House Fodder

House: Baggage Review

House has a double mystery to solve in one patient. And he's seeing his therapist. Wilson wants Sam to move in and House to move out.

Intro:

The episode begins with House entering his therapist, Dr. Nolan's, office. House comes in late and grumpy. The whole episode is told through House's eyes about his latest case, and his dealings with life. House says he's not under any unusual stress. Nolan says "tell me about your week."

House vs. Wilson + Sam

Wilson is moving Sam into his condo, and trying to induce House to move out so they can have some privacy. Wilson says it's his idea, not Sam's. House says he'll just go back to his old place, which bother's Wilson because it's associated with depression and drug abuse.

When House returns to his old apartment, he finds Alvie, his old mental hospital buddy, living there, hiding out from the INS, and hocking some of House's possessions for living money. He's painting House's apartment for him. House hates the colors. His coffee table and his rare books have gone to finance the decorating.

House goes to the pawn shop where Alvie pawned his stuff and finds most of it, but one thing is missing - a very important - to House - rare book. It's been sold. The pawnbroker holds House up for five times what his stuff is worth.

House pays nerf football with Alvie and Wilson shows up. House arranges an immigration hearing for Alvie, which distresses Alvie.

Wilson convinces the pawnbroker to give up the name and address of the buyer of House's rare book by telling him it's contaminated with anthrax spores… and paying him $300. Wilson waffles on making House move out - he's genuinely worried about making
House get along without close moral support.

House thinks someone else is pushing Wilson to take House back. Nolan speculates it could be Sam, but House suspects it's Cuddy, and imagines the conversation between Cuddy and Wilson. His speculations make it appear they don’t trust him to do OK by himself. Nolan questions of those are their feelings or House's. Nolan imagines a conversation with a different slant. Ultimately, Nolan decides the Wilson conversation is a dead end and asks House what else he would want to punish himself for.

House had a confrontation with the buyer of hi rare book, who recognized it's rarity and won't sell it back to House at any price. And the guy is obnoxious about it. Fortunately for House, while House and the book-buyer argued at the front door, Alvie was slipping around the back and stealing the book.

While celebrating their victory back at House's apartment, the INS shows up and arrests Alvie. Alvie denounces House for ratting him out. House shows up at Alvie's deportation hearing and comes close to being arrested himself for continuing the differential on his cell phone as the hearing begins. When Alvie's case is called, House produces a DNA report proving Alvie's relationship to his mother, a Puerto Rican (and thus US) citizen and making Alvie one himself. Alvie swears eternal allegiance (and more home makeovers) to House, but soon now being documented as legal, abandons House to go live with a cousin in Arizona. House's next action: get drunk.

House vs. Patient

Cuddy hands House a case in the E.R. - a jogger found unconscious in the streets, no ID, just her heart rate monitor and jogging clothes, and, by the way, she has amnesia.

House deduces she's an extreme long distance runner from her muscle tone and the fact she's hungry again right after eating. Also that she's rich from the price of her running shoes.

The team looks at MS and physical trauma as a cause, and rules them out. House says they can find at least the neighborhood she lives in by tracing her heart rate monitor to its point of sale. House says he'll take her around the neighborhood to see if anything jogs her memory.

House takes Alvie with him on his 'show the jogger the neighborhood trip. Alvie spins a tale of his INS woes. No one in the sporting goods store where the heart monitor was purchased recognizes the jogger, but Alvie suggests they go to the doughnut store nearby and House, reflecting, thinks an extreme runner would stock up on carbs. The clerk recognizes her but doesn't know her name, but says the guy she comes in with left a business card.

They find a house, and the man who opens the door gives a big sigh of relief and calls her "Sydney" and gives her a big hug, but she's still not recalling anything. He's Jay, her husband, and tells her she's a lawyer, with a stressful job and running is her way of handling the stress.

She finds a picture of herself with a surfboard and asks if she surfs. Jay says she gave it up for lack of time. He also mentions she won a class action suit for clients whose houses had been built on an undisclosed old dump, exposing them to methane. As they leave the house to return to the hospital for more tests, she falls, saying her foot went numb, and loses control of her bladder, which House diagnoses as complex partial seizures.

Taub calls to say the patient is not seizing after 12 hours of observation. House says to use a strobe light and induce stress which Taub says there's plenty of already - the patient is disturbed by the attention of her husband, who is a stranger as far as she is concerned.

Cuddy tells House to get the patient cured, since she's a barracuda attorney - the type that loves to sue hospitals.

Sydney and Jay argue over the potential operation - he saying "you'd be losing a part of your brains" and Sydney responding "It's my brain." Jay tells House he'll take it to court if necessary - Sydney is in no condition to make decisions about herself. Jay continues arguing but House is distracted looking at the monitor over Sydney's bed - he says the argument's moot - the disease has spread to her brain stem and is inoperable. He orders chemo and radiation instead which won't cure her but may give her a couple of weeks more.

House says he was angered by Jay's stand since he would rather risk his wife's life than their marriage.

Later, Sydney is crashing and no one knows why. As she's wheeled through a sterilizing ultraviolet lamp toward a clean room, House spots something and tells then to halt under the ultraviolets. He sees a tattoo that's been removed on the outside but with still present in the sub dermal layers. An old surfing tattoo. She was fine until she took up long distance running, and then the greater circulation caused an allergic reaction to the ink. A full layer skin graft will cure the problem. Her memories not back yet, but her husband has adjusted and is courting her, which Nolan infers House suggested, and she's liking it.

House vs. Therapist

Nolan wants to know why House was in the E.R. to get the case in the first place. Avoiding Wilson, who wants to toss him out. Nolan wonders how House can be fine with that. House is entirely rational and reasonable about Wilson's choice, and Nolan thinks it ought to provoke more of a reaction.

Nolan finds House spending time with his patient another unusual behavior. He thinks his tolerance of Alvie is another distraction.

House tells Nolan that Sydney was more comfortable with him than her husband (whom she couldn't remember) Jay, and Jay was picking up on the fact. He say this didn't disturb him, she was just a patient, and interesting.

Nolan wonders why House was so attached o the stuff Alvie pawned.

House tries to duck telling about what Wilson says when he dropped by the apartment.

House tell Nolan the patient became a lawyer as a reaction to her brother dying in a car accident when she was in college - wanting to make her life more meaningful - but with the memory of that gone, she's wondering why she lived such a pressured life.

She develops a breathing problem that leads to a diagnosis of spongiform encephalitis, which would require cutting out part of her brain, the part that that controls long term memory. Nolan says all this is irrelevant to House's case, interesting though it may be.

House admits having a bar fight with a stranger, and Nolan wonder what he's screwed up to give him these feelings of self loathing that lead to such destructive behavior. House finally admits he may have a problem.

House says everybody's happy now. Sydney and Jay, Wilson and Sam, Cuddy and Lucas moving in together, even Alvie and his cousin… Nolan backs him up to Cuddy and Lucas, whom he hadn't mentioned before. The mention of Cuddy strikes a chord in Nolan's memory. He looks up the title of House's 'rare medical book' and discovers it was written by Earnest T. Cuddy, Lisa Cuddy's great-grandfather, a fact House hadn't bothered to mention. House says he's had the book for years, always meant to give it to her for some special occasion. Nolan deduces House is miserable over Cuddy's moving away from him. House accuses Nolan of being a "faith healer" (a mortal sin to House), and concludes he's still miserable and has nothing to learn from Nolan and leaves.

= Cecil =

----------------------------------------------
Next Week: "Help Me"

House's patient is trapped under a collapsed building.

----------------------------------------------
Favorite quotes:

-------------
House: Okay. "Therafy" me.
Nolan: You're late.
House: You're fat.
-------------
House: I'm not stressed... beyond the stress induced by you telling me how stressed I am.
-------------
House: Aren't therapists supposed to be nurturing?
Nolan: Nowhere... is that in the manual.
-------------
House: Are you charging me for this time?
Nolan: [reading boating magazine ] Yes.
-------------
Nolan: What's that?
House: A bruise. I fell.
Nolan: Do you remember falling?
House: No, I was drunk.
Nolan: It looks like you fell on the tip of someone's boot.
House: I said something someone objected to.
-------------
House: God's sake, Wilson. You really span the chasm from wishy to washy
-------------
Nolan: Have you gotten any other people angry at you over anything?
House: Well, yeah. That's why I called it an ordinary week.
-------------
Alvie: I didn't know there was a section of the brain just for hope.
House: It's very, very tiny.
-------------

Cast and Crew Ep. 6-20, “Baggage” Air Date 05/10/2010

Cast and Crew

Director:___ David Straiton

Writers: __ Doris Egan
__________ David Foster (II)

Stars:

Hugh Laurie ________ Dr. Gregory House
Lisa Edelstein _______ Dr. Lisa Cuddy
Robert Sean Leonard _ Dr. James Wilson
Omar Epps _________ Dr. Eric Foreman
Jesse Spencer _______ Dr. Robert Chase
Jennifer Morrison ____ Dr. Allison Cameron
Olivia Wilde ________ Dr. Remy Hadley (Thirteen)
Peter Jacobson ______ Dr. Chris Taub

Guest Stars:

Zoe McLellan ______ Sidney
David Monahan ____ Jay
Lin-Manuel Miranda _ Juan "Alvie" Alvarez
Cynthia Watros _____ Sam Carr
Carl Gilliard _______ Dutch
Paul Keeley _______ Harris
Andre Braugher ____ Nolan
Annette Lesure _____ Durdanna
Tina Huang Public __ Defender
Gil Glasgow _______ Court Officer
Ric Maddox _______ Officer Durkee
Angelyna Martinez _ Nurse Jody

Music:

Me and My Woman
_______ Shuggie Otis
Make Me Smile
_______ Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel
In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning
_______ Buddy Guy & Junior Wells