We Don’t Have to Take Our Clothes Off…

So this House recap is crazy late, mea culpa, etc etc. Moving along. The episode was a weird mix of hot sexy sex and warning about how horribly wrong it can go if you don’t use a rubber. Wilson was looking good, House was rocking the leather jacket, Cameron and Chase got funky, but the patient du jour had HIV. Huh. That brings things down.

We open up on House’s confession to Wilson that he broke into Stacy’s file. Wilson is outraged – outraged! – until House gets to the part where Stacy says she and Mark don’t have sex anymore. Wilson is all about the prurient interests. I like the little hints we’re getting that tell us that Wilson is a big ho.
In a nice change of pace, this scene is set at House’s…abode, and a friend of mine pointed out that the number is 221B, which was Sherlock Holmes’ address. Neat! The BFF carry the conversation outside, where Wilson sarcastically suggests that House show Stacy’s file to Cuddy to prove how unstable Stacy is. House is busy looking for his newspaper, but a young guy waiting outside already has it. House introduces him to Wilson as his stalker, and apparently he’s been bugging House to treat him, but House isn’t interested because the guy just has regular old AIDS. House rattles off some symptoms, including rapid weight loss, as seen by his shirt “gaping at the collar.” Which is weird, because the guy’s shirt is in no way gaping. Anyway.

This guy claims that although he has HIV, his immune system is fully functioning. Despite all the ways in which his body is breaking down, his tests come back fine, so no one can treat him effectively. He thinks House won’t treat him because House is a closet case. Wilson gets all uppity and clarifies that they’re not a couple, to which House snarks, “So self-loathing.”

The guy grab onto House’s cane and won’t let go, leading to a tug-of-war that ends when House lets go and the guy crashes back against a parked car, causing him to go into anaphylactic shock. I think it’s worth noting that it’s Wilson who rushes to help the guy, while House just says, “I didn’t touch him.”

At the hospital, Cuddy is relentlessly insisting that House go see Stacy to make sure he’s not about to get his ass sued. Which would normally be fine advice, but in this case Stacy is actually still at home. And Mark isn’t. And House tries to get laid. At first it just seems as though he’s doing his usual flirty banter business, talking about Stacy “climbing up Mt. Gregory,” that sort of thing. But then he goes over to the sink to help with the dishes, even though they both know he hates doing dishes. He looks at Stacy all meaningfully and says “people can change.” Ew, vomit! Where is naughty snarky House? I don’t want any deep longing from him.

Mark comes home then, causing House to leap ten feet in the air. I think he was surprised, but tried to play it off. “I know it looks like we’re cleaning dishes, but actually we’re having sex.” You know, I just don’t buy that he could say that to a woman’s husband. It’s funny, but I just don’t buy it.

OK, the patient’s name is Calvin Ryan. House wants all the tests redone, since they can probably be done more accurately at this hospital. As the Outhouses fill him in more on Calvin’s case history, House finally gets interested. He thinks that maybe Calvin’s newer, stronger drugs are kicking his immune system into action, which is causing it to attack any infections (or remnants of one) in his body too strongly.

House is still way more interested in Stacy’s “case,” though. He’s down in the pharmacy mixing up some rat poison so he can be a hero and kill the rat in her attic. Wilson is there to berate him some more, telling House to either admit he wants her back or “shut up and cry yourself to sleep like everybody else.” Oh, Wilson! Come here you little snugglebuns! (Where is this attraction I unexpectedly have for Wilson coming from?)

While House is coming up with sneaky ways to hook it up with Stacy, Calvin is coming on to Chase like there’s no tomorrow. Well, I guess if you’re that sick… Calvin’s a photographer, a career choice he claims to have made strictly in order to sleep with hot models. He also, somehow, can read Cameron like a book, getting on her case for not having fun at work, or ever, which is something Chase confirms. Cameron’s so pathetic when she pretends that her life is fulfilling.

Over in Stacy’s attic, House is talking about how angry Mark is. I guess it is a nice parallel, if a little obvious, to have Stacy’s husband also be handicapped. House can say that Mark is angry at Stacy because he was once angry at Stacy and resentful that she could still walk. I think he’s playing a little fast and loose with the stuff he got from her file, though. Wonder if he’ll get caught?

The Outhouses call to give House an update on Calvin, but he hangs up when the rat appears. Luckily the Outhouses are a little more dedicated to their actual human patients, and Cameron is soon back in Calvin’s room. Lecturing, or course, but the important thing is that she’s there. Too bad he rewards her by coughing blood and spattering it all over her face. She’s freaked out, naturally, and although Calvin had acted like a shallow little shit before, he looks genuinely stricken by what’s just happened.

Now, from all the sex ed I took at my super-liberal middle school, I thought it was dang near impossible to get HIV without actual sex, or, I guess, a blood transfusion. But I guess all the ladies from Planned Parenthood were wrong, because the hospital has already set Cameron on a course of preventive drugs. Calvin’s blood did get in her eye and mouth, but it was a surprise to me that they had to be this cautious. Having said that, Cameron looks completely drained and terrified and for the first time, I actually feel for her.

House totally doesn’t give a shit about Cameron. Or so he would like us to believe. I can’t tell. When she comes into the room, she’s extremely brisk and businesslike, which doesn’t do much to cover up how upset she is. She’s sent, with Chase, to find all of Calvin’s drugs and test them for any additives. House is way more concerned with the rat he found in Stacy’s house, which seems to have some sort of illness. He asks Foreman for a second opinion while the other doctors do real work.

At Calvin’s place, Chase tells Cameron they should go out for a drink to get her mind off of things. As skeezy as Chase is, I think he’s just being a friend here. But Cameron, looking at the mountains of medicine bottles Calvin has, doesn’t think a drink is really going to help at this point. She talks about how the hospital will pay her medical bills now, but if she does get HIV, they’ll try to prove she got it elsewhere by doing drugs or sleeping around. Chase dismisses the very idea, saying that’s it’s not like they’d find anything exciting about Cameron’s personal life. She is very bummed out by that, but knows it’s true.

Chase finds some evidence of poisoning, so they head back to the hospital, where House tells Cameron that she has to do the test on Calvin, since she’s already at risk for HIV anyway. Jeez, that was not funny! House is not being cool. She then…she…oh god, I can’t even watch this. Zoom-shot into Calvin’s back as she sticks a little metal rod into him and uses it to grab a piece of his lung and pull out through the incision. OK, I have to lie down now.

It’s halfway through the show, and so: Calvin starts to crash and tells them to tell his dad he’s sorry, and in a different scene Stacy looks like she’s ready to sleep with House, but Mark calls right before they jump on each other.

House and Cameron have this tortured discussion about not having any regrets, and Calvin continues where House left off, saying that while he hopes that Cameron didn’t get HIV, it really loosened him up and might do the same for her.

Ugh, the subtext is killing me. House and Stacy are discussing the rat and how she secretly likes it. OK WE GET IT. House tested its urine and found traces of the chemicals that are in cigarettes, which means someone in the house is smoking. House knows it’s Stacy because she smoked when he was sick, too. Then they almost make out, closer this time, clooooser, but the rat runs into the trap and breaks them out of lusty mode.

And Cameron’s here to pick up the slack! Yowza! Chase goes over to her place to pick her up for an evening out, but turns out Cameron’s all ready for an evening in. She’s got crack whore eyeliner going on and her hair’s all crazy and she admits that she’s high. He tries to resist when she jumps on him, but really, guys are pretty weak in the face of hot undersexed girls looking to get laid. So they do it. I’m feel fairly confident that she made the right choice in picking Chase; Foreman probably would have been able to think with the brain in this situation.

Cameron shows up at work the next day looking seriously strung out, but immediately has to deal with Calvin and his dad screaming at each other. His dad claims that Calvin killed his mother. We cut to a commercial right after this pronouncement, but when we come back we learned it wasn’t quite that simple. She had kidney failure and although Calvin was a match, he was also HIV positive and couldn’t donate an organ, and she died. That is a little different from him killing her, I must say. Cameron is delivering this news to the other doctors very aggressively, and pacing a lot too. Foreman thinks Calvin did kill his mom, since getting HIV through unprotected sex shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone. Cameron asks him if he always uses condoms, then she asks House the same question. She doesn’t ask Chase. Did they not use a condom? On the day she maybe contracted HIV? Preposterous!

House figures out pretty quickly that Chase and Cameron bumped uglies. The best part is the look on Foreman’s face when he figures it out. Pure childlike glee. There’s less glee over in Calvin’s room, where Wilson is telling him that he has cancer. They’ll have to do surgery to see if it’s terminal.

After a brief interlude wherein Chase tells Cameron that the sex was hot but can’t happen again, House decides that Calvin doesn’t have cancer, but rather parasites he picked up from hunting as a kid. He thinks the dad has them too. However, Poppy McHickson won’t take a blood test to find out. House totally baits both men by calling the dead mom a fatty and a whore, which makes the dad punch House. House is now within his rights to retaliate, and smacks dad in the gut with his cane, causing him to go into the same kind of shock that Calvin experienced earlier. The surgery is gross. That’s all I can say.

House has to go to Stacy’s office since he has hit another patient, again. This time, he goes too far. She puts ice on his face where he was punched, and House talks about how he can tell that she doesn’t have sex anymore. She laughs it off until she realizes that the only person who could know that is her therapist. Who works in the hospital. Ooh, she is pissed. House tries to say that she knew all along but didn’t care because she still wants him. “I don’t anymore,” is her reply. Oh, burn! That is amazing. She straight up told House that he just lost her forever right there. Bummer.

Ah, the closing montage of sadness. It’s a personal favorite of mine. Calvin apologizes to his dad. Stacy cuddles up to Mark, something that seems to surprise him. Chase looks in the mirror and sees a sore on his lip. Yikes. Now, obviously even if he did get HIV he wouldn’t have symptoms yet, but as a total hypochondriac I can sympathize. Cameron marks the days until her HIV test, and House sits alone, with only his new pet rat for company.

So! Whadya think? Was the sex titillating? On a scale of one to ten, how hot is House in that leather jacket? Why do all the actresses on this show pluck their eyebrows so much? Let’s talk about the important stuff.