We already got a Wilson-centric episode this season, and now House serves up a Cuddy-centric ep this week.  And unlike the Wilson episode, Cuddy’s seriously lacks in House and even more seriously lacks in being really interesting.

Cuddy starts her day off to a crying, sick baby and is running late to head to work with an important insurance presentation to make.  Her detective boyfriend, Lucas, shows up just as she’s headed out the door, rarin’ and ready to go for a quickie.  Cuddy attempts to put him off but then goes for it… For a solid minute, as indicated by the clock. Just before the petting gets really heavy, House calls Cuddy to find out where she is and why she’s running late. 

Cuddy rushes out the door and later learns that House made a bet with Lucas that he couldn’t get a quickie in with Cuddy before she left and Lucas bet that she wouldn’t answer her phone if House called during sex.  This does not go over too well with the already-stressed Cuddy.  Compounding things, she finds out that double the prescriptions were ordered. 

Things get further complicated when Cuddy has her meeting with the representative from Atlantic Net Insurance, the insurance provider that Princeton-Plainsboro has a contract with.  As Insurance Douche attempts to play hardball, but Cuddy pushes back, demanding a 12% increase on their contract, but Atlantic Net is only offering a shoddy 4%, which barely covers the cost of their operations.  She tells him no deal and threatens to not re-sign the contract if her negotiations aren’t met. 

In more of her administrative duties, Cuddy listens to an appeal from a man who wants her to prescribe breast milk as a cancer treatment.  She refuses on the grounds that the insurance company may or may not reimburse the hospital for it and that it’s a cost the hospital would have to eat.  The cancer-stricken man leaves after calling Cuddy a bitch.  

The fun doesn’t stop there for our favorite administrator as she has to put out fires all over the hospital.  Dr. Dave is annoyed with House for stealing his best surgeon, Chase and putting him back on the diagnostics team.  Meanwhile, Chase is the subject of a lawsuit by a man whose thumb he had reattached, performing surgery without consent.  The insurance company only covered 60% of the surgery and the man is going into debt trying to pay for it.  Cuddy attempts to smooth things over, telling the man that Chase gave him his life back and allows him to hold his job as a carpenter.  The dude still maintains that being able to work isn’t doing him any good since he’s ready to declare bankruptcy.

From there, Cuddy has to address the issue of Gail, a fat chick who works in the dispensary who has been gobbling diet pills to lose weight.  As Gail turns on the water works, insisting she’d been a model employee for seven years, Cuddy still must fire her for the unforgivable offense of stealing meds.  As it turns out, Gail isn’t quite so innocent and had started stealing all sorts of meds and selling them no less than 6 months after she had started working at Princeton-Plainsboro.  Gail also has quite the neat little meth lab at home.  She attempts to blackmail Cuddy, holding it over her head about her insisting that she had been banging House and had covered for his prescription drug abuse.  With the aid of a flower pen/recording device, Cuddy records Gail’s attempt at blackmail and gets her to back off, high-fiving a shift nurse in the process. 

While Cuddy still ponders what to do about the insurance company, briefly discussing it with House as to what to do, Lucas brings her lunch, and feels the Wrath of Cuddy (which isn’t very wrathful at all) when she tells him that she knows about the side-bet he had with House.  Lucas gets her to calm down by switching the subject to Cuddy’s daughter, Joy’s fever and diaper rash.  He also grabbed the nanny’s phone by mistake so that’s why the nanny wasn’t picking up. 

Lucas redeems himself and his buffoonery by offering to dig up some dirt on the CEO of Atlantic Net Insurance.  Armed with this info, Cuddy takes it to the visiting CEO in the commissary, making her case for a 12% increase by pointing out facts.  Atlantic Net is the highest rated insurance company and the total sum of their contract with Princeton-Plainsboro is less than the cost of their marketing budget, or Atlantic Net’s PGA Sponsorship.  She tells him that she will call a press release to point out how selective his company is when cutting costs.  The CEO is impressed with Cuddy’s attempt at hardball, but tells her no, saying “You can portray me as a rich bastard in the press all you want… So long as I stay a rich bastard.”  Ouch.

Following Cuddy’s lunchroom throwdown, Douchebag Rep tells her that the CEO is willing to up their contract by 8%.  Cuddy still says no, demanding 12%.  She calls a press conference, telling the hospital that they will no longer be accepting patients with Atlantic Net Insurance, but will keep on the ones who are already patients there.  The staff is aghast and Cuddy almost cracks under the strain, going out to her car for a good, frazzled, soul-searching session.  House comes out to see her in her car, and in what has become more oddly characteristic this season than uncharacteristic, gives Cuddy the pep talk she needs to stay on as Princeton-Plainsboro’s administrator. 

Things work out for the best when Atlantic Net finally caves and gives Cuddy a signed contract with a 12% increase.  Cuddy does the Happy Dance and the credits roll.

Just in time for Super Bowl week, House’s patient of the week is #77 on the field, #1 in your heart, a very large college football player who’s being scouted.  As the kid — Daryl–’s mother talks up her son to a scout in the stands.  Daryl is like a raging bull, charging across the field, plowing into everyone and everything in sight.  The aggression doesn’t stop there. Daryl takes off his helmet starts beating himself in the forehead with it, drawing blood. Lots of blood.  So much blood, in fact, that he’s whisked off to Princeton-Plainsboro for House and his team of crackerjack diagnosticians to figure out what’s wrong. 

The team attempts the clock to discover what’s wrong with Daryl before his mystery malady kills him, and all before Saturday, when Daryl has a tryout in front of scouts in the hopes to kick off his pro football career.  At over 6’5″ and 300+ lbs., House’s first reaction is that it’s a bad case of ‘roid rage or pituitary damage.  When nothing shows on the scans, House wonders if Daryl “got his hands on the good stuff,” possibly HGH.  As usual, the staff exhausts every possibility until House has his 11^th hour epiphany that Daryl has melanoma located on his foot.  Disguised by the fact that Daryl is black and melanoma rarely affects people of color, House sees the treatable spot on the football player’s foot. 

Speaking of feet, House also finds himself dealing with another patient, a young war veteran with a pregnant wife who has already seen three tours of unplanned duty and is being dispatched for a fourth in the Middle East.  Frightened at the prospect of his child possibly growing up without a father, the young soldier takes House’s advice and shoots himself in the foot.  He allows the infection from the wound to spread until not just his toe (apparently, soldiers can still serve with only nine toes) but entire foot must be amputated, exempting him from active duty.

The race to solve the medical cases of patients is complicated by the usual sort of storyline drama creeping in.  House and Wilson appear to have a little War of the Roses spat with one another in their apartment kicked off by House soaking his sore leg in Wilson’s oversized canoe of a tub in Wilson’s private bathroom.  A series of very expensive misunderstandings involving  putting a possum in the bathtub and loosening the handicapped rail on the side of the tub.

What initially seems like House and Wilson engaging one another in clever one-upsmanship results in the Odd Couple discovering that neither of them was behind the (very expensive) pranks when the sprinkler system waterlogs their condo and destroys their prized flatscreen.  Realizing that neither of them would sacrifice the ginormous television set, House and Wilson learn that Cuddy’s boyfriend, Lucas, was behind it all.  Being a detective, he uncovered that House and Wilson bought their dream loft and decided to assert his superiority to the Odd Couple as a sort of revenge on behalf of his lady love.  He retains House and Wilson’s silence by agreeing to keep mum that the two of them deliberately bought the place she wanted since she’s under the odd impression that they’re really her friends.  Ouch.

Lucas’s vengeance on House and Wilson is nothing compared to House’s dealings with his staff this week.  When Foreman’s brother, Marcus (Orlando Jones) is released from prison, he hires him as his new assistant.  Foreman is none too happy with House hiring his ex-con/ex-addict brother, insisting that House isn’t doing this to help out a man in need of a job, but rather to screw with Forman. 

Marcus fills in House on many details of his relationship with his brother, including the story that Foreman wet the bed one night over at Bobby Samson’s and the eulogy that Foreman gave at their mother’s funeral. When Marcus and Foreman were caught by the cops as teens, their mother picked them up from the station with just the words that she would pray for them.  While Marcus embarked on a continued life of crime, Foreman’s mission in life became to never disappoint his mother again.  When House was taken aback that Foreman never told him that his mother had recently died, Marcus pleaded with House not to mention their mother to his brother. 

Of course, that means that House brought up Foreman’s dead mother to Foreman.  Ultimately, the end result was that the once estranged brothers Foreman became close once again thanks to a kinder, gentler House who still wants everyone to believe he’s old, completely douche-y House.  As Wilson observed, House’s lack of relationship with his own family led him to covertly bring Foreman (AKA – “House Lite”) closer to his remaining family.

Just in time for Super Bowl week, House’s patient of the week is #77 on the field, #1 in your heart, a very large college football player who’s being scouted.  As the kid — Daryl–’s mother talks up her son to a scout in the stands.  Daryl is like a raging bull, charging across the field, plowing into everyone and everything in sight.  The aggression doesn’t stop there. Daryl takes off his helmet starts beating himself in the forehead with it, drawing blood. Lots of blood.  So much blood, in fact, that he’s whisked off to Princeton-Plainsboro for House and his team of crackerjack diagnosticians to figure out what’s wrong. 

The team attempts the clock to discover what’s wrong with Daryl before his mystery malady kills him, and all before Saturday, when Daryl has a tryout in front of scouts in the hopes to kick off his pro football career.  At over 6’5″ and 300+ lbs., House’s first reaction is that it’s a bad case of ‘roid rage or pituitary damage.  When nothing shows on the scans, House wonders if Daryl “got his hands on the good stuff,” possibly HGH.  As usual, the staff exhausts every possibility until House has his 11^th hour epiphany that Daryl has melanoma located on his foot.  Disguised by the fact that Daryl is black and melanoma rarely affects people of color, House sees the treatable spot on the football player’s foot. 

Speaking of feet, House also finds himself dealing with another patient, a young war veteran with a pregnant wife who has already seen three tours of unplanned duty and is being dispatched for a fourth in the Middle East.  Frightened at the prospect of his child possibly growing up without a father, the young soldier takes House’s advice and shoots himself in the foot.  He allows the infection from the wound to spread until not just his toe (apparently, soldiers can still serve with only nine toes) but entire foot must be amputated, exempting him from active duty.

The race to solve the medical cases of patients is complicated by the usual sort of storyline drama creeping in.  House and Wilson appear to have a little War of the Roses spat with one another in their apartment kicked off by House soaking his sore leg in Wilson’s oversized canoe of a tub in Wilson’s private bathroom.  A series of very expensive misunderstandings involving  putting a possum in the bathtub and loosening the handicapped rail on the side of the tub.

What initially seems like House and Wilson engaging one another in clever one-upsmanship results in the Odd Couple discovering that neither of them was behind the (very expensive) pranks when the sprinkler system waterlogs their condo and destroys their prized flatscreen.  Realizing that neither of them would sacrifice the ginormous television set, House and Wilson learn that Cuddy’s boyfriend, Lucas, was behind it all.  Being a detective, he uncovered that House and Wilson bought their dream loft and decided to assert his superiority to the Odd Couple as a sort of revenge on behalf of his lady love.  He retains House and Wilson’s silence by agreeing to keep mum that the two of them deliberately bought the place she wanted since she’s under the odd impression that they’re really her friends.  Ouch.

Lucas’s vengeance on House and Wilson is nothing compared to House’s dealings with his staff this week.  When Foreman’s brother, Marcus (Orlando Jones) is released from prison, he hires him as his new assistant.  Foreman is none too happy with House hiring his ex-con/ex-addict brother, insisting that House isn’t doing this to help out a man in need of a job, but rather to screw with Forman. 

Marcus fills in House on many details of his relationship with his brother, including the story that Foreman wet the bed one night over at Bobby Samson’s and the eulogy that Foreman gave at their mother’s funeral. When Marcus and Foreman were caught by the cops as teens, their mother picked them up from the station with just the words that she would pray for them.  While Marcus embarked on a continued life of crime, Foreman’s mission in life became to never disappoint his mother again.  When House was taken aback that Foreman never told him that his mother had recently died, Marcus pleaded with House not to mention their mother to his brother. 

Of course, that means that House brought up Foreman’s dead mother to Foreman.  Ultimately, the end result was that the once estranged brothers Foreman became close once again thanks to a kinder, gentler House who still wants everyone to believe he’s old, completely douche-y House.  As Wilson observed, House’s lack of relationship with his own family led him to covertly bring Foreman (AKA – “House Lite”) closer to his remaining family.

This episode’s Patient of the Week manages to out-House House in the psychopathic, lack of emotion department.  The viewer is dealt a neat little swerve in initially thinking that it’s going to be the puking drunk corporate lackey, Russ, who heaves his cookies in front of his douchebag tyrant of a boss and onto the shoes of his executive assistant.  Wrong!  Patient of the Week is the corporate assistant who drops to her knees in front of Douchebag Boss (get your mind out of the gutter) when her ears start ringing painfully. . 

After Valerie, the Executive Assistant, is admitted to good ol’ Princeton-Plainsboro, House and his crew are on the case.  House, in particular, finds the fact that attractive Valerie is married to a creepy cucumber of a guy and intends to unravel that mystery in addition to what’s causing her ear ringing.  That is, when House isn’t busy dodging phone calls from a former college friend (or as close of a “friend” as it gets to House) or replacing Cuddy’s boyfriend’s head with that of a chimp in her office.

As the House-lings attempt to discover what’s wrong with Valerie, Russ, the dude who blew chow all over Val and Douchebag Boss, pays a visit to her at the hospital.  Russ is drunk now, as opposed to having been drunk when he showed everyone what he had for lunch.  Apparently, it wasn’t three martinis.  Instead, he claims that Valerie drugged him.  … And that they had an affair!

This character assassination tips Thirteen’s radar off.  While everyone (particularly Foreman, whom Thirteen is butting heads with.  Guess that whole former relationship thing is coming into play now.) believes Valerie is the one telling the truth because she’s a happily married, successful consultant and Russ is a newly-fired, widower with a history of alcoholism and breakdowns, Thirteen’s not buying it, believing Valerie targeted him for something she wanted because Russ was vulnerable and easy prey.

More credence is tossed towards Thirteen’s theory when she runs a scan of Valerie’s brain.  Although Valerie capably uses the language part of her brain, she can’t feel the emotions she can recognize with words.  In short, she’s a psychopath… with a heart abnormality.  When proffered with the evidence, House believes Valerie’s mental state is somehow tied to her physical one.

As House and the diagnostics team try to figure out what’s wrong with Valerie, Thirteen unravels more of the mystery that is her patient. She admitted that she didn’t poison her co-worker, Russ. She just gave him Valium.  And sex every Thursday night in exchange for passing off his ideas as her own to the boss.  She admits that she’s with her creepy husband because he has a trust fund and she was forced to sign a pre-nup at his parents’ request.  (Good call, Mom and Dad!)  She goes on to tell Thirteen that everyone is out for themselves.  Val doesn’t like that Thirteen is onto her and threatens to sue her for everything she’s work if she gives even so much a hint to her husband that she was cheating on him.

It all comes out in the wash when Val’s arm gets broken (brittle bones dues to mystery malady) and she starts coughing up blood.  Thirteen asks Creepy Husband if he knows of any environmental factors that may have caused his wife to start upchucking blood.  He mentions that she took a landscaping course every Thursday night at the Y.  He soon finds out that there was never any course at the Y and that it was all a lie. 

Creepy Husband flips out when he figures out Val was banging Russ on the side every Thursday, however, Our Little Psychopath spins it that she was staying late at the office and didn’t want to tell him because every argument they ever had was about her focusing too much on her career.  Creepy Hubby eats this up with a spoon and as he hugs his philandering wife, Val smiles creepily over his shoulder at her.

In between hacking up blood and with her good arm, she manages to dial the Medical Board and attempts to get Thirteen not just knocked off of her case, but her license revoked.  Unlike Foreman, Cuddy takes Thirteen’s side and removes her from the case, not because Evil Val (E-Val?) wants her off, but because she feels that Thirteen shouldn’t have to be subjected to such a nutcase of a patient.

Meanwhile, Val’s condition is deteriorating and her liver’s reaching epic fail proportions.  Her sister, Sarah, is called in as a donor in a last-ditch effort to save Val’s life. When asked why the hell she wants to save this shrew, Sarah elaborates that Val was the only one who stood up for her against their alcoholic father’s abuse.  That Val used to care but gradually became more bitchy and detached over time, starting in her teen years.

House manages to pry himself away from pranks and his former college chum to recognize Val’s inability to process copper by her blue nails and diagnoses her with Wilson’s disease. Once Val’s treatment begins, her being self-servingly calculating and psychopathic dissipates.  She’s still blunt and bitchy, telling Creepy Hubby how much he disgusts her, knowing that she cheated on him and he’s willing to ignore it.  And she tells him that even though she’s got Wilson’s Disease, he’s got an incurable case of FUG. 

With that problem solved, House focuses most of this episode dealing with fallout from his therapy which instructed him to write a letter of apology to someone he hurt.  Rather than apologize to Wilson for countless transgressions and Cuddy for mean-spirited pranks because they’re too close to him and he actually cares how they feel about him, he contacts an old college classmate, Lorenzo Wiberly.  House swapped papers with Wiberly to prove a point about a college professor who gave him bad grades, that if he submitted a paper under another classmate’s name he’d get a better grade.  He didn’t.  Wiberly took the failing grade for House. 

After dodging his calls, Wilson pranks house by sending in Lorenzo to talk to him to have lunch.  Lorenzo tells him that he doesn’t have to feel bad for him and accepts his apology.  Even though he never got licensed and never graduated med school because he was one credit short thanks to that failing paper.  But Lorenzo maintains that he looooooves his life bagging groceries at Danny’s Organic. 

Learning that Wiberly is going to lose his house due to an adjustable mortgage and his dead father’s medical bills, House is plagued by a guilty conscience and writes Wiberly a hefty bailout check.  Wiberly refuses to take it and cracks, admitting that he was actually an orthopedic surgeon who lost his license due gambling and trying to cover those gambling debts with fraudulently billing clients.  And he got an A+ on that paper from the professor. 

House still insists that Wiberly takes the check to stop foreclosure on his home and walks off into the wintry nice.  Wiberly doesn’t hate him, but Cuddy might still be mad about him messing with her photos… Oh, and Thirteen and Foreman make nice and are becoming more civil with one another in spite of the fact that they used to bump uglies.  Progress, people!

The underlying theme on this episode of House is that everyone is a big fat liar, and mostly everyone (or at least everyone who happens to be a doctor) has a lot of fun being a liar.  Thirteen, Taub, and Chase decide to play a prank on Foreman, while House and Wilson find themselves competing for the attention of the same woman who lives in their building — and who thinks the two housemates are gay. Meanwhile, the Patient of the Week has been living a lie, harboring a secret for the past 16 months of his life.

Speaking of the Patient of the Week, viewers are introduced to Mickey, a drug dealer who finds himself collapsing to the ground whenever he hears a loud noise. His concerned friend/fellow dealer, Eddie brings him to good ol’ Princeton-Plainsboro Hospital.  House, perplexed by his pusher patient’s sudden development of noise induced vertigo, nonetheless has a grand old time slamming his cane against things to make loud noises that drop Drug Dealer to the ground. 

As House orders testing on Mickey’s ears, he ponders testing his cocaine.  Meanwhile, I’ve pondered the fact that Season 6 of House seems to be the one where most of the guys in the cast are sporting new, shorter ‘dos.  House and Wilson have a shorter crop this year, and post-Cameron break-up Chase now has much shorter hair.

Back at House and Wilson’s new condo, Wilson chats with a cute, age-appropriate woman in 3-B.  Snappy banter ensues and she gives him recommendations on the best places to eat and tells him to come over for dinner.. And to bring his cute friend with the cane. For a split second, Wilson thinks she’s got the hots for House.  Actually, she thinks they’re gay… with each other.  Wilson’s epiphany prompts him to bust in on House during a diagnostic session, screaming, “Everyone thinks we’re gay!”  House then decides to play this up to the hilt with 3-B, using her supposition that he and Wilson are partners to lull her into a sense of security so he can eventually bang her.  He even goes so far as to purchase a gigantic, famed poster of “A Chorus Line.”

Back at the hospital, House is having slightly less fun trying to shake down Eddie as to if exposure to any of the drugs or chemicals Mickey may have used to cut them are causing his illness.  Using fashion and fabrics as a metaphor for drugs, and swapping out “Culottes” for “Cocaine,” House discovers what he’s been around.  House sends Thirteen and Chase on one of his usual missions to investigate the environment of a patient.  Thirteen takes it a step further and goes to investigate the cocaine storehouse with Eddie, narrowly avoiding the two getting caught but making a save when pretending to be a hooker and making out with Eddie.

After some investigative work on the part of Thirteen and Chase at the hospital, they find out that Mickey has a bug up his ass.  Literally.  He has a listening device implanted on him and in his room and is actually a cop who has been on undercover assignment for 16 months. He hasn’t seen his wife, home, or dog in that time.  He’s been on beta blockers and has been going through withdrawal to help him deal with the stress of this assignment and guilt over the things he’s been doing to help catch his “boss.”  He can’t stop now because his boss, who is one of the biggest cocaine dealers on the coast, is scheduled to have a very large deal go down that will expand his business to Philadelphia.  Telling House and his team this could potentially disrupt his planned bust and render the last 16 months of his life null-and-void.

While Mickey is still undergoing tests, Foreman finds himself as the butt of a prank cooked up by the rest of the diagnostics team.  Each of them finds a way to get Foreman to see their paychecks and realize that, even heading them up and as House’s second-in-command, he makes less than all of them.  Foreman takes the news to Cuddy and demands a raise.  She’s unsupportive, telling him that he has no other option than Princeton-Plainsboro, so there’s no point in offering him more pay.  She will, however, consider a raise when his review comes up in August.  Little does he know, Cuddy’s in on the plan, too. 

While Mickey is having a few nice pulmonary aneurisms and hooked up on anti-fungal meds so he doesn’t drown in his own blood.  House is laying it on thick with 3-B, much to the chagrin of Wilson.  First he has an “apartment picnic” with her, sipping wine and whining about how Wilson just doesn’t get romantic with him anymore… segwaying into back rubs as Wilson comes home.  Things reach a fever pitch when House goes out to dinner with 3-B, pulling his sensitive gay man routine. He’s about ready to have her plied with wine and ready to “straighten him out” when Wilson shows up and delivers the ultimate block: Wilson drops to one knee in the restaurant, ring in hand, and asks House to marry him.  3-B leaves in a hurry.

Later, House comes clean to 3-B that he had been pulling the whole faux-’mo routine to get in her pants.  She’s fairly disgusted with him and the level he stooped to.  House decides to let her know that Wilson is no saint, either, playing along with his routine on top of the fact that Sweet, Sensitive Wilson has been divorced three times and once slept with a dying patient.  House and Wilson later seem to be okay with the fact that neither of them will be boning 3-B at any point and do guy things like watching hockey and quibbling over House’s “tacky” reclining couch and Wilson singing show tunes.  (I’m loving the “wink-wink-nudge-nudge”ing at some ho-yay here.)

As it turns out, 3-B wasn’t the only one who got played.  The rest of the staff feels guilty about pranking Foreman who’s all in a tither and ready to walk and offer to give up a chunk of their paychecks to Foreman.  Foreman drops a “Who’s your daddy” bomb of his own, turning the Tables of Pwnage and punking his staff at their own game.  He cites that he’s worked for House for far too long not to know when someone’s pulling his leg. 

In the midst of all this fun, Mickey’s actually dying.  House and the diagnostics department discovered too late what his malady was, an autoimune disorder that had been tearing him down for quite some time and now he was in the final stages.  If he hadn’t been undercover or so secretive to the team about who he was and why/what drugs or beta blockers he had been taking, there may have been hope. 

Yet, the show — and the bust — must go on.  Still undercover, Mickey gave the word to his police unit to bust his boss, and even his friend Eddie who had brought him to the hospital at peril to himself.  Eddie got busted and hauled off to the hoosegow with the rest of the hardcore dealers.  Some really awful guitar plays over a slow-mo montage of snow falling on the roof of the drug storehouse, police busting in, some fat dude we can only assume was “the big boss” getting shot at, and some guys and Eddie getting cuffed n’ stuffed into a cop car.  Interspersed in between slow-mo shots of the bust are equally slow shots of Mickey reunited with his wife after 16 months, watching TV with her by his side in the hospital bed, and hacking up blood and dying. 

House notes that Mickey died a hero in his own mind, which is probably the only thing that mattered to him anyway.

An interesting installment of this season.  I’m actually finding the focus on the Princeton-Plainsboro staff’s personal lives much more interesting than some of the Patients-of-the-Week, this week’s patient being no exception.  My sole gripe with this one was that Foreman didn’t already know just how much his ex-girlfriend Thirteen was making?  As a former couple, Foreman and Thirteen seem to be working well together, without an uncomfortable trace of relationship present.  (I’m not sure if I buy that actually happening and how believable that would be in a real life setting, however.)  Overall, a very good episode and refreshing to see a show with a new episode in the middle of the midseason drought. It’s short-lived, however, since viewers will have to wait another week to see a new episode of House.

CBS easily won Monday night, again, with its insanely popular line-up of comedies. During its flagship night, the network defeated ABC and NBC in the 18-49 demographic and demonstrated series highs with The Big Bang Theory and the 100th episode of How I Met Your Mother. Starring Neil Patrick Harris, Josh Radnor, Jason Segel, Cobie Smulders and Alyson Hannigan, the show netted its best numbers since last spring.

Two and Half Men with Charlie Sheen also had its best 18-49 demo performance since last winter and also its best audience average since December of 2008.

Rival Fox followed CBS with an episode of House and a “special airing” of their sci-fi sensation Fringe. The episode was played against NBC’s Heroes with stellar results. This week’s episode of Heroes was the series’ lowest-rated telecast ever. The airing of Fringe on Monday performed just as well as House’s usual follow-up of Lie To Me, which is off the schedule until the return of 24.

ABC’s Castle improved its performance in the demographic thanks to a strong lead-in from their reality show The Bachelor, which was up 9-percent with adults 18-49. Castle is up 24-percent from its last original airing.

At 8 p.m., the regular-slot season premiere of Chuck (2.6 rating, 7 share in adults 18-49, 7.3 million viewers overall) scored the show’s highest regular-slot results in 18-49 and total viewers since the special 3D telecast on February 2, 2009, the night after the Super Bowl. It was also the biggest total-viewer average for NBC in this time period with regular programming since that Feb. 2 Chuck.  In a time slot that last night included competition from Fox’s House, ABC’s The Bachelor and CBS’s comedies, Chuck generated growth from its first half-hour to its second of 8-percent in adults 18-49 (to a 2.7 from a 2.5) and 16 percent in adults 18-34 (2.2 vs. 1.9).

This week, Wilson takes center stage doing what he does best: being everyone’s BFF and port of calm in the various storms that rip through the lives of those closest to him. In terms of diagnostics and perception, living with House has rubbed off on Wilson.  Even better, the dear fellow is starting to grow a pair of his own!

Things kick off as Wilson wakes up to the mellow strains of House doing an acoustic guitar rendition of George Michael’s “Faith” at 6:33 in the morning. When he tells House that he’s going back to sleep and then going turkey hunting with his friend, Tucker,   House interjects that Wilson’s buddy is a Self-Important Jerk.  Pot. Kettle. Black.  However, House maintains that even though he himself is something of a jerk, he at least has the decency to call Wilson “Wilson” or “James” and not “Jim” like ol’ Tucker does.

While hunting, Wilson’s friend recites his “I kicked Leukemia’s ass” speech for the fifth year running.  Moments later, Tucker hits the deck, unable to move his arm, which is contorted in a weird position. The opening credits roll and once again, we’re back at Princeton-Plainsboro. As Tucker awaits the results of the diagnostics, Wilson mistakes the pretty young thing at Tucker’s bedside for his daughter.  Instead, Ashley is actually Tucker’s girlfriend in brave, new, cancer-free world.  In Tucker’s awesome post-cancer world, he chucked aside his wife, Melissa, and teenage daughter, Emily who stuck with him through his illness for a much newer, shinier, more fun lifestyle!  Speaking of fun lifestyles, Ashley’s got wicked cold sore that, having been kissing the dude, may have caused Tucker’s temporary paralysis.

When Wilson flounces towards House telling him that he had “A House Moment,” diagnosing his friend with Transverse Myolitis, House insists instead that Self-Important Jerk’s cancer is back like Jordan.  Insulting Wilson’s prowess as a doctor and citing that he cares too much for his patients, House goads him into making a $100 bet that Self-Important Jerk really does have a cancer relapse.

While Wilson plays God to House’s Devil to Tucker’s Job, Wilson manages to go about his day sprinkling sweetness and light throughout the cancer-riddled corridors of his oncology domain.  Throughout the course of an episode, he helps an old man named Saul sleep (in a non-Kevorkian, non-morphine O.D. way that he had alluded to a few episodes ago) and diagnoses and cures a spot on another old man’s lungs, purely on the basis that the proud grandfather was depressed and not talking about his grand kids.  Somehow, Grandpa’s depression was the sign of another sort of cancer complication, but sweet, savvy Wilson figured it all out – like House without the awesomely douche-y factor!

In the midst of all this work, Wilson still must remain the stalwart shoulder of support for all parties involved when Cuddy drops the bombshell that she’s (already?!) moving in with Lucas. (What was that?  Six episodes?) Even better, Cuddy asks Wilson to call his ex-wife Bonnie, the realtor, to see if she can find her a dream house/loft.  (Why don’t you just blow your nose on Wilson’s lapel, too, Cuddy!?)  Placed in an awkward position, Wilson breaks the news to House who ponders Cuddy’s decision to get a loft. He wonders just how serious her relationship with Lucas is and if this is her version of a midlife crisis.

Meanwhile, when Self-Important Jerk’s meds aren’t working and he can’t feel his foot, he asks Wilson to call his daughter to his bedside, just in case it really is cancer.  His teenage daughter, Emily, is hesitant to come but eventually shows up with her mother – Tucker’s ex – in tow.  A nice buffer to the Big Bowl o’ Awkward, Tucker starts coughing controlling uncontrollably and requires a crash cart.  Wilson gets him stabilized and poses Tucker’s case to the rest of the group on the premise that any diagnosis other than cancer will make House $100 poorer.  They jump at the chance and deduce that it could be a big ball of fungus that’s attached to his spine and causing him problems.

Wilson suggests operating, but before Tucker goes under, he asks him why he and his ex are no longer together and he’s jumped aboard the Young Ship Ashley. Tucker can’t really explain, or just hedges the question. When Tucker’s opened up, Chase spots something that looks suspiciously like pneumonia.  House gets a fondue in his panties, musing about how this compromised immune system probably means Tucker has cancer. When the results are back, House finds himself $100 richer as he cheerily breaks the news that Tucker has cancer… Again.

The type of cancer Tucker has this time is Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia, a second type of leukemia caused by the chemo they gave him before to treat his first type of cancer.  This time, the cancer has localized in his brain with a 90% cure rate. 

Forced to make a decision right away, Tucker tells Ashley that his ex-wife, Melissa, is his healthcare proxy and Ashley throws a sniveling fit since she thinks that means Tucker loves Melissa more. Tucker protests that it doesn’t mean that he loves Ashley any less, it’s just that Melissa has been through this before and knows what to do. When the chemo doesn’t work and Tucker still can’t feel his appendages, Wilson realizes that the chemo from the first round gave his friend’s system a resistance to chemo, rendering him almost incurable.  Almost. 

Wilson hits upon yet another plan to cure Tucker, which renders the cancer gone within a scant 24 hours.  The downside is, Tucker’s liver is shot, as evidenced by his Scutt Farkas-like yellow eyes.  If Wilson can’t find Tucker a new liver, he’s toast in 24 hours.  Since none of his women or daughter match his blood type, a live liver donation isn’t possible.

House busts in to tell Wilson that a trauma victim just arrived with great news for Tucker’s potential new liver.  The catch is that there’s no donor card and his sister refuses to give up her dead brother’s liver.  When they consult the dead dude’s sister, she denies the liver on the grounds that her religion prevents her from defiling a dead body… And that giving up his liver is essentially like peeing on a corpse.  This ends up a moot point since the hospital pages Wilson to tell him that the liver has started to decompose and is no longer able to be transplanted.

Back at the hospital, a bedridden Tucker is making up for lost time with his daughter and ex-wife who stood by him through Cancer-Palooza 1. He even finds time to accuse Wilson of giving him only 24 hours with his newly-reunited family as opposed to the six months he would have had if he never went with the chemo option in the first place.  Self-Important Jerk Friend then suggests that since Wilson gave him his blood for a transfusion last time, he should give him a lobe of his liver to attempt to pull him through this time.  Wilson hesitates and is wracked with guilt, going out to drown his sorrows with some hooch… which is just terrific for the liver!

Stumbling in relatively sober, Wilson sees that House has made a dazzling array of Jello shots in test tubes and is getting slammed on his couch.  He tells House of his conundrum and House offers a pep talk/dose of truth that Wilson is a doormat and his “friend” Tucker is – cancer or no cancer – a Self-Important Jerk. Wilson shows House how much of a doormat he is by telling House to get his stuff and get the hell out.

The next morning, Wilson tells Cuddy he will be donating part of his liver to Tucker and then tells House. Wilson also asks House to be there with him as he’s on the operating table. (Even though he just booted them out of their apartment/adult dorm room. House declines on the grounds that if Wilson dies, he’s truly alone – perhaps the sweetest thing House could ever say to someone. As Wilson goes under the anesthesia, he sees House looking down at him from his observation perch and smiles.  Awwww… Now that’s man love!

In recovery, House pals around with Wilson and Wilson later pals around with Tucker, learning that now that he’s made a full recovery, that whole “going back with my ex-wife and daughter who loves me” schpiel has been thrown out the window.  He’s back with hot, young Ashley, citing that “the person you want when you’re dying isn’t the person you want when you’re living.” Wilson is grossed out by his friend’s shallow about-face and admits House was right on both carts that Tucker did have cancer and that Tucker was a Self-Important Jerk. However, he does tell Tucker that his name is “James,” not “Jim.”  Oh, well… The liver regenerates itself, Wilson.  At least you didn’t totally damage yourself for a douchebag!

Even though he’s usually the “go-to guy” for being the shoulder to cry on, Wilson vents his “disappointment” with Tucker (rhymes with….) to House.  House responds that “disappointment is anger for wimps.”  Knowing that in spite of everything, House is the one guy he can always count on to be honest with him, Wilson breaks the news to House that they’re moving in together again… This time, to a bigger place.  Deciding that if he had to call his ex-wife that he may as well benefit from the deal, Wilson outbids Cuddy on the dream loft she wants to share with Lucas. Wilson declares his spot on “Team House” saying that “she hurt my friend, she needs to be punished.”  Wilson gleefully smiles knowing that the Odd Couple is reunited.

On House, this week’s Patient of the Week, a bona fide genius and M.I.T. grad who dumbed himself down to be able to live happily with his dullard of a wife, was boring.  Once his illness was revealed to be the result of using cough syrup with a vodka chaser to numb himself to his mundane, yet “happy” life and deplete his brain cells to close the 91 I.Q. point gap between himself and his wife.  Having attempted suicide several years ago by jumping, the Cough Syrup Savant broke his ribs and the ribs punctured his spleen, severing it into sixteen easy pieces, all of which needed to be removed instead of just the one that Chase had assumed was the problem.

Way more interesting than the episode’s side plot was House’s machinations to break up Cuddy and Lucas.  Learning that she’ll be having Thanksgiving dinner at her sister Julia’s, House goes to great lengths to find out where Julia lives and tells Wilson he’s crashing dinner.  After driving 3 hours, House makes it to Julia’s house, but she’s in Hawaii.  Cuddy anticipated what House would do and instead, bought herself roughly 6 hours to have a holiday dinner with Lucas, her daughter, and the rest of her family at her place, free of any House interruptions.

After returning, House breaks into Lucas’s house… and his wine cellar, chugging a full bottle of wine.  In a drunken stupor, House tells Lucas how he was a fool for squandering the chances after chance that Cuddy gave her.  Oh, and he tells her that he loves her. 

Somehow, House wakes up at his own place.  Well, actually his and Wilson’s place. He learns that Lucas breaks up with Cuddy and does The Happy Dance, telling Wilson that Lucas had fallen for his “I’m going to pretend to be drunk and confess my undying love for Cuddy” schtick.  Wilson is fairly disgusted at the depths his friend has sunk to, but isn’t entirely surprised. 

The real surprise is that Cuddy lied and has concocted a plot with Lucas to fool House into believing they had broken up under the rationale that if House believed they were broken up, he would leave them both alone.  House figures it all out and is seemingly okay with this… For now.

Meanwhile, the love lives of the other doctors at Princeton-Plainsboro are equally drama-laden.  Thirteen and Foreman have a modicum of tension, which is nothing compared to the tension between House and Chase.  After attempting to goad newly-single Chase into offering a plausible theory as to what was ailing Cough Syrup Savant, he simultaneously insults Chase and threatens to call “his smarter half” Cameron to get her opinion on the case.  For the second time in the duration of the series, Chase hauls back and clocks House right in the face.  House, in turn, refuses to dime out Chase to Cuddy, insisting that he “tripped over an ottoman” after she attempts to reprimand Chase.  Not entirely altruistic with this, House uses his busted nose to show off his newly-acquired “better nature” to Cuddy, selflessly refusing to see Chase called on the carpet.

Taub also benefits from House’s face-punching in his own way.  Mrs. Taub has been rather icy since Taub left his private plastic surgery practice.  She’s turned off by the fact that he has to work longer hours and is still doing grunt work at the age of 40 and misses the days when he was his own boss.  In an attempt to prove his masculinity and that he truly is a grade-A bad ass, Taub snaps a picture of House’s battered mug and tells the missus that he took matters into his own hands and things got “a little heated” between himself and House.  Mrs. Taub immediately gets re-heated for her hubby and all is well between the Taubs once again.

It’s just another day on the set of a porno movie, when this episode’s Patient of the Week — a 30-ish, Jewish male porn star — has a severe reaction to light known as photophobia, collapsing on the set in a way that not even Viagra could revive.  The woodsman is then sent off to (where else?) Princeton-Plainsboro. 

Foreman, interim head of the Diagnostics department, wants to forgo Male Porn Star’s case in favor of a baby that has gone completely limp. (Insert your own joke here.) Luckily for the woodsman, Cuddy drops off the papers reinstating House as the department head and it looks like the staff will be working on his case instead.  

This might not be as simple as it seems, since Cameron and Chase have both decided to leave Princeton-Plainsboro because Chase is reminded on a daily basis that he medically terminated Dibala.  The happy couple can’t walk out just yet, not having given sufficient notice.  Chase and Cameron set to work to discover what’s wrong with the Woodsman. 

The ailing porn star gives the details of his life to both Chase and a rather judgmental Cameron.  (Apparently, her bleeding heart doesn’t extend towards porn stars or genocidal dictators… Just husbands who happen to kill off the latter.) Chase seems rather intrigued that the Woodsman is tested for STDs regularly as part of his job, and even more so that he’s married… to another porn star…. And that they’re both perfectly okay with boinking other people as part of their respective job descriptions.  While Chase doesn’t hate, but rather appreciates while discussing matters of conscience, Cameron is appalled at their nonchalant attitude towards on-the-job lack of monogamy and the Woodsman’s wife’s insisting that sex is separate from emotion.  Woodsman’s Wife also verbally smacks Princess Judgmental down by telling her that she’s there to treat her husband, not judge him.

In the midst of all this, the patient’s blood will not clot and he’s bleeding out all over the place. Even better, they discover that the male porn star has a colony of worms residing in his liver.  Things get even hairier when the Woodsman’s lungs begin to fill with fluid for the as-yet-unknown malady that’s slowly killing him. 

House, on the other hand, starts doing some research and bones up (no pun intended) on the patient’s work to get a better scope on this case.  In light of Cameron and Chase’s proposed departure, House attempts to get the band back together to round out his department. He hunts down Taub at his cosmetic surgery practice and a fresh-from-Thailand Thirteen, seeking their input on the case, as well.  Attempting to get them back in a diagnostics state of mind, he baits Taub with taunts that he’s suddenly become Husband-of-the-Year to a wife he can’t stand to be around and calling Thirteen a chicken for not being able to work around her ex, Foreman. Additionally, House also baits Taub and Thirteen with the patient’s life by threatening to treat him with possibly dangerous methods of “cure” for an unknown ailment.  Both Taub and Thirteen take the bait and are back on House’s team by the end of the episode with Thirteen manning up and Taub admitting that diagnostics gives him the thrill that philandering used to. 

Wilson, on the other hand, is disturbed that House has gone to such great lengths to get back his staff.  Wilson notes that there are at least 1,000 people who want to be a part of House’s staff, yet he’s going after the four people who don’t.  Wilson concludes that familiar faces are House’s new drug of choice, a source of comfort since he’s no longer popping Vicodin like candy.  He doesn’t need good doctors, he just needs a good friend! The issue of Cuddy’s new boy toy, Lucas – the only other person besides Wilson who House can call a friend – making off with the one woman House actually cares for is another cause for House throwing himself into his work. 

And since House isn’t happy in Romantic Relationship Land, no one else can be, either.  Preferring to see Chase and Cameron break up sooner rather than inevitably later (and presumably, after both doctors exit his team), House speaks to each half of the couple individually.  He tells Chase their marriage will eventually implode due to Cameron’s bleeding heart character flaw that could never allow her to live with someone she sees as a murderer.

When House speaks with Cameron, she tells him that, at one point, she was in love with House, not Chase, believing that she could heal him. She attempts to excuse Chase’s behavior on the Dibala Debacle by blaming House for imprinting his personality on his staff, teaching them that it’s okay to play God.  She resigns herself that she cannot heal either her husband or House, saying that “there’s no way back for either of you.”  Kissing house on the cheek, she departs from Princeton-Plainsboro… possibly forever.

While House’s gradually progressing social relationship skills is an issue, things are getting worse for the Woodsman who’s now peeing blood and headed into cardiac arrest.  It turns out that the pills given to him to remove the worms from his liver were hurting him, rather than helping him.  Due to germaphobe parents who didn’t allow the Woodsman to play in the dirt and be properly exposed to filth, he developed a form of extra-intestinal Crohn’s Disease.  The worms were actually helping him.  The Woodsman is cured, allowing him to resume his dream job with no fear.

The episode ends with a montage of House’s piecemeal staff: Thirteen and Foreman exchange “I’m ignoring you on the job” glances; Taub breaks the news that he’s back working with House; Cameron’s suitcases are packed as she kisses soon-to-be-ex hubby Chase goodbye; and House watches Cuddy and Lucas snuggling with each other as they leave the hospital together.  **sigh**

The colorful, potentially prevaricated antics of this week’s Patient of the Week, an ailing teenage Lolita, aren’t nearly as much fun as House breaking down and confessing his love for Cuddy in this week’s episode — and dressing up in 1780s fashions! Oh… And Chase finally tells Cameron that he killed that African dictator weeks ago.

Patient of the Week Jordan is a 16-year-old aspiring rock groupie/sci-fi geek whose hands and feet swell up after a night out on the town at a star-studded party with her best friend.  Although Jordan’s BFF knows most of the real story, there are still some details that escape her.  Initially, Jordan gives her other group of teenage friends a story that she spent the night with an eyeliner-wearing rockstar.  In reality, Jordan and her friend hit up a party attended by both the aforementioned rock star… and a sci-fi director/auteur whose work Jordan and her friend greatly admire.  

After Jordan starts bleeding into her heart, the team of Cameron, Chase, and Foreman attempt to discover whether or not she was roofied by the director who was potentially pulling a Polanski after Jordan delivers him his journal that he had left at the party back to his hotel room.

It’s later found out that Jordan’s stories were lies, proven by both her friend, hotel surveillance footage, and Foreman monitoring her biorhythms.  However, it’s not her fault that she’s been lying, but rather a condition of what’s wrong with her: Hemachromatosis as a result of noshing on oysters on the shell at the fancy schmancy party. 

The biggest story of the episode, however, revolves around House and Wilson’s trip to a days-long medical conference… with Cuddy. Although Wilson wants to take House with him since he’s taking his post-nutHouse babysitting responsibilities seriously, House relents and goes along for the ride since it means he’ll have an opportunity for more face time with Cuddy. House goes along for the ride under an assumed doctor’s name.  In addition to the Cuddy Factor, House attempts to attempt to talk Wilson out of career suicide and dissuade him from reading his paper on euthanasia.  After seeing Wilson’s exceptionally kind, morphine-dispensing bedside manor with a dying cancer patient at Princeton-Plainsboro, House surmises there is a lot more personal truth in Wilson’s treatise than just medical fact.

The conference ends up becoming an exercise in male bonding and traipses into high school territory as House gushes (or as comes as close as humanly possible for House to gush) to Wilson about his feelings for his Administrator.  Ever the Pollyanna, Wilson encourages House to declare his feelings to Cuddy himself.

House makes his play at the conference costume party – an ‘80s-themed bash.  As Cuddy flashdances her way across the floor dressed as Jane Fonda, House rocks his inner Amadeus with 1780s fashion, complete with a powdered wig and pimp(ernel) dandy cane. Just like any real ‘80s prom, House lets Cuddy know that he had always been romantically interested in her to the strains of “Time After Time.”  And again, just like any real ‘80s prom, Cuddy rushes out of the room, slightly uncomfortable with the granule of knowledge – and uncharacteristic (albeit small) show of emotion from House.

Wilson plays the role of good friend and questions Cuddy (this all sounds so high school, doesn’t it?) as to why she doesn’t reciprocate. She admits that House can be sweet, but unreliable, and as a new mommy, she needs a man she can count on. 

Wilson carries the info back to House.  In turn, House drugs Wilson’s grape soda so he can speak with Cuddy himself.  After visiting Cuddy in her room and offering his services to babysit her infant she brought along on the trip, House discovers the reason why Cuddy was so taken aback by his sudden declaration: She’s been dating Detective Lucas from last season.  Awk-WARD!

As it turns out, Cuddy had called the detective to investigate a potential accounting scam at the hospital and the two hit it off.  She decided to keep this from House because of his fragile state and that she doesn’t like to advertise her personal life.  House is surprisingly understanding and Hugh Laurie does a wonderful job conveying the emotionally devoid House’s sense of disappointment underlying his calm exterior. 

Now firmly entrenched in the Friends Zone with Cuddy, House actually does do a good deed for his best friend, Wilson, stopping him from admitting that he admires Dr. Kevorkian just a tad too much to his congregated peers. After drugging Wilson and stealing his pants, House assumes the identity of another doctor and reads Wilson’s paper aloud. 

Realizing that it’s more about Wilson’s story being heard rather than him being credited – and possibly ruined – for it, House speaks for Wilson to give a voice to the life of the dying and what doctors face when they treat those who are on borrowed time.  House reads to the symposium about allowing a dying man to overhear the code to override the morphine drip so he could accidentally overdose instead of succumbing to cancer taking its course.  Ultimately, most of the doctors applaud Wilson/assumed identity Dr. House’s paper and the courage it took to read it. 

Afterwards, Wilson regrets not being able to connect with his peers, but is grateful for House’s show of friendship.  He cites “We’re all murderers.  We just don’t have the guts to admit it.”  In turn, House attempts to allay Wilson’s feelings towards his profession, noting that of all of the oncologists in the world, all of them lose patients, yet Wilson is the only one who would feel guilty about it.

Speaking of feeling guilty, Chase shrugs off Cameron’s supposition that he’s having an affair and finally comes clean to his wife, telling her that he was responsible for Diballa’s death.  Cameron doesn’t seem to know how to take the news.  Guess we’ll find out how this affects Cameron and the rest of the Princeton-Plainsboro staff next week.

The episode (and ensuing intro to the Patient of the Week) begins with a bang, as a middle aged detective and a hotshot young detective are in hot pursuit of one of those roof-jumping French guys.  It all reeks of Casino Royale!  The young cop attempts to jump off one roof and onto the other after the guy, gets some airtime, and then falls several stories below. Things aren’t looking too good for him as he lies contorted in a pinwheel position with blood oozing from his mouth.  A trip to Princeton-Plainsboro sees him propped up in a hospital bed with a leg cast and multiple contusions, telling the team that whatever they do won’t matter because, like his father and grandfather before him, he’ll die at 40.  Oh.  And he’s 39 now. 

As usual, it’s never just about the patient at Princeton-Plainsboro.  Nope.  Chase keeps seeing Splat!Cop in the same room where his “international incident” went down and keeps having Dibala flashbacks. (What? Are you gonna kill him, too, Chase?!) Plagued by a guilty conscience, he hauls it to confession and is seriously bummed that the priest tells him the only way he can be absolved is to turn himself in to the police.  Using logic, Chase realizes that turning himself in won’t solve anything, just bring down the wrath of the authorities on the rest of the staff… At least that’s what we can assume is going on inside his tousled, blonde noggin.

 In other departmental news, Cameron keeps wondering what’s up with her new hubby.  and House, at the behest of Cuddy, has to complete 120 rounds in the hospital to requalify.  He also keeps checking out her dumper encased in really tight skirts throughout the episode, to the point that even the interns notice that his leering and sparring are merely foreplay. In the meantime, House gets several of the doctors he’s forced to do rounds for to sign off by being such a urine-spilling nuisance that they’ll agree to anything to get rid of him.

 In the episode’s subplot, House has taken to “picking his bellybutton lint” under the covers on Wilson’s couch which prompts early bird Wilson to giving House his own room so he doesn’t have to witness it first thing in the morning.  In turn, House gets the room that Wilson converted to a shrine for Amber, his dead girlfriend.  House thinks he’s going crazy by hearing whispering voices in the middle of the night.  In reality, it’s just Wilson talking out loud to Dead Amber, telling her about his day, and House hears the whispers from the heating grate in his room.  Awwww…..  Later on, Wilson gets House to try this sort of therapy and House briefly talks out loud to his Dead Dad before deeming it “stupid.”

In between the personal drama, the team manages to try to crack the medical mystery of why the men in Splat!Cop’s family keep kicking off before 40.  This is all a convenient excuse for Chase and Foreman go grave digging (off-screen) and come up with the remains of Splat!Cop’s pa, grandpa, and great-grandpa to do some genetic testing. Cameron takes it a step further and uses her bleeding heart superpowers to track down Splat!Cop’s ex-girlfriend.  As it turns out, Splat!Cop has a son he doesn’t know about.  This complicates things just a tad since Splat!Cop had been taking precautions against having people who were too attached to him in his life, knowing he was going to buy the farm at 40. 

When Splat!Cop, nestled all snug in his hospital bed, is re-introduced to his ex and the son he doesn’t know about, he gets too cold even by House’s standards.  When the kid asks him to see a movie when he gets out of there, Splat!Cop hands his offspring a big, fat “no” before telling him that his Dad died when he was his son’s age and then has the staff escort him from his room.

Cameron is upset by this, but still manages to get the kid to agree to bone marrow tests.  House, on the other hand, seeing that by all results of the tests so far, I Don’t Want to be a Dad!Cop is perfectly healthy and has nothing wrong with him, tells him a fib that he has some sort of minor disease which can be managed by taking a few placebos. Splat!Cop is dismissed and goes off on his merry, unattached way. 

That is, until House receives a late night visit at Casa de Wilson from Foreman who breaks the news that Splat!Cop is now Dead!Cop, having collapsed while doing laundry after being discharged.  House is visibly shaken and Foreman is rather understanding (especially considering patients are dropping like flies on his watch as Department Head), after all Dead!Cop showed no symptoms of any disease and gave no reason for them to think anything was wrong. 

He requested Dead!Cop be shipped back to Princeton-Plainsboro’s morgue where he and House perform an autopsy.  Actually, Foreman performs the autopsy with House standing by since he can’t legally perform one without a medical license.  After firing up the saw and making the first incision into Dead!Cop, House and Foreman stand back and observe what appears to be bleeding. Realizing that dead men don’t bleed, Dead!Cop becomes Undead!Cop and sits bolt upright screaming.  Which would be the normal reaction if someone just sawed into your chest.  Just sayin’.

With this latest House of Usher-esque development, House, Foreman, and the team are kicked into high gear trying to figure out what’s wrong with Undead!Cop.  After running through the usual suspects (cancer, Wilson’s Disease of the liver, genetic predisposition to autoimmune disorders), House deduces that the men of Undead!Cop’s family have a genetic “self-destruct button” that manifests as a sort of aneurism.  The aneurism stops the signal to the heart, which resulted in everyone thinking that Undead!Cop was actually Dead!Cop.  House preps Undead!Cop for surgery and has Cameron call his ex-girlfriend to bring the kid in, as well, to get this inherited self-destruct button taken care of well in advance of the boy turning 40.