OK, Houseaholics. I'm going to be up front with y'all. February is National Stomach Bug Month, and I'm celebrating with a tall glass of Pepto, trying to take notes while lying very very still on the couch under a heat pad. So I can kinda sympathize with this week's POW. Is that anything like method acting? I just hope there's no really disgusting symptoms in tonight's episode, like blood or excrement or puke or... uh oh hang on a second... ok I'm back. Did I mention this is episode number 100? Hopefully something special and non-nauseating is in store. On to the cold open!
It's a cooking class. Like I can think about food right now. The chef has been watching a little too much Gordon Ramsay, because he's laying into his assistant. It's not long before she starts looking woozy, and I'm really afraid she's going to barf. Her lips turn blue and she starts muttering medical terms at random. She passes out instead of tossing her cookies. Whew.
It's OK, I'm a doctor. Those are GOOD germs I spewed all over your food.
After the credits, we see Foreteen waking up in bed. "You drool." "Shut up." Remember that, kids. Ten years from now you'll be screaming it at each other. Assuming 13 lives that long. I'm kinda hoping they kill her off this year, but anyway. Next we see Wilson washing dishes. He takes a long meaningful look at a coffee cup that's sitting on the counter (much the same way I look at my coffee cup at 6 am) but leaves it. Next, House walks in to work and limps up the stairs because the elevators all have "Out of Order" signs on them. How much you want to bet someone's um, pulling his leg? Sure enough, all the Houseguests say the elevators were working fine for them. Anyway, let's talk about the POW. She has a pneumothorax, which my personal medical consultant says is a fancy name for a collapsed lung. House doesn't find this interesting, but 13 says they really REALLY want to take this case. She's a brilliant research doctor who is about to cure cancer, therefore They Must Save Her. I smell yet another moral or ethical ambiguity coming. The smell makes me want to puke. But pretty much everything does right now.
13 and Louie go check the POW for asthma. She's getting the fast track treatment because "Dr. House gets a few perks." Louie adds that curing her fast will be "our gift to society." Barf. The POW says sorry to break their little hearts, but she quit her research job months ago. She had an operation for like a tumor on her uterus or something, and she realized on the operating table that she wasn't happy with her life. "Couldn't you just buy an expensive German sports car and have an affair?" snaps 13. Hey, Louie's wife bought him that car, remember? Just sayin. Regardless, that sounds like something Old Cranky 13 would say, not New Perky 13. Hrmmmz. The POW says she's much happier being chewed out as an assistant chef than she was curing cancer.
House goes to tell Cuddy he's on to her little game of putting fake signs on the elevators. Cuddy is busy watching her nanny cam. Most people would be satisfied spamming their Facebook friends with flair, but I guess the boss gets to hog all the bandwidth. (Somewhat-related true story: I showed up at work early once and one of the bosses asked me to figure out why the printer wasn't working. He'd jammed the print queue full of Naughty Asian Barely Legal Sluts. Ah, the good old dot-com days.) Anyway, Cuddy admits to the not-very-funny practical joke. She's taking revenge on House for making her come back to work. "Congratulations, you've dragged me down to your level." House pulls the sign off the elevator, nods to the janitor in a sneaky Scrubs reference, and gets in with about 10 other people who are already on. Did Cuddy send a memo to everyone else in the hospital except House, or does she run out and only put the signs on when she knows House is coming? She must not be doing a lot of actual work.
"Someone sent me a Schrute Buck! SCORE!"
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Comments (4)
The whole scratching through the skull thing is actually not an urban legend. It has happened...there are certain compulsive disorders that cause a person to scratch incessantly and, eventually, scratch through the skull in their sleep (I don't understand how fingernails can scratch through bone, either, though!)
1 of 4 | Posted by tracy831 | Posted on February 7, 2009 1:10 PM
If I'm remembering correctly, the real life person who scratched through her skull did it over a period of months. She developed some sort of infection that softened the bone. So overnight, it's impossible, but over time it's somewhat possible.
Oh, and I'm glad I'm not the only person who wondered what happened to the flame cane.
2 of 4 | Posted by Esquimaux | Posted on February 7, 2009 5:01 PM
She had been scratching for months, but she went through the skull over one night. And the infection developed after she scratched through the skull.
I miss the 'bitchin' cane too!
3 of 4 | Posted by tracy831 | Posted on February 7, 2009 6:53 PM
I immediately started wondering what happened to his cane also. I even rewinded to make sure I wasn't seeing things.
4 of 4 | Posted by flowie623 | Posted on February 9, 2009 11:33 AM