Let me officially start off the season by expressing my undying love for Gregory House. Yes, he may be an unapologetic bastard and yes, this may reveal many sad truths about my inability to sustain a healthy relationship. But that fake doc is hot! His arrogance and snide commentary are so sexy. And no manufactured playa strut for him; this guy and his cane have real swagger. But I do have a small confession: I wasn’t as faithful as I could’ve been last season. I missed more than a few episodes, but I’m playing catch-up. From what I’ve gathered thus far, House has whittled down 40 applicants Survivor-style to the final three new diagnostic team members: plastic surgeon Dr. Chris Taub; Kumar look-alike Dr. Lawrence Kutner (Wait, he is that guy from the Harold & Kumar… movies? Wow, he’s come a loooooonnnggg way); and Dr. Rema Hadley (a.k.a., Thirteen). Oh, and Amber’s dead.
The premiere episode opens with a sharply dressed businesswoman sneezing on her assistant in an elevator. During her boss’s sexual harassment consultation, the assistant begins to see and feel ants crawling all over her body and she promptly rips off her clothes in front of a boardroom of gawking male executives. Upon admittance to Princeton Plainsboro Teaching Hospital, her initial symptoms are: hallucinations, anemia, bradycardia (slow heart rate), and abdominal pain.
The team tosses around a couple of ideas: a bug picked up on one of her foreign business trips; amphetamine abuse and long hours in the office; airline peanut-induced B-12 deficiency. Thirteen takes offense to the others suggesting that a strong career woman could be made sick by her strong career, and instead offers up pancreatic cancer. House quickly nixes it.
While Thirteen is administering her B-12 cocktail, the patient thinks she has an out-of-bedpan experience. But her accidental bowel movement turns out to be blood. After an endoscopy and a colonoscopy, the team finds no apparent cause. Despite these negative results, Kumar uncovers a condition for which she does test positive: she’s pregnant…or not. Psych! An ultrasound can’t locate the fetus. Okay, what illnesses can produce two false pregnancy tests, a lower gastrointestinal bleed, bradycardia, hallucinations, and anemia?
You’d think House would be beyond intrigued, but he can’t stop sulking over Wilson’s departure. Yes, Dr. James Wilson, his only friend is leaving the hospital. Dean of Medicine and archnemesis Lisa Cuddy confronts House about his relationship with Wilson post-Ambercide and encourages him to confess his guilt to Wilson for his girlfriend’s death, even if he doesn’t feel at fault. Instead, House tries to recruit resident empath Allison Cameron to convince Wilson to stay based on her own experience with loss (her short-term hubby died of brain cancer while they were still in the honeymoon phase). No luck.
House takes his frustrations out the best way he knows: by proving his team wrong. He performs a second ultrasound on the patient and shows them that she actually is pregnant. However, the pregnancy is ectopic – the fetus isn’t nestled safely in the uterus, but has implanted itself in her large intestine. Without taking the time to discuss options, he demands they schedule surgery immediately to remove the fetus. Thirteen is more disturbed by this than the patient, who agrees without hesitation.
After surgery, the patient experiences complications that include rapid blinking and loss of consciousness. I’m a little sick of calling her “the patient” and can’t remember if she was ever given a name, so I’m going to call her “Stressed-Out Grunt.” So Stressed-Out Grunt is blinking. A lot. Enough to freak out the team, who frantically page House. But he refuses to respond. Why? Because he wants to use her life as leverage to convince Wilson to stay, of course. He blackmails Wilson with the buzzing pager and threatens to go home until he changes his mind about leaving Princeton Plainsboro. It doesn’t work on Wilson, so House leaves. Man, this bromance transcends all time and space. I feel sorta jealous.
The team turns to Cuddy for advice and she unconvincingly tells them she has faith they can manage without House, probably because she just doesn’t want to deal with them herself. In order to ensure she won’t ever have to deal with them again (at least not until next week), she tricks House and Wilson into meeting in the same room for “couples’ counseling.” Doesn’t quite work, though.
In House’s absence, Thirteen takes a lead and suggests multiple sclerosis. But that turns out to be wrong when Stressed-Out Grunt comes down with a fever. The entire team including Eric Foreman (I’m really glad Omar Epps is still around) holds a viewing party to watch exciting film footage of her insides. Kumar spots a possible abnormality but Taub waves it off as a hematoma (welt-like bruise). In order to prove whether the bump is actually a ganglioma (nerve cell tumor) they approach Aussie hottie Robert Chase for additional exploratory surgery. Chase gets a severe case of surgeon’s asshole when he hears he may have missed a ganglioma, but he rightfully refuses to subject Stressed-Out Grunt to more cutting, bleeding, and anesthesia.
Kumar (okay, I’m gonna stop), I mean Kutner, gets a great idea to circumvent the need for surgery (and by great idea, I mean really disturbing and uncomfortable suggestion). How about inserting a lighted scope into her rectum to move the intestine and push the ganglioma to the surface? Oh, and let’s do it while she’s wide awake, shall we?
The team performs the procedure and retrieves a sample of Stressed-Out Grunt’s intestine. After examining it under a microscope, they come up with a dire diagnosis: lymphoma. They hook her up to chemotherapy and she begins to feel better. Thirteen spends most of the episode with Grunt, convincing her to liberate herself from her crazy boss and encouraging her when her crazy boss beats her to the punch. Despite the fact that House already outed her to the team, she admits to Grunt and to herself for the first time that she has Huntingdon’s Chorea, a debilitating neurological disease. Her relationship with Grunt has been about finding meaning in her own life before it’s too late.
This would be a nice place to end, except House returns to the hospital and jabs a syringe into Stressed-Out Grunt’s leg – I love this guy. Turns out she doesn’t have lymphoma after all. What is it really (no psych outs this time)? “Pretty leprosy”! An oxymoron if I ever heard one. But I looked it up and it actually exists! Instead of making you scabby, it releases wrinkles and makes the skin supple. Might be the next big thing in Beverly Hills.
House gives in and almost earnestly apologizes to Wilson as a last-ditch effort to keep him from leaving. But Wilson gives us all a collective pop upside the head by revealing that Amber’s death isn’t the real reason he’s leaving – it’s because he’s sick of living with House’s misery. The thrill is gone, and so is he.
Next Week: Tons of donor recipients with organs from the same body are keeling over. Plus, House gets all Fatal Attraction and hires a private eye to spy on his boo.
