Episode Report Card Sara M: A- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Poor Lee, Doing Poorly
By Sara M | Season 5 | Episode 19 | Aired on 03.30.2009
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.After House gets in a motorcycle accident while cruising around New York, he winds up in the ER next to a man and he out-doctors the ER doctors (who were about to donate the guy's organs) by diagnosing him as having locked-in syndrome following a bike accident. That means the only movement Lee can control is blinking. House decides that Lee's brain damage was what caused his accident rather than was caused by it, and that's enough to persuade Lee to transfer to PPTH, where Wilson will stop at nothing to find out what House was doing in New York in the first place. While Taub struggles to come up with the correct diagnosis in order to secure his job, it's Kumar who comes up with everything, both incorrect (heavy metal poisoning) and correct (liver failure caused by a rat pee borne illness). Once the rat pee illness is treated with antibiotics, Lee is mobile again even though his liver already failed and we don't hear about him getting a new one. Though Taub doesn't get the diagnosis after all, his willingness to lie to House that he did is enough to show House that he wants to be there. Wilson finally gets to the bottom of House's mystery trip and discovers he was seeing a psychiatrist. House assures him that was a one-shot-only deal, to which Wilson assures him that he'll die alone. Fun!
Want more? The full recap starts right below!So this episode is shot partially from the perspective of a guy who can't move, which means it should be pretty cool to watch and make productive and good use of my arch nemesis Deran Serafian's directorial talents. Except that, skipping ahead here, he isn't directing this week. I can't believe I'm saying this, but that's a shame. We get various glimpses of hospital things and personnel that you might see if you were lying on your back looking up, mostly blurry as I'm assuming the eyes this POV belongs to try to focus and he drops in and out of consciousness. He wonders what's wrong with his legs and groggily asks someone to talk to him, but all he gets is a doctor standing over him sighing that he has a "great heart for transplant." That's one of the worst things you can hear in a hospital, followed of course by "oops!" or possibly "ohmigod WHAT IS THAT????" But there's hope on the horizon, as a familiar voice with a familiar slight lisp calls out that removing the organs from live patients is kind of unethical. "Get back in your bed please, Mr. House," the unethical doctor responds. "It's actually Dr. House," House says, and we see his arm come into focus as he moves to the patient's bedside. His shirt sleeve is ripped and there's a bloody bandage on his arm. House medical crisis #14,503,442,345! The unethical doctor exposits that House is in this hospital because he was in a motorcycle accident so he can get back in bed and stop trying to consult. House exposits that he suffered a mere flesh wound to his elbow. As for the patient, the unethical doctor says, "he's brain dead. So drop it." "No I'm not!" patient says. But he obviously isn't saying any of this out loud, so House will have to prove his case. He points out some brain waves on the patient's monitors. The unethical doctor doesn't think they mean anything. Really? If a guy is truly brain dead, I'd think that would mean it was too dead to produce any waves at all. Meanwhile, he isn't responding to pain or stimuli, so he must be brain dead, case closed for Dr. Unethical. This is why people don't like to be organ donors. They're always afraid of getting the one doctor who's in a hurry and knows a nice little girl their heart is a perfect match for. House points out that the patient's eye is following his movements. Dr. Unethical smugly calls that an "involuntary reflex," pointing out that as a doctor, House should really know that. Now that he's sufficiently baited House to do any and everything to prove him wrong, House leans over and comes into view. He looks directly into our patient (and therefore, our) eyes and says "I also know about locked-in syndrome." I know about it too, and it sucks. I think I'd rather be dead. House asks the patient to blink if he can hear him. He does. "This is gonna be fun," House says. Not for the guy who's locked-in, I'd wager.