Jamie "Apollo from Battlestar Galactica" Bamber is a beloved small-town fella by the name of Bob. And he's got a problem when he has a heart attack in the middle of an illicit experience with Miss Cedarville. That's her official title, not her name. As far as I know. Anyway, this drags Bob into the clutches of PPTH, where House's team has ballooned up to four, thanks to the return of Chase and Taub.
The wrong diagnoses range up and down Bob's body until they kind of settle into his liver, which is so bad and is going to have to be replaced. When all the Cedarvillians crowd into the hospital to see if they're eligible to donate parts of their livers to Good Ol' Bob, Bob takes the opportunity to confess to a wide variety of local crimes, including theft from a scholarship fund. Everyone leaves in a huff! Then Bob's skin all peels off, then it turns out to be an aneurysm, and then he can plausibly deny even the initial escapade with Miss Cedarville. So everything's fine for Bob, although Adams appears to have some sort of obsession with guys who cheat on their wives. So it's going to be like that, then.
And in non-patient-related news, House spends the episode trying to get under Taub's skin about the possibility that neither of the children he's taking care of are biologically related to him. Taub ends up shredding the file that would tell them the answer, but it's not like he couldn't just take another DNA swab if he changes his mind. Oh, and House builds a secret passage from his office into Wilson's. Of course he does.
It's small-town America! Fire engine tours! A banjo! Miss Cedarville! A fat, jolly mayor with an adorable little bowtie! You know, all that sort of thing. The mayor is giving an award to Coach Bob of the Little League team, who is an all-around Good Guy. He owns the only gas station in town, and he's Bob Harris. He's also Jamie Bamber, who was Apollo on Battlestar Galactica! The lovely young Miss Cedarville brings him a gold trophy, and the town applauds. He raises the cup.
At night, there's the sound of a hot make-out session between Bob and Miss Cedarville. In mid-coitus, he collapses on her. She doesn't seem delighted to be crushed under his body. She figures he's having a heart attack and promptly starts to call the ambulance, but he wants to be driven to the hospital instead. That's what an ambulance does, dummy. I understand if you don't want to be caught having sex with Miss Cedarville, but surely some eyebrows will be raised if she's the one who drops you off at the emergency room at 3:00 AM?
In his swanky office, Foreman welcomes "new employees" Chase and Taub. Chase says he's coming back so he can do "crazy crap" and Taub just wants to save people's lives. Foreman, as the new Dean of Medicine, now looks askance at all the crazy nonsense that House's team tends to get up to. Chase reads Foreman's notes and points out that Foreman wants them to spy for him. But he won't do it! Foreman is foiled. Also -- and this is going to be a big plot element tonight -- Taub needs a babysitter for his two baby girls because he wasn't planning on coming back until week. Remember those two babies Taub was getting?
Adams, in the now-vacant external office, runs down the case at hand. Park reports that the patient said he was at work when his heart went weird. Chase and Taub enter, so I guess this is the whole team now. House says Chase and Taub are late, although Taub insists that he's a week early. House thinks Chase and Adams look cute together, and the other two don't. House says the rug burn and knee abrasions mean the patient is lying. Adams says the patient attributes the abrasions to flag football, and House rearranges that into "having sex." This gives Taub an excuse to say, "Everybody lies." Park makes the mistake of thinking that, just because Taub has two babies of about the same age, they must be twins and House gleefully disabuses her of that notion. I don't think the show wants to spend too much time reminding us of the plot complications that took place last season that resulted in Taub having two children by two different mothers. Then House tries to convince Taub that they're not even his children, even though Taub insists that they look like him. It's a baldness joke.
House wants an exercise test, which will hopefully cause another attack. Chase is the first one to figure this out, and he gets a congratulatory hug.
Bob buckles under the rigorous interrogation Adams and Chase give him, and admits that he was not sitting at his desk when the attack hit. He admits that he felt light-headed before the attack and could barely breathe. Then his wife enters before he can go into any detail. She doesn't understand why they'd do an exercise test when he wasn't exercising the first time. Chase doesn't really answer and lets Bob stammer.
House pounds on Wilson's door to tell him that Chase and Taub are back. Wilson has a headache and wants less noise. He claims to have a migraine, but House is convinced that Taub's babies are hidden in his office somewhere. And he's technically wrong, because Wilson has stashed them just outside the window.
Exercise test. Chase says they need to get Bob to the point he was at when he had the attack. Adams declines to have sex with him. Monitoring the situation, Park tells Taub that it seems reckless to deliberately cause attacks. Then House brings in the two little Taubettes because he wants to get a DNA sample from Taub and find out the parentage of the children once and for all. I think I'm right in saying that no one cares about this subplot. Taub's children, and indeed his entire personal life, are of no interest to me whatsoever.
Mrs. Bob comes in because Chase and Adams are trying to get Bob to spill the beans about his "flag football." He starts to stammer, and then collapses off the treadmill. Taub, who has been dutifully watching the monitors, reports that it wasn't his heart. Chase: "I know. It was a seizure."
House's vacant external office. Chase and Taub sit on the floor while Park and Adams carry in a couch. They're also running down things it might not be. Chase tosses out myocarditis. Taub suggests something genetic. House pretends he likes the idea, but it's because he wants to hug Taub and steal his hair. Park and Adams sit on the couch until House invents a new place for it. Which is too bad, because I liked the idea that they got to sit on the couch while Chase and Taub were on the floor. You want something to sit on? Go steal a chair! But instead, House stretches out on the couch as soon as it's free, leaving his four minions seatless. Park's got an idea that House considers boring, so he replaces it with photic epilepsy.
Wilson pushes Taub's kids (in a double-wide stroller) through the hospital lobby and describes their screams as "Satan's alarm clock" to Foreman. Foreman thinks House is suspiciously quiet, but Wilson thinks he's just busy establishing authority over his team. He declines to be an intermediary between Foreman and House. Foreman, once again, is foiled. Shouldn't he have some skills in dealing with House from all his years doing exactly that?
Bob tells Chase he can't live like this. Chase thinks he should keep lying to his wife, but Adams doesn't. He's in a room where the ceiling tiles blink quickly, testing for photic epilepsy. Couldn't they just use that hand-held adjustable strobe light that House had? It seemed ideal for this sort of thing.
Chase and Adams return to the office, where something noisy and construction-based is happening behind a wall. House tells them that Park wasn't necessarily wrong; she was just wrong not to test for epilepsy first. Chase and Adams go off to run the latest test, and Taub and Park go to the motel where the attack hit. Hosue gives them a few quarters for the massage bed. Swanky!
At the motel, Park explains to a nearby prostitute that Taub couldn't get a babysitter, which is why he brought the babies. Then she explains to Taub that everyone clearly thinks she's a prostitute herself, since she's here with a man twice her age. "How old do you think I am?" he asks. I guess that would be funny if I didn't also think he was twice her age. For what it's worth, Peter Jacobson is 46 and Charlyne Yi is 25. So he's not quite twice her age, but it's pretty close.
Chase and Adams look at monitors while Bob and Mrs. Bob sleep in the room. Chase: "So who cheated on you?" Ah, he's trying to be like House and "read" people. She parries by pointing out that Chase quit medicine when House got arrested. This distracts him long enough for a machine to beep. But Chase says it's just that one of the sensors has come loose. When she's fixing it, she sees that Bob's got a giant neck goiter! And she announces the latest diagnosis, which, um, I can't come close to spelling. Time to figure out how to operate the Tivo's closed captioning. Okay, hang on... it's "not a pheochromocytoma." So there!
House brushes his teeth while his team makes their reports and wonders where the construction crew is. Apparently House has them working nights. Park suggests meningitis. Taub rushes in, having stashed his kids at a daycare across town. Chase rejects meningitis because Bob's neck isn't stiff. Park reports all the stuff from the motel bed. It includes animal poop! House accurately guesses one of the bacteria that was found and proposes Lemierre's Syndrome. So they need to cut him open and remove a clot. Everyone leaves and House grabs Taub's coffee cup and puts it in a plastic evidence bag. But Taub returns and takes it back.
Bob says he has to tell his wife the truth about Miss Cedarville. But the team in the room is Park and Taub, and they don't care. It's Chase and Adams that are into arguing abotu the moral dimension of this case. Park and Taub just want to get on with the medical stuff. Bob won't agree to anything until he tells his wife. His kids come in and are cute until he gets rid of them. Park and Taub go out into the hall to pretend to watch the kids.
Taub thinks Bob's being an idiot. Park thinks it's a good idea to set things straight before you die. I liked them better when they didn't care about it. It was a nice contrast to Adams's obsession with infidelity. Mrs. Bob comes out and tells the kids to get their stuff. But she's going to come back. She says Bob made a mistake, but they'll get through it.
Taub and Wilson in the cafe. Taub wonders why House is so bugged by his kids. Wilson doesn't answer, so Taub answers his own question with some talk about House sensing insecurity. Wilson tells him House started a betting pool on which kid is actually Taub's. Taub takes this personally and leaves. Wilson bags Taub's fork, but Taub catches him. Wilson claims not to be the bad guy on the grounds that he bet on the kids being Taub's. Taub leaves again, having foiled another attempt to steal his DNA. It can't be that hard.
Bob is in surgery! It's not a clot. The lymph nodes are inflamed. Time for a biopsy. This seems like a situation where there's gonna be some beeping. And there it is! "His sclera's jaundiced. I think it's his liver."
Adams says it's not Lemierre's Syndrome after all. Park suggests alcoholic withdrawal. House says that doesn't cover the lymph nodes. He wants to hit him with broad-spectrum antibiotics. Adams says that'll destroy what's left of his liver, so Chase proposes a liver transplant, then the antibiotics. House says that the old team is ahead of the new team. This whole time he's been doing something weird with the electronics in the wall. I don't think he's actually stealing cable, though. Why would he steal it? He works there!
Mrs. Bob is sad that Bob could die while waiting for a new liver. But a partial liver transplant is possible, which could be done with a living donor. Mrs. Bob volunteers. But she might not be a match. They'll need to cast a wide net! Bob is beloved, so there are hundreds of possible volunteers. And Bob wants to confess his misdeeds to every one of them first. I guess Small Town, USA is pretty close.
The lobby is full of people. They applaud Bob as he's wheeled out. He announces that he cheated on Denise. She immediately and publicly forgives him. But there's more! Bob tells Larry that he didn't need that new transmission. And Joe didn't need that engine rebuild. "In fact, I cheated most of you here tonight." He's been ripping them all off for years. He also took $10,000 from a scholarship fund and lost it gambling. Some people leave, which means they'll miss any other revelations. Bob says, "I'm sorry. I'm not the man you thought I was." Park: "That didn't go well." Good one, Park. You're a real diagnostic machine today.
Chase reports that there were only two potential donors left, and they were both negative. The four of them are eating Chinese food while House drinks a martini from his new in-office bar and talks about Adams's breasts. He tells Adams that every man she's ever met has thought about having sex with her. This is to shock her into believing that everybody lies. Anyway, it's time to get "reckless and extreme": they're going to cut out the damaged part of the liver and move forward. Whee!
Taub has his kids at home. They both shriek. He apologizes for what he's about to do, saying that nothing will ever change how he feels about them. He puts them on their backs on the bed and says that he needs to know. He carefully swabs their little baby mouths.
Foreman comes in on Chase and Adams, who are monitoring Bob in the Scanner Tube. He's angry that they're going to do surgery that might kill Bob. Because if Bob dies waiting for a transplant, that's natural causes, but accidentally killing him in surgery is a different deal. But Adams has a CT scan she's suddenly fascinated by. Bob's liver has healed itself a lot over the last ten hours!
The team watches Bob and Mrs. Bob having a scene. She seems mad. House speculates that the liver has been in shock from an allergic reaction: "This all started when he cheated on his wife." Maybe something on the other woman?
Miss Cedarville, no longer wearing the ceremonial sash, asks, "You think I did this to him?" She admits to giving him a condom from the health fair. As Miss Cedarville, the health fair is one of her responsibilities. Adams is all snitty about him cheating. Miss Cedarville seems to regret it, especially how everyone's talking about it. And if they find out it was her, she'll lose her title. Then she won't even have a name! Which I wouldn't mind, because "Miss Cedarville" takes a long time to type. I much prefer a short name like "Bob," which is why I'm referring to the patient by his first name. Saves valuable keystrokes!
Bob tells Park and Adams that he didn't think Denise would leave him. He just wanted to clear things up before he died. Park asks what his plan was if he didn't die. He has no answer.
Time for another round of guesses! Wheat-based allergies? Nope. Corticosteroids? Not hooked up yet. Latex allergy? Nope. "None of his samples test positive for anything." Then, says Taub, he's not allergic to any of their stuff. Park and Chase leave, and Taub puts some DNA scans up on the lightbox. Foreman enters to whine about Chase calling him a sellout for becoming Dean of Medicine. Taub thinks being a doctor is more important than being an administrator. Foreman says that Taub's looking at monkey DNA, probably because House stole the results once he tricked Taub into bringing them into the hospital. House probably never even tested the babies, because he knew he could manipulate Taub into doing it for him.
BEEP BEEP BEEP! Bob is screaming in pain. And understandably, too, because his skin is peeling off in huge swathes. Make-up extravaganza! And poor Jamie Bamber probably thought he was going to get to lie in bed for the whole episode. Nothing's more relaxing than pretending to be in a coma!
So Bob's getting worse, not better. Park asks if everyone's trying to think of an answer or is trying to avoid saying an answer that fits everything: Stevens-Johnson Syndrome. For which there is no treatment. House tells everyone to go home. "Case closed." Everyone leaves. Chase last.
Bob looks super-gross now. Chase looks at him from behind a surgical mask, presumably because he just couldn't bring himself to go home.. Bob feels like he's in hell. Chase says more pain medication will make his condition worse. Bob says he has one final confession to make. He claims to have killed his business partner, shooting him in the head and making it look like suicide. "And he was just the first." There were three. Or four. Chase, doing an admirable job of looking skeptical when half of his face is covered with that surgical mask I just mentioned, says,: "Try not to kill anyone else before i get back."
The team is back in the hospital, looking at a brain scan. It's an aneurysm! In the communication center of his brain. He'll confess to anything now! They demonstrate this experimentally. Park questions how this could explain the skin problem. House says it couldn't, so the aneurysm is just another symptom. The new answer is Kawasaki Disease. The key is the rug burns! It has something to do with carpet-cleaning chemicals. Fine.
House leaves, followed by Taub. House, who has a significant folder in his hand, insists that Taub say he was right. Taub says he doesn't care. House threatens to shred the file if Taub doesn't agree to go to the light box in the lab. Taub eventually stops him. Then he takes the folder, glances in it, and shreds it. "Just wanted to make sure all three were inside." House looks thoughtful. So that's the resolution!
Bob has his skin back! Mrs. Bob enters. She looks nervous and says, "The mayor checked. There wasn't any money missing form the scholarship fund." Adams and Chase start to leave. Mrs. Bob asks if the affair was real. Bob claims that he's never cheated on her. Mrs. Bob is happy. Adams is not.
Locker room. Foreman is there when Chase enters. Chase cheerfully says he got lucky with that diagnosis. Foreman says he doesn't want to spend his time second-guessing his best doctors. And he's in the locker room because there's a shower. He won't go home while House is there. Chase says that House is watching TV and drinking martinis all night just to screw with Foreman. Hey, if there's a locker room, how hard would it have been for someone to sneak in here and steal some of Taub's DNA? The guy's balding, so there's got to be hair on his clothes, right?
In the refurbished external office, House hands out martinis and displays Phase One of Operation Outer Office 2.0. Behind the curtain, there is no hot tub. Then he hits a remote control and a wall rises up. It's a giant window into Wilson's office. Wilson: "No."
Follow Monty on Twitter at @montykins and read his blog, Mysterious Exhortations.
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