House Recap: Lines in The Sand

LaLa, our favorite HOUSEkeeper, is back with a recap of last night’s episode. With all the site issues, I will admit I’ve fallen a bit behind on the ‘ol TiVo, so I didn’t get a chance to watch last night’s show. So LaLa, I’m sure you rocked the recap, but I just can’t deal with reading it until after I watch the show.

Title: Lines in the Sand
Original Airdate: 9/26/06

It may have taken a few weeks, but it turns out House most definitely has not forgiven Wilson and Cuddy for the dirty, dirty thing they did to him. Apparently, he was just waiting for the right time to exact his revenge – which, as it turns out, involves getting all OCD about his blood-stained office carpet which Cuddy recently replaced, and taking over Cuddy and Wilson’s offices until they give it back now! Obviously, House is purposely pulling the kind of exaggerated power trip on those two that they hoped they could prevent by making him think he had failed that case. But maybe, as Wilson likes to think, House is also a little bit like his current patient, an autistic boy, in that he reeeeally doesn’t like change; or following the rules; or being polite. But unlike House, this boy is exempt from society’s rules because of his autism – which is exactly why House admits to envying the kid.

Too bad autism doesn’t make you exempt from getting mysterious and bizarre illnesses, like the boy does in this episode. While being forced by his dad to do a name and picture recognition exercise at home, all the boy will do is draw random squiggly lines on a chalkboard. Then the kid suddenly starts screaming and choking. Deciding that this is not just a desperate ploy to get out of doing homework, his protective parents decide to rush him to the hospital and Dr. House’s care. But running medical tests on this kid soon proves to be more difficult than diagnosing him, due to the boy’s fear of such things. Only House, with his magical powers of persuasion, is able to get the kid to co-operate without physical force. Like when he takes a few hits of the anesthesia gas mask in order to get the kid to take it. And apparently, a little anesthesia makes you kind of stoned/drunk, as House is soon pointing out the Cameron has “pretty hair”, and then spouting off his “circle queen” theory about how skinny, socially privileged white people like Cameron want everything to fit into a box and be “normal”. Poor Cameron – House is, like, giving her sooo many mixed signals. Especially when, after she had been trying to analyze and lecture him, he complained, “Why can’t you be like the other age-inappropriate girls who have a thing for me and just accept me for who I am?!”

Speaking of, slutty jailbait girl is back, and she’s not taking “No” for an answer! First she shows up in House’s clinic and exposes her goodies to him while he listens to her heart with a stethoscope. Then she calls him 15 times, which is total stalker behavior according to Cuddy, who promptly gets a restraining order put on the girl – which in turn prompts House to sarcastically yell to Cuddy, “You can’t stop our love!” Oh that House, such a rakish joker. But thankfully, even he gets tired of the joke when the girl refuses to obey said restraining order and keeps showing up at the hospital. In a hilarious scene, House uses Humphrey Bogart’s famous final lines to Ingrid Bergman in “Casablanca” in order to break up with the girl, who apparently has never seen that film (ignorant whipper-snapper that she is) and takes his words to heart. She starts crying milky tears. Wait, what?? House takes a closer look at said tears, and unhappily figures out that this girl was not naturally attracted to him – she had just concocted some crazy spores in her brain from an earthquake in Fresno she had been in, which are making her irrationally obsessive and horny. “Damn!” House whines upon the discovery. Talk about a serious blow to his ego. Something Wilson and Cuddy only wish they could do. So slutty jailbait girl scores in the end after all!

And as with last week, slutty jailbait girl also unintentionally helps House figure out his patient’s mysterious illness – it’s in the eyes. You see, figuring that the boy might have eaten something poisonous in his backyard, House had threatened the boy into pointing to the picture of the thing he had eaten: sand in his sandbox. When the boy’s right eye suddenly starts rolling around crazily, Foreman is ready to cut it out in order to inspect the kids brain [I know, I don’t get it either…] Fortunately, House solves the case before this butchery can occur – apparently, the kid has been drawing squiggly lines because, literally, that is what he is seeing. Only they aren’t lines – they’re worms in his eyes [I know: EWWWWW!] And they’re not just in his eyes, they’re scattered all throughout his body. The kid got these nasty worms from eating the sandbox sand, which was infected with dog excrement. And thus kids, we have the most chilling and disgusting reason for why you should never eat sand. *shudder*

Once the case is solved, everything calms down again. Cuddy finally gives House his old, blood-stained carpet back so he’ll stop invading her and Wilson’s offices. “Not all change is bad,” Cameron suggestively says to House as the carpet is restored – and for once, House seems to listen to her. And the kid is happy and healthy again, and even gives House his beloved portable video game as a gesture of thanks. House, confused yet still moved, finally understands why Wilson keeps seemingly meaningless toys in his office – when it’s given to you by a patient, it becomes a nice reminder of why you do your job.