House Recap: “Que Sera Sera”

Before we get into out recap, I have to take a minute to thank our HOUSEkeeper LaLa for her amazing House recaps this season.  When we celebrated our 1 year anniversary a few weeks ago, my head was obviously way up my ass and I didn’t thank LaLa for her contributions to Give Me My Remote.  Trying to manage my real job and GMMR sometimes gets a little tough, and the show recappers are so important in keeping this site going.  So thanks again to all the recappers, but especially LaLa since I missed giving you the love the first time around.

On to House….

Title: Que Sera Sera
Original Airdate: 11/7/06

After watching this episode, I was left with one big, puzzling question: How the heck can someone be conscious and calm while their head is being drilled?!?!?  I mean seriously, I freak out when a doctor sticks a needle in my arm – I can’t imagine sitting there, just chilling, while someone takes a power tool and drills a hole in my skull!!  But I digress…

And now, back to our regularly scheduled House recap.  We begin the episode with a fireman on the street telling another fireman a sistah-from-the-Hood joke, which is rudely interrupted by an entire wall falling to the ground in front of them.  That would be their fellow fireman in the building above doing their best to extricate a hugely obese man from his deathbed.  Strangely, someone lets out a big fart when the firemen try to lift up said obese guy.  Eventually realizing, though, that the “Whoever smelt it dealt it” rule isn’t working here, the firemen figure out that it could only have been from the obese guy – and therefore he is not, in fact, dead.

Enter The House Team – or rather, House’s minions, who bat around ideas for hours while also wondering why their boss hasn’t shown up to work yet.  That would be because he’s been stuck in a jail cell all night with, according to House, “a guy who thinks that showers are the way the devil gets inside you.”  Nice to see that a night in jail hasn’t dulled House’s zingers!  Unfortunately, he’s still getting arraigned by scary cop David Morse, who apparently will not stop until he ruins House’s life.  This includes quietly stalking House when he returns to the hospital, as well as breaking into the good doctor’s home with a search team looking for illegal meds – which he does indeed find.  A whole big bag full, too.  But I am getting ahead of myself.

First, House and his minions have to crack the case of what’s wrong with obese guy and why is he in a coma?  Testing proves to be difficult, though, since at 600 pounds, obese guy is, well, too obese to be put through the usual medical machines – like, 150 pounds too obese.  But Cameron insists that the team not discriminate against obese guy and let a silly thing like weight capacity limit on a machine stop them from giving him an MRI.  To which Foreman responds, “And you believe the machine will stand on principle?”  Ah, I love how clever the writing is on this show – and also the fact that House isn’t the only one who is allowed to bust out the snarky one-liners, as all the main characters get some in from time to time.  Which makes sense, frankly, because I highly doubt a guy like House would surround himself with a bunch of boring know-it-alls with no sense of humor.  But again, I digress.

Anyway, Cameron essentially forces the team to put obese guy in the MRI machine, and surprise, surprise, the man does in fact break it when he, well, surprisingly wakes up during the test.  And boy, is he upset – at being made to stay in the hospital, that is.  As far as he’s concerned, he’s fine now that he’s awake; plus he hates hospitals because, according to him, people die all the time from doctor mistakes and getting hospital infections.  Foreman then points out that thousands also die from obesity every year as well, but obese guy refuses to acknowledge that his obesity is a problem, insisting that his health has always been fine, and he’s happy – now let him go home!  Or, as House puts it, he’s got “places to go, people to eat.”  Undeterred by such fat jokes, however, obese guy tries to leave the hospital – and then promptly passes out and smashes through a glass wall.  Ouch!  Could this be related to his mysterious illness?  Apparently not, actually, as it turns out that an increasingly House-like Cameron secretly slipped him some sedatives in order to make him get disoriented and pass out, and thus keep him in the hospital longer for testing.  Oh, S-NAP!  You go girl.  Even House is mightily impressed with that underhanded maneuver – which, deep down, was the reason you did it, wasn’t it?

And so, thanks to Cameron’s gutsy sneakiness, further testing ensues on obese guy, including the previously mentioned head drilling while he’s conscious (Seriously?!  SERIOUSLY?!).  Said head drilling causes him to go blind, though not from the pain apparently.  The House Team – which, by the way, is now minus Chase, who hilariously decided to take House seriously when he sarcastically ordered Chase to sit around and do nothing.   Anyway, after obese guy goes blind, the House Team becomes convinced that his problem is Diabetes and try to get him to drink sugar water in order to test for this disease – but obese guy vehemently refuses the drink, insisting that he’s not diabetic.  A violent struggle ensues, during which House realizes, after gripping the guy’s thickly boned hand, that his problem isn’t diabetes – it’s lung cancer.  Thus, an obese guy who’s never smoked in his life ends up contracting terminal lung cancer.  Oh the irony.  Upon learning the news, all obese guy can say is, “C’est la vie.”  Which begs the question: why wasn’t this episode entitled “C’est la vie” instead?  Do the writers have a thing about Doris Day and that song, but they couldn’t clear the rights to utter the famous phrase in the episode?

Well, regardless, House has got bigger problems – in the form of David Morse’s scary cop, of course.  After the search and seizure of House’s secret pill stash, the good doctor is finally frightened enough to consult a lawyer.  But he’s going to need more than a lawyer to get him out of this jam – he’s going to need surprisingly loyal friends like Wilson, who, while being interrogated by Morse, insisted that the suspiciously different signatures on the pill prescriptions were all done by his own hand.  Perhaps Wilson lied for House because he’s still feeling guilty over the dirty lie he tormented House with in the first few episodes of the season.  Or perhaps he really is a loyal friend.  But whatever the reason, this subplot is certainly getting juicy!  And so is House’s relationship with Cameron, by the way, which ended with a flirty conversation in which House seemed genuinely interested in learning more about her past, and almost managed to speak to her without insulting her… well, almost.  He is House, after all, and no matter what Morse does, that ain’t changing any time soon.  Nor do I want it to.