Adverse Events
Updated 2008-10-01 08:58:11
While a classical guitar plays on the soundtrack, an artist paints a naked (but strategically posed) woman on a couch while her husband watches, thrilled to bits. Aw, that's kind of sweet. The artist, by the way, is played by Breckin Meyer, so it's a foregone conclusion that he's the Patient of the Week here. Although they did fool us once before by putting Brandy in an episode, only to have her appear for three seconds. Breckin finishes the painting and the couple sees it for the first time. They're not impressed. In fact, the husband is furious. "This is not what we discussed or what I paid for!" he says. The artist, whose name is Brandon, doesn't understand the problem, saying this is one of his better works. The philistine of a husband demands a refund, both verbally and physically with a punch to Brandon's face. Brandon goes flying into his easel and the noise gets the attention of his girlfriend, who comes running downstairs as the husband says he'd better have his refund by Friday ... or else! He and his wife take off (the wife wearing only a bathrobe, so that's going to be an interesting ride home. Hope they don't have to stop for gas!), leaving Girlfriend Heather to ask her bleeding boyfriend what just happened. Brandon has no idea why the husband would get so upset, but when Heather sees the painting -- and, finally, so do we -- she has a pretty good idea: it's an abstract of the wife's face. The problem is, the husband paid for a perfect likeness, and Brandon seems to think that's what he gave him. Wait, so ... does he see the wavy face as perfectly normal, or did he think the wife's face actually looked like that and didn't feel the need to call the government to report an alien invasion?
House is in the cafeteria with his new friend the P.I., who gets a name this week. It's Lucas. Lucas has just dropped off a packet of information about House's fellows, and House is very pleased with the results. Cuddy, however, is not. Because she is not stupid (well, not that stupid), she noticed that House was trying to slip Lucas's bills into PPTH's repair budget. Lucas quickly stands up to introduce himself, but Cuddy ignores him to tell House that she will not be paying for the "repairs" to the vending machine, cryostat, or elevator. House protests that Lucas spying on Wilson somehow saves PPTH's patients' lives, therefore saving the hospital money in the long run. Cuddy points out that saving lives actually costs the hospital money, although I really hope real hospital administrators out there don't think like that (but have a horrible feeling that they do). With that, Cuddy apologizes to Lucas, who's been awkwardly checking her out this whole time. "I like the shoes," he tells her. "Thank ... you ...?" Cuddy says, apparently not used to getting compliments about her outfits. That's probably because the only feedback she gets regarding her choice of business attire has been from the PPTH board of directors, and it goes like this: "Please stop dressing like a stripper pretending to be a teacher." So this is new ground for her. She walks off and House figures out that Lucas really meant to compliment Cuddy's legs rather than her shoes. Lucas, watching Cuddy's exit, thinks it's "less creepy" to say shoes than legs. "Less creepy, more gay," House answers. Meanwhile, House knows more about women's shoes than like any straight guy ever, what with the not hiring fellows who wear Prada . With that, Lucas asks what a cryostat is. House has no idea -- that was a genuine repair that Cuddy is now refusing to pay for. It's all fun and games until the cryostat breaks again and Cuddy can't find anyone to repair it since PPTH has now been added to the New Jersey State Cryostat Repairman Deadbeat list.
For some reason, House brought props to the differential session: Brandon's works of art. They aren't very good. In fact, the accidental abstract portrait is probably his best piece. The others are plain old undistorted pictures that look like the best my high school art class could churn out. And we didn't even have money for certain colors of paint, or new paintbrushes. While Taub plays art critic, Foreman says the "acute onset visual agnosia" could be a stroke or a brain tumor. Meanwhile, House is staring at Hadley, and it's making her uncomfortable. It throws her off her game (or maybe she just sucks at her job, which is actually much more likely given what we've seen of her "skills") and she diagnoses Brandon with a typical artist's drug problem even though the ER already obviously checked him for drugs when he was admitted. House calls her a moron for this and then asks why her car loan has a twelve percent interest rate. Hadley is so shocked that she forgets to play it cool and admits that she does, indeed, pay that much interest although she doesn't say why. Ha ha! Hadley has bad credit. Ha ha ha! She'd better watch out -- I heard that defaulting on loans is one of the first symptoms of Huntington's. With this, the entire team realizes that House's pet P.I. has investigated them all, and they're not thrilled. Especially not Taub, although since House already knows that he was fired from his old job for sleeping with a nurse, he couldn't have much more to hide, could he? Hadley asks how this could possibly be relevant to their jobs, and House says you never know -- perhaps Brandon has neurosyphilis and the last vial of penicillin is in a room at the end of a twenty-mile long, two-foot high hallway. Actually, I'm pretty sure that's where Marco the Pharmacist is hiding out these days since he got sick of House breaking into his little clinic pharmacy and stealing his drugs. A long, short hallway is pretty much House-proof with his bad leg.
"You've discovered that one of us has been hiding the ability to stretch or shrink themselves?" Taub asks. That struck me as hilariously funny, as did House's indignant response: "No. I would never out someone's super powers." It would be awesome if we found out that Kumar had arms like Dhalsim, but this show isn't Heroes so the explanation is much more ordinary than that -- Kumar once crawled a world record twenty miles. "My name's in the Guinness Book ," he says. SCANDALOUS! Come on, Lucas. Surely you can do better than that. Taub says that must really get the ladies' attention. Kumar says he didn't do it to get ladies. "No. That would cheapen the purity of your achievement," Taub says. Oh, look at Taub with his cutting wit today! House just smiles, loving every moment of his team's discomfort and in-fighting. Honestly, though, I can't see how he thought Kumar would be ashamed of his crawling record. Maybe it left him with badly scarred knees or something, but even those would be marks of honor and not shame. Foreman asks if they can get back to work now. Kumar shrugs that they just need to give Brandon an MRI with contrast (of DOOOM?) and asks what Lucas got on Taub. House says he has nothing on Taub. He does, however, have something juicy on Taub's wife. "That's enough," Foreman says warningly. Since when did Foreman care that House was abusing his fellows? Maybe Foreman slept with Taub's wife and doesn't want it to get out. House gets all huffy and says they can get right to work looking at Brandon's head and his giant artist loft. "Can't Lucas?" Kumar asks hopefully. House immediately shoots that down. Lucas is busy. That's bad news for everyone with either something to hide or a world record.
Hadley and Foreman prepare Brandon for the MRI. Brandon is cautious about the contrast and asks if it's dangerous. Brandon must sense that the MRI is hungry for its next victim. Hadley says there's a "small chance" that the contrast could cause an allergic reaction. Brandon turns to Foreman -- obviously trusting him much more than Hadley -- and asks if that means he could stop breathing. Foreman says they're prepared to deal with anything that could happen. Especially bloody asses. They get those a lot here. Worried, Brandon whips out his sketch book and shows off his latest drawings, saying they're not distorted so maybe the visual agnosia was just a passing thing or a reaction to something he ate. Foreman points out that that's not the typical response to food poisoning and tries not to be too condescending. I mean, come on. Something he ate? Dumbass. Heather speaks up to urge Brandon to sign the consent form. He does, but he doesn't look thrilled about it. Hadley and Foreman exchange looks.
Over at Brandon's loft, Kumar and Taub look around for possible toxins. Incidentally, that loft set looks really strange, like it's a set for a theatrical production. Did they film this in the prop shop or something? Kumar asks Taub about the dirt House got on his wife. Taub shrugs it off, saying he doubts there's any dirt on his wife to get. Kumar tries to rile him up, saying he should know if his wife is "doing the doorman" on the sheets Taub pays for. How do you know Taub pays for those sheets, Kumar? Maybe the wife has a job. Taub is pretty confident that's not the case since he doesn't have a doorman. Ah, but maybe you do, Taub, but you never seen him because he's always up in your apartment doing your wife. "If my wife was a slut, I'd want to know," Kumar says rather viciously. I guess he's still smarting from Taub's not-at-all insulting remarks about him getting a crawling world record to get chicks.
Brandon's MRI went off without a hitch, which is disappointing. So is the result: Brandon's brain looks perfectly clean and free of tumors. House says they're just left with drugs. Taub points out that House called Hadley (Taub calls her Thirteen, which is stupid and annoying. We know her name now. She's wearing a nametag, and I'm sure it doesn't say "Thirteen" on it. Call her by her real name) a moron when she suggested drugs. Yeah, but Hadley is a moron so it's all good. House uses this as an excuse to bring up Taub's wife again, and Foreman again interrupts him to suggest that Brandon could have had a cavernous angioma that leaked, causing the symptoms, and was then re-absorbed so the symptoms went away and it wouldn't show up on the MRI. Hadley says good luck getting Brandon to consent to a test for that, given how uneasy he was about the simple contrast MRI. This surprises House, and Hugh Laurie should not stand in front of a light box while he's wearing that hairpiece. I do have to say, though, that it's a very convincing hairpiece and would've fooled me except that a) House had quite the bald spot going on in the pilot and bald spots don't just disappear, and b) Hugh Laurie doesn't wear a piece when he's out and about, and the thicker they make his fake hair on this show, the thinner his hair seems to get in real life. House asks a seemingly unimportant question: is Brandon's girlfriend hot? "Very. And if he dies, it's good news for all of us," Hadley says. Oh, every once in a while, they actually give her a good line and she delivers it well. Armed with this information, House says he's figured the whole thing out. With that, he's off to tell Brandon he may have a massive brain tumor, even though they just finished figuring out that he doesn't.
While Taub, Kumar, and Foreman don't see any reason to accompany House and figure out what's going on, Hadley does. She chases House down into Brandon's room (not sure why she had to run to keep up with House, but maybe she had to stop on the way to file for bankruptcy again or something). House tells Brandon that although they found no trace of a brain tumor in his scans, they think there's one in there, and the only way to fix it now is with a risky head-cutting exploratory surgery. Brandon refuses because he knows that they did the head-cutting surgery last week and they never repeat themselves two weeks in a row. Actually, he refuses because he knows his problem isn't a brain tumor, as his reaction to hearing about his possible brain tumor suggests. He wasn't upset or terrified like you'd expect someone who just heard that news would be. And that's because, as House has already figured out, Brandon knows what caused the visual agnosia. "What drugs were you on?" House asks. "His drug tests were clean," Hadley says. Um, way to try to undermine your boss, Hadster. Shut up. House says they were, but they don't test for every drug. For example, if Brandon were supplementing his artist non-income by signing up for drug trials to preserve the illusion to his hot girlfriend (because you only try to keep the hot girlfriends. Ugly ones ain't worth it, apparently) that he's a rich and successful artist, those drugs would not show up on the tox screen. House tells Brandon to admit the truth now while his girlfriend isn't in the room. Brandon does. He says he's been acting as a guinea pig for not one, but THREE pre-FDA-approved drugs. Wow, you only have to do three drug trials to afford a huge loft? Hmmm ...
House tells Brandon that since he's been symptom-free since his admission, whatever drug caused this is probably out of his system by now. He tells Hadley to keep Brandon overnight and get the names of the drugs Brandon's been taking. I hope she follows that up by telling his health insurance carrier that he just wasted a lot of hospital time and resources by not telling them that he was on experimental drugs in the first place. As for Brandon, his only concern is that Heather doesn't find out about this. House reassures him that he can't tell her, "even if [he] cared enough to want to."
Taub has been staking out House's office, so when House goes there to get his things and head out, Taub is there to meet him. House isn't surprised. Taub wants to know what he knows about his wife. House says "the point" of this "exercise" is to see how the entire group reacts, so he won't tell Taub anything without everyone else there, too. "Cut the crap, House," Taub says. House realizes that he might be able to jerk Hadley and Kumar around, but Taub is older and wiser and less willing to bend. He tells Taub that his wife has a secret bank account she's been making regular deposits to for the last year. Taub plays it cool, saying it's not a secret bank account. House doubts this, noting that Taub referred to it as "a bank account" and not " the bank account." Which is actually an important distinction. Very clever! But Taub continues to deny it. He says his wife set the account up for their refurnishing budget. House points out that the account has almost a hundred thousand dollars in it. Wow -- that's almost as much as Hadley's credit card debt! Although I guess if I knew I was going to die in about ten years, I'd go ahead and ring up an enormous credit card debt, too. Why not? I would spend so much money on hot air balloon trips, too. Taub seems taken aback by the amount, but doesn't drop the act. With that, their beepers go off.
You didn't really think Brandon was all better, did you? We aren't even fifteen minutes in! He's having a seizure. Heather hovers over him, asking what's wrong. House takes that opportunity to check her out and agrees with Hadley's assessment that she is hot. The best part is House's look after he says it and checks her out again as we go to commercial. Bit campy there, Laurie.
House is unconcerned about Brandon's condition, figuring the seizure is just an effect of the drugs not yet being out of his system. Kumar points out that none of the drugs Brandon admitted to taking are known to cause seizures, and House says that might be true of them taken by themselves, but three unproven and untested drugs together -- "that's like the Mod Squad." And they just gave Brandon a 20% warning rate. Kumar gets all political and says it's "ridiculous" that drug companies can give humans potentially dangerous drugs for money. And yet, there are some people out there who would rather we test drugs on humans than animals. House takes a different approach and blames the people rather than the companies, saying they shouldn't get desperate enough for money to test potentially dangerous drugs. Meanwhile, House once faked terminal brain cancer to have an experimental painkiller thing put in his brain , so who's desperate now? House says it's all for a good cause anyway, since the desperate people test drugs that later save puppies and children. Except that they don't. They can save men from having a flaccid penis or people who toss and turn at night from what they're meant to believe is restless leg syndrome, but they still can't cure cancer. And that's the biggest shame of all.
With that, House arrives at a vending machine and puts his hand out for money from the team, all of whom immediately reach for the change in their pockets. Even Foreman, who I thought was past this kind of thing by now. Pathetic. Hadley reads off the chart because she doesn't have any money to spare. Ha ha ha! House interrupts her to give the first of Brandon's drugs a cool name, since before they're put on the market with names like Nexium and Requip, they're just long boring numbers. In honor of Hadley, he names the first one Bisexadrine. Hadley doesn't protest, knowing that the alternative was probably Huntingtonium. Without missing a beat, she calls the drug Bisexadrine and says it's an anticoagulant. House names the second drug Cuckoldasol while staring at Taub, cluing Kumar into Taub's wife's secret. He asks if she's having an affair. Mind your own business, Kumar! He cares about this way too much. Taub explains that his wife has a not-so-secret bank account and it's no big deal. With that, Foreman changes the subject back to the drugs, saying drug three (Worldssorestkneesasil -- lame. How about Murderedparentsasil?) is an autoimmune treatment with "almost no side effects" because it probably doesn't work. Foreman says there are a million ways the three drugs could interact with each other. House doesn't feel like taking the time to find out which one is doing what and orders them to put Brandon on dialysis to clean his system out for good. Taub the Negative points out that a "rapid detox" could lead to other complications. House says complications they can predict are much better than ones they can't.
Hadley hooks Brandon up to the dialysis machine. He asks if this means his kidneys are failing. She says no. Taub butts in and says Brandon is more worried about how he's going to explain this to Heather than what shape his kidneys are in. If I was Brandon, I'd be like, "hey! Shut it, baldy. I don't need my doctor working out his own personal trust issues with his wife through me." "I just don't want her to worry," Brandon says weakly. "You mean you don't want her to leave you," Hadley says, getting in on the fun. Brandon defends himself in a way that makes Taub think: he says he never lied to Heather about "anything important." He is an artist, and he used to sell paintings. He's just doing the drug testing thing to tide himself over until things pick up again. I used to work with a guy who told his girlfriend he was a producer even though he really worked as a tape-dubber. When she came to visit, we'd always have to play along that he was a producer. And he said it was okay because one day he really would be a producer, so he wasn't really lying. He didn't seem to care that his girlfriend cared more about his job than his personality, or what it said about his feelings about her that he assumed she'd be that shallow. Men suck. Hadley urges Brandon to just tell Heather the truth. Taub says he can't because this lie makes Heather happy. Brandon just lies there like "Am I in the ICU or the psych wing?"
Outside, Hadley has figured out that Taub did not know about the bank account. He admits that he didn't, but since his wife isn't, to the best of his knowledge, sleeping around or spending the money, he doesn't see a reason to do anything about it. Hadley still thinks a conversation is warranted, but Taub says he's in one of those rare happy relationships, and it's because they don't ever communicate about anything. I think it's more like he cheated on her and knowing she's doing something behind his back makes him feel less guilty.
House comes into work the next morning. Taub meets him at the door and says after the dialysis, Brandon's been symptom-free. House has a feeling Taub has more to say. He does: "You can screw with me all you want at work, but stay out of my personal life." Well, now that the boundaries have been clearly established, I'm sure House will stick to them. "What did she say?" House asks. He chose to listen to the first part of Taub's statement and not the second. "Want my advice?" he asks. "Of course not," Taub says. House says that's good, since he doesn't have the faintest idea what Taub should do about this. He does, however, know what Taub will do: he'll forgive the wife for the account, confess to his cheating ways, and beg for forgiveness from her. "I'm not saying you should ... but you will," House says before ducking into the elevator, which always has the best timing.
Inside, House is hearing voices. Actually, it's just one voice -- Lucas's. And it's coming from a tiny transmitter in his ear. Lucas claims he's six miles away and House is in love with the technology that makes Lucas sound so clear from so far away. Lucas says he just feels like an idiot, and then he feels like even more of one when a woman sitting next to him hears this and thinks she's sitting next to a crazy man who talks to himself. With that, Lucas easily slips into the role of Wil-psychologist and tells House he likes making people like Taub miserable and driving everyone away from him. House thinks Taub "deserves" to know the truth. Yeah, right. And Hadley "deserved" to know the truth about her bad credit? She already knew that! Why can't House just admit that he wanted to stir shit up and torture people? With that, we realize that Lucas lied to House (even though he said he was bad at lying) and is actually quite close -- in the clinic. Cuddy's there, too. Lucas tries to conceal himself behind a newspaper, but she sees him and shakes her head.
House continues his conversation as he disembarks from the elevator, drawing a weird look from a woman waiting to get on. Heh. Lucas quite accurately points out that Taub is only one of House's fellows now because he had to leave the exciting world of plastic surgery to save his marriage. If that marriage falls apart now because of House's meddling, then House can kiss Taub good-bye. House gets a "shit! I didn't think of that!" look on his face.
Over at Brandon's room, things are not going well at all. Brandon's head and neck have swelled up and he can't breathe. Someone went a little overboard with the swollen neck makeup job, by the way. He looks like a bullfrog. Or like Gwyneth Paltrow in her Shallow Hal fat suit. Foreman's having trouble finding a place to cut for the tracheotomy with the neck so swollen. Hell, people are going to have trouble fitting in the room if Brandon's face gets any bigger. Kumar tells him to just start cutting and hope he finds the trachea, because they don't have much choice. That's risky, since one man's trachea incision is another's throat-slashing murder. But after all that, Foreman easily finds it and Brandon can breathe again.
After the break, Kumar explains that Brandon's face is so swollen that his tear ducts have been squeezed shut. Yikes. Various steroids and creams to reduce the swelling have had little effect and Brandon's tested negative for face swelling-related diseases. But House isn't paying attention to any of this since he just found out that Hadley paid for a three-year-gym membership but has only gone twice. He wants to know why. Well, clearly Hadley isn't very good at spending money and probably buys lots of things she doesn't really need or use. Also, she's busy working for you, so maybe she doesn't have time for the gym. The Cottages just stare at him and wait for him to finish. He says he's not going to bother wasting his time with their diagnoses since he already knows what Brandon's problem is: drugs.
Foreman reminds House that Brandon's been on dialysis to rid his system of the drugs. House thinks the swelling is a symptom of Brandon's rapid detox. You know, I watch Intervention a lot and I don't even think I've seen that happen. Hadley calls it withdrawal, and House quickly takes a bunch of Vicodins just to reassure himself that they're there. House says either they need to find a better way to detox Brandon so his face doesn't swell up again or they have to be sure that the new symptoms aren't because some of the drugs are somehow still in his system. Either way, they have to detox Brandon. House's plan to do this? Put Brandon back on the drugs that are killing him. This time, though, they'll wean him off of the drugs gradually. Having now lost faith in House, the Cottages look to Foreman for guidance. "Try it out," he shrugs. On their way out, House calls Taub aside. Taub just says he didn't talk to his wife and keeps walking. Aw, House almost looked sincere there.
Meanwhile, someone wearing the same cap as Lucas is still in the clinic, reading the Most Boring Newspaper of all time. Seriously, what is this, prop department? The "Banner Times?" Stories like "Pilots Warned by FAA" and "Lower $$$ Spurs Foreign Buy-Outs?" A picture of a nondescript building and some trees? I've seen better journalism in the paper you get in a SimCity 2000 game! Cuddy comes across the man and snatches his paper away, ready to tear into Lucas. But it's not Lucas sitting there. "Excuse me!" the man says, all bent out of shape that Cuddy ruined his boring newspaper. And right in the middle of that thrilling buy-outs article, too! Cuddy apologizes and walks away, embarrassed.
She heads for her office, where she finds the real Lucas searching her desk. He gave his cap to a man who sort of looks like him to distract Cuddy so he could search her office. That man is a weirdo for accepting a cap from a total stranger and wearing it without washing it first. I hope he learns his lesson and gets lice. Lucas admires Cuddy's boobs and says he likes her blouse. Cuddy bends over the desk and tells Lucas that if House wants to dig up dirt on her, he can just ask her himself. Right, I'm sure she'd volunteer blackmail information, too. Lucas says he isn't doing this for House, but for himself. He wanted to get to know Cuddy before he asked her out. If I were Cuddy, I'd call the cops. But she just lets Lucas ramble on that he considers this "research" and then he puts his feet up on her desk. Cuddy does say that Lucas is creepy, but Lucas says it's not like he could find out anything steamy about her based on her work desk. Well, he knows that now. What if she kept her coke stash in there? "I'm not a creep. I just thought you seemed interesting," Lucas says. I'm sorry, but ... he's a creep. He did bring a bouquet of flowers, though, and he leaves them with Cuddy on his way out. He gets to the door before trying to make a deal: he'll give her embarrassing information on House if she goes on a date with. And gives him money. Lucas doesn't work for free, unless it's for House because I'm pretty sure House hasn't given him a cent yet. "If you pay me while I check you out, it's all cool," Lucas says. CREEPY. Plus, Cuddy will have "leverage" and something she can use against House next time she needs to keep him in line. Cuddy gets all offended that Lucas would think she needs help keeping House in line, as if she doesn't let House run amok all over her hospital all the time. In the end, Cuddy can't resist the charms of a pathetically desperate man and agrees to the deal. She then asks him how he knew she liked roses. "I was in your house last night," Lucas deadpans, and Cuddy's expression goes from flattered to horrified in 0.1 second. Lucas claims he was kidding, but I don't think he was. Remember, he's bad at lying.
It's too bad that Taub isn't actually refurnishing his home because it has got some ugly furniture going on. It reminds me of pictures of my grandparents' house in the 70's except there's no shag rug ... yet. He and the unnamed wife sit down for a sushi dinner and talk about a boring library fundraiser. When Taub isn't instantly thrilled about the Parker Quartet, Wife determines that something is wrong. Taub finally comes out with it, lying that while looking for a letter opener in her desk, he came across a bunch of bank statements from a secret account. Wife looks terrified, then exhales "I was so close." Taub asks what $83,000 was close to. I want to know how much money he has that $83,000 could have gone missing without him realizing it. Wife comes clean: she set up the account to save money to buy Taub a car! Oh, no! Now he feels like a double asshole for cheating on her and suspecting her of stealing his money in an effort to leave him! Taub is flabbergasted. Wife says she knew Taub would never buy an expensive car for himself, so she took his money and bought one for him. It's being delivered on Friday. "You are amazing," Taub says, looking like a huge weight has just been lifted off his shoulders. "Lucky you," Wife says. I think that weight on Taub's shoulders just came back, heavier than ever.
And now it's been, like, one day and they've "gradually" weaned Brandon off of his drugs. His swelling has gone down and he tells Hadley he feels great, but he's got a strange look in his eye. When she tries to listen to his heart, he lunges for her and brings her back down to the bed. I guess those two times Hadley went to the gym she partook of the kickboxing class, because she nails Brandon in the face with a right cross. He screams and lies back on the bed, nose bleeding. He's been punched twice in one episode, which I think beats House's personal best. All manner of nurse and Foreman runs in. "What happened to his face?" Foreman wonders. "The question is, what happened to his hormones?" Hadley asks, calling out for an ice pack. Good punch, poor follow-through.
Back in the conference room, Kumar thinks they can finally rule the drugs out of the diagnosis, since Brandon's system has been cleared of them twice now. Taub says the drugs could have set off a "dormant neurological condition." Or maybe Brandon got horny. That happens, too. House takes this opportunity to says that coming clean can be damaging. Aside from triggering dormant neurological conditions, for example, it can lead to divorce. Taub figures this is about him and says the bank account was to buy him a car. Once again, it's Foreman who gets back to the case, suggesting a disease that causes hyper sexuality and visual agnosia. House starts talking about the horrific life Brandon can look forward to if it is that disease, but this time it's Taub's turn to interrupt. He's decided to demand an apology from House, and he even uses his newfound spine to stand up when he does so. He says any rationalization House had for digging into his life and his wife's disappeared as soon as it turned out that the wife had a real, non-threatening reason to have that bank account. House does not actually apologize, although he does say that Taub is "right." Not that House owes him an apology, but that House no longer has to worry that Taub will use his wife's indiscretion to admit to his own. Since his wife didn't do anything wrong, Taub can keep his mouth shut. This answer couldn't have been what Taub was looking for, but he seems to accept it.
Meanwhile, Foreman and Hadley have given up on House and Taub's participation in this differential session and talk amongst themselves about Brandon and his current state. House interrupts to say Taub might feel doubly guilty now that he knows that not only wasn't his wife planning to leave him, but that she's also buying him a car while all he can do is cheat on her. Taub probably didn't feel that way before, but he will now. House apparently paid enough attention to Foreman to say he's right about his latest diagnosis that won't turn out to be what's wrong with Brandon so I'm not going to bother looking it up to find out how to spell it. Frankly, I think House doesn't think Foreman's right at all, but he knows that the test to prove it will keep Taub at PPTH all night, which means he won't be able to run home and confess anything to the wife that will ruin his marriage.
House, however, does get to go home. He heads for his closet to hang up the motorcycle jacket, only to find Lucas hiding inside. Lucas notes with surprise that House, who can't run, owns so many pairs of sneakers. I find that very sad, actually. House doesn't even seem surprised to see Lucas in his house. He hands him his jacket to hang up and limps to the kitchen, saying he ordered them Indian for dinner. Apparently, House was expecting Lucas. Lucas says he has to find something embarrassing about House to give to Cuddy, so I guess Lucas really was in Cuddy's office for House after all. House doesn't want to give Lucas anything to give to Cuddy, saying if he does then she won't need his services anymore, and apparently it's important to House that Cuddy need Lucas's services. Perhaps he gets a referral discount or something. Lucas says if he doesn't give Cuddy anything then she'll think he's incompetent. He also says "this" won't work, since he's not good at lying. The not good at lying thing is getting to be tiresome. Plus, who knows they aren't good at lying? My dad is the worst liar in the world, but he thinks he's awesome at it and doesn't know why we can always tell that he's fibbing. Apparently, Lucas has done well so far because he hasn't actually had to lie -- he actually is interested in Cuddy. So is House -- he wants Lucas to date Cuddy and then report her secrets back to him. Except that now Lucas has to give House's secrets to Cuddy, so aren't they even? This is very complicated, but House thinks it will be worth it. If he gets something on her, it will help him get what he wants from her. As if he's ever had a problem with that. Even when she says no, he still gets what he wants. But I guess this way it won't take as long. With that, House turns on the TV to beach volleyball. UGH. I couldn't escape that sport during the Olympics and I can't escape it here! Lucas doesn't believe House is doing this for blackmail purposes. "You're doing this for the same reason I'm doing this," he says; "we'll see who gets there first." Hey hey! Looks like Cuddy is the Season Five hot ticket! It's about time. House seems unnerved by Lucas's assumption that he likes Cuddy. I'm not sure if that's because he didn't want Lucas to figure it out or he's just figured it out himself.
Back at PPTH, the results are back from Kumar and Taub's all-night cranial MR angiogram party. Kumar notes some narrow vessels in Brandon's brain, but House doesn't think they're important -- if Brandon had problems with those vessels, he would have had symptoms a long time ago. Taub notes that the symptoms might have suddenly started because Brandon developed an intermittent arrhythmia in his heart. House gets all pissy because Taub is talking about Brandon's heart when the problem should be in Brandon's head. Taub has to explain that the experimental drugs could have triggered an arrhythmia which then caused low blood pressure. Low blood pressure + narrow blood vessels in the brain = brain not getting enough oxygen, which then somehow = trying to get with Hadley. Taub's plan is to trigger the arrhythmia so they can locate and fix it. I can't tell if House is impressed or not; he's silent for a minute, only to ask if Taub's been home since last night. Taub says he has not. "Good," House says. He rewards Taub by approving his arrhythmia hunt.
As Taub and two orderlies wheel Brandon's stretcher to the Mad Scientist Wing of PPTH, Brandon interrupts Taub's attempt to explain how they're going to mess around with his heart to express his remorse over what he did to Hadley and then wonder if he should tell Heather about this. "All I do is lie to her," Brandon whines. This, of course, hits close to home for Taub. He stops the stretcher to tell Brandon that if he tells Heather the truth, she'll either forgive him or leave him. Which means, best case scenario, Brandon's life will stay the same. "It's noble to want to confess ... but if the result is just damage and pain, that's not noble. It's selfish," Taub says. I have a feeling he's rehearsed that rationalization in his mind many times. The fact is, the time to think about whether or not you want to hurt your wife/girlfriend is BEFORE you cheat on her/tell her you're making lots of artist bucks. And if you want to have a real relationship, you should be honest. Even if it hurts. This is like saying it's better to have cancer and not know and go around feeling happy and fine until you suddenly die, than to know you have cancer and treat it and live, even though it means you'll feel like crap during the treatment. Ignorance is not necessarily bliss. Meanwhile, the orderlies are standing around wondering what the hell is going on and if this confessional will cut into their lunch break.
Brandon's set up for the arrhythmia triggering session. Kumar presses buttons to stimulate different parts of Brandon's heart while Taub pulls double duty: he watches to see how Brandon's heart is doing while also having a conversation with House about how he's essentially keeping him hostage at PPTH until he's sure Taub won't go home and confess everything to his wife. House just says "guilt fades quickly," so Taub can look forward to going home Wednesday at the latest. Taub wonders why House suddenly cares about Taub's marriage staying intact. "If it ain't broke ... " House starts, and poor Hugh Laurie hates saying "ain't," doesn't he? Truly American words like "y'all" and "ain't" are painful for British people to say. Taub calls bullshit on that, saying House reveled in the possibility of it being broken when he thought the wife had a secret bank account. House counters with a spectacular metaphor about Taub's marriage being like a "broken toaster," in that no matter how much un-toasted bread pops out of it, Taub still insists that it's toast. And that leads to a metaphor within a metaphor where House says Taub puts his bread in many different toasters. Epic metaphor. A++. Brandon's mind is totally blown by the brilliance of House's double metaphor and he goes into V-tach. Weirdly enough, Brandon remains conscious. House finds that "cool," because it means they get to zap Brandon while he's awake to feel it. Yeah ... I read this book written by a guy who worked as a paramedic and he once had to shock a conscious man like that and said it was extremely painful, with the man screaming in agony throughout. That doesn't sound cool at all. Brandon doesn't seem to be in as much pain as that, although he's not having the greatest time of it either. Meanwhile, House starts stroking Brandon's hair. He must really miss Wilson. Kumar tells House to get away from Brandon while he shocks him again, but House studies Brandon's hair some more, asking if he dyes it. Brandon tries not to die as he says he doesn't. House notes that the roots are red. Kumar asks him again to get out of the way. I think Kumar should just zap Brandon while House is touching him. Teach him a lesson. The second shock gets Brandon's heart rate back to normal. Taub's theory seems to have been proven by the heart's reaction to the test, only to be disproved by the new symptoms of hair changing color. "Either he's lying about dying ... or just dying," House says. You might want to wait until you're out of the patient's earshot before you say he could be dying, House. Then again, such extreme measures might be the only way they can get Brandon to confess that he dyes his hair.
In the hall, House says the hair color change means Brandon's melanin is being affected. He asks what could do that. "Age," Taub says. House says he's pretty sure people don't go ginger as they approach their mid-thirties. Foreman suggests something less stupid, and then Kumar walks up saying he found something on Brandon's EKG that suggests Romano-Ward syndrome. House doesn't like it because Romano-Ward doesn't cause hair to change color, but Foreman says Romano-Ward is caused by at least five gene mutations, so it's not a huge leap to think Brandon has other gene mutations that caused his hair to change color. Yeah, one of those gene mutations that causes hair to randomly change color in your thirties at the same time that you happen to be dying of something else. Okay. Kumar says Brandon's heart is too weak for the standard treatment for Romano-Ward. "Pete Best!" House says. There is no response, and he lectures them all for not knowing about the Beatles' original drummer and thus ruining his upcoming metaphor about a bunch of nerves that control the tempo of the heart. One can't keep the beat, so they replace him with Ringo Starr and become the best band in the world. "Pete Best was actually a great drummer," Kumar, president of the Pete Best fan club, says. Kumar has the world record for Pete Best memorabilia, I heard. He continues that he guesses House is leading up to suggesting a cardiac sympathectomy. "Probably shoulda just said that," House says. He kind of got told by Kumar, didn't he? Taub whines that playing around with Brandon's nerves could have all kinds of unpleasant side effects, like he won't be able to swallow or sweat. Hmm. Well, sweating is overrated. Just ask pigs. They can't sweat and they're fine. And delicious. Hadley asks if Brandon is stable enough for surgery, and her hair is looking bad today. Unlike Kumar and Taub, she got to go home last night, right? She has no excuse for that limp, choppy mess. "If he was, he wouldn't need it," House says. How's that for a Catch-22?
And now we're looking at a black and white picture of two women wearing generic cheerleader uniforms and ... a young House, also wearing a cheerleader uniform. And he's even almost smiling. Good god. I don't even know what to say about this. I mean, it's one of the worst Photoshop jobs I've ever seen, but still. Cuddy seems equally impressed as she studies it in a diner, with Lucas at her side staring at her in his usual creepy way. "Do you have any brothers or sisters?" he asks. "One sister," Cuddy answers, before saying House told her he was on the lacrosse team. When would he have told her that? It's the kind of normal, everyday, friendly conversation I can't imagine House ever having with anyone. Lucas says House was on the lacrosse team -- in high school. In college, he became a cheerleader. Okay, except that didn't Cuddy and House go to the same college? They weren't in the same class but I think they were there at the same time. And a shot of the cheerleading picture from further away reveals it to be even faker-looking than before. In return for the information, Cuddy grants Lucas the answers to five questions. The first was about her sister. The second and third are about her relationships with her father and mother (both "fine"). The fourth is how old Cuddy was when she lost her virginity. This is starting to sound like when Howard Stern interviews porn stars. Cuddy refuses to answer that one. Question five: "You know, don't you?" Cuddy has no idea what Lucas is talking about. He clarifies that Cuddy is "hot" and "smart" and therefore aware that things like Photoshop exist. So she should be suspicious of a photo of House, the un-cheeriest man in the world, as a college cheerleader. But she isn't, so either she isn't smart, or she knows it's a fake. Aw, it's a fake? I'm disappointed. But it does explain why that picture looked so fake. It was supposed to. Lucas says he figures that Cuddy must also know that he was working with House to give her a fake picture to try to get dirt on her and therefore he's busted and doesn't get to spend creepy time with Cuddy anymore. Cuddy says she's not stupid. She knows the photo was fake and that Lucas is playing a game with her. Lucas sighs and goes to leave. Then he stops and turns around and says if Cuddy knew he was playing her and she wouldn't get anything worthwhile on House from him ... why did she play along? Cuddy claims she wanted to screw with House. Lucas sidles up to Cuddy and says he thinks there's another reason. She gives him her version of a flirty smile. Cuddy is getting desperate in her old(er) age. You don't date men who search your desk and call it "research," no matter how endearing they try to be.
Taub and Hadley explain the surgery to Brandon. By severing the nerves between his heart and brain, Brandon runs the risk of not being able to feel angina and dying of a heart attack somewhere down the road. Brandon has more immediate issues, though: the people speaking to him are not Hadley and Taub at all, but some creepy gross versions of them with their voices. I was actually looking down when this scene started and was in for quite a shock when I looked up to see those two clowns standing there. I'm kind of disappointed, too, since if this is Brandon's visual agnosia kicking in again, shouldn't their faces be all contorted and twisty like in that portrait? That would have been hilarious. Brandon doesn't notice that the strangers at his bedside have different faces but the same voices as his old doctors and demands to speak to Taub and Hadley. AgnosiaHadley is just as thick as the real Hadley and doesn't get that Brandon is suffering from the agnosia again, figuring he must not be very good with faces. She patiently explains that she is Hadley and that is Taub. Brandon says he's never seen them before in his life. The real Hadley and Taub exchange glances.
When House steps off the elevator, they're there to meet him, saying they can't do the cardiac surgery now that Brandon's original symptom has returned. Although they can't decide on whether this is a progressive disease or an intermittent thing. House gets to the end of a hallway and turns around and walks in the opposite direction. Not sure what that was about. He says Romano-Ward can be intermittent, so their diagnosis still stands and the surgery can still happen. Taub whines that they must have missed something, and House insists that they've checked everything there is to check. Taub says Brandon might have used some toxic paint in the past that hid out in his fat cells, only to cause symptoms when he lost weight, which were then accelerated after he got to the hospital and lost even more weight. Obviously Taub did his research and watched Season 1 of this show. The theory is sound enough to cause House to hold up an elevator full of people who are trying to get to their important life-saving jobs and ask how they're going to go about finding Brandon's old paint. Taub says Brandon hasn't sold any of his old paintings, so he must be hiding them somewhere so Heather will think he has. Taub wants to find those paintings and ask them if they have any toxins. House doesn't want to wait, saying that if it is Romano-Ward, Brandon could die at any moment. If they hold up Brandon's surgery and he dies while Taub is looking for a toxic painting that doesn't exist, it'll be on Taub's conscience, where it will have plenty of company. House gives Taub one hour (which probably isn't enough time to drive to the storeroom, let along take samples and bring them back to PPTH for testing) and finally steps onto the elevator, where the passengers give him dirty looks but don't say anything, which is why House always gets away with his rudeness.
Taub runs into Brandon's room, only to find Heather there. Since Heather doesn't know about Brandon's artistic suck-cess, Taub has to speak carefully. He says he needs to find all of the paintings Brandon has sold recently wink wink nudge nudge hidden storage room. Brandon asks Heather to step out of the room, and she asks why Brandon's paintings are a topic that would require her to leave the room. I see it has finally dawned on Heather that Brandon might be full of shit. Good for her. Brandon decides to come clean and admits that he's only sold two paintings in the last three years, one of which was to a relative. Damn, that's quite the dry spell. But his loft was so amazing! Those drug tests must pay like a hundred grand! How long do you keep chasing that dream before you get a full-time job to pay the bills? Brandon could still try to paint during the weekend and wait for his artist career to take off. Idiot. Brandon tells Heather about the lucrative world of drug trials. Needless to say, Heather's not thrilled. Not that her boyfriend isn't a rich and successful artist, but that he lied to her. For years. And what he must have thought of her to think he had to. Brandon clumsily explains that he liked the way Heather looked at him when she thought he was successful, and couldn't bear to lose it. Well, he did anyway, so that really wasn't worth it, was it? "When I look at you, I see you," she says. Or at least, she did. Now she sees a guy who lied to her -- and to himself -- that he was a great artist. Pathetic. With that, Heather smiles and Taub remembers that he only has an hour. He asks Brandon for the location of the storage room.
Brandon is prepped for surgery while Taub takes a ride down a service elevator to a store room. He finds a bunch of chairs stuck on a chain-link fence. I'm not sure if that's art or Brandon's old dining room set. And then he finds Brandon's paintings, all arranged in chronological order. There's a crappy painting of Heather. And there's a painting of some guy with a distorted face. Taub takes a sample of the paint and notes the date on that bottom.
House gets a phone call. We already know it's not a social call, since House has no friends. It's Taub. He quickly says it isn't toxic paint after all -- it was the drugs all along. Brandon's portraits are distorted every other month. And those months match the months Brandon was on all three drugs. During his off months, his paintings are fine. So you're telling me that Brandon didn't notice that he had painted weird wavy people when he didn't have the agnosia? He didn't look at any of his paintings a few weeks after he painted them? Come on. Taub says he doesn't know how or why, but this is all because of the drugs. House has an idea, though. He asks Taub what was the last drug trial Brandon was on before the three he's doing now. Before Taub can say, House has already guessed: an antacid. Taub is super-impressed with House until he admits he read it on Brandon's file, which is in front of him. That has to be the first time House has ever read a patient file.
Chase is about to start the surgery when the OR gets a phone call. A woman talks on the phone for all of two seconds before hanging up and telling Chase it's House. Chase already knows that House has gotten his trademark last-minute flash of brilliance and tells an assistant to wake Brandon up. The woman tells them to hold up: Brandon still needs surgery. Just not on his heart. He needs to have a bezoar removed. The woman doesn't even know what that is but apparently didn't see the need to ask House for clarification before hanging up and relaying a partial message to Chase. If there's one message you really, really want to make sure you get absolutely correct, I'd think it'd be an order for a patient's surgery. But Nurse Half-Ass doesn't agree.
So, what is a bezoar? Taub explains it all to Heather. It's "like a hairball" except it's made up of undigested food. Brandon's antacid drugs caused his stomach to be too low on acid to digest everything, so it just stayed in there looking disgusting (as we see on the Magic Schoolbus Cam, which gets a special stop-motion animation segment this week as we watch the nasty-ass bezoar grow and rot and become sticky). It then sucked up all of the drugs Brandon was taking, only to release them all at the same time. Um ... hmm ... they didn't see a large mass in Brandon's stomach on any of the scans they did? Really? In surgery, Chase pulls out a large clump from Brandon's stomach that you just know has to smell sooooooo bad. I can't believe Brandon didn't notice he had a big lump in his stomach. My stomach always hurts when I eat stuff that takes a long time to digest. Like Roscoe's Chicken and Waffles. You can only go once a year because it takes that long for your meal to work its way through your body. And you feel it every step of the way. But Brandon's walking around with this large foul brick of pills and rotten food in his stomach, thinking people have wavy faces every other month, and is completely unaware that there could be anything wrong. Chase puts the bezoar in a metal pan and tells the nurses "that is why I won't let Cameron buy a cat." And you just know she asks for one, like, every day. Cameron loves kittens!
Taub finishes with Heather by saying Brandon will be fine. She seems very relieved. He asks if she's glad Brandon finally told her the truth once it was absolutely necessary. "Yes, of course," she says. "Were you happier before you knew?" Taub asks. That's not the point, Taub. Heather doesn't answer because there's a woman dangling a key behind Taub.
It's Taub's wife, who leads him out to the parking garage on the Fox lot. He's got a tie wrapped around his eyes. Wife stops him and says if he doesn't like the color, they can exchange it. You can exchange a car? I doubt that. She removes the blindfold, and Taub checks out his new grey ... uh ... is that a Porsche? Shit, I'm so bad at cars. It's a convertible, and it's expensive. There you go. "You like it?" Wife asks. Taub doesn't say anything, and his smile fades. Someone's looking guilty as hell right now. "We need to talk," he says. Aw, don't confess at the same time as she buys you a new car! That's like when my ex-boyfriend dumped me AFTER I'd already made him dinner. Dick. Men suck this week.
And back in House's apartment, someone is playing a bluesy tune on his piano. But it's not House -- it's Lucas. House comes home and doesn't have a possessive fit over the man using his precious piano, which surprises me. He seems like someone who would be very protective of his instruments. "She didn't buy it," Lucas says. "Damn," says House. Did he really think she would? Lucas says he didn't get anything from Cuddy in return, and they probably "overstepped" with the fake cheerleading thing. House says he thought Cuddy would buy it because she wouldn't expect him to spend time carefully constructing a terrible fake cheerleading picture. "Yeah, about that," Lucas says, and an alarmed expression crosses House's face. "I took a little trip to your alma mater," Lucas says. House clearly wasn't expecting Lucas to go to the trouble of visiting Michigan to investigate him, but Lucas says it's a pretty easy process nowadays through the Internet and phone calls. House sits down and plays his guitar along with Lucas on the piano. Wilson never played the piano. The only instrument he played was the pity piccolo. Lucas > Wilson. "That's a real picture, isn't it?" Lucas says. House doesn't answer. Wait, so ... the picture was real after all? On one hand, bad showing, prop department. That looked fake as hell. On the other ... HA HA HA! That's awesome. House as a cheerleader! A picture simply will not do. We need video! I don't care how fake it looks. Oh my god, do you think he had pom-poms? WHY AREN'T WE SEEING A FLASHBACK?! And what's truly great about this is, that after all the stuff House tried to dig up on everyone else, the only person who had something truly embarrassing uncovered was him, and he was the one who dug it up in the first place!
House tries to explain it away as something he did to impress a girl. Lucas says the truly pathetic thing about all this is that House wanted Cuddy to see him in a different light, and not only couldn't she, but she also didn't even believe it was possible. Okay, but the picture did look ridiculously fake. Even if we knew House was a cheerleader I still would have had doubts about that particular photo's veracity. "People hate people who have theories about people," House says. He should know. He has plenty of theories about people, and, well ... now he even has to pay people to hang out with him. With that, House plays more guitar, coming down with a bad case of guitarface in the process. Lucas asks if he wants him to "back off." Not sure if he means back off of Cuddy or House. "Would you?" House asks, a little too hopefully. "I barely know you," Lucas says. House actually smiles.
Get our read on what's ailing the docs at PPTH in our House: Diagnosing the Doctors gallery .
You can read more from Sara Morrison at L.A.me , which she occasionally updates when she has something to complain about. Or you can email her at saramorrison@gmail.com , especially if you know why the dashboard lights on her Ford Focus won't turn on anymore. Is it an electrical thing? The battery?