Well, that wasn't what I was expecting.

House the show, like House the character, is a master of misdirection, and this episode was full of many tantalizing examples. Even knowing all was not what it appeared, the episode left me admiring the show's ability to piece together this heartbreaking, infuriating character I'd like to kiss and then stab. Kind of like Cameron.

A media release ruined the first bit of misdirection by revealing that House wasn't talking to another hospital as a job candidate, but as a patient for a brain cancer clinical trial.

Because it seemed an unlikely direction for the show to take, and because I'm a big baby who can only handle one life-threatening event against House each year, I basically took advantage of our interview to get Katie Jacobs, executive producer and first-time director of this episode, to reassure me that it couldn't possibly be cancer without exactly telling me that it couldn't possibly be cancer, because I don't like spoilers.

So watching Cameron, Chase, Foreman, and Cuddy unravel the mystery behind House's flight to Boston, I figured something else was going on. I just didn't expect the ultimate answer to reveal such a brazenly unsympathetic side of House while still managing to elicit my sympathy for the miserable, messed-up bastard that he is.

In stark contrast to the complex title hero, the simple patient of the week in "Half-Wit" is musical savant Patrick Obyedkov, played with a profound sweetness by musician Dave Matthews. Patrick is brought to the hospital after his hand freezes up during a concert, and the diagnostic team is brought in largely because House is curious about how Patrick's brain works rather than about the cause of his hand dystonia.

"Half-Wit" was full of delicious witticisms, but as someone who loves making up my own words, I was particularly fond of the line: "Just because it's inexplicted doesn't mean it's inexplicable."

Kurtwood Smith of That 70s Show is very un-Red-like as Patrick's father, a somewhat stern but always loving presence who surprisingly doesn't harbour an alternate identity as the stage father from hell who is somehow at the root of his son's medical issues.

He does act as interpreter, informing an auditorium full of people (and therefore, no coincidence, us) about his son's accident 25 years earlier that left him brain damaged but a sudden musical prodigy, and informing House and Foreman (and therefore, no coincidence, us) about Patrick's coping mechanism of mimicry, because he knows he's expected to respond to people, but can't always grasp how.

House has found a fun, new toy in the person of Patrick, getting him to mimic the opening bars of "I Don't Like Mondays" (subtitle in House's mind: "Or Anything or Anyone Else"), then to continue a song House had begun composing in junior high school but had never been able to complete.

"He's fine. Can he go?" Foreman asks. "He's great. He's staying." responds House.