Recap: House: Rape-Babies R Us

The long dark DMo Popo arc has finally ended. Along with our three-week Idol-imposed hiatus. But not without a few lingering questions. Is DMo Popo really gone? Will a patient try to trick the good doctor House into sticking a finger up his bum? Will Wilson continue to whine like a bitch? The answers: Yes, Yes, and Of Course, He’s Friggin’ Wilson. Fortunately, his time in tonight’s episode was brief and uninteresting, a description that, if applied to his genitals, would no doubt explain why his wife left him.

Oh yeah, there’s also the crazy chick pictured above. She was raped. And she can’t wait to tell House all about it.This week’s episode starts off with Cuddy telling House that for the next two days, he’ll be doing nothing but clinic work. Why? Because she owns his ass. Literally. While he was in jail, she traded a cartoon of smokes and a jug of prison wine for him. So from now on, when Cuddy says “jump” House must pleasure her until she says “détente” which is their agreed-upon “safe” word.

And wouldn’t you know it, after fulfilling his bitch duty (heheh, I said dooty) the first three patients House sees – a geek, a bottle blonde and someone’s grandmother – all think they have STDs. I hope it’s not the same one. That would make solving this week’s mystery way too easy. Obviously, Grandma had a three-way with her granddaughter and her nebbish boyfriend.

In the waiting room, House asks who’s there for a runny nose. The few who raise their hands, he yells at, telling them it’s a cold, it’ll get better, and to go home. Everyone who stayed will get a doctor who’s not him, because he’s tired of wiping crotches. God, he makes medicine sounds so romantic. Not to mention the fine art of crotch-wiping.

Cuddy comes out and yells at House that he’s not getting out of clinic duty that easily. Just then, a crazy guy starts running around the waiting room, screaming and holding his head. While it could be something interesting, I’m betting his iPod is just stuck on Creed. After a couple of laps, House trips him up and gives him a sedative. No, wait, it was just a paralytic. So now the dude is still in pain, but at least he’s paralyzed and can’t annoy House any longer. (Ir)regardless, it looks like House has ticket out of the clinic: crazy bald guy! Maybe he has a head STD.

After the opening credits, House gets the band back together to solve the guy’s case. So, what do right ear pain, psychotic behavior and dizziness have in common? They all get House out of clinic duty. No matter what silly guess the OutHouses throw out, House agrees and orders the tests. Something smells fishy. And for once, it’s not Cameron. House tells them that once they’re done running all the tests, he wants them to pour some alcohol in the patient’s ear. Why? To kill the cockroach that’s biting him. UGH!! That might be the grossest medical story since The Pomp tried to smile.

Since Cuddy thinks he’s treating Roachboy, House decides to go hang out at the jogging track in the park. Why? Because it’s the last place Cuddy will look for him. Plus he likes watching all the bouncing breastesses. It’s not long though before Wilson comes along and totally harshes House’s woody. He’s such a killjoy. He wants to know why House is in the park and not in the clinic. Hey Wilson, you don’t own House’s ass. In fact, you sold his ass to DMo Popo, so get your bitch ass up back in the kitchen and make Housie some pie. House says he just likes watching people jog. He sits, he watches and he imagines. Wait, jogging is like porn? Sort of. But with better shorts.

Back at the hospital, Cameron gets to treat an old homeless guy who we’ll call HoboJoe. He hands her a note that he got from the last doctor he saw. It says “I like you, do you like me? Check one.” Turns out the last doc was a little too forward for HoboJoe’s liking. Just cuz he’s homeless doesn’t mean he does that kind of stuff. At least not on the first date. And certainly not without a case of Mad Dog 20/20. Actually, the note says he has inoperable lung cancer. Yup, he’s dying. He asks Cameron if he can sleep in the hospital tonight, because it’s cold outside. Besides, he needs someplace to empty his jar of poop. At least it saves Cameron the trouble of asking for a stool sample.

In the lobby, Cuddy sees Cameron and gets her to admit House already cured Roachboy. Ruh-roh! Of course, she runs out to the park and starts yelling at House. Either he can go back to the clinic, or she’ll turn him in. I hope she doesn’t pull this crap every time she’s mad at House. Pretty soon this show will start to feel like a procedural.

To make matters worse, he pops a Vicodin right in front of her. Hey, what happened to rehab? Eh, it didn’t stick. I guess we shouldn’t be so surprised, considering House had been paying the orderly to sneak him some Vicodins. So the whole thing was a scam? More or less. Cuddy says if he doesn’t go to the clinic, she’ll say she lied and he’ll go to jail. She only lied because she thought he was getting clean. Women are dumb.

Back at the clinic, House’s next patient has no nose hair. Has he been injecting himself with stem cells from a naked mole rat? No, he’s just a plucker. Good grooming is very important to him. And based on House’s rumpled unshaven appearance, he’s worried that House might not be detail-oriented enough to solve his case. Unfortunately for him, it turns out he has athlete’s foot in his nose, from using toenail clippers to trim the way-back hairs. So much for that good grooming theory.

House returns to the lobby and offers $50 to any patient who will leave without being treated. Three people take him up on it, so obviously they weren’t that sick to begin with. Cuddy takes House back to her office and wants to know how she can make clinic duty interesting for House. Dude, she is totally propositioning him! Housie gonna get some! Actually, she just offers to pay him $10 for every patient he diagnoses without touching them. And by them, of course, she means her breastesses. If only. She really means patients. What a tease. She also says he has to pay her $10 for every patient he touches. Evidently, she’s under the misguided notion that if he deals with enough patients, he’ll find his humanity. Like I said, women are dumb.

Next, we get a quick montage of House making patients run their own tests, including a guy who sticks a tongue depressor down his own throat, a girl who rubs her own rash, and a stoner who can’t take his own pulse. So far, Cuddy owes House $30. The next patient, however, is hot, so you know House is gonna lose about $50 on her legs alone. God knows how much he’ll lose for wiping her crotch.

The test results for House’s STD patients are in, so now he has to tell them the bad news. But not without berating them for not wearing a condom or watching an after-school special or Dawson’s Creek. Grandma and Woody Allen are fine. Blondie, however, isn’t so lucky. She immediately starts to cry. Come on, girly-girl, don’t be like that. It’s just Chlamydia. At least you didn’t have to get a q-tip stuck up your peehole to find out. When House tries to give her some pills, she screams at him not to touch her. From this, House surmises that she had something else stuck up in or around the general vicinity of her peehole: her rapist’s thingie. Still, it could be worse. She could’ve spent time in an Egyptian prison.

Since House and his rapier-like wit (Get it? Rape-ier?) is obviously not the right person to handle a rape case, Cuddy assigns a new doctor. Little Miss Rapie isn’t too happy about that, though. She wants to keep seeing House. So she’s psycho, too. Interesting. But not interesting enough, as House tells her he doesn’t want to treat her. Why? Because the fact that she was raped holds no interest for him. It’s nothing personal, there’s just nothing for him to treat. She’s physically healthy. Doesn’t matter. She trusts House and wants him for her doctor. House says that she doesn’t really want him; she just wants some sense of control in her life. She interprets this to mean that House thinks she’s raping him and starts yelling at him again. Yeah, it was a little harsh, but at least it got him off the case.

Cameron is back with HoboJoe and wants to treat his pain. He refuses, though, saying he deserves the pain because he screwed up his life. Hey, that’s the same excuse I use for why I deserve so much beer.

House’s next patient has the hiccups. And by hiccups, I mean the desire to have House stick a finger in his ass. Seems he read about a treatment for hiccups called anal-digital manipulation and is really curious as to what that’s all about. I can’t wait to see the commercial for that treatment: Ask your doctor about anal-digital stimulation. Side effects may include bleeding, oily discharge and really stinky pinky.

Cuddy is talking with House when he sees one of the patients who took his $50 being admitted to the hospital. Even worse, now the little boy needs an operation. Did House screw up? No, Dr. Gacy here just likes cutting up little boys. Not so fast there, Dr. Dahmer. Just because the kid swallowed a magnet doesn’t mean he needs to be disemboweled. To prove it, House uses a scalpel to show the magnet is already well into the boy’s intestines. He’ll get rid of it on his own soon enough. Yay poop!

While all this is going on, Eve (the rape victim) crashes. When the new doctor Cuddy assigned to the case turned her back, she took some pills and tried to kill herself. Paging the Worst Doctor EVER!

When Eve wakes up. House is sitting next to her bedside. You know, she seems to be pretty coherent for someone who just overdosed. They bicker back and forth about why she wants House as her doctor. She just wants to talk, but he’s not interested. Especially since she won’t talk about what happened to her, or her STD meds. I bet she’s a cuddler too.

Since this whole communicating thing is uncharted territory for House, he decides to ask the OutHouses for advice. They think he should talk with her about whatever she wants to talk about. House thinks he’s the last person she should be talking to. Chase agrees, but Cameron begs to differ. Other things Cameron begs to differ with: whether or not “fetch” is ever going to happen. It’s not going to happen! Foreman tells him he should just talk with her, but nicely. And that’s where they agree to disagree. Cameron thinks Eve has to talk about the rape. Foreman thinks she should ignore it and pretend it didn’t happen. Chase, meanwhile, thinks Yahoo Serious is totally underrated as a serious actor. Come on, people. His last name is Serious!

After his team’s less-than-inspiring pep talk, House decides to give it another shot, and tells Eve she has to tell him what happened. Or what? He’ll be mean to her? He tries to convince her the rape wasn’t her fault. But you know he’s just talking out his ass because he has no idea what she was wearing at the time. (Please direct all hate mail for that last joke to cutmesomeslackimtryingtomakealivinghere@tvgasm.com.) Eve doesn’t want to talk about anything. She just wants to give it time. Because time changes everything. See, she did watch Dawson’s Creek. House thinks that’s bunk. Doing things changes things. Not doing things leaves things exactly the way they were. Which isn’t exactly true. I haven’t done any sit-ups in a few weeks now, and my gut has grown an extra pack.

Cameron is back with her dying hobo, trying to figure out why he’s punishing himself. He says it’s because he promised his dad he would. Yeah, that sounds like a great family reunion. Out of the blue, HoboJoe asks Cameron why her husband had to suffer. How did he know about her husband? At first he says he just knows, but when she calls him on it, he admits the nurse told him. He’s just trying to freak her out. Why? Because that’s how HoboJoe rolls. That, and he wants you to remember him. He needs someone, anyone, to remember him. Wait, who were we talking about again?

I think there has to be an easier way to make someone remember you than refusing pain meds for your terminal lung cancer. Why not take off your clothes and streak down the hallway? French-kiss Cameron and goose Cuddy? Even better, French-kiss Foreman and goose Chase. They’d certainly remember that, as I’m sure it’s not every day a dying hobo sticks his tongue down Foreman’s throat.

House and Eve are trying some small talk. It’s more forced than that time I tried chatting with Honey Bunny. House says her trusting him for no reason is not rational. She thinks that nothing is rational. He thinks that everything is rational. She says tomato, he says tomahto. Potato. Potahto. And then they call the whole thing off.

Actually, she wants to know if anything terrible has ever happened to House. You mean besides losing the muscle in his leg, spending every minute of every day in excruciating agony, getting shot by an ex-patient, stealing a dead man’s meds, spending a few nights in jail, faking his way through rehab and going mano-a-mano with DMo Popo? Yeah, besides that. Nope, nothing springs to mind.

When Eve finally dozes off, House goes off for some advice from Wilson and the notHouses. Did I say she dozed off? My bad. House sedated her. That’s one way of getting out of an awkward conversation. Maybe I should start giving the roofies to mrs. copygodd after we make the beast with two backs. Hmm… Wilson thinks House should just tell her the truth: his life sucks. Cameron, meanwhile, thinks he should tell her his life has been wonderful, so she’ll have some hope. Foreman thinks he should tell her his life sucks. Chase thinks he should just keep sedating her. I like the cut of Chase’s jib.

House returns to Eve’s room and wakes her up. Turns out he does have a story to share. He was abused by his own grandmother. Not as interesting as being his own grandfather, but still, I’m intrigued. House says when he was younger, his parents traveled a lot. And they left him with his grandmother. She was very set in her ways, and was a strong believer in discipline. Much like Dick Cheney. When House screwed up, she’d make him sleep in the yard, or take a bath in ice. At least she didn’t shoot him in the face. He never told his parents what was going on, though. He just took it. Like a bitch. Eve asked what he called her. Oma. It’s Dutch for grandmother. Even after she abused you? Well, she was still Dutch, and she was still his grandmother, so yeah. Eve doesn’t believe House, though. There’s no way he would keep calling her Oma after something like that. Eventually, House admits the story didn’t happen to him. But it did happen to someone. Probably Wilson.

House gets pissed and asks her if she’s going to base her whole life on who she gets stuck in a room with. Actually, she’s going to base this moment on who she’s stuck in a room with. Because that’s what life is. It’s a series of rooms. And who we get stuck in those rooms with adds up to what our lives are. Much like the internets are a series of big tubes. And who we get stuck with in those tubes determines whether we order Viagra or Cialis.

Cuddy interrupts and says she needs to talk to House in the hallway. Does she need a hormone shot? Is she going to remind House that he’s her bitch? Nope, she tells House that Eve is pregnant. Man, this chick can’t catch a break.

House breaks the news to Eve, then starts telling her about the “termination procedure.” I think that’s a euphemism for something funny. She won’t do it though, because she thinks it’s murder. You know what else is murder? Meat! There’s some more back and forth about abortion, which I really don’t want to get into here. Partly because it’s a touchy subject, and partly because I just got back from Pub Quiz and I’m totally hammered. So my apologies in advance if the rest of this recap reads like EdHill wrote it. Cooter!!!!!

Upstairs, or at least in another part of the hospital, Cameron is passing the time with HoboJoe. And based on my experience with relatives who’ve had cancer, he’s not looking too good. But on the plus side, he doesn’t have a tracheotomy yet. (Hi Dad!) He still won’t let Cameron give him any pain meds, though, which is where the similarities end. She says she’ll remember him, not because he’s crazy, but because he’s a nice man. Evs. This dude’s so batshit crazy, if he were to flop onstage during an Ozzy concert, the Oz would bite his head off. What can I say? Jack’s dad loves him some cancer. He tells Cameron he has no family, he has no friends, he’s never even had a real job. Other than being annoying, of course. If he dies in peace, he’s just another patient. But if he dies suffering, he’s just another patient who’s never taken drug advice from Rush Limbaugh. (Ir)regardless, he tells Cameron he just needs to die knowing something is different because he was here.

This prompted a big discussion between mrs. copygodd and myself, which I wish I had a clearer recollection of at this point in time. We were trying to decide if we had made a difference in someone else’s life. I think I have, because I’m sure at some point in time someone went further into debt because of an ad I wrote. And I know the missus has, because she helped write the regulations for the state of Ohio for disposing of old tires. (Yes, anyone there who’s had to pay the disposal fee when you buy new tires, now you know who to thank.)

Okay, back to the show. Did I mention I’m totally smashed right now? We came in fifth place tonight, if it makes any difference. I should go back and correct this in the morning, but really, where’s the fun in that? At least this way, I may get an extra comment or two. And as you all know, the number of comments is how they determine our rate of pay here at the ‘gasm.

Okay, now really back to the show. Because Cameron’s such a pussy and won’t just jab the guy she’s forced to sit and watch HoboJoe die in excruciating agony.

Meanwhile, House and Eve are at the jogging track. They continue their philosophical discussion, which at this point is totally beyond my meager levels of comprehension. But I can still do a screen grab. Look:

Eve thinks that we’re all living on a prayer. House, meanwhile, thinks this is all there is, and our time on Earth is all we have. Unfortunately, he’s neglected to factor late fees into his philosophy. However, he has managed to insert “rape-baby” into his lexicon. I’m going to see how many times in the next management meeting I can slip that into the conversation. In the end, Eve admits she needs to know that all this, including her rape (not to mention my drunken recapping), means something; that there is an ultimate consequence. She needs the comfort of knowing. And I’m going to need the comfort of a cold compress and an Advil suppository.

In the last scene in the park, we finally learn why Eve chose House: Wilson paid her to. Actually, she says there’s something about him. It’s like he’s hurt too. And guess what? He is. Or was. Turns out the abuse story he told Eve was true. But it wasn’t his grandmother who abused him; it was his father. And yes, he continued to call him Oma. At that, Eve finally starts to tell House about how his grandmother raped her.

Finally, back at the hospital, Cameron is still sitting with HoboJoe. He dies. The end. Actually, it’s not the end, because she gives his corpse a sponge bath. You know, if she really wanted to comfort him, she’d have pulled out the sponge before he died. Oh yeah, Cuddy interrupts House and Wilson’s game of foosball to tell him that Eve aborted her rape-baby.

Boy, that was a happy episode. Not quite as happy as I’m sure you’ll be when I tell you that the man, the myth, the legend B-Side himself may be handling next weeks’ recap, as I will be out of town on a drinking business trip.

Anyway, what did you think of this week’s ep? Was it worth the three-week wait? I don’t think so. But at least we learned a fun new word. Say it with me: rape-baby!