Episode Report Card Monty Ashley: C+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT All You Need Is Cash
By Monty Ashley | Season 8 | Episode 4 | Aired on 10.31.2011
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Remember how Park punched her old boss? Well, her disciplinary hearing takes place at the end of this episode, and that takes up much of the non-medical discussion. After accidentally betting House that she'll be exonerated, she ends up apologizing and not getting in trouble at all. So if you were expecting her to get fired in the fourth episode of the season, she doesn't. What a twist!
In hospital news, this week's patient is a captain of industry who's thinking of moving his company to China. This provides House with a chance to beg for lots of money and Adams with a chance to talk about jobs leaving the country. He starts with something cool called "Alice in Wonderland Syndrome" and ends up with hyperviscosity syndrome brought on by Y-shaped antibodies from his rheumatoid arthritis. He ends up sending the company to China over his daughter's objections.
In his ongoing campaign to raise money to get his old office back, House steals a laser and hocks it or something. Then he uses the money to buy a lot of stock in the patient's company, so when the China move is announced, House makes enough money to get the laser back, give Wilson five thousand dollars he stole along the way, and buy his old office and staff back. So Chase and Taub will be back next episode, apparently.
Oh, and Adams is late for work early on in the episode. That ends up being because she just got divorced. And I think she gets officially hired at the end of the episode, which is good. I mean, she's been spending all this time treating patients without actually being employed at the hospital, so it's nice to get the paperwork taken care of.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!An older, white-haired gentleman steps out on the front porch of his enormous mansion (it's got marble columns! And not just two or three, either) and flourishes a trash bag to begin the process of de-TP-ing his trees. At first I thought it was just a regular post-Halloween scene, but there are also signs calling him "Benedict Barton" and insisting that he save US jobs. And also he's been hung in effigy. So we are to conclude that he's very rich, but not very popular. A cheerful younger woman drives up in an expensive car, and I naturally assume this is his trophy wife. No, it's his daughter. Cliché: avoided! Anyway, she encourages him to call the cops about the vandalism. Or at least not move the company to China. He won't. He can't! He absolutely must move the company, no matter what it does to local jobs. Well, at least the local effigy-makers are getting work. She suggests some external investors, but he refuses to consider to sell off parts of the company. It's a family business, and it's his responsibility, darn it!
As he protests, he cuts off in the middle of a sentence and looks at his hand. A POV shot reveals that she looks like she's a million miles away. And so does his hand. Finally, he speaks: "I need you to drive me to a doctor." A sensible plan! He's handling this very well.
House has binoculars and is looking through them backwards so things look like they're far away. Park suggests "the JVE virus." House recommends she read the inoculation record so she won't suggest things that are already ruled out. She closes his laptop, then opens it so that he can read her an email from her ex-boss apologizing for hypothetical sexual harassment. What's happened is that he's taken some sexual harassment courses and issued a blanket apology that doesn't admit to anything specific. This is relevant because Park's disciplinary hearing for punching him is coming up. She insists that he grabbed her behind, although House characterizes it as a "celebratory slap." House: "You are so fired." Park is fired up and defiant and says, "A hundred bucks says I don't get fired." He takes the bet and promptly fires her. It begins to dawn on her that House doesn't play fair. She tries to modify the bet to whether she'll be fired after the hearing, and House chooses to interpret that as a further bet, in addition to the one she already lost, putting her "a C-note in the hole." Such colorful language! Do you think he picked that up in the joint?