Commerical break: you know that Wal-Mart Christmas commercial with Destiny’s Child? It’s weird that Beyonce sings about her nephew and he’s in almost every shot, but Solange is nowhere to be found. Wal-Mart loves babies! But sluts can go straight to hell!

Back to the show. House is creating domino walls out of CD cases and having a grand old time when Stacy comes in worrying about boring things like renewing his credentials. Just like a woman! He says he liked it better when they were sleeping together, to which she replies that if she weren’t married, she’d be on him like “red on rice.” Ha! Oh, I love the women on this show who aren’t Cameron.

The cyclist, it turns out, is a world-class champion; he was just in that race for charity. House wants no part of the case because he doesn’t want to deal with the back-and-forth about steroid use that he’s sure will come with treating a pro athlete. Cuddy convinces him to talk to the patient by saying that he’s not denying drug use. House goes up the room, pretty much to prove a point: he immediately asks the cyclist if he’s on steroids. The guy says no, which causes House to gloat in Cuddy’s direction, until the patient says, “I do straight blood doping.” “Plot twist!” shouts Cuddy gleefully.

This is when House decides to take some of his painkillers. I’m not sure what he’s trying to prove by doing that. That he’s on the patient’s side? That can’t be.

The Outhouses are in the conference room offering their theories. They each have a different cause in mind for the respiratory distress, but it’s Foreman who comes up with the winner (and we can safely guess it’s wrong, since we’re only ten minutes in to the show, right?). He figures that given how many times a day the cyclist injects himself with various substances, he must have made a mistake at some point and let in air with the injection. This would be ironic, as House helpfully points out.