Clueless

"Due to some graphic content viewer discretion is advised." Translation: in this episode, Wilson and House totally become boyfriend-boyfriend.

A blonde woman steps out of a shower and puts on a black-and-white floral bathrobe from the Boca Beachwear Resort Collection. She putters around her bathroom for a second, and then sneezes twice with purpose. Death by sneezing! It's probably lupus, as it always probably is (and then never actually is) on this show. Gesundheit, mysterious robe lady, and bless your lupus as well. She collects herself and steps onto a scale which, after a moment, announces in a loud female digital voice, "Your weight is...113.9 pounds." Subtracting the all-important .9 ounces that is the weight of South Florida-inspired fashion mistakes, our heroine steps off the scale and makes her way toward the mirror, where she wipes a circle of mist off and...RAPE OR ROLE-PLAYING RAPE-TYPE SIMULATION! A man with a stocking over his head comes out of seeming nowhere and grabs the woman, putting his hand over her mouth and asking, "You gonna make me hurt you?" She shakes her head as dramatically as one would if she were being playfully assaulted by her masked rapist husband (spoiler!), and he drags her down the hall of a particularly well-appointed house. On their way, she drags her free hand across a mantel, sending numerous framed photos crashing to the floor. Because as everyone knows, the three key steps of the kinkiest sex acts always include 1) getting attacked by your own husband; 2) making sure to wear shoes on the upstairs landing; and 3) a visit to the glass repair shop. All I'm saying is that if you know it's only fake-rape, you can afford to be more careful and spare the frames.

But down the hall she goes, screaming all the way. In the bedroom now, the masked husband throws the robed woman down onto her bed. She fights him valiantly, finally freeing herself and throwing him to the side. Unsatisfied by her ability to escape him, she turns around to find him lying on the bed, gasping for air. She steps into the bedroom cautiously, asking, "Are you all right? Did I hurt you?" When he responds with the sound of puke-y choking, she runs back into the room screaming, "Bob!" Is he wearing a "Hello, your rapist's name is ______" sticker on his shirt? Or is it that...oh! She knows him! It's only a kinky sex game, wherein he pretends to be an evil, evil rapist, coming to have his way with her in an aggressive and illegal fashion. Does that really improve your love life? Should I have my significant other come into my apartment late at night and embezzle the change off my side table? Because, hot. Seeing that her husband cannot breathe or speak, blonde-y makes for the phone, dialing 911 and doing the requisite, "Page Doctor House!" thing to the emergency dispatcher on the other line. He can't breathe! He's turning blue! She's freaking out! We'll spend some time examining why she was so surprised and upset about her husband's untimely attack a little bit later in the episode. But for now...

Credits.

We're at the house of House, where we discover the sleeping doctor opening his eyes to the sound of some kind of loud oral hygiene habits of the brushing and gargling variety. This is soon followed by a loud clicking sound we don't identify until later (but if you've already watched the whole episode...ew, am I right?), immediately followed up with a loud whirring. House bounds quickly out of bed to gleefully greet the morning, and...oh, no, he doesn't! Not that crotchety House! Good ol' crotchety House. What he actually does is drag the metaphor for all of his sorrow out of the bedroom and into the bathroom, where he discovers Wilson already sharply dressed for the day and in the middle of his morning coif maintenance. He's blow-drying his hair. Which leads House to a question: "You blow-dry your hair?" Wilson turns around and apologizes to House for waking him up, inspiring House to shout in an even more incredulous fashion, "You blow-dry your hair?" Wilson doesn't just blow-dry it. He blows it dry with one of those combination dryer/brush contraptions that's always filled with hair and doesn't actually seem to produce any blowing air for the alleged purpose of drying. And while I haven't seen the business end of a hair dryer for probably ten years now, I did grow up 1) gay and 2) on Long Island, the official language of which is "big hair" and 3) during a time in our nation's history when "fashion icon" equaled "Gunnar Nelson," so I am well-versed in hair dryer culture. And believe me when I say it: Wilson, drop the brush/dryer combo, which is equally inefficient at both tasks, and go for one of those giant diffuser attachments which will make you look like your favorite member of a-ha in no time. We both know that's what you secretly want anyway.

House and Wilson banter Odd Couple: The Generation-ily about how House wants sleep and Wilson wants fashion, and Wilson plot-develops that it was time for House to get up anyway, seeing as it is "almost nine o'clock." House pops some morning pills -- part of this complete crotchety breakfast -- and informs Wilson, "This isn't gonna work." What isn't? "You. Staying here." Wilson's eyes go puppy-dog-on-a- calendar-filled-with- adorable-puppy-dogs big and he asks, genuinely hurt, "You're kicking me out? After one night?" House asks if he thinks they should try counseling first (heh), segueing the discussion to why Wilson even wants to sleep on a couch anyway, noting, "You've got money. At least until the divorce is finalized." It's because Wilson wants...love! And really, isn't that what we all want, House? Let's wait until the episode's final shot to find out. Wilson promises to be "out of [House's] hair by tomorrow." His hair? The part of Wilson House was just making fun of? Seems like Wilson needs some sort of zinger to button things up here: "What's left of it." Theeeeeeere it is.

Hospital. Cameron is mid-exam on Bob Not-Actually-A-Rapist-Stein, feeling his glands just like a real doctor and listening as he explains, "It was three days ago. My throat got really dry, and then my tongue felt like it was blowing up like a balloon." Cameron assumes that other doctors checked for food allergies, and Bob notes that two doctors already did. His wife, sitting behind Cameron and logging as much screen time as possible, jumps in to say that another doctor said it was a panic attack and that the one after that wanted to take his tonsils out. Seriously, can anyone be a doctor? You know what I think it is? Purple Diabungie. That's my differential diagnosis. Who cares that it's a disease that I just made up right now? Bob hops back in to report that the and last doctor had no idea, and that's how they ended up getting referred to Dr. House. Cameron glances at Bob's chart and reminds us that the attack was preceded by "some strenuous physical activity." Bob stumbles over his words and looks at his wife, transitioning us to...

...House's office, where he comments, "Awesome." Yeah, it was okay. As naked rolling around goes, it had one too many women for my liking, but hey, I'm just the recapper here. "A sex fiend with a swollen tongue. Just think of all the places I can make Foreman search." Oh, man, but that is a great line. We cut to a shot of House's hand, which holds a canned beverage the shape and color usually associated with those newfangled so-called "energy drinks" that profess to "give you wings" or keep you on your toes all day, but are really just unholy alliances of sugar and caffeine and chemicals that we'll look back on in fifty years the way we do with cigarettes and be like, "I can't believe those products used to be allowed to advertise on television. How did people NOT think they gave you cancer?" House cuts open the can in the middle and practically crams the whole thing in his mouth, provoking Cameron to ask him just what he thinks he's doing. He tells her that he's "testing a new caffeine delivery system," and Chase helps out the viewing audience who just got off the phone from their fifty American Idol votes and missed the opening segment of this show by recapping, "He didn't get his beauty sleep. Wilson's moved in and apparently has unusually loud toenails." Also, that's the explanation for the clicking. And seriously, dude, it can't wait until you have your own place? I can count the number of times in a year I cut my own toenails. And that number is not "On weeks when I'm shacking up at a friend's house."

But boring old Foreman only wants to talk about the case. Boooo, Foreman! Especially because his long, long words are so much longer than the word "toenails" and are therefore so much harder to type. Here are some of them now: "If they're into rape fantasies, S&M is on the menu as well." Please let me never find the restaurant containing that menu. "Neck trauma can cause vocal-chord paroxysms, which can cause choking." Cameron notes there was no sign of trauma, and that the couple was so open with their history that they even told her about a threesome they participated in a few months back. House offers that "a hundred bucks says they're as miserable as the couple," because he had and lost love once. Chase asks if it was a guy or a girl and, finding out that the third participant was female, points out that if this guy isn't happily married, Chase doesn't know who is. Projecting that hypothesis through to the end of the episode, then, that'd be no one. House agrees, saying that this couple is clearly looking for something, and that people who are happily married have "nothing to look for." Cameron argues that, if it's something both people are into, one threesome every seven years can do a couple a world of good. Cameron...call me! Whatever, you guys. She's a damned stone fox and everybody knows it. And they all do, as a lengthy silence follows her speech, broken by House's suggestion that they discuss Cameron's comment in detail. Cameron tells House, "I'll take the bet." It's hers to lose. Has she never seen this show before?

Back to work (booooo! With the long words!) they go, Chase positing, "Maybe the first doctor was right. The food allergy explains the anaphylaxis." Foreman thinks that maybe it's neurological, but Cameron notes that neurological troubles such as ALS would "affect [Bob's] facial muscles before his throat," thereby insuring that, at least on this day, Bob The Fake Rapist will not end up "the luckiest man in the world." Sorry, guys. It's just that it's the only ALS-related joke I've got. House goes to the big board and scrawls the words "can't breathe," positing, "What if the problem's not in his throat?" Chase says that that would be a little odd, considering that's where all of the symptoms originated. House wants to know, "According to who?" and is told by Cameron, "The patient." But House? Not so much about the patient: "Most patients can't tell their ulna from their anus," he states poetically, so it's possible that said patient doesn't know the difference between choking and suffocating: "His throat might be fine; his lungs might be messed up." He orders lots and lots more tests, mentions the patient's anus one more time (stop doing that!) and takes his leave of the room. Oh, incorri...sorry. Last time.

Clinic Exam Room let's say One. A middle-aged man in a sleeveless sweater worn over an open-collared shirt -- basically, it's every creepy child-molester outfit worn by Dylan Baker's character in every frame of Happiness -- seems to be in the middle of a story regarding his urge to urinate and then his subsequent inability to do so. He worries that it's his prostate, but House assures him, "You have herpes." They each repeat the word "herpes" nine thousand times, until House helpfully defuses the banter: "Your turn." House attempts to comfort the man by telling him the number of people who come into the hospital with "some kind of crotch rot," but somehow that doesn't seem to make him feel that much better. Because this is House -- where patients are liars and everybody cheats and David Shore had his heart broken real good once by SOMEBODY -- the man gives a naive speech about the impossibility of having contracted a sexually transmitted disease. He's been married twenty years and he's never had sex with anyone but his wife. To which House observes, "Bummer." He gives the man a prescription and tells him to take it once a day and have his wife do the same. When the man protests again that there must be some kind of mistake, House moves on to the all-important psychological component of his job: "You got any kids?" The man does. "Any of them take guitar lessons?" No. "Tennis? Art? Acting?" His daughter does karate. At which House writes one more prescription, advising, "Give this to her sensei." He scribbles and scribbles, ripping a sheet off the pad and telling the man, "For Miyagi." To cure or control an outbreak of herpes House believes to have broken out as a result of Miyagi's waxing on and waxing off another man's wife.

"I need you to pant, kind of like a dog," Cameron tells Patient Bob The Not Rapist. He has a blue tube down his throat during the scene in which a patient is in a vulnerable position and has something spontaneous and terrible happen to him just at the moment of the act break. As Bob pants, Cameron turns to his omnipresent wife, standing just beside her, and asks, "The threesome and the role-playing...is that because things get boring?" The wife says that they just enjoy their fantasies, adding, "Marriages don't fail because couples get bored." They fail because people pretend to be who they're not while they're dating, and there's only so long you can keep that up. Cameron posits, "Maybe they are that person while they're dating, and then they change." Nope. Wifey (she really doesn't have a name yet, does she?) forebodingly says that thinking people will change is another reason marriages fail. From the safety and comfort of his blue tube, Bob winks at his wife, and she winks back at him, though her other eye kind of closes as well. She's not a good blinker, is all I'm saying. Oh, and I don't love her pinched little face, either. Other than that, she's America's Sweetheart. "People don't change," Wifey buttons. "At least not in any way that really matters." Wifey stares into the distance. Cameron's worldview collapses. I can't believe this scene ended without this man in a coma.

The Amazing House-dini juggles everything! A stapler. A Magic-8 Ball. He's in his office hurling pretty much the cumulative contents of his desk up in the air and then catching them. Team House enters, Chase surmising, "I think you've had enough caffeine." The doctors debrief House that he was right (surprise!): it wasn't Bob's throat after all, but his lungs. Foreman reports that it's "definitely interstitial pulmonary fibrosis." Stop doing that! But they don't understand the cause. (I still don't understand the diagnosis.) Foreman adds that the man works as a wedding photographer, so it's unlikely that he's come into recent contact with coal dust or asbestos.Cameron notes, then, that the cause could be "idiopathic." House says that it can't be idiopathic, seeing as that means "without a known cause." Cameron tries to explain something, but House cuts her off with a curt "What you meant was you don't know what the cause is." Yeah! Stop using big words that fall outside the purview of my spell checker just because you know you're smarter than I am. House is done juggling. He catches all of his many tools in one hand, snagging a small basketball with his other hand, positioned at the small of his back. Impressive! I wonder if juggling is meant to stand as a metaphor for, saying, juggling something. I'm a smart and careful viewer. The cause for House's juggling is not idiopathic. They start to argue about what to do , just as three sets of beepers go off...

...and the doctors go running back to Bob's room. They enter to find Mrs. Bob whining, "There's something wrong with his skin!" He is madly scratching at his chest; Cameron tries to pull his hands away so that she can get a better look. Oh, I wouldn't do that if I were you, Cameron. It's disgusting. We finally get a closer look, and...ew, just as I said. We zap under the skin and see a cool-ass close-up of what I imagine are nerves, buzzing with electricity. And what I meant to say is that this is the scene in which a patient is in a vulnerable position and has something spontaneous and terrible happen to him just at the moment of the act break.

"Now we've got something to discuss," House says as he leads his staff on a limp-and-talk down the halls of the hospital. "What causes both lung scarring and the itchy splotchy red blotches?" Foreman asks where he's going, and House slams open the door to the men's room, announcing, "To complete the second half of the caffeine delivery system." Does anyone else think this episode is the tightest, most House-y episode of House in a good couple of weeks? I'm all in. The door to the men's room closes with all three doctors standing on the other side, House bellowing, "Either talk louder or get in here." Chase and Foreman do. Cameron clutches her pearls and waits outside. Foreman wastes a lot of valuable time suggesting that "lupus could cause lung scarring and a rash." But it's not lupus. Because every week it could be lupus and it never is. It's the subject of a drinking game with my friends at this point. Chase once again suggests a food allergy, and Foreman reminds us that we've ruled that out, but House wants Cameron to weigh in, shouting from his urinal, "We need an allergy expert in here!" She walks in, sniping, "This could wait two minutes." House says that she doesn't know that, immediately returning to business and recapping that Chase thinks food allergies should still be on the table. She notes that an allergy wouldn't explain the lung scarring, which prompts Chase to note that some homeopathic studies have found connections between food allergies and autoimmune diseases. That's true! Homeopathic medicine totally works. To which Cameron lobs back, "Yeah, and some homeopathic studies have also found that ground up spiders can cure cancer." That's...also true. Homeopathic medicine is as valid as the Yeti swimming through Loch Ness on a raft of St. John's Wort. Stop messing with my mind, Eastern healing! House thinks a second and recites, mantra-style, "Lungs, skin. Skin, lungs. Sklungs?" Which makes me remember that we're in the middle of the all-haiku episode of House. Can I do one?

Wifey is no good
Her man should get out, right now
She still has no name.

"Lungs, skin, throat," House continues, looking down at the urinal. The camera pans down the front of it. Panning, panning, for the LOVE OF GOD stop panning down! There really are some things we never need to see. Luckily, the camera finds a subject of interest in some rust growing on the urinal, and House zips up, flushes, and announces, "Heavy metal toxicity." Weren't they one of the featured groups on Bands Reunited? I think the bass player wouldn't go to the reunion because he was afraid to leave his job as a professional welder. But House thinks it might be the cause of Bob's symptoms, and tells them that it would explain the lungs and the itching, which apparently nothing else has done. Foreman rattles off some of the causes of heavy metal poisoning (here are some of them: nobody cares), and notes that the patient's lifestyle couldn't be farther away from all of those causes. Cameron remembers that Bob and Mrs. Bob had worked a wedding in Cabo the month before, noting, "A lot of pottery in Mexico is contaminated with lead-based paint." House tells them to search the house, and to screen Bob's blood and hair for lead. And to test for mercury and arsenic. And to find out whether the resort they stayed at recently did any kind of repairs. Hold on. Let me get something to write with.

House's house, night. He walks in wearing his motorcycle jacket and holding his helmet, but soon hurls said jacket into a closet. He walks past Wilson, who sits on the couch eating what looks like bread crumbs out of a large cooked pepper. And usually I am hungry for everything, all the time. But I am not hungry for that. I'm with House, who says, "Good Lord. What's that smell?" When Wilson tells him that it's a stuffed pepper, House asks the somewhat obvious, "Stuffed with what? Vomit?" House asks what happened to the whole hotel arrangement, and Wilson too loudly announces, "I found an apartment. I can move in on Monday. That's fast enough for you?" House sits down on the couch and has a fight about food with Wilson, in which Wilson accuses House of eating nothing but peanut butter and canned soup. Add cheese to that list and I could do all the shopping for the both of us. Wilson makes House taste his pepper, asking, "It's good, isn't it?" House responds that it isn't, but that it is "better than it looks."

And while we're on the subject of food (I thought the scene was over and had already picked up the spoon that's sitting in a jar of peanut butter sitting right to me and, no, I'm not kidding), House turns things procedural again, asking Wilson, "How much beans and rice do you think you'd have to eat from a ceramic pot painted with lead-based paint to get enough lead into your system to damage your lungs?" Damn, it must have taken a lot of practice to get something even close to a casual delivery on that line. Seriously, Hugh Laurie is sure to sail through the inevitable line of dialogue when the patient is a woodchuck who chucks wood or a seller of sea shells by the seashore. Wilson's professional opinion is that he'd have to eat, like, a lot of beans and rice. Always appreciating the professional opinion, Dr. I Totally Could Have Told You That. Wilson flips on the TV, and we get a kick-ass shot of House's TiVo-like-DVR. Okay, seriously, you'll want to know: it's The O.C., two episodes of Sponge Bob, something called Monster Truck Jam, eight episodes of a program entitled New Yankee Workshop, the winky in joke that is House having recorded an episode of Blackadder, two more of The O.C., and a final Sponge Bob. House's TiVo? Meet screen grab. Screen grab? Meet my new desktop wallpaper. Because that shit is hilarious. Wilson asks why House would have a season pass for New Yankee Workshop -- because apparently House's yen for a show about who lives in a pineapple under the sea is fairly self-explanatory -- and House explains, "It's a complete moron working with power tools. How much more suspenseful can you get?" You mean besides THIS SCENE? House rips the remote from Wilson's hands, Wilson whining that he was watching something and House correcting him, "You were about to watch something. I'm watching something. See the difference?" And, truth be told, it is the man's television.

Who needs a name when you have that house? Foreman stands with Mrs. Bob The Not Raped in her kitchen, taking a water sample from the faucet. She asks why she wouldn't be sick also if the water were contaminated, and Foreman tells her and us that people metabolize toxins at different rates. He asks if there have been any recent renovations (there haven't), and if the Bobs have had any problems with bugs (just the occasional ant). He asks if they use bug spray, and Mrs. Bob reports that she hates the smell, following up that she and her husband are both pretty obsessive about keeping things clean. Except for that pesky glass-filled floor up the steps that no one seems that concerned about cleaning up. Foreman rubs a finger along a squeaky surface and agrees, "Yeah, I can tell." Yeah! Dirt rules! What is it with everyone in this episode marching into other people's houses and critiquing how they're run? Be as clean as you want. TiVo all the Oprah and American Idol you want. Or, wait. That's actually my TiVo. Foreman looks at a framed photo of the happy couple on a side table just as a large ant crawls over it. This seems important. How odd how much it eventually so isn't.

Back in his office, House shovels pancakes into his mouth while asking the rest of the team, "You think ants are the problem?" Cameron asks him to stop stuffing his face with pancakes for one second, and he corrects her that what he's eating are not pancakes at all, but "macadamia nut pancakes. Wilson made them and they're amazing." House loves the pancakes. He makes a fundamentalist terrorist-themed joke about how if he blows himself up in a crowded restaurant, he'd prefer pancakes to the oft-promised virgins in the afterlife. Truth be told, I would take the pancakes, too. At least pancakes don't bleed the first time you eat them.

(I'm fired. So very, very amazingly fired.) ["I think I'm too shocked to fire you. Who knew you could work so blue!" -- Wing Chun]

House asks about the exact specs of the ant, wondering if it was "big and red or small and black." Foreman expertly creases his brow and notes that it was "medium and brown." House also courts firing by pressing, "Halle Berry brown or Beyoncé brown?" When no one can figure out exactly what that means and go about wondering why it would even be important, House has knowledge at the ready that army ants could eat a cow but that Australian bull ants are "more of a nuisance than a threat. No surprise there." Was that a dig against ants of Australians? Foreman caves and offers an answer of "Beyoncé," which automatically discounts the long-discussed ants as a cause in all this drama. Chase follows up that the pricey resort The Bobs stayed at didn't use clay pots, and Cameron reports that the tox screen was negative. House wants to run all of the tests again, but Foreman insists, "It's not heavy metals." House says it is. The tests say it's not. Chase won't let go of food allergies. Cameron insists, "His diet hasn't changed since he was a kid. His favorite food is corn flakes." House says they should start treating Bob for lead poisoning, but that they can also test him for all sorts of exciting allergies.

Cuddy! Hey, Cuddy. I watched the pilot recently, and hoo boy does she look better now, with her cute bouncy hair. I diagnose her with a raging case...of fashion! She looks less like a tranny than ever. Aaaaaaanyway, Cuddy's walking through the hospital when she's accosted by a woman in terrible boots who shouts, "I am not having an affair with daughter's karate instructor and I did not give my husband herpes." And before we even see the words form on her lips, we know where Cuddy is going with this, as she orders a conveniently-passing nurse, "Find out where House is."

Bob is lying on his side, which means that something terrible is probably happening to him back there. He cries "ow" in a fashion commensurate with pain in that area, and Chase apologizes. But Bob tells them that he's having pain in his feet. Burning!

But there's nothing there, so we're back in House's office, Chase telling his boss that extreme pain in the lower extremities isn't exactly the sign of a food allergy. House says that this only bolsters his argument for heavy metals, and Cameron says that all of the tests for "lead and everything else" once again came back negative. Foreman once again returns to take a long, deep drink from the lupus well (which I don't recommend...that well is dirty with lupus), but House argues against it, because it's never lupus. But just as Cameron argues that the tests don't match heavy metals, three sets of beepers go off once again...

...and we're back with Bob. Mrs. Bob plot-develops that he's not breathing again, and we have to intubate, except for all of the sudden vomit. Oh, it hardly matters. Let's gouge a hole in his throat anyway.

"It's lupus-induced kidney failure," Foreman argues to House on yet another hallway limp-and-talk. It's not. It's never lupus. It really, really isn't. But House won't get off the idea of heavy metal poisoning, and one really wonders why people bother doubting him at this point. Have they never, ever watched House? Foreman knows where the symptoms are pointing, but lowers the boom that, unless House can prove which heavy metal it is, he's starting treatment for lupus. House shakes his head and puts his arms out all Jesus-y.

Back with Mrs. Bob, Foreman takes his time explaining the disease her husband doesn't have. He tells her that lupus causes the immune system to become hyperactive and attack normal tissue, which could explain all of the symptoms. Normal treatment is steroids, which, it turns out, Bob is already on. Is his name actually Bob? Foreman continues to explain that the disease can usually be kept under control, but apparently that's only if the patient actually, y'know, has it. However, in rare cases, "it can cause cardiovascular and renal failure." Mrs. Bob has been trolling her dog-eared copy of the Merck Manual, and clunks out, "Cardiovascular and renal. That's, uh, the heart and the kidneys." Hey, thanks, Dr. Mrs. Bob from the Plot Development Institute of Easy Reader Medicine! Where were you in Act I when we were knee-deep in unexplained references to paroxysms and anaphylaxis?

Mrs. Bob sits bedside vigil to her maybe-dying husband. He sits up and croaks through his newly-accessorized neck tube, "Don't worry. It'll be all right." Mrs. Bob nods. Foreman stands at the door wearing a grim look that says, "She understood the definition of 'cardiovascular' and 'renal.' But she's dead wrong if she agrees with his diagnosis of 'all right.'"

House sits in his office enjoying some kind of virgin or pancake kind of meal from a Tupperware container, and Wilson soon stomps through the door, puts his hands menacingly (well, for someone so darn cute!) on his hips, and asks, "Are you enjoying the salad?" Wilson says that he made this salad for himself, prompting House to ask, "Well, how was I supposed to know?" At which Wilson indicates a Post-It Note on the top of said container reading, "MY LUNCH. DO NOT TOUCH!!" Oh, that could mean almost anything. As if he could be castrated by this argument any further, Cuddy barrels in at that moment, wearing an outfit containing every shade of pink in that limited section of the color wheel, and hands House a chart: "It's Mrs. Lambert's herpes test results," she says, and this of course means nothing to House. When he professes ignorance, she fills in the blanks: "You've told more than one patient his wife is sleeping with his daughter's karate teacher?" Something dawns on House, just as Cuddy adds that he can clean up the mess of the pot he stirred. House, I imagine, wonders if anything in that pot is eventually going to turn into pancakes. What House actually does is muse aloud on what people do when they find out they have herpes. If a man would step out on his wife, he wonders, would he not say anything in the hopes that she would contract it too as the result of her stepping out on him? Wilson wonders if he would really give his own wife herpes just to shift the blame, and Cuddy jumps in to snipe, "He'd give his own mother herpes if it got him out of Clinic duty." But House is already in that House-y world of his own, just at that exact moment when a story of lesser importance suddenly emerges to inform that more pressing A-story of his episode. Which kind of makes me wonder if that will happen right now. "Of course, maybe it was the wife. Maybe she was the one who..." He stares off into space as it all comes together just in the nick of time. Like that pinchy-faced harlot with no name wasn't always up to no good.

House finds Cameron in The Room Where They Perform Some Tests and asks, "Where's Mrs. Nympho?" See? He doesn't know her name either. Unless they really are Mr. and Mrs. Bob Nympho, in which case (a) this explains all of their wanton behavior, and (b) best wedding announcement ever. House demands, "Go search her." Cameron asks if he means her medical records, and he says that if that's what he meant, he probably would have said that. And then there's a dawning moment for Cameron as well: "You think she's poisoning him." House says that Bob should be getting better, but that he's not, which prompts Cameron to helpfully narrow down the action: "So either she's poisoning him or it's not heavy metals." She says that they've done ten heavy metal tests, and House argues that that shouldn't preclude them from doing the other thirty. Cameron tells him that she won't let his paranoid fantasy make her accuse a woman of attempted murder. But House is sure that no other explanation exists. Cameron disagrees. House asks whether Bob has responded to the lupus treatment, and when Cameron answers in the negative, House tells us once again that it's not lupus (it's not): "It's not allergies, ALS, arthritis, or sarcoidosis. She's all that's left." Or it could be lupus.

House rounds a corner to find Mrs. Bob sitting alone in a hallway perfectly lit for muuuuuuuuuuurder. He introduces himself perfunctorily and asks if he can take a look in her purse. She asks why, and he levels, "Because I'm gonna need to search it and you for whatever you're using to poison your husband." Confident in her non-husband-killing desires, she hands over her purse, waits for House to find nothing, and asks, "Are you satisfied?" This question is rhetorical, so that's why the camera goes off.

"Absolutely not," Cuddy screams, and we find House in her office explaining that Mrs. Bob has let House search every part of her, but that her vagina is, for some reason, off-limits. Cameron -- oh, look, Cameron's here, too -- tells House that she's sure the woman isn't poisoning her husband, and he repeats that it's the only explanation. He tells Cameron that she has childlike notions about married people, and when she asks if he's calling her childish (he is), he barks, "Grow up." Cuddy is there with some quick-witted doctoral hijinks, yelling, "Shut up. Both of you. And stay away from his wife. Sorry. I'm not giving you permission to assault someone." ["But she's kind of a superfreak -- maybe she wouldn't even consider it assault!" -- Wing Chun]

Wilson watches House watch Foreman and Cameron push Bob in a wheelchair as Mrs. Bob walks closely behind. (Is Chase off at some, like, digeridoo concert or something? Come back, Dr. Hot! Paging!) Wilson sidles up to House and surmises, "Let's see. I'm thinking Colonel Mustard, in the music room, with the candlestick." Let's all say it in unison with House, because I know I did: "There's no music room. It's the conservatory." And the correct answer, anyway, is that it's Mrs. Bob, with the heavy metals, in the hallway that still has all the untended-to glass on the floor. And speaking of people with increasingly messy houses, Wilson takes this moment to inform House, "My wife fired the maid. Apparently, she's getting rid of everything that reminds her of me." Perfect for as frou-frou a straight man as Wilson is that "not dirt" reminds his estranged wife of him. Sweet. House asks if Wilson "did" the maid, and he responds glumly that he was nice to the maid, which annoyed his wife. House guesses that maybe Wilson's wife "did" the maid, which causes Wilson to bark, "No one was doing her." Wilson is telling this to House because he promised to pay the maid until she found another job, and he is currently paying her to...clean House's apartment. And while I too would rather have someone surprise me with a maid rather than, say, having someone surprise me by taking a crap on the living-room carpet, I still would want someone to ask me. They always put things back in the wrong place. House agrees, observing, "You're supposed to be moving out. Not moving more people in." But just as the argument escalates once more, House watches as all hell once again breaks loose inside Bob's hospital room. He has no pulse. Clear! Now he has a pulse. Mrs. Bob begs Bob to talk to her, so, sad as this sequence is, it confirms that someone's name is actually Bob. Mrs. Bob fawns over him and cries, and Wilson observes, "Yes, she is quite the little actress." And just at the exact moment when he was in a vulnerable position and has something spontaneous and terrible happen to him just at the moment of the act break.

House's office, where the good doctor has added "cardiac arrest" to the big board, and Foreman is in the middle of arguing, "We've got lung and kidney failure, neurological symptoms, and now cardiac arrest. A systemic disease with multi-organ involvement is the definition of lupus." It's not...eh, nobody listens. House does, suggesting that they start Bob on interferon, which, while not a treatment for lupus OR heavy metals, is the best method of treating -- dun DUN duuuuuuun -- a viral infection. Brows crease across America.

Mrs. Bob reacts badly to this. She thought it wasn't a viral infection. In fact, she thought it was lupus, on account of her doctors telling her that. Foreman tells her that the rapid progression of the symptoms have caused them (well, House) to reevaluate. She asks what happens if they're wrong again, and Foreman tells her that, with Bob's lungs, heart, and kidneys all failing, they don't have much of a choice. "Lungs, heart, and kidneys"? He can use the big words. We know she knows them.

Later. Mrs. Bob sits on the edge of her husband's bed, acting all sad and non-murder-y. He wakes up briefly, sees her there, clears his throat, and lowers the boom: "I cheated." Ah-HA!!! What a dramatic fourth-act admission, sure to prove the dastardly method by which his wife-- "Ninth-grade Earth Science." I...oh. "Mr. Foley." Dude, I cheated in that class, too. That guy was a dick. "I sat behind you so I could cheat off of you." Mrs. Bob pillow-talks that she let him cheat so that he would sit behind her. Awwwww, Earth Science gifts of the Magi! Bob says that he thought they would grow old together, but instead she's trying to kill him. Well, he says some of that. He says he loves her and she refuses to say it back, claiming, "Because you're not dying." He begs her to say it anyway, threatening, "You gonna make me hurt you?" Like her heavy metal vagina isn't doing all of the hurting in this relationship.

Foreman reports to House that the interferon isn't working, and House insists that they keep upping the dose. Just then, House's beeper dings...

...and we cut to House entering Cuddy's office, late for his meeting with the Lamberts. Mr. and Mrs. Herpes sit to each other, each looking mighty peeved. House gets right to work: "Your wife has herpes." She claims that this is impossible, but he tells her that she hasn't had an outbreak yet, but that she will, real, real soon. Mrs. Lambert calls her husband a "ruddy jackass," which, unless "ruddy" is fake-Anglo for "not a," cannot be construed as a compliment. Mr. Lambert once again promises that he hasn't been with anyone else in twenty years, and when she tries to claim that he's the one with the sores on his suzie, House corrects her that that doesn't mean he got it first. Mrs. Lambert says that there has to be some way to prove who brought home the early Christmas present, and when Cuddy says there's no test, House busts in, "Either of you two ever sit on a public toilet?" Cuddy looks at him like he's gone bonkers, but House explains that herpes can live outside the body for very short periods of time. The proper lady says that she always uses a paper cover, but her dirty, dirty husband takes this opportunity to admit that he doesn't always. And that's why he has herpes! Except, yeah. Take it, House; "He could believe you can get herpes from a toilet seat, or he could be cheating on you and just be happy to have an out." Mr. Dirty Bottoms says that the toilet-seat defense is sound, prompting House to finish this subplot off with a simple "She'd only choose to believe a well-presented lie if she were innocent, and since you both can't be innocent, you ruddy jackass..." At which the cuckolded Mrs. Lambert takes off her wedding ring and hurls it down, her husband running after her. Wow. House sure read a lot of Encyclopedia Brown books as a kid. Even Cuddy is impressed. House picks up the wedding ring, considers it for a moment, and quickly drops it on a nearby table, and the writer of this episode turns to all of the friends he invited to his viewing party and announces out loud, "And this is the shot that everyone who watches this is going to think I stole from Match Point."

Wait, wait! Stop the interferon! House is on his cell phone, barking to Cameron that Mrs. Bob had a family history of arthritis, right? When Cameron confirms that this is so, he tells her to stop the current treatment and to do one more heavy metal test, this time for gold. Oh, and Cameron shouldn't let Mrs. Bob go to the bathroom.

House peels down the road on his motorcycle, pulling up to his house with great purpose. But when he enters, he opens up his normally disarrayed closet to find all of his personal effects hanging in perfect order. A small woman holding a dust rag rounds the corner and introduces herself as "Lady." House dispenses with the pleasantries, asking just what the hell she did to his closet. He tells her that he needs to find a wood box, asking her what she did with it. Because a maid isn't a maid in this country until being accused by the white man of stealing something. Not that I feel that way. I'm liberated. I saw Crash. Anyway, House accuses Lady againof moving his box, at which point she remembers, "Ah, you mean the chest? The one that's under the bed?" She cleans under the bed? Lady? Call me.

Back at the hospital, Cameron is trying to explain to Mrs. Bob that every bathroom in the hospital is broken, and Mrs. Bob calls her bluff by piledriving past her and going anyway. House runs up to the women's bathroom containing her, waiting for her to emerge from her stall. When she finally does, she's slightly incredulous to find the whole team waiting for her. At least Cameron is logging some equal-opportunity bathroom time, finally. House takes Mrs. Bob's hand, which she tells him (and us) is wet. Here's why: "The damage to your husband's lungs is permanent. Kidney damage is reversible, and with the right therapy he should regain neurological function. So other than the fact that he's not going to running any marathons, he should be fine." Mrs. Bob tries to celebrate what she perceives as good news. But wait! There's more: "I didn't have a problem with you going to the bathroom. I just didn't want you to wash your hands." One quick, cautionary tale about Egypt later, House tells Mrs. Bob that ancient Egyptians learned that mixing something called stanischloride with gold turns a surface bright purple. With which he pulls his hand away, and we note that Mrs. Bob's hands are bright purple. So unless she's actually made of gold, she's been poisoning her husband with vast, vast riches, an arthritis remedy extremely popular in Mexico. (And monkey's brains, though popular in Cantonese cuisine, are not often to be found in Washington, D.C.) She's busted. She tries to tell House that he's wrong, but...

...he's not. This is why we cut to Mrs. Bob being led out of the hospital by the authorities, Team House arguing the myriad reasons she could have done it. No one will ever know. The episode is too close to over. Cameron comes to offer her cash to House.

And, back at House of House, the good doctor opens his refrigerator, removes a Post-It Note reading "Property of James Wilson. Trespassers will be prosecuted!" from something that looks delicious, and clicks on his home answering machine. One message tells House that Wilson's apartment could be lost to a better offer, but that if Wilson calls back ASAP, he could get the place back. House, his heart growing a size bigger every minute, deletes the message to keep his best friend around. Awwwww! Seems like a call that time-sensitive probably should have come through on the man's cell phone anyway.