Episode Report Card Sara M: B | 1 USERS: A YOU GRADE IT Hold Me Closer, Tiny Dancer
By Sara M | Season 5 | Episode 23 | Aired on 05.04.2009
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.This episode had like sixty things going on in it as the writers are clearly rushing to jam all their ideas in before the season ends next week, so I'll do my best to sum it all up: the patient of the week is a star ballerina whose lungs keep collapsing. House treats her with antibiotics before confirming his diagnosis as usual, but this time that results in a rare reaction where all of her skin falls off. Whoops! The team works around this complication as well as possible until House figures out she has some kind of crazy gonorrhea that formed an abscess in her heart. House then takes off, leaving the Cottages to figure out how to get that abscess out while their patient is all septic. They do it with dopamine, which then turns right around and kills off all of her appendages. She refuses to allow Chase to amputate her hands and feet, which is a great decision since it allows Taub to come up with a way to save them and, thus, her career. Her relationship with her dance partner boyfriend, however, will not be saved because he really didn't appreciate getting the clap from her.
Meanwhile, Chase and Cameron's wedding plans come to yet another screeching halt when Cameron admits that she wants to hang onto her Poor Dead Husband's frozen sperm just in case things with Chase don't work out. He tells her to marry him when she's as sure about them as he is, although if he really felt that way he shouldn't have asked her and her crazy weirdness to marry him in the first place. It's not like this is anything new. House continues to see CTB and has no choice but to tell Wilson about it so he can keep House in check while they try to figure out what's wrong with him. This involves yet another near-death experience for House until the only possible hallucination cause remaining is the Vicodin. At this point, Wilson basically disappears and House goes to Cuddy to help him detox. After just one day of hell, he's feeling much better and CTB seems to be gone for good. He's so relieved that he has sex with Cuddy.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!It's about time an opening on this show took us somewhere classy, wouldn't you say? This week, we go to the ballet, which has been made to look as music-video-exciting as possible. It's all too much for a male dancer, who complains to the conductor of the orchestra that he's "too fast." The conductor says his musicians are playing at the same speed as usual, and the rehearsal continues. The directors/producers/whoevers watching from the audience exposit that while the male dancer, Jeremy, is a whiny little bitch with a bad back no one cares about, his female partner, Penelope, is a superstar of the dancing world. With that, she leaps into Jeremy's arms and he holds her high above his head until his back gives out and they both fall to the floor. While he clutches his back in pain, she's gasping for air, and the Magic Schoolbus Cam zooms in to show us her collapsing lungs.
House is watching nature shows on TV in his PJs and a bathrobe and eating cereal while, in the corner, CTB went to the hallucination music store and bought herself a hallucination ukulele that she plays for attention. She will not be ignored, and House says he's not going to listen to her because she tried to kill Chase, even if that apparently is what he wants subconsciously. As he gets up to answer a knock at the door, CTB warns him that he isn't being rational. At least, "not completely."
House answers the door to find Foreman, who would have called ahead except that House left his phone off. He says they've got a new case and the patient is high profile -- the star of the New York Ballet. House doesn't care and insists that he's taking a personal day, even when Foreman says Cuddy threatened to fire House if he refused to come in. Oddly enough, CTB seems to take Cuddy's threats seriously, which is ridiculous since we all know, both consciously and subconsciously, that Cuddy would never ever fire House. When CTB points out that she's not going to disappear anytime soon to allow him to go back to work, he decides he might as well put in an appearance. I guess even hallucinations can get boring if you hang out with them in your miserable apartment for too long.
In the meeting room, the Cottages exposit that Penelope continues to suffer collapsed lungs no matter what they do, and they can't find any evidence as to why. CTB lets us know that House isn't paying attention to any of this before suggesting dehydration. House ignores her and suggests a pulmonary contusion. Hadley says there's no evidence of that on any of the scans, and CTB persists that the dehydration is masking an existing infection. House has no choice but to put that suggestion forward, and sends the Cottages off to give Penelope fluids and antibiotics. "We're like Magic [Johnson] and Kareem [Abdul-Jabbar]!" CTB says, holding a hand up for a high-five. House leaves her hanging while probably hoping that he gets to be the Kareem, since Magic kind of has HIV and stuff. Then again, he also owns half the businesses in Inglewood, so it's not so bad.
Meanwhile, Wilson is informing a patient with a long last name and a silly wig that he has kidney cancer. "Wow. Is that a bad one?" Mr. Petramalaersafdadingdong asks. That's when House walks in unannounced and says he needs to talk to Wilson. Mr. Petramalaersafdadingdong says he just found out he has cancer, so he'd like House to get in line. "I'm hallucinating!" House says. If I had the kidney cancer, I'd still tell him to get in line, but Wilson decides to take this one, leaving Mr. Petramalaersafdadingdong to wonder if a hospital with a hallucinating doctor and an oncologist who doesn't understand how to prioritize is really the best place for him.
In the hallway, House already has the solution to his problem: he'll just make Wilson sit in on all of his differentials to make sure that he's still able to treat patients properly. Obviously, Wilson doesn't think it's a good idea for House to be practicing medicine at all, but House says he probably just has sleep apnea, which means that he doesn't get a good night's sleep no matter how much sleep he thinks he gets. Ah, yes, one of those cases of sudden-onset sleep apnea with no symptoms except hallucinations. Sure. Wilson asks if House has any other weird neurological symptoms while CTB tells House to be nicer to his friend, who is only trying to help. "Enough!" House says to her. Wilson is offended, so House has to clear up that he was yelling at the hallucination, not Wilson. But he won't say who he's actually hallucinating up, which is probably a good idea. When pressed, he says it's Kumar, and CTB says that's a good lie, since Wilson now feels bad and will be disposed to helping him out. Sure enough, Wilson agrees.
Chase and Cameron are having an evening in of take-out food, wine, and some whine, as Cameron passive-aggressively mentions that they eat take-out from the same place almost every night because of Chase's apparent lack of restaurant originality. And then she comes up with this doozy: "I have my husband's sperm." This is not appropriate dinner conversation. Chase isn't quite sure what Cameron's trying to say, here. She says she and her Poor Dead Husband decided to freeze his sperm after his cancer diagnosis, although I'm not sure why since I thought she met him or at least only wanted to marry him AFTER he was diagnosed and BECAUSE of that diagnosis. And apparently Cameron held onto the stuff after he died just in case she ever wanted a child and couldn't find another, less dead man to give it to her. And even though Chase is on the scene, she still wants to hold onto the sperm just in case things don't work out with him. After all, as she says, "nobody plans on getting divorced." True, but then Cameron says she didn't plan on her husband dying either, which is not true since, again, I'm pretty sure it was established that she married him BECAUSE he was dying and she wanted to keep him company. Meanwhile, Chase should not have planned on wearing a short-sleeve dress shirt with a sweater vest because it is ugly. I think I've said everything I can possibly say about Cameron's craziness, which this storyline has taken to epic new levels, so I'll leave it at that.
House spends the night in the sleep lab to confirm his silly diagnosis of sleep apnea. Wilson appeals to him to consider other reasons for the hallucination, like his drug addiction or a late effect of his recent motorcycle accident. He thinks House should be admitted so they can really find out. CTB knows that the apnea diagnosis is wrong and thinks House should tell Wilson that he's scared. "Can't sleep with you here," House says. If you rearrange the letters in that, you almost get "I'm scared." But not quite. Wilson sighs and leaves the room.
The next morning, House enters Wilson's office to announce that he's still hallucinating and the apnea test was negative. Sure enough, CTB appears next to House along with a very real Foreman, who reminds House that he still has a patient and the antibiotics aren't helping. House wants to test her for pneumonia, but the standard test can't be done because her lungs are in such bad condition. House suggests an alternative way to test for it that Wilson compares to water-boarding and CTB seems to like the idea of very much, which tells you all you need to know about how unpleasant it'll be for poor Penelope. House subtlely checks with Wilson to make sure that he's suggesting something within his normal realm of insanity and not super hallucination insanity, and Wilson gives him the green light. Foreman detects there's something going on between them, but can't be bothered to really find out what. He leaves to torture Penelope and House hands Wilson some differentials he wrote for himself on the back of an envelope, which should make the Whiteboard O'Symptoms really jealous: infection, trauma, MS, schizophrenia, and, he adds verbally, pills. CTB informs House that he wrote infection at the top not because it's the most likely candidate, but because that's what it'll be since it's curable and means House will be able t