Episode Report Card Sara M: C | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT PPTH Security Fails Again
By Sara M | Season 5 | Episode 9 | Aired on 11.25.2008
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.A sick man named Jason is so desperate for a diagnosis that he takes House, Hadley, and several Clinic patients hostage in Cuddy's office to get it. House's early attempt to shoot Jason up with a sedative goes wrong when he orders one of the hostages to take a dose first and the guy passes out. To show that he's serious, Jason shoots another hostage in the leg. That means any and all future medications must be legit. And just in case they aren't, Hadley volunteers herself as the medicine tester, much to everyone's annoyance. Including Jason, who thinks she's a crazy risk-taker.
Non-hostage Cottages, old and new, get together to form a super diagnostic team for all of three seconds before Chase gets angry and leaves, never to be seen again this episode. Several diagnoses are tested, with the only result being that Hadley's eyes get darker circles underneath them with each medication she's forced to take. Soon they come upon a diagnosis that they need actual machinery to prove, so they have to move the party to radiology. But they can't get the X-ray they need if Jason has the gun in his hand. He gives it up, and the rest of the hostages take off except for House, Hadley, and one Clinic patient who shares Hadley's death wish. But when the X-ray doesn't show the tumor House was expecting and Jason still doesn't have his diagnosis, House is so obsessed with getting the right answer that he gives the gun back to Jason, which pisses everyone off.
Then Hadley's kidneys start to fail because of all the medications she's been testing for Jason. That helps House and the Cottages who haven't quit in disgust at his actions come up with the real diagnosis -- a tropical disease that was initially ruled out when Jason said he hadn't been anywhere tropical. He didn't realize that Florida counts as tropical. Jason trades House's freedom for a dose of the necessary medication, but then insists that Hadley take it first, even though it will kill her in her current condition. House seems to feel bad about this, since his obsession will have caused Hadley to die. And he should. In the end, though, she can't inject herself with the deadly drug, and she realizes that she doesn't want to die after all. Jason hasn't seen any episodes of this show before, so he also doesn't want Hadley to die. He injects himself with the drug just as the SWAT team is blowing a hole in the radiology department. The medicine works, and Jason will be perfectly healthy for the long jail sentence that awaits him. Hadley will be fine after a round of dialysis and now she has a sunny new outlook on life, so she signs up for Foreman's Huntington's drug trials. And I have to give her props for doing her best acting job thus far and almost causing me not to want her to die … almost.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!I won't lie: I've been dreading this episode. Seven extra minutes to recap? Yet another Hadley-centric episode, this time where she's in Deadly Danger? The tired hostage situation plot that's been used countless times on television and that I hoped this show was innovative enough to avoid? No, things weren't looking good. But I'll try my very best not to be bitter.
Some music that kind of sounds like "Popular" by Nada Surf plays as we watch another day begin at PPTH. Apparently, the cafeteria ran out of coffee, because people are looking very sluggish. Oh wait -- it's in slow motion. Various Clinic patients hang out in chairs and wait to be seen. We go into regular speed, and one of them, a large man wearing a cap, walks up to Hadley and says he's been waiting for an hour for a simple refill on his migraine medicine. "We'll get to you as soon as we can," Hadley says. "You can get to me now!" the man yells back. If he had a real migraine, I don't think he'd be yelling. Or running after her, still begging for help. "You're not an emergency," Hadley says. "This isn't an emergency room!" Migraine Man points out. No doubt he stopped by PPTH's ER first thing and saw some young blonde woman running around and decided to take his chances in the Clinic instead. His attitude doesn't win him any points with Hadley, who says things won't go any faster for him if he pisses her off. Maybe he wouldn't piss you off if you hadn't been so mean and uncaring to him in the first place, Hadley.
Foreman's been watching from the sidelines, and he steps up to ask Hadley if she has a minute to talk to him. "No!" Hadley says. What crawled up her ass today? Besides more Huntington's, of course. She passes up a file on a patient who needs a "routine exam" for something more interesting, and I don't think it's fair that she's not going in order on the patients, but in what catches her fancy. After all, like Migraine Man said, it's not an emergency room. PPTH sucks. Foreman persists despite her rejection, saying he's consulting on a clinical trial for a new Huntington's drug. "While it's true that no sometimes means yes, in this context ... " Hadley says, trailing off. When does no mean yes, Hadley? When you're forcing yourself on another innocent victim of your nightly prowls? Foreman ignores her and says that the Huntington's drug is showing "real results," which is terrible news for people who don't like Hadley. He offers to try to get Hadley into the trial, but she turns him down. She's not even going to try to deal with the disease she has or do anything that might slow down its progress. This, of course, is great news.