Episode Report Card Sara M: B- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Doctors Without Boundaries
By Sara M | Season 4 | Episode 6 | Aired on 11.05.2007
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.A drag racer collapses after a race and heads to PPTH, where she is soundly ignored as House is whisked away to CIA headquarters and Foreman dismisses her symptoms as dehydration and heat stroke. While House tries to figure out what's ailing a CIA agent with skin problems and a host of other things that look suspiciously like one of those radioactive poisonings that are so popular amongst spies these days, the Numbers challenge Foreman at every turn. CTB and PS even go so far as to run to Cameron when they think it's lupus. For this, Foreman is justifiably pissed at his former co-worker. To her credit, Cameron learns not to interfere in House's business anymore and do her actual job. In the end, it turns out that the agent just ate too many Brazil nuts and the extremely smug, yet amazingly hollow, lady doctor who House was working with on the case decides to quit her job at the CIA and work under House, which means CTB's chances of getting hired are that much slimmer. Which SUCKS. Boooo, CIA doctor! Go away! As for the drag racer, it turns out she has polio, and Random Guy cures her with some vitamin C. Until House comes back to PPTH and figures out that she had simple heat stroke after all and Random Guy poisoned her and faked some labs to make it look like she had polio to get funding for polio research for his beloved Third World. Random Guy has a personality after all: INSANE. And, finally, we learn that House's ring tone is "Whatta Man" by Salt-N-Pepa featuring En Vogue. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
I have to open this recap with an apology -- it seems that last week's Giovannini's Mirror Syndrome was not, as I had assumed, totally made up. Reader Arthur just sent me an email with a link to the British Psychological Society's blog, where a case of a man with brain damage who mimicked the occupations of the people around him. A team headed by a Dr. Giovannina Conchiglia was studying this man, and I'm guessing that's where the show got it from. They called it a "Zelig-like Syndrome" after the Woody Allen movie, though. I guess they're fans of old men who marry their step-daughters. Anyway, my faith in the writers has been restored by this, and I'm sorry for doubting them in the first place. And it's my fault, really, as I had stopped reading the British Psychological Society's blog in favor of the Canadian Psychological Society's blog, which was closely monitoring depression in Canadians following the introduction of Lynn Johnston's hybrid For Better or For Worse comic strips.
Anyway, it's drag racing time at House! Two racers prepare to square off against each other in a sport I simply do not understand. How does it require skill to put your foot on the gas pedal until you reach the finish line? I mean, in regular racing where they have to around a track and pass opponents and stuff, that takes skill. But drag racing seems like you could just wedge a stick between the gas pedal and the dashboard and get the same result. Oh well. The racer who is doomed to become the POTW is a young lady, who goes through her pre-race ritual with her manager/team owner/Dad where he feels like he's going to barf and asks her if she wants to go to law school and she answers that she hates lawyers (although she will probably like them a whole lot more at the end of this episode).
The "race" begins and we're thrown into a realm of CGI while our driver is thrown into a realm of vision problems, seeing the track in slow-motion looking all stretchy-like. Then she gets over it and finishes the race, winning and setting a record. The audience cheers wildly even though they've got to feel kind of stupid for paying money and spending their entire day getting to and from a race that lasted all of three seconds. The driver, Casey, does a post-race interview with a heftier Nick Warnock. What is this so-called "businessman" doing as an actor? Clinging onto the seconds of fame he has left, I suppose. As her dad drives up, Casey excitedly says it was the "coolest ride of [her] life." Then she starts having the vision problems again and passes out. Her dad runs over and tells someone to call an ambulance, although you can't see his face when he says this because the camera is zoomed in on his armpit for no reason.