[House] LSD & Anti-Depressants a.k.a. Breakfast of Champions

WARNING: The following re-cap is almost TWoP length. I took actual notes this time. I promise to never do that again.

For those of you who don't know me, let me start off by saying that I LUFF HOUSE! The fictional character of House is my future husband. Seriously. This is why House is my #1 favourite show. I mean I like the whole show, the ensemble cast is fantastic, but it is Dr. Gregory House M.D. that I LUFF more than tv itself! Okay, maybe not that much, but he's a close second. So women (and some men), HANDS OFF! He's MINE!!

Okay, I'm okay now....

We open up on a sunny day in the woods. A Father and Son are ATVing down a well worn path. They stop to take a break and son asks father if he can have a turn at the wheel. Dad says no way jose, but melts under the beatific smile of his only child and relinquishes the handlebars. (Hey, wait a sec...Have you ever noticed that there are only families with an "only child" on this show? No one seems to have any siblings. That's peculiar....) I shake my head with disapproval, "You're gonna regret this Dad!," but he does not heed my mental warning and they take off. Everything seems to be hunky-dory until the Son's eye twitches, and then his hand, and then they accelerate out of control. Dad tries to tell him to slow down but he's lost control of his body. Dad gets bumped off the back of the ATV while his son rides off the path and crashes into a pyramid of oil barrels just sittin' pretty in the middle of the forest (?!) and bursts into flames! But it's gonna be all right, cuz we know that during the opening credits he's in an ambulance on his way to Princeton Plainsboro Teaching Hospital.

No wait! It must be more serious! Son's been helicoptered in!! They force dad out of the room so they can work, unlike on ER where friends and family stand around and get in the way where ever they please. But fortunately for Dad, he can still watch over his Son due to the over-designed set with the floor to ceiling plate glass window walls for every hospital room.

Cut to House reading Hindi?! Wait a second! We know he speaks Spanish and reads Portugese, but he also reads Hindi?! Foreman walks in with Son's file but House already knows about the case and has been ignoring the pages. A burn victim? That's too easy a case for the great House. Why? Because we already know what's wrong with him. Or do we? After a quick look at the file, House takes the case because he sees some elevated brainwaves. Foreman points out that it could be attributed to the burns, but House continues down the corridor like nobody's business. Cut to the viewing room, with another huge window, of Son's OR. It looks like Son is wearing a massive burn tee and I wonder if in the next scene he'll be wearing a skeleton tee. House needs a brainwave test but an EKG is out do to the burns so he pulls some obscure knowlegde out of his arse and tells his Ducklings to track down a Galvanometer at "Any electronic store open before 1905." The ducklings look at him with a mixture of admiration and distain.

Cutty's office. She's just found out that she's "invited" some Dr. Webber (guest star Dan Butler a.k.a. Bulldog from Frasier) to guest lecture at the hospital that day. Where is her assistant?! She quit apparently, and considering she once had male eyecandy sitting on the other side of her window, I guess we're supposed to assume she's like Murphy Brown and can't keep an assistant for longer than an episode? How does a crab-apple like the delish House keep a loyal following of Ducklings and Cutty not keep an assistant? She's tough, but not rough. Anyhoo, she finds House inducing a coma patient with a migraine in order to test an experimental migraine medication. "Have you ever read an ethical guideline?" She asks, but does nothing to try and stop him. She calls him on forging her signature authorizing the lecture, but again, does nothing to reprimand him.

Back to the Ducklings. Cameron takes Son's history from his parents. Mom and Dad are "kewl" parents. They have the perfect and the most open relationship with Son. In fact, they even gave their son pot to smoke. "Demystifying" drugs and all that. Like I said, they are, like, totally kewl! Meanwhile, Chase and Foreman are eletrocuting their Son with the Galvanometer. Well that's the way it seems, but phew!, he's only experiencing a seizure. Can't sue us for that! Back at House's office, House gives the Ducklings orders to run certain tests, but as he tries to leave they keep stopping him - "You're cramping my exits." - and point out that due to the burns they can't run any of the normal tests. Have they stumped him? Not the informidable House. He tells them to do an ultrasound of Son's brain. Whaaaa?! If he has MS then the ultrasound will show elevated something or other. Uh, okay....

Now we're in the lecture hall. Trusty Wilson sits beside a "disguised" House who looks like he's ready for St. Paddy's Day all dressed in green. You'd think they'd dress him in red or pink it being Valentine's Day and all, but no, they chose green. Finally, we discover the reason he was reading a Hindi medical journal. His arch nemesis from Medical School 20 years ago is - wait for it - Bulldog! Wilson heard the story of how House got thrown out for cheating, as he finds out that this is the guy who ratted House right outta Johns Hopkins and stole the award that was meant for him. Bulldog has developed a migraine medication (doh!) that potentially will make him millions. House has determined by giving the medication to one coma patient that it doesn't work, and all the research and tests Bulldog ran in India has got to be bunk because, c'mon, it's India. Wilson wants to know why House has gone to all this trouble to pick a fight with this guy, it was 20 years ago, after all. "He's a bad scientist." "Well, you cheated off of him. How bad could he be?" "His answer was wrong." Wilson begs House not to pick a fight. He points out that what is eating him up inside is not Bulldog's bad science, but the fact that he pushed away the only woman he's ever loved for the second time. He points out that there are more constructive ways of dealing with it, without having to cause pain to himself or to others: Buy a plasma TV (yeah!) or get a hooker (nooooo!). But House picks the fight in front of everyone at the lecture by stating that the drug doesn't work. Bulldog tells him he can't prove it based on one test on a coma patient, "You don't know everything, House." Oh no you di'int, Bulldog! Them is fightin' words!

Hmmmm, so what's House gonna do now? Well, simple, he induces a migraine on himself. Here they use a fish-eye lens from high above or low below eyelevel to show what his migraine feels like and the effect is, well, effective. Cameron finds him in this state and woos over him and shows her disgust at the same time. Oh I love you! I hate you! I love you! I hate you! (I hate her!) And he tells her Bulldog's meds still don't work. Yea! He was right! Boo! He's stuck with a migraine that won't go away! Yea! The physical pain takes his mind of his emotional pain! Boo! He's tearing Wilson apart with his destructive behaviour! Wilson's luff for House is strong in this ep.

House and the Ducklings brainstorm over why Son had an orgasm in the hyperbolic chamber. (oops! Skipped over that little fact, didn't I?) But instead of standing by the whiteboard writing down all the symptoms, House is under the, yes, glass table with this eyes closed. He continues to dole out ancient remedies by ordering the Duckling to clean his burn wounds via magots! At this point, I don't know exactly what happens because I'm looking away from the television set. Bugs make my head itch. It's itchy right now while I'm thinking about it. Let's move on shall we? (Your "YES!" doesn't have to resonate so loudly! Trust me, I want to get to this end of this just as much as you do.)

Son's brainwaves are still all over the map, because really, they haven't done much to treat him. So House orders Foreman to give the kid a lumbar puncture near the base of the brain which may cause paralysis or death. Foreman lays it all out for Mom & Dad and Mom's all, well do we have a choice and he says no, and she says then why are you telling us about the possible side-effects?? Dad tells her to calm down and she totally turns on him. Supportive Mom lashes out admitting she blames Dad just as much as Dad blames himself. (Dad's been full of self-loathing all episode.) Foreman gives Son the lumbar puncture with Chase jealously looking over his shoulder, but the needle won't go in, so Foreman moves it even closer to the brain. Chase freaks out, Son's BP goes up, but all is well and the test comes back clean for MS. Back to the drawing board with 15 mins left.

House hypothesizes, "What if he felt tingling before the crash?" He's, like, psychic or something, so House brings in the anesthesiologist to wake him up which is totally whack because of the amount of sheer pain a burn patient would feel were he conscious. But no one can stop House from doing whatever the heck he wants to do, so Son is woken up and he immediately freaks out and starts screaming with pain. House asks him what happened before the crash and Son manages to spit out that he pee'd his pants and then blacked out before he's put back under. That oh-so-subtly expressive face shows us how House regretted inflicting such pain. It reminds us he's not a jerk, deep deep deep down inside. Cameron meets him outside the room with her usual admiration-disgust combo and asks House where he's going now. He says, "Kid's screaming gave me a headache. I'm going to take some aspirin." Okay, maybe he's a little bit of a jerk....

HOUSE IN THE SHOWER! Yowza! Yowza! Yowza! We see through his eyes that he's hallucinating. Cameron walks into the locker room - secretly hoping to catch House still in the shower - and he tells her he's hallucinating by seeing sounds. She leaves disgusted because she knows he's taken "something" when there are dying people to be saved. You just know she couldn't wait to blab it all over the hospital, so when House walks into his office all chipper, Foreman tells him he looks much better. Anti-depressants are the key, House answers. However, since they didn't show up on Son's tox-screen, House decides he has to wake him up again. But he's been thawted by the anesthesiologist, who tattled on him to the parents and now they won't let him near their child. House tells them that their Son had a seizure on the ATV caused by anti-depressants. Dad is momentarily relieved it wasn't his fault, until House points out that while the seizure caused the crash, if he hadn't been driving he wouldn't have gotten burned. That's right, you're a baaaad Dad. House needs to ask Son if he's been taking medication, but since Mom & Dad know everything about their child, who never lies to them by the way, they bet his life on the fact that their son is not depressed and therefore not taking anti-depressants.

People, what is the motto of this show? Everybody Lies. So House basically says screw you and goes into Son's room. Mom runs to get Foreman who tries to stop House from waking up him up again, but what actually stops him is a small burn on his hand and discolouration on his fingertips. He walks out and tells the parents that their Son has been lying to them. No, he's not depressed, but yes he's on anti-depressants to help him quit the smoking they knew nothing about. All is well in the world of medicine once again. Dad wonders if Son will every forgive him and Mom is all supportive again. I say, Dad, snap out of it and be there for your Son! This ain't all about you.

Cutty walks into House's office with a "Hey, did you drop acid?" Nice to see you too, Cutty! We find out that Cameron tattled and that indeed House has taken LSD to stop the migraine and then anti-depressants (ahhhh...) to kill the buzz. Bulldog storms into the room and blames House for ruining his career and life because the email he sent to Bulldog's pharmaceutical backers about his little test caused them to take away their funding. Kapow! (Love Monkey shout-out) That's what you get crybaby Bulldog when you bet against the House. Still, House knows he's gone to far and surprise surprise, it didn't make him feel any better. So he takes Wilson's advice and gets himself a hooker.

Now please excuse me while I go and weep in the corner. Why would you do that to me Housey? Why?

Originally Posted by Highbrow