- House's investigator gets information on everyone, which House uses to stir the pot of their lives while the team tries to cure a portraitist whose artistic view now looks like Picasso.
- We opened on an artist painting a nude portrait of a woman for her and her husband. When he was done, the husband was so offended he punched the artist in the face, telling him he wanted a refund. When we finally saw the portrait, we discovered the woman's face and figure were all squiggly and distorted. Something's wrong with this artist.
Cuddy (Lisa Edelstein) told House (Hugh Laurie) the hospital was not going to cover the cost of his private investigator, Lucas (Michael Weston). The team studied the artist's portraits and tried to figure out what was wrong with the patient. House told Thirteen (Olivia Wilde) he knew she paid 12 percent on her car loan. He also knew Kutner (Kal Penn) once crawled 20 miles to get into the Guinness Book of World Records. Kutner asked House what he had on Taub (Peter Jacobson). He said nothing. "Taub's wife, on the other hand...." He didn't continue.
The artist showed Foreman (Omar Epps) and Thirteen some drawings he'd done since the incident, which looked fine. He thought maybe it was something he ate. Kutner and Taub searched the artist's apartment. Kutner wondered whether Taub thought his wife was cheating on him.
House thought it was drugs. So to get the man to consent to a drug test Thirteen said he'd never consent to, House decided to tell the man he had a brain tumor. He said they'd have to cut his head open. The guy simply said, "No."
"Wrong answer," House said.
"I'm not allowed to say no?" he asked.
"You're not allowed to not be terrified," House said.
House said the only way he could not be terrified was if he was on drugs. House deduced the guy doesn't make enough money as an artist, so he participates in medical tests -- taking untested drugs -- to bring in steady money and keep his hot girlfriend.
House was right, and the guy admitted it. He said the drugs he was taking -- three of them -- were soon going to be approved by the FDA.
Taub came to House's office to see what he'd found out about his wife. House said she has a separate bank account and she'd been making weekly deposits but making no withdrawals. Taub claimed he knew about the account and said it was for furniture. It held $100,000.
The patient went into some kind of shock.
The team had to break down the three drugs. House decided to give them cute named. The first was "bisex-idrine," in honor of Thirteen. The second was "Cuckold-isol," for Taub, but House continued to insist he knew about the bank account. The third was "World's Sorest Knees-isil," in honor of the 20-mile-crawling Kutner.
The patient was put on dialysis but became worried his girlfriend would find out the real cause of his health problem. He didn't want her to find out. Thirteen got Taub to admit he didn't know about his wife's bank account, but he claimed he wasn't worried. "She makes me happy. I make her happy. It works," he said. House told Taub that he'd forgive her for the bank account and confess that he'd cheated on her.
"What purpose could that possibly serve?" Taub asked.
"None," House said, "which is why I'm not saying you should. But you will."
House began having conversations with Lucas through a wireless device tucked in his ear. The patient had another traumatic moment, including his head and neck swelling.
House said it was still the drug cocktail. The effects could have been worsened by the dialysis. The PI continued to follow Cuddy around the hospital and was digging around her desk when she found him. He asked her out on a date. He offered her embarrassing information on House, which he said could help her keep him in line.
We saw Taub at home, eating dinner with his wife, Rachel. He was a little quiet before he claimed he was looking through her desk for a letter opener when he stumbled on to bank statements from her secret account. She said she wanted to keep it a surprise, but she'd bought him "the car." She'd been saving, and it was going to be delivered on Friday. "You are amazing," he told her.
Thirteen told the patient he was drug-free and he thanked her. He looked her up and down quickly before grabbing her, pulling her on top of him and kissing her neck. She punched him in the face as nurses rushed in. "What happened to his face?" Foreman asked. "The question is, what happened to his hormones?" Thirteen responded.
The doctors decided they could rule out the clinical trial drugs because he'd tested clean twice. Taub told House he was wrong about his wife and House owed him an apology.
House came home to find his private investigator, Lucas, hiding in his closet. They talked about Cuddy and how the PI actually liked her. They realized they're both going after Cuddy.
The patient struggled with whether to tell his girlfriend the truth. Taub told him wanting to tell the truth was noble, but if it only caused trouble and pain, it wasn't noble. House was making Taub work long hours to keep him from going home, reasoning his guilt about cheating would fade with time away from home.
The patient went into shock while being tested for something and House and noticed the patient's hair was growing in red. He asked if he was dying his hair and the patient said no. "Either he's lying about dying," House said. "Or just dying."
On their date, Lucas showed Cuddy a picture of House as a cheerleader in college. He asked her about her parents, then asked when she lost her virginity. He told he's into her because she was hot and smart. He said she should have known the photo was fake and that "this is a game." He left -- almost. Then he realized if she knew he wasn't going to give her anything worthwhile and she wasn't going to give him anything worthwhile, she went out with him because she liked him.
Thirteen and Taub explained the risks of surgery to the patient, but he saw them as different people and asked where Dr. Taub and Dr. Hadley were. Taub and Thirteen told House they couldn't do the surgery. Taub theorized the artist, at some point, had used some bad paint and it stored itself in some fat cells and released into his bloodstream. Taub wanted to check the paint on some of his old, unsold paintings. Taub asked the patient if he could talk to him about his old paintings, and the man asked his girlfriend to leave. She got suspicious and he told her the truth about his drug trials. She forgave him for lying. Taub looked impressed.
The patient was being prepped for surgery as Taub went to check some of the old paintings. He found one with a distorted face and put together a pattern. The patient had distorted paintings every other month because those were the months when he was on all three drugs at the same time. House figured out the drugs were collecting in the man's abdomen in some kind of hairball-like mass that was growing, holding some of the drugs and occasionally releasing them into his bloodstream. That was effectively giving him overdoses of the drugs over the past week.
Chase (Jesse Spencer) removed the disgusting looking thing in surgery and said, "That is why I wouldn't let Cameron get a cat."
Taub told the patient's girlfriend he was going to be fine. He asked her if she was glad he'd told her the truth and she said she was. He then asked if she was happier before she knew, and before she could answer, his wife surprised him with the keys to his new car. She blindfolded him and took him out to the parking garage to see it, and when he opened his eyes, he looked disappointed.
His wife asked if he was alright.
"We need to talk," Taub said.
The PI told House that Cuddy didn't buy the cheerleading photo. But the PI had discovered the photo was actually real, which he called "humiliating."
MEDICAL REVIEW :
Brandon (Breckin Meyer) is, at best, a mildly successful artist. At the beginning of the episode, he is painting a portrait of a woman, but when the woman and her husband take a look at the finished product, they are shocked because the subject in the painting is horribly distorted. Even stranger is the fact Brandon cannot tell anything is wrong; the portrait looks completely normal to him.
Brandon is admitted to the hospital for evaluation of his acute onset visual agnosia. The initial differential diagnosis include stroke, brain tumor, drugs, or environmental toxins. An initial MRI was negative, but House wants an MRI with contrast. He also sends Taub and Kutner to search Brandon's apartment for toxins. The search turns up nothing suspicious and the MRI is negative.
Toxins and drugs remain on the differential diagnosis, but a cavernous angioma of the brain (large, abnormally dilated blood vessels in the brain) has been added as well. When Brandon shows little emotion after being told he requires a risky surgical biopsy, House deduces he is hiding something. It turns out he has had to make ends meet by enrolling in clinical trials of new drugs. He is currently a participant in three separate drug trials. House assures him his symptoms were due to the experimental drugs, and since they should be out of his system by now, hell be discharged in the morning.
As usual, being discharged from Princeton Plainsboro is a sign of problems to come, and Brandon has a sudden seizure. By now, the team has discovered what drugs Brandon was being given: an anticoagulant, an autoimmune drug, and a statin (a cholesterol medication). They suspect the interaction of all three drugs is causing his symptoms and House elects to give him dialysis to clean all the drugs out of his system. It seems to work at first, but then Brandon develops massive swelling of the tissues of the head and neck occluding his airway. Foreman performs an emergency tracheotomy and Brandon is started on steroids. The differential now includes a thrombosis, Chagas disease (both of which would block the venous drainage, causing swelling), infection, or cytokine storm, with the team favoring the latter. House and the team are unsure whether the cytokine storm is a withdrawal symptom from the experimental drugs, or a new symptom entirely. To solve the puzzle, House elects to put Brandon back on all three drugs, and then wean them off slower this time.
Once again, withdrawing the drugs seems to work at first, but then it becomes obvious Brandon's libido has been put in overdrive. A punch to the nose from Dr. Thirteen solves that problem, at least temporarily, but it is a new symptom to consider. Kluver-Bucy Syndrome (a condition caused by damage to both temporal lobes of the brain) is suspected, and an MR Angiogram is obtained to get a closer look at the blood vessels. It shows some narrowing of the vessels of the Circle of Willis (the main arteries supplying the brain). That should not be enough to cause symptoms, but Taub suspects there may an underlying cardiac arrhythmia that worsens them. An EP study (electrophysiology study it looks for abnormal conduction in the heart) is ordered, and is decidedly positive. During the test, Brandon goes into ventricular tachycardia and needs to be defibrillated. At this point, House notices Brandon's hair is turning red around the temples.
Kluver-Bucy is abandoned and Waardenburg Syndrome is suggested, but when Kutner notices a prolonged QT on the EKG (a potentially dangerous heart rhythm), the suspicion shifts to Romano-Ward Syndrome (a common inherited form of Long QT Syndrome). A cardiac sympathectomy (a surgery that reduces the effect of the sympathetic nervous system on the heart) is ordered. When Brandon once again develops visual agnosia, Taub begins suspects the symptoms may be due to lingering toxins, and seeks out Brandon's old paintings. The paintings show the same distortion every other month the same time he was on all three experimental medications together. It turns out that in a previous research project, Brandon had been on an experimental antacid which allowed the formation of a bezoar in his stomach. This bezoar trapped many of the experimental pills and has slowly been releasing them, causing Brandon's symptoms even though he has not been taking any new medications (which means the team had it right halfway through, it was the combination of the experimental drugs, and the last half of the episode was spent chasing one red herring after another. After all, who can argue against the symptoms of experimental drug reaction?) The bezoar is removed surgically and Brandon should be good as new.
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