[House] Vicodin Chic

“Wake up in the morning, feelin’ kinda lonely. Gee I gotta go to”...work. That’s what should have been playing in the background as House’s alarm goes off and he gets out of bed, instead of that cheezy “Desire.” His leg is obviously bothering him this day, and as he tries to walk he almost falls over with excruciating pain flashing across his face. Cut to him hobbling through the hospital’s front doors where Wilson just happens to be hanging out, waiting to walk House to his office. They blatantly ignore Cutty who’s on the phone but trying to flag them down. Wilson notes that the leg is worse off than usual and suggests hopefully that the nerves are regenerating causing the additional pain. Cutty catches up to them and hand House a file. A 15 year old supermodel bitch-slapped another model on the catwalk before she passes out on the runway has been admitted. He takes the file and gets onto the elevator without a complaint, Cutty is surprised, and he explains as the doors close, “You had me at supermodel.”

Shocker! House goes to the see the patient (who looks like a poor man’s Abby Morgan ) voluntarily within the first 10 mins?! He’s supposed to be taking her history, but gets as far as ogling the jailbait and figuring out what brought her to the hospital, “Cataplexy and catfight on the catwalk. Cool.” Cameron, in her luff/hate way, berates House for lusting after a child. The costume designer has put her in this high collared Victorian blouse for this episode which I think is hilarious! The ducklings try and come up with a viable diagnosis in the office while House sits off to the side ogling the model in a magazine spread. Tox screen shows she’s on smack, “Shocker” as Chase eloquently puts it. House shakes his head disappointedly, “Heroin Chic is so five years ago.” But the two of them move on to discuss her positive attributes and an age-old question – her breasts: real or fake? House: “Two clinic hours says those love apples (Har!) are hand crafted by God.” Foreman: “I thought you didn’t believe in God.” House: “I do now.” Cameron gets them back on track luffing and hating all of three of them at the same time. They can’t determine what course of action to take until the heroin is out of her system, so House tells them to induce coma and super detox her by pumping her with “good drugs” which will have her clean and sober in 24 hours. During the detox she has a heart attack and de-fibs but is revived and House goes on with the detox despite Manager/Dad’s objections.

Once the model is brought out of the coma, she’s got short-term memory loss. Foreman blames it on the few seconds without oxygen during the heart attack while House blames all of the symptoms on Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. His initial diagnosis is based in the assumption that daddy’s been diddling his little girl. The ducklings think he’s nuts, but we know House is a lil’ psychic. Foreman questions House in the hallway; he thinks that the leg pain is effecting his decisions. House whips around and gives Foreman a bit o’ hairy eye and says, “You got a problem with the call I make, question the call. Don’t make it personal.” Foreman admirably stands his ground – unlike the folds-like-a-house-of-cards-Chase or the oh-so-sensitive-she-feels-the-pain-of-all-the-patients-Cameron – and tells House that he’s just concerned that the pain is causing him to rush the diagnosis. House thanks him for his concern and then turns around and yells down the hall to ManaDad, “Are you doing your daughter?” He gets ManaDad to admit to sleeping with his daughter one time and when House enters his office all righteous he’s hit with a new test result: elevated protein levels in her CSF. That almost sounds like I know what I’m talking about, right? This means it’s physical, not psychological, and they’re back to square one. Square one? That must mean we’re about ½ way thru the show. Cameron’s hung up on the whole sexual abuse and won’t let it go. She blames House’s indifference to the matter on his leg pain. House smacks his cane against the bookcase b/c he’s sick and tired of everyone questioning his methods. He tells them to go away and perform a brain biopsy. Surprise, surprise, Cameron tattles to Cutty.

Wilson wants to know how many patients House is going to kill before he admits the leg thing is a problem. “Three.” (Heh!) Wilson gives House an MRI to see if there is nerve activity in the brain. While he’s in the machine, Wilson says into the mic, “House, this is God.” He jokes God wants to schedule an appointment, so House tells him to check with Cameron (who keeps his schedule – she’s a glorified secretary! The other two wouldn’t put up with that kind of crap.), but God says, Not Cameron! She always wants to know why there’s so many things wrong with the world and he’s running out of excuses. But the joke gets swallowed up by the presence of Cutty who marches into the room and (finally!) reprimands House for not reporting the abuse and that she’s called the police and he’d better go along with the investigation or she’ll fire him. Cutty has a breaking point! Unbelievable! The MRI shows the nerves are not regenerating which leads Wilson to the conclusion that it’s all psychological. Heeeeey, isn’t that what House is saying about the model? Coincidence? I think not. Wilson says that House is manifesting his loss of Stacey as physical pain, so House whacks Wilson in the leg with his cane (which is getting a lot of non-walking-assistance use in this episode) and asks him if that hurts b/c Stacey’s gone. He is still in excruciating pain, and would prefer no more lectures from Wilson, so he asks Cutty for her help. He wants her to give him a shot of morphine in his spine. At first she refuses, but he shows her, and us for the first time, his leg and it is not pretty. His desperation is evident so she acquiesces.

House, in a better mood, has come up with a new diagnosis based on the model’s twitching when she’s off a particular IV. He determines it’s a cancer and to demonstrate he starts and stops her IV making her twitch and still at his command. “Let’s see if I can make her dance.” Wilson takes over from here and runs every test in order to find the tumor. He doesn’t find it. House double checks the results – looking at the mammogram, “Knew the twins were real. Chase owes me.” So he’s back to PTSD. That is until he’s paged to check on his clinic patient. Yea! Now that the Stacey scenes are gone it means we get to see House fill his clinic hours! These are some of the best scenes in the show. His patient is a man experiencing sympathetic pregnancy in a BIG way! He tells the wife, who’s in labour, to shut up and be thankful that she has the perfect husband, a woman. Then it clicks. He has Cameron do a last MRI and there it is as plain as day: the supermodel is a BOY! Those ain’t small ovaries, they be testes!! And the left one has a tumor on it. The boy thing explains the aggression and the tumor everything else. The model freaks out because as s/he admitted to Cameron about why s/he lied to the social worker about the abuse, s/he’s been seducing all the men in her/his life, including ManaDad who looks thoroughly disgusted, in order to get what s/he wants. “I am not that smart. I am that beautiful.” But I don’t think the menz are gonna want what you got no more, honay!
House needs another shot. He seeks out Cutty who is more than willing to oblige because, oh SNAP!, she gave him a placebo! It was all psychological after all. His new prescription? A piano with Vicodin on top. We end on the tortured soul playing a beautiful classical piece on his baby grand. (Sigh!)

Originally Posted by Highbrow