Foreman is amusingly pragmatic about having to treat his boss for this self-inflicted misery – just another day on the job – while he, Cameron, and Chase go about the business of trying to help the patient of the week. They do have help from the astute if pained mutterings of House, curled under the conference room table. Wilson provides House with all the sympathy he deserves (which is to say, none at all) and interprets House's actions for us: "You get distracted by pain." And after driving away the love of his life, House needs distraction.
The neglected patient is Adam, a 16-year-old boy who was badly burned in an ATV accident ... which may have been the show's first real stunt that didn't involve Hugh Laurie taking a punch. Though House seems to take cases a little more readily these days, burns are still not enough to bring the master diagnostician to the case, so Adam also has unexplained heart symptoms and blood test results.
Because of his injuries, the team is unable to perform the usual tests, including their favourite MRI, and must resort to some old-fashioned and creative procedures. House yet again proves he'll do anything to get the truth from a patient, waking Adam from his induced coma to question him about his pre-accident symptoms as the boy screams in agony. But it's all justified, at least in House's mind, because Adam gives House the information he needs. From the clue that Adam wet himself before the accident, House pieces together the truth that the boy had been trying to quit smoking, took a cessation medication that also acts as an anti-depressant, and suffered from the rare complication of too much serotonin, causing seizures and a bizarrely orgasmic response to pain.
After House takes a shower to shake off the headache, Cameron finds him in the locker room dressed only in a towel. Under ordinary circumstances, that might be the Best Valentine's Day Present Ever for the pining girl, but instead she's angry to realize he's high and "seeing" music (but ... cool. There's some cool direction by Dan Attias to mirror House's migrane and altered consciousness, too.) She's later equally puzzled to find him quickly recovered. We're not shown the drug-taking, but House not-admits to Cuddy that, hypothetically, one might take LSD to help with a migraine, and then one could conceivably take anti-depressants to balance out the LSD.
Article comments
1 - Joanie
Just wanted to let you know this article is now on Advance.net
2 - JELIEL³
Woohoo, congrats on being picked.
This was a great review to one of House's greatest episodes. As a migraine sufferer myself, I could see myself so well. The attention to the torture that everything in the environment becomes when you have a migraine. Just great. Plus the waking up of the patient was brutal but we got to see a glimpse of compassion from House. The compassion we all know he has inside but doesn't let show.
Laurie is simply the best actor on TV right now.
I would have given it a 5 outta 5 :D
3 - Diane Kristine
Thanks Jeliel. Yeah, I seem to most like the episodes where House is suffering the most, so this was high on my list of favourites. Hmm ... so in addition to being a masochist for liking medical shows despite being squeamish, maybe I'm a sadist, too. But it lets us see the tortured soul underneath the snark. The guy often creates his own misery, now we find he needs to distract himself from that misery by making himself miserable. Twisted, but interesting.