House: Unfaithful

Posted by: Sarah Miller  •  February 20, 2009 @ 2:22am

Filed under: Recaps & Reviews

This week the team tries to diagnose a priest who got drunk and met Jesus, Foreman and Thirteen face the music over their relationship and medical missteps and House totally rocks a pink shirt. This week's soundtrack also features a Hugh Laurie original composition, are you excited yet? I know I am.

The Case of the Wine Soaked Preacher
This week's patient is a priest who undergoes a crisis of faith along with his crisis of health- also, he looks a lot like Thom Yorke and/or Clay Aiken circa American Idol, take your pick. He gets drunk one night and opens his door to find Jesus. Miraculously (haha, see what I did there?) House actually picks up this case himself as he's poking through Cameron's charts in the ER looking for an easy open-and-shut case. But this case turns out to be anything but easy.

The team's first step is to run an EEG to test for epilepsy and do a CT scan on Father Daniel's brain for tumors. When they conduct a medical history, Taub and Kumar find out that the priest has been moving around a lot since a youth at one of his old parishes accused him of inappropriate sexual contact. Father Daniel insists that it wasn't true and the boy was just confused but Taub and Kumar are dubious.

Taub and Kumar decide that the only thing wrong with Father Daniel is that he was drunk and had a hallucination, they try to discharge him the next day after he's slept it off. But Father Daneil tells them he feels nauseous, and his left foot feels like it's falling asleep...and then his toe falls off. Just so you know it totally looks like a piece of dog poop. Gross.
House thinks Father Daniel might have Carbon Monoxide poisoning so he tells the team (at this point, reduced to Taub and Kumar) to put him in a hyperbolic chamber and then sends them off to check the priest's apartment for CO sources. Is it just me or are these two the only ones who do any actual doctoring on this show?

The dynamic duo don't find anything in the priest's apartment, but when he appears to have a heart attack in the hyperbolic chamber they are presented with a new symptom. However the EKG that they perform during the commercial break shows that he didn't actually have a heart attack. House sends Kumar and Taub off to perform an angiogram to see if maybe the priest has clotting problems. During the angio House sits in and Father Daniel tells him all his thoughts on God. They don't find any blood clots, but they do discover that the patient has numbness in his chest.

Next up: a nerve study to find out if the numbness is a neurological symptom. Taub finds that one of the nerves in the priest's rib is stressed, Kumar finds that the priest has gone blind in his right eye. The ophthalmological exam (once again performed during the commercial break) shows that there is nothing structurally wrong with the priest's eye. But the priest's sensory perception is decreasing, and his muscle numbness is worsening.

House thinks there is something wrong with the Father's spleen. Thirteen runs the biopsy and doesn't find anything except a few minor bugs that wouldn't be enough to make him sick. But the priest has a normally harmless infection that he caught from the holy water, and it appears that he has a compromised immune system that is making him susceptible to the bug. And what is compromising his immune system, you might ask? House thinks the priest has AIDS.

But the Priest insists that he doesn't have it. He has never had sex and never had a blood transfusion, so how would he have gotten it? He refuses to get an AIDS test, because he knows as soon as he does he will permanently lose any credibility he might have left. Taub seeks out the kid who accused the priest of sexually molesting him to tell him he needs to get an AIDS test, even though doctors aren't legally allowed to do that. House orders the AIDS treatment.

In the end it turns out that Father Daniel doesn't have AIDS, he starts having a reaction to the AIDS medication which means that he doesn't have the disease. Thirteen thinks that Father D might have some kind of genetic disorder that is causing micro tumors in his brain. So Taub and Kumar head off to perform the test.

As they are prepping Father D for his genetic testing, Ryan (liar liar pants on fire) shows up to the hospital to apologize for ruining the Father's career and life and being the cause of his crisis of faith. There is a really touching moment where Father Daniel lays his hand on Ryan's head and accepts his apology. "And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us."

In the end, House has an epiphany when he removes the hallucination of Jesus as a symptom of the Father's ailment. Without the vision of Jesus, all of the priest's other symptoms fit Wiskott-Aldrich Synrdome. It's a genetic disorder that made our priest susceptible to all the AIDS stuff without actually having AIDS. And he was born with it: another gift from God. But it turns out that the vision of Jesus was a coincidence, a coincidence that brought Father Daniel to House and ultimately saved his life. So was it a coincidence? Or was it an act of God?

Foreteen

House admits to Foreman and Thirteen that he only took the priest's case because it's not a real case: he wants to fix his department before he starts dealing with real patients. He gives them an ultimatum: they have to decide between their jobs and their relationship. Or, as House puts it to them: "If you don't split, you must quit."

There is much foot stomping and whining over the ultimatum. Foreman points out that House never cared that Chase and Cameron were dating. True, but Chase never falsified medical records or compromised an entire drug trial for Cameron. Thirteen insists that they are adults and they can handle dating and also working together, and goshdarnnit House just needs to give thme a chance. But House counters with a: "No you're not, no you can't, and no I don't."

So Foreteen decide that they aren't going to play House's game and tell him that they aren't quitting and they also aren't going to stop seeing each other either. Wrong move. In face, as House points out- it's hard to remember the last time that these two made a right move. House ends up firing Foreman.

Foreman and Thirteen share the grossest, slobberiest kiss of all time in the locker room, and Foreman is convinced he's gonna be ok to find another job no problem. But when Foreman goes to ask Cuddy for a letter of recommendation, she won't give him one. It turns out that House had every right to fire Foreman. Duh. Cuddy tells him that he's lucky to still have a medical license, and sends him on his way.

When Thirteen realizes that Foreman is not going to find another job very easily, she starts looking for one. She approaches Cameron to see if there are any openings in the ER, and Cameron finds her a job at Mercy hospital. Thirteen goes to House and asks him to re-hire Foreman if she quits, and House agrees.

When Thirteen tells Foreman of her plan he doesn't like it. He is up in arms that it's only been two days and she hasn't really given him a chance to look for another job. When Thirteen tells him that House said he would react this way, he gets indignant and takes a shot at her bisexuality. But in the end he goes back to House and asks for his job back. Now Thirteen is pissed because she already told the other hospital she didn't want the job and also: what the hell, Foreman? Ugh these two are despicable, they totally deserve each other.

They are both back on the job (at least for the remainder of the case) and promptly begin sniping at each other during the differential. In the end, as far as I can tell nothing has been resolved. Thirteen heads back to the Foreman's apartment and they make out on the couch. Does this mean they both get to keep their jobs? Is Thirteen really quitting?

Mazel Tov, Cuddy Mama
Cuddy invites house to her Jewish baby naming ceremony. House thinks that Cuddy is just inviting him so that he won't show up. At first House is non-committal, but he eventually figures out (during a conversation with Wilson) that Cuddy just invited him so that he wouldn't agree to go. Unfortunately for Cuddy, reverse psychology doesn't work on House and he agrees to go.

Cuddy gets angry with Wilson for turning House on to her dramatic plot, and tells him it's his responsibility to fix the situation and get House to not go to the baby naming ceremony. So Wilson takes a much more direct approach, asking House why the hell he would want to go to the baby naming ceremony anyway.

Cuddy admits that she actually does want House at the baby naming ceremony because it's supposed to be about love and acceptance and House is filled with loathing and contempt. So he says, Ok, he's really not coming. But...I don't know, it seems like House is secretly crushed that Cuddy doesn't want him there.

Wilson seems to agree with me, because as he and House are having lunch in the hospital cafeteria, he realizes that House actually does want to go to the ceremony. Wilson tells House if he wants to go he should just go and act like a human being. But we all know House isn't capable of that.

Despite Cuddy secretly wanting House at Rachel's baby naming ceremony and House secretly wanting to be there, neither one of them is able to swallow their pride and admit what they really want to the other one. But House does hold the door open for her on their way out so... progress right?

While everyone else is at Cuddy's place for the ceremony, House ends up alone, drinking scotch by himself playing a medley on the piano. It's a sad, sad resolution for these two characters, but I'm happy as long as Hugh Laurie is playing the piano.

Houseisms

House: "You're a wuss, part wimp and part puss."

Wilson: "Why the hell are you going to Cuddy's baby naming ceremony? It's a religious ceremony, it's boring. Why waste a perfectly good evening that could be much better spent in a drunken stupor feeling sorry for yourself?"

House: "We are at the back stage door of a Duran Duran concert, hundreds of screaming girls clustered around. What does that mean?"

Kumar: "That girls like rock bands?"

House: "The presence of the fans indicates the presence of the band. Ok different night- same band, same door- now there's not a girl in sight. What does that mean?"

Thirteen: "Sorry, I don't speak hair band."

Kumar: "They weren't a hair band, they were new romantics. Did the band already leave?"

House: "Nope. The band is still there, still rockin' out. When does the absence of the fans not indicate the absence of the band?"

Thirteen: "When it's 2009, there aren't any Duran Duran fans."

House: "They don't make them anymore. There's no infection because there aren't any fans- no white cells."

Taub: "You think it's his spleen?"

House: "Why do I bother with these great metaphors if I still have to spell it out? Yes! I think it's his spleen! Go get a biopsy!"

Father Daniel: "Einstein said that coincidences are God's way of remaining anonymous."

House: "A woman in Florida said: 'Look, Jesus is on my cheese sandwich!'"

Tags: House, Unfaithful, Season 5 episode 15

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Original Comments Posted (2)

joalberts says...

I think Thirteen and Foreman pulled a fast one on House... they are pretending to be pissed at each other so that they can both stay working for House.

Remember when Thirteen walked into their apartment and bowed? Then they made out? I think they were proud of their acting skillz. That's my guess anyways. Either way, it's not going to work out well.

Feb 20, 2009 6:57pm

sarahm says...

Hrm, interesting theory. I never thought of that! We'll see what happens. House doesn't stay fooled for very long.

I was kind of hoping one of them would get fired for real, and House doesn't usually go back on his word without a purpose. We'll see, we'll see.

Feb 21, 2009 8:37pm

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