A young-adult mystery author tries to eat a gun, but has a seizure before she can close the deal. Turns out House is an unabashed fanboy who takes the case as what I'm sure is not just a distraction from his worries about not having anything in common with Cuddy, any more than it's a naked bid for a chance to read the author's latest manuscript. As for the author herself, she's proving rather uncooperative, just trying to run out the clock on her 72-hour psych hold. She even keeps mum about the metal screws in her leg so they'll turn into tiny bombs when they try to give her an MRI. Yes, she's still trying to kill herself, so House offers to call her bluff by giving her a syringe full of death-juice. Or so he claims, but it's just a ruse to get her to knock herself out so they can do some tests she otherwise wouldn't allow. And The MRI gets a chance at redemption when House asks Sam to use it to recover the new novel from the patient's typewriter ribbon so he can read it. Strictly for clues, of course.
In other news, House and Cuddy double-date with Wilson and Sam at the go-kart track, where the competition gets ugly enough for Wilson to make an innocent comment that cracks it open for House: the patient's thyroid gland was damaged in a car accident years ago. But she still gets paralyzed, and then refuses further treatment even though the team's figured out what's really wrong with her medically and could fix it if she'd just let them. Fortunately, House also figures out what's wrong with her psychologically: the protagonist of her books is based on her son, killed in the aforementioned car crash, for which she's always blamed herself. But then House breaks the news that it was an aneurysm that really killed him, which gives her reason to live. She doesn't need to know House lied about the aneurysm, so she's ready to move on -- including from her mystery series. So House saves the patient, but not his beloved book character. But at least Cuddy doesn't dump him, so there's that.
So Sara M is out this week with what I fervently hope is not lupus. But not to worry; I'm an expert on House myself, because it always seems to be on before 24 and Burn Notice so there are literally scores of episodes I've seen the last minute of. Also, my five-year-old son is a big Hugh Laurie fan, but all he had to contribute was, "Stuart Little's dad needs to shave."
A woman is banging away on an old manual typewriter, which is the first major sign that she's got something wrong upstairs. At least she's working in a nice study, where the walls are hung with framed cover reproductions of novels from what looks like a series about Jack Cannon, Boy Detective, by Alice Tanner. They have such exciting titles as The Castle of Stone and Light, The Map Of Tomorrow, and The Girl From Columbia (which is either about a university student or a typo). In none of these covers is the hero's face clearly visible, but that'll be remedied soon. Alice Tanner herself, played by a blonde Amy Irving, hammers frantically at the keys like she's on a tight deadline. In fact she's on the ultimate deadline, but I'm getting ahead of myself. Finally she pounds out THE END and slumps back in her chair in relief. Wow, that was a really short episode. Is it like this every week?
Oh, never mind, it's still going on. She's massaging her aching hands when a smart-ass teenager in the room suggests a cure: "It's called a computer." Whatever, he's playing with a yo-yo, so he's clearly not up on the latest electronic gadgetry himself. Shouldn't he be playing with a DS or some Silly Bandz or something instead? She tells him the book is finished, and he's not too cool to get excited about reading it. But she's not going to let him this time, instead walking across the room and locking the ream of paper in a safe. He wonders how he can help with the book, but she breaks the news that there won't be one. He asks why, and she pauses to look at his face, his Bieber cut, and the gnarly scar on his cheek before saying she can't do it any more. "I'm not brave like you." As she returns to the desk, he wonders what she's going to do with her life without writing. "What I should have done years ago," she says, pulling a revolver from the desk drawer. The kid freaks, as Alice holds the gun barrel up, pointed vaguely towards her own face. "Put it down, or I'll make you!" he says unconvincingly. "How, Jack?" she asks. "You don't even exist." Sure enough, she's alone in the room; he was a figment of her suicidal, typewriter-using imagination. Yeah, the yo-yo was a dead giveaway. She tries to put the muzzle in her mouth, but her hands shake so badly that when the gun does go off, all she manages to do is give herself a powder burn on the cheek. She topples out of her chair, and the maid rushes in to see her producing what may be the last line of her career -- a line of drool.
At PPTH, House enters a comatose patient's room, but he's not there to doctor; he's there to loot. After sampling a chocolate -- which he hates so much he classily spits it into the bedpan -- he examines the two miniature stuffed animals on the bedside table, and that's how Wilson finds him, trying to decide which of the two will say to Cuddy, "I want to sleep with you more." House decides on the penguin all on his own (declaring the beaver "too high school," like that ever stopped him before), and Wilson's wondering why he's in trouble with his girlfriend. While also snagging a bouquet of flowers, House says he's never seen Cuddy happier. And he's happy too, which worries him. As they proceed down the hall, Wilson calls that normal. Ooh, that's low. But House is convinced that he and Cuddy have nothing in common besides work, which means their relationship is doomed, even if she doesn't plan to dump him right away: "We'll fight, makeup sex, fight, maybe sex, and then she'll dump me. With possible goodbye sex...I need to find something we both like doing besides each other." Wilson suggests talking to her about it, which House sees as the beginning of an inexorable spiral of mutual resentment. "At least with my plan I get my one a day with iron to the bitter end." One a day with iron? Is that what the kids are calling it? He suddenly thinks to ask if there's a reason Wilson is following him around, like there ever needs to be one, but this time there is: "You're not gonna believe who just checked into the ER."
Down in the ER, House sweeps into the curtain area where Alice Tanner is all dressed and thinking she's ready to go. She tells House she just fainted, and while beginning the exam, House tells her, "Huge Jack Cannon fan, by the way. Love your books." Alice is as surprised as I am by the compliment, but not because she knows anything about House: "My fans tend to be overly annoying teenage girls." So do House's, if you only count Wilson. House rolls his eyes about the whole Jack vs. Deacon controversy, "Like Sarah can't love both of them. I may belong to one or two online fan clubs." He asks her about the new book, but she's not the type who talks about her work. However, she offers him a deal: if he finishes the exam quickly, she'll answer one question about anything. "Who is Jack's real father? Who kidnapped his uncle?" House takes her up on it and asks, "Why'd you try to kill yourself?" Clearly Alice should have been more specific that she meant questions about the book, since that powder burn on her cheekbone was a little hard to miss. House presses, "So, change your mind at the last second, or are you just a lousy shot?" Okay, now she knows something about House. She's about to storm out, going back on her end of the deal, and dares House, "Try and stop me." Which means she clearly still has a lot to learn about him. So the lesson he gives her is to call out to the security guard, "This woman is on a 72-hour psychiatric hold. If she tries to run, shoot her. With a sedative. It's more convenient." And less repetitive. I don't know how legal that was, but Alice is definitely on a House crash course now.
House fiddles with his stolen flowers in the lobby while the Cottages gripe about being called back to work for a woman who had a seizure. "While trying to commit suicide," House corrects. He tries to appeal to their sense of compassion and humanity, but since they know he doesn't have one of his own, he has to up the ante by adding she's the author of Jack Cannon, Boy Detective, "beloved by millions." "By girls between 10 and 14," Chase corrects. Foreman disgustedly asks, "So we're taking this case because you're a fan?" House says that would be crazy and unprofessional; "You're taking this case because I said so." In other words, on the orders of someone crazy and unprofessional. He tells Foreman and Taub to observe Alice overnight for further seizures, and cuts Chase loose, "because he brought a smokin' hot babe," House explains. They all turn to see the miniskirted blonde waiting outside with her cigarette. See? Smokin'! House shoots down Taub's lame attempts to plead plans with his wife, saying Taub hates his personal life and adding to Foreman, "and you obviously don't have one." House sends Chase on his way with a flower. "I'd stay myself," House tells Taub and Foreman, "but I just bought the flowers." That would be a lame excuse even if the flowers weren't stolen.
House and Cuddy are making a quick stop at a big stone pile of a mansion before their 8:00 dinner reservations. "We need to pick something up from a haunted house?" Cuddy asks. House corrects her that it's "A Gothic revival masterpiece" and hopes to live in one like it someday. Because we have to start hammering the theme of how they have nothing in common in their first five seconds onscreen together. Once inside Alice's study -- because of course it's her house -- House makes out like he was asked to read a friend's manuscript. But
that story doesn't hold up long, because Cuddy notices the name Alice Tanner on the shelves and wonders why it sounds familiar. House claims he gave Cuddy some of Alice's books years ago, but that's not it; Cuddy recognizes Alice Tanner's name as that of House's patient. "Did you steal her keys?" she asks in annoyance. Offended, House asks, "Think I'd take the dean of medicine on a B&E?" Just then Christina the maid rushes in with a baseball bat, demanding, "How did you get in here?" House tells Cuddy, "Well, I guess you have your answer." Yeah, I think we would have had it even if Christina had welcomed them with hors d'oeuvres.Back at the hospital, Taub and Foreman are trying to examine Alice, but she's not making it easy on them. Pretty much the only new information she does give them is that "I had the damn seizure before I could get the gun in my mouth." Foreman asks why, and she sarcastically calls him out on his wanting her to open up so they can save her (wrong show, lady), and then demands a woman doctor. Well, unfortunately the one they had disappeared, so tough shit. She tells them to get out, but Foreman says they have to watch her overnight. For seizures, that is, not further suicide attempts. Foreman points to the observation room where he and Taub will be watching her, and she agrees, "Whatever it takes to get you out of here." I think they're probably feeling the same way.
Back at her home, Cuddy tells House that she's talked Christina out of calling the police. "She's probably illegal," House says charmingly. "Same reason she didn't report the suicide attempt." Christina says that Alice threatened to fire her if she said anything about the gun. "If she whacks herself, what happens to your job?" House wonders. Rather than attempting an answer for that, Christina delves into Alice's character, how she's all depressed and never goes out. House tells Christina he needs to see the new manuscript, acting all businesslike about it so Christina will think it's for medical reasons. Even though it works, Christina can only point House to the locked safe with the book inside. Cuddy asks about any physical pain Alice might be suffering. All Christina can offer is that Alice's back and hands hurt a lot. House correctly says, "A writer with back and hand pain. Very helpful. Let's go." He's got a point, but a lot of the writers I know also have to contend with DVR remotes whose batteries have to be changed a lot, which I guess wouldn't really apply to Alice the luddite author. Christina's not done yammering, though, but suddenly House isn't done snooping, either; he's decided to confiscate Alice's typewriter ribbon. While doing so, he happens to glance into Alice's trashcan and pull out an empty tuna container, which according to Christina, Alice eats two or three of per day. Ding ding ding! It's mercury poisoning! This show is easy!
Back at the hospital, Alice is asleep -- and so is Taub. Foreman tries to wake him up for his turn, but House banging on the window with his cane does a better job of it. While Foreman nervously blathers at House and says Alice is fine, House theatrically rolls the bed around and yanks down the blankets when she wakes up. "You wet the bed," he informs her. "Just not sure how yet." Well, it's a good thing we know about it, then.
morning, Chase breezes into the meeting room to join Forman and Taub, and he's wearing the same shirt and tie as last night. He has shed the sweater vest, however, because that would have clashed with his shit-eating grin. "If it's any consolation, I didn't get any sleep either," he smugs at them. It does not, for the record, appear to be any consolation. "Unilateral hyperhidrosis?" he reads from Alice's chart. "Interesting." Not really. Although if the show is going to accuse a character of wetting the bed in layman's terms, it should probably do the same when clarifying that the soaked linens were actually caused by excessive sweating on one side of the body. Foreman updates Chase on Alice's tuna intake, and Chase catches up with me on my mercury poisoning theory. As House enters, he says it explains the seizures, pain and depression. Cool! Now we can spend the rest of the episode exploring House and Cuddy's relationship. Oh, wait -- shit. Foreman comes to our rescue by pointing out that the only trouble with the mercury poisoning theory is that Alice's mercury levels are normal. Chase suggests further testing, but Taub and Foreman remind everyone that they can't do that because Alice asked for a female doctor. Foreman complains about that being a blatant attempt to run out the clock on her psych hold. "Put some lipstick on Chase and start chelation therapy," House orders. Nobody points out that Chase is probably already wearing lipstick, just not where we can see it. Off their blank looks, he agrees, "Okay, I'll go talk to Cuddy. Maybe she'll let us borrow a dress, too."
House walks into Cuddy's office without knocking and does a shitty job of waiting out her studious ignorance of him. She snaps, "Whatever happened to keeping our professional and personal lives separate?" "I'm not the one talking about our relationship at work," House says. Rather than pointing out the obvious hole in that argument, because she knows damn well it'll turn out to be a rabbit hole, Cuddy asks what he's holding behind his back. Her presents her with the "peace penguin." "What room should I return it to?" she asks, and he immediately says 243, so at least he cared enough to remember. House tells her that Alice Tanner wants a vagina. Actually, House, I think she wanted a whole doctor. "I'm pretty attached to mine," Cuddy says, not that you'd know that by who she provides with access to it. She reminds him that he was supposed to hire a temporary replacement for Hadley two weeks ago. "I've been busy," he says. "Doing what?" she demands. "You," he answers. Sure, he already used a variant of that joke once this episode, but that was with Wilson. Might as well get as much mileage out of it as he can. She agrees to help with Alice if he hires a new female doctor by week. "You think we just sit around talking sports and belching and farting when the chicks aren't around?" House asks before agreeing. That was a pretty good belch he threw in there, but I'm glad that's as far as it went. I hate sports talk.
Alice now has two other women in her room: Cuddy and Christina, with the latter puttering around uselessly while Cuddy explains about the mercury poisoning theory and how they need more tests to prove it. Cuddy also tries to talk Alice out of ditching House's team, but Alice is more interested in the perfume Cuddy's wearing, a gift from House. Which must be why Alice smelled it on House last night, and which is still on Christina's cardigan. "Something you'd like to tell me, dear?" she asks her maid coldly. Yeah, and Cuddy too? Oh, wait, last night at Alice's house we saw Cuddy with her arm around Christina and her one cardigan, so that explains the smell transfer. Especially if, as I suspect, House mixed the perfume himself in his sink using animal pheromones and musk. Christina, knowing she's in trouble with her boss, says she just doesn't want to see Alice suffer any more. So Alice obligingly fires her. Cuddy rather heatedly comes to Christina's defense, so Alice tells her, "Send the men back. At least they're not a bunch of dewy-eyed crybabies." Has anyone remembered to add "acts like an asshole" to Alice's list of symptoms? Or do they all just spend so much time around House that it seems normal?
Wilson's in House's office, telling him to stop wasting his time trying to recover the novel off the typewriter ribbon. "It can't be done," he says. "And people wonder why you've never cured cancer," House snarks. No, I think Wilson would have to spend some time actually working for that to happen. Wilson asks if he got the ribbon before or after his date with Cuddy, and House thoughtfully concedes, "Probably would have been a wiser choice," leaving unspoken the key words, "than during." Wilson skips straight to the bright side, remarking that it's a good
sign that Cuddy's willing to commit crimes with House. "She's looking for ways to connect. Sure, they're self-destructive, juvenile, and insane, but..." wait for it... "so are you." Wilson says that House and Cuddy do have something in common: they're both looking for things they have in common. "And not finding them," House says glumly. Sure, be a downer, but I'm cool with anything that shuts Wilson up.Alice is getting another visit from her book's imaginary protagonist, but the only point to their interaction is to have Taub and Chase arrive with the chelation treatment in time to bust her talking to herself. Not that she's embarrassed about it. "It's only my imagination," she explains. "I make things up for a living." She adds that writers are also good at reading people, which...uh, I'm sure some of them are. She demonstrates by totally pulling a Sherlock Holmes on Chase, observing that he's a recent divorcee who had a booty call last night at a girl's place. Chase considers denying it, but then asks how she did it. She explains about the tan line from his wedding ring and the reek of smoke on him, even though he doesn't have nicotine-stained hands or teeth, which means he spent the night with a smoker and is wearing the same clothes as yesterday. "Do him," Chase says, pointing to Taub. Like Taub needs any encouragement. She says Taub reminds her of her ex-husband. "A cute man, but problems in the bedroom department." Taub smugly says, "Not even close," because he's not cute. But the bedroom problems Alice was referring to were the ones she caught her husband in. Oops, Alice got closer than we thought there. She gets so upset remembering that she pitches another seizure on the spot. Chase thinks it's a reaction to the chelation agent. "I didn't give it to her yet," Taub says. He holds up the syringe to show Chase, because even Alice knows that we can't trust Taub when he says "I didn't give it to her."
In the meeting room, the Cottages eat lunch and talk about how mercury poisoning has been ruled out. Yeah, I already knew that. Catch up, you three. Chase suggests hemolytic uremic syndrome, which would have been my second guess, but Foreman nixes that as well. Without looking up from his unreadable printouts of whatever he pulled off of Alice's typewriter ribbon, House figures out that the seizures happen when Alice is upset, so they could be caused by elevated adrenaline. "A pheochromocytoma," Taub realizes, snatching the word from the tip of my tongue. House orders an MRI to find it, and when they go back to their food instead of immediately jumping up, he sweeps all of their takeout containers into the trash can, which he even made Chase hold. "I meant now," he explains. Which they should have known already. I mean, really.
Taub and Chase roll Alice's gurney into the MRI (of DOOOOOM, right?) room, ignoring her complaints about claustrophobia. But they can't ignore it when she suddenly gets a "leg cramp" that quickly turns into agonizing pain, and then into a visibly sizzling line of spots on her shin. While she screams, Foreman rushes in, telling them to get her out of there because she has metal in her leg. Which sparks like a fork in a microwave while Alice continues to shriek like she's had a white-hot iron buried in her leg, and the Cottages stand there staring at each other in horror. This is why they aren't emergency physicians.
In the x-ray room, Foreman and the Cottages explain to House that Alice has three screws in her leg from a skiing accident, and didn't tell them. Taub makes excuses, so House turns him around and writes on the back of Taub's lab coat, "EVERYBODY LIES." "Maybe this way it'll finally sink in," House says with uncharacteristic optimism. "She wants to die. We can't trust anything she says." Foreman says they burned up most of the day patching up Alice's leg and replacing the screws, and it'll take a week to find the pheochromowhatsis without an MRI, and longer if Alice doesn't stop lying to them. "Or we could figure out a way to find it in the 39 hours left on her psych hold," Taub says lamely. Thinking out loud, House says they need to get her cooperation by offering her something she wants. Foreman reminds House of what he said ten seconds ago, that Alice wants to die. "I can work with that," House says cheerfully. Is he kidding? That's like his medium of choice.
He goes back to Alice and tells her, "I want you to write more books." She says she's done, in more ways than one, and House finger-wags, "Now don't you say that, you dirty birdie." Props to the writers for only dropping one Misery reference into this episode. He tells her there are easier ways to go, and shows her the syringe he brought with him. "The best part? You'll feel so good you won't even notice you're dead." She's skeptical of his motives, so he explains that he's giving her a choice: "Give us a chance to make you better, or stick this anywhere and push." "Why do you care about me?" she asks, as though he didn't already answer that with his entrance line. He gives her a big speech about how he knows from pain, and how you think you can handle it until you can't, and then "you either find reasons to go on or you don't." She says she's out of reasons, but he promises that she'll want to live once she's pain free. "And if I'm wrong, I have a backup plan to take home with you." She accepts the syringe, and he advises her to hide it. Which she does -- right in her thigh. Wait, that's not what he meant! Or is it?
Well of course it is, as we see after the ads. House leans pensively over a gurney with a covered body on it, until the body moans and pulls the sheet off its face. "Good morning, Sunshine," House tells Alice. "You're a real bastard," Alice informs him. Is she trying to test out of this course? Good luck to her on that. "You were supposed to choose life," House lectures. He insists that she'll get better once they find and remove "that pesky adrenaline-secreting tumor," but all she says is that they better hurry, because she's out of there by tomorrow. Except, as House points out, she gave herself what she thought was a lethal injection, so that added 24 hours to her psych hold. "I know, bummer, right?" As he goes to leave, Alice drops this spoiler on him: "Jack Cannon dies. I know, bummer, right?" Get her, using the only weapon she has against the doctor who's basically kidnapped her, and who has about fifty.
Apparently the team made good use of Alice's self-inflicted naptime to run some PET scans and other tests, but there's still no sign of the pheochromothingy, and Alice still isn't giving them the cooperation they need to find it. Chase asks House, "Do you think you can get her to kill herself again? We're gonna need more time." He says there might be a way to get more out of her, "If writers write what they know." Oh, good, a medical excuse to read her book. I'm sure he's been hoping for that to come up ever since Wilson dropped her name. Luckily, Jack Cannon has a mentor named Aunt Helen, a character who's the same age as Alice. "The answers could be in the book." Which I guess he's off to go work on, while the Cottages are supposed to continue the search for the tumor with the ultrasound. And yet the party who will be wasting its time won't be the one you think.
House tapes long segments of ribbon onto the MRI table while Sam asks him, "I drove across town to treat a ribbon?" House explains, "That's why I prefer lying. It makes things easier." Wilson bursts in, telling Sam not to waste her time trying to help House read the latest Jack Cannon, Boy Detective novel, but it turns out Sam is not only a "Fannon," she's Team Deacon. "Why can't she love them both?" House demands. Suddenly Sam is on board with this goofy project, and goes into the control room to mess with the software while House activates the scanner. Wilson, after asking House if Cuddy knows this is happening ("Let's say yes," House answers), cuts off their arguments about the books by reminding them, "There are actual patients waiting to use this machine." There are probably also actual patients waiting for an oncologist, too, but that never seems to stop Wilson from...you know, being Wilson. Just then blurry words start showing up on the screen, and even though they're all upside-down or backwards or overlapping or filled with clichéd imagery, Sam says, "Congratulations, it's a book." Well, that was easy.
We catch up with him and Cuddy at the indoor go-cart track, and she is not impressed that this is what he came up with. Even though House called her mom to find out what she liked, which is sort of sweet, especially on the House spectrum. "I loved them when I was 12," she says, rather meanly. Just then, from across the track, Sam excitedly calls to them, "I haven't done this since I was 12! Winner picks the restaurant!" "I have a very bad feeling about this," Wilson whines. But soon the four of them are in the carts, and the bored flagman tells them, "On your marks, get set, go away." I like how this show gives subtle clues to new viewers. For instance, from the fact that House and Cuddy are able to go out on dates every night, I can tell that neither of them has a small child at home.
The race is on, primarily shot from floor level to make it look like they're going faster than five miles an hour. Wilson, in the pole position, keeps getting bumped by Sam, who's into this to a dangerous degree. House is glad to see that Cuddy seems to be coming around to enjoying herself. He doesn't even mind her shit-talking him. Wilson calls over to Sam, "My parents never let me drive one of these!" "Yeah, I can tell," Sam yells back, and keeps bumping him until he spins out and crashes through the barriers. Is that allowed? Where's the yellow flag, dammit? House and Cuddy safely make it past the wreckage as Cuddy asks House, "What is her problem?" House yells back, "She hates Jews!" Heh. "Never again," Cuddy vows, flooring it to catch up with Sam. Who also knocks Cuddy out of the race with a bump that leaves the latter rubbing her neck in pain. House zooms right on past Cuddy in pursuit of Sam, emitting an evil laugh. When he catches up with her, he reaches out with his cane and unhooks the battery cable on her cart, which coasts to a stop so he can cross the finish line alone. Victory! I guess.
Afterward, as the four of them are leaving after being not only kicked out but banned for life, House proudly whispers to Cuddy, "I avenged my lady." She complains, "Seatbelt nearly broke my neck. I'm done for the night." House points out, "It's not my fault Wilson' s attracted to psychos." No, but it explains why Wilson keeps hanging around him. She reminds him that he picked the place, and heads out as Wilson assures House, "That's just the pain talking," because he's more worried about House's feelings than Sam's. Although maybe when they get home he'll be telling Mad Max that it might have been in order for her to dial it back a few spins. But back to Wilson's real date, House, who murmurs, "Oh, wow." But that's just the Epiphany Face talking.
He goes straight to the hospital, where he wakes up Alice and busts her for saying she was in a skiing accident when in fact he just realized that it was a car crash that resulted in the screws in her leg. He adds that the shoulder strap cut into her neck and damaged her thyroid gland. "You don't have lupus. What you have is curable." She doesn't seem overjoyed, just telling him to go away. Even she knows it's never lupus. He adds that he read her book. "Sucks, by the way." She doesn't believe him until he starts dropping plot points, then he loses her as she grabs the printout from him, so she probably doesn't hear him say she has hypothyroidism. "With medication you'll feel twenty years younger. Or whatever age you were the last time you didn't want to kill yourself." He tells her to finish the story the way Jack Cannon deserves. At the mention of his name, she starts getting upset all over again, but no seizure this time -- she just freezes and collapses to the bed. Acting those other two seizures must have really taken it out of her. "What did you do to me?" she demands from her immobile position flat on her back "I can't move. I can't move anything!" Well, at least she's learned enough about House to know that bad things that happen to her are his fault, even if her premises aren't as solid as her conclusion.
While House and the Cottages loiter outside Alice's room the day, House wonders how he could be both right and wrong. "I deduced car accident because the thyroid fit the symptoms, but damaged thyroid wouldn't explain the paralysis." Wouldn't it explain it if the thyroid exploded and the shrapnel hit her spinal cord? I'm telling you, I could totally do this job. Taub suggests a "post-traumatic syringomyelia," which I guess I could buy, if I had to, this late in the episode. In Taub's theory, it's slowly been growing in the 15 years since the car crash, pressing against her spinal column. Resulting in the symptoms we've been seeing, up to paralysis and death, although the death hasn't happened yet. But the good news is that if they take it out, she'll get better. Chase suggests finding the location using her old medical records from the time of the accident, and House tells them, "do it." They whine about how they haven't slept for four days, and House sarcastically says, "Aw, that's sad. You know what's even sadder? Thirteen was the only man on my team." Unabashed, Foreman suggests House hire someone to replace her, then, and House says go ahead. "Cuddy wants it to be a girl." Foreman stars talking, but House informs him, "I was talking to Chase. I was just looking at you to screw with you." Sure, leave it to Chase to find women. That...makes sense, I guess.
Later, the Cottages wake House up in his office to inform him that not only did they not find Alice's old medical records, she's refusing further treatment anyway. "Why would she lie about the accident?" House wonders. "Everybody lies," Taub says. Looks like it did sink in, after all, even though Taub is wearing a new lab coat. "Everybody who has a reason," House says. Oh, now he wants to qualify it, after six seasons?
House's stop is Cuddy's office. She's been trying to find a legal way to operate on Alice without her permission, but struck out. "As your boyfriend, I'm grateful for the effort," House says. "As your employee, I'm disappointed at your ineffectiveness." He starts wondering again about Alice's silence regarding the pins in her leg, and when Cuddy reminds him that Alice wants to die, he asks, "By having her leg ripped off?" I was wondering about that too. "She wants to punish herself for something that happened before she was famous. Before she even started to write. I think the answer's in her old medical records, but Dopey, Sleazy, and Uptighty can't find them." "Maybe Alice Tanner's just her pen name," Cuddy muses. That doesn't seem like something a superfan like House would be unlikely to know, but he tells Cuddy, "Your boyfriend is an idiot." Rather than agreeing, Cuddy picks up the phone to check with the national records archive on Alice's leg screws, and House advises, "Her first name could be Helen." I'd say that would be too easy, but nothing is ever too easy when there are only five minutes to go.
When House pays his visit to Alice, he's holding medical record folders, so it looks like Cuddy was successful. "Don't bother to get up," he says to Alice. Ha ha, it's funny because she's paralyzed. He says that Jack always seemed so real to him: "He's cool, but he's awkward. He's brilliant, he makes mistakes. He's funny, but sometimes he takes it too far." Sounds like someone we know, except the "sometimes" part. She asks him to leave her alone, and he says, "You weren't alone in the car crash. Your son was with you, Helen." He holds up a photo of the same actor who's been playing Imaginary Jack, only the scar on his cheek is a fresh wound, and instead of playing with a yo-yo he's rocking a morgue slab. "Your books are your way of keeping him alive," he diagnoses. Alice admits, "I killed him." Imaginary Jack is in the room now, looking down at her with imaginary sadness as House says she didn't. "I let him drive," she says. "He only had a learner's permit. It was raining. I deserve this." "No, you don't," House insists, either out of kindness or just to be argumentative, and I know which way I'm leaning. Alice goes on, "He could always get me to do what he wanted. He's always been my muse." House says he looked at her muse's autopsy results, and holds up a brain scan to point out the aneurysm that actually killed him -- according to House, he was dead before the crash, and there was nothing Alice could have done. "It's easy to miss," he says. "Your son would have died that day. On a bus, in school, sitting on his bed. The only thing the crash is killing is you." Alice says that when she wrote, she could feel him with her. He puts his imaginary hand on hers. If you're paralyzed and an imaginary hand touches you, can you still feel it? He tells her, "It wasn't my fault, Mom." "And it wasn't mine," she responds. But they say it nicely instead of defensively like how it looks on my screen.
Later, Cuddy joins House in the OR's observation balcony while he's watching Alice's surgery and says with the vocal equivalent of an eye-roll, "Her son didn't have a brain aneurysm." Yeah, no shit. Even I knew that. Looks like Alice isn't going to ace her House course after all. "She shouldn't have let him drive in the rain," House agrees with Cuddy. "Jack was never very coordinated." Cuddy tells him, "As your boss, I am opposed to you lying to a patient. As your girlfriend, I'm glad you care." As a viewer, I'm getting bored with that construction, but as a recapper, I'm downright irritated with it. House says he doesn't care about Alice, but Jack Cannon. Cuddy says she can see why House likes Jack, since she started reading one of the books he gave her. "I find that very hard to believe," he says. "Why, because I can't like something you like?" Cuddy scoffs. "We couldn't possibly have something in common?" "Because I lied about giving you the books," House says. Busted. Cuddy actually looks guilty about having told one lie, which looks pretty puny sitting there to the entire skein of whoppers that House has spun this hour. "Wilson told you," House realizes. "He's such a gossip." Derr. Cuddy assures House that she isn't going to dump him because they like different things. "On the other hand, I might dump you if you don't talk to me when you have a problem with our relationship." Or for any one of several dozen perfectly valid other reasons, I might add. House doesn't buy what she's selling, so she continues, "Who cares about common? Common is boring. It's, ugh, common. I like being with you. You make me better." By comparison, I think she means. "Hopefully I make you better. What we have is...uncommon." She concludes that she's never been happier, and heads back to work. That was a pretty good speech, but House doesn't look convinced, probably because he doesn't trust anything but misery. Oops, look what I did there!
After Alice's surgery, House pays her one last visit. Alice asks Christina -- rehired, apparently, so now maybe in a few weeks she'll be able to afford a second cardigan -- to excuse them for a minute so she can thank House. "You can dedicate the Jack Cannon to me," House suggests. She says she can't -- not because she's still having pain, but because she's ready to move on. "I want to write books for adults," she says. Well, that leaves House out in the cold. House asks what'll happen to Jack, pointing out, "Your last book didn't' answer anything." She insists it's the perfect ending. "Each reader can decide what fate they want for him for themselves." That's great, Alice. Ask David Chase how that worked out for him. House sputters, "You can't just leave it on a cliffhanger. Who does that?" Alice kindly insists that Jack's story is done. "There's really nothing you can say to change my mind." Ooh, she just flunked her House final, and he's about to let her know it. He starts to say, "Your son -- " but then for some reason he happens to turn and see Cuddy standing in the doorway, at which point he manages to force out between gritted teeth, "was very lucky to have you as his mother." Cuddy's even more touched by that than Alice is, and as House stumps out past her, she starts to tell him, "That was--" "Oh, shut up," he spits at her. Chalk up another final minute of House for me! I have to say, it's better when you also see the first fifty-nine.
M. Giant is a Minneapolis-based writer with a wife, a son, and a number of cats that seems to have settled at around two. Learn waaaay too much about him at Velcrometer, follow him on Twitter , or just e-mail him at m.giant[at]gmail.com.
, then see our round-up of House's craziest patients!