this counts as everything. And it's not like he has anything to lose at this point. "It's not working. She's not coming back," House says. I like how he managed to blame either God or Esteban's crappy praying abilities on Marina's death there. House tells Esteban to come to the ICU and say goodbye to Marina while House takes her off the bypass machine. Then we get a look inside House's personal nightmare when Esteban sobs and hugs him.
Esteban says his goodbyes to Marina and asks House if her brain is working right now. "Probably," House says; "just not her heart." Weird. It's usually the opposite -- the heart works, but the brain's dead. It seems kind of wrong to kill someone whose brain is still working. Esteban says that Marina looks like she's sleeping, since she apparently usually sleeps hooked up to a roomful of machines. You know who else is sleeping? Me. YAWN. "She's not sleeping. We double-checked," House says, unable to resist getting a dig in there, even at a time like this. Esteban nods, and House turns the machine off. It takes like twenty buttons to do it. I don't feel like I care enough about these characters to really care if Marina lives or dies, so if this scene is trying to tug at my heartstrings, it isn't. The machines are finally off, and Esteban sobs and rests his head on his wife's bosom...where he feels a heartbeat. House, already disgusted by Esteban's emotional display, doubts this, but when he checks, he definitely feels a pulse. He turns the monitors on and finds where there was once a flat line and question marks, there is now a normal heartbeat with normal numbers. Marina wakes up. "Holy crap," House says. Marina asks if she's in heaven, and House quickly informs her that it's New Jersey. Those two are mutually exclusive. Esteban pronounces this a miracle. House looks up at the ceiling with a Gallic shrug like, "What are you doing?"
Back from commercial, Esteban is feeding his alive-looking wife while House and Cameron wonder how the hell she's still alive. House points out that live hearts don't stop for no reason, and dead ones don't start for no reason. Foreman walks in and reports that Marina claims to be feeling better. Um, Foreman? Why are you still working there? How many last days has he had now? Maybe he's just going to stay at PPTH indefinitely and prolong this goodbye over the three seasons. He guesses that Chase was right after all; Marina had some kind of tropical infection that the antibiotics they gave her during that bypass cleared up. House doesn't think so, because he loves the Cuban medical system and will not give up on it. Cameron says the only other explanation is a miracle. Well, House isn't about to let God get the credit for his work. In fact, he's going to blame Him for this. "What if it was God's error?" House wonders, continuing that a congenital defect in one of Marina's arteries that made it susceptible to inflammation could have caused all of this. Cameron protests that they've looked all over Marina's heart and found nothing. House says they haven't looked inside yet -- the one time they tried, her heart stopped before they had a chance to see anything.
And then House gets a little angry. No more of this "saying what Wilson told him to say" BS; it's time for a hard dose of the truth! House doesn't think Foreman cares about the patients any more than he does. Foreman only cares about Foreman. Wilson watches another one of House's bridges go down in flames and resignedly lets out a warning "House," knowing it's already too late. House accuses Foreman of being the real selfish bastard here -- he's drawn out his goodbye for three weeks just to make himself feel important. Foreman stops for a second and looks like he might actually be taking in what House is saying. But then a sneer appears on his face and he turns and leaves. "Nice try," Wilson says. House says nice tries are worthless. That theory is why he solves the cases and saves the lives other doctors can't. Including Foreman.
When House returns to his office, he finds Cameron there, sitting in his chair and looking creepy. She hands House the resignation letter I'm guessing she typed up while having sex with Chase. Seriously, when did she have time to do all this? Whatever. "I've gotten all I can from this job," she says. Of all the Cottage-leaving explanations, hers makes the least sense, and that's saying a lot when you look at Foreman, who didn't want to turn into House and thought being near him would make him uncontrollably so, and at Chase, who randomly got fired for being around too long. House asks Cameron what he's supposed to do now. She says she expects him to move on and be just fine. "I'll miss you," she says. It gets less and less genuine every time she says it. She leaves the office and no doubt goes to every single employee of PPTH and tells them she'll miss them, too. Except for the Weird Night Janitor Who Wears His Pants Backwards. No one talks to him. For House's part, he looks less sad about what just happened than...kind of blank, really.
House spends the night celebrating with Esteban with cigars and alcohol. I'm sure all that smoke is just great for Marina to inhale after her open-heart surgery. Apparently, Esteban and House have been talking, as Esteban knows that House has lost all three of his fellows. "It's very hard to lose your people. You must be very upset," Esteban says. "Must be," House repeats. But he isn't. In fact, he's smiling a little. "I think I'm okay," he says. Esteban asks what's . "God only knows," says House. As long as someone does, because I have no idea and I don't know if the writers do, either.
House limps home and finds a big package waiting for him. At this point, I'm expecting a naked Cuddy wearing a bow to be inside, since why not at this point? People coming back to life for no reason, Cottages being fired/resigning...the world's gone crazy. But no, it's just a new guitar. House takes his old one off the wall and plays his new one, which apparently came perfectly tuned. The ladies, they swoon. And...that's it for Season Three. No last-minute Cottage rehiring or un-resigning. They're gone, and House seems to be perfectly happy. The only way this episode would pay off is if none of them came back season, but since I very much doubt that will happen, it'll make all of this worthless when we see all three of them back in the fall. Then again, this show has surprised me before, so who knows? It was a clunker of an episode, especially for a season finale, but I have no idea what to expect season, and I'm looking forward to finding out.