We opened on a fitness instructor filming a commercial in a stadium advocating a natural lifestyle. An obese guy, Irv (Brad Grunberg), collapses while climbing some stairs, but he wasn't going to be the patient. The first one who collapses is never the patient. The fitness instructor, after urging the big guy to run to the top of the stadium steps, collapsed and fell down several rows of bleachers.
Cue: Awesome theme music.
Cuddy (Lisa Edelstein) told House (Hugh Laurie) there were fewer requests for him than usual, but at least there was this one interesting case. She told House she was going to be sharing offices with him after hers was destroyed during the hostage crisis last week.
Taub (Peter Jacobson) and Kutner (Kal Penn) were the only docs around for House to confer with on the patient because Foreman (Omar Epps) and Thirteen (Olivia Wilde) were working on the Huntington's clinical trial -- Foreman as the doctor, Thirteen as a patient. Cuddy, in the adjacent office, kept interfering with the differential.
Thirteen sat in a lobby area and watched a Huntington's patient suffering through the physical burdens of Huntington's. This prompted a flashback of her mom (Danielle Petty) suffering the same symptoms and her dad (Christopher Stapleton) telling her it would be OK, while shutting the door to block her mother from her view.
Taub and Kutner put the fitness instructor through an exercise to try to re-create the circumstances prompting her initial collapse. She said she felt find, and then collapsed.
Thirteen did a test for Foreman after which he concluded her nerves have started degenerating.
Back in the office, House proposed to Cuddy they split the desk in half. Kutner divulged to Taub he'd set up a "second-opinion clinic" online where people e-mail their symptoms to him and he tells them what he thinks of their conditions. He said he was running the site under House's name and Taub blackmailed him into giving him a 30 percent cut or he'd tell House. Then they discovered, while looking at images of the fitness instructor's stomach, she'd had her stomach stapled.
Cuddy and House's playful office tension reached a new level when House tried to annoy Cuddy to get her to leave his office.
Taub mocked the patient for "cheating" and getting gastric bypass surgery to get her figure while telling other people they can work hard enough to get where she has.
Kutner was having a problem with one of his online patients. The patient, a woman whose breast implant burst, wanted Kutner to figure out what was causing her chronic fatigue or she'd complain to the licensing board. Taub and Kutner had to stay overnight to run a sleep apnea test on the patient and when she flat lined they discovered she wasn't in her bed. They found her on a treadmill, running on her broken ankle. Her leg was bleeding and she didn't feel Taub poking her in the leg with a needle.
Cuddy spilled hydrogen sulfide in the office she and House were sharing, then left for the night. Thirteen rejoined the team while Foreman went back to work on his Huntington's trial. She told Foreman she'd come by later for treatment.
The fitness instructor, Emmy (Samantha Shelton), told Taub she knew she was a hypocrite, but asked if he'd ever done anything hypocritical and whether he thought he had a good reason. He didn't respond.
Taub and Kutner rode in the elevator with a tattooed woman who said she'd been e-mailing with House about her breast implants. She wanted to talk to House. They stopped her and put her on antibiotics, hoping she'd be better in the morning. Thirteen came home to find Foreman waiting there. He asked why she'd followed his instructions but didn't show up for treatment. She said she didn't want a visual reminder of what was going to happen to her every time she went to his trial. He told her to show up the next day, on time, or not show up at all. She had a quick flash of her dad knocking on her door saying, "Your mom's leaving. You're going to regret this for the rest of your life."
While discussing the patient, Kutner and Taub received pages one right after the other. They decided to treat the fitness instructor for Guillain-Barre syndrome, which leads to paralysis and starts with weakness in muscles and limbs. Kutner's online patient, DeeDee (Becky Baeling), was down in the ER singing "Put the Lime in the Coconut" into her nurse call button. Cameron (Jennifer Morrison) noticed she was bleeding from her ear and told them to get House.
Kutner, Chase (Jesse Spencer) and Cameron talked about the singing patient over lunch. They tried to convince Kutner to tell House, but he refused. Kutner came up with an idea and Chase said he'd do the test, in exchange for 25 percent of Kutner's income.
The fitness instructor had a hallucination in which her clients converged on her in her hospital room and said they knew she'd lied about her gastric bypass. She woke up shouting, "Get off of me!" The doctors decided her hallucinations ruled out Guillain-Barre.
House and Cuddy exchanged some flirtatious banter and asked each other, "Are you screwing with me?" Cuddy said everyone knew they were headed somewhere and said they'd reached the part where they were supposed to kiss. Instead, House touched her breast, saying they'd already kissed, so that would be the logical next step. "I'm an idiot for being surprised," Cuddy said before leaving.
Thirteen showed up for treatment and saw the woman from earlier in the episode sitting in the waiting room who was making random, sudden movements, unable to control herself because of the Huntington's. She asked Foreman if he could change her appointment time, but he said he couldn't. Thirteen had a flash of watching from her bedroom window as her mom sat in a car, ready to leave, making the same involuntary movements. Thirteen walked over to Janice (Lori Petty), the patient in the waiting room, and helped her put a sweater on.
Emmy told Taub she wanted chocolate cake, but he told her not to give up. She asked what else her disease could be other than a brain tumor. He told her Prion disease, and wheeled her away.
Taub asked House about the patient, but House wanted to know how Taub felt when he was "philandering with impunity." Taub said he "loved it," superficially, but thought he was miserable deep down. Taub set off to get Cuddy's approval to do the brain biopsy, but House said he'd do the biopsy himself. They went into Emmy's room and found her stretching. "I thought you said she was sick," House told Taub.
House wondered how Emmy suddenly was no longer sick. Taub said he took Emmy to the cafeteria to get some chocolate cake and took her to her room. "You gave her cake?" House asked. "She asked for it," Taub said.
House went to Emmy's room with a chocolate cake. He explained her illness was hereditary coproporphyria which makes her unable to produce an enzyme important for her "liver and everything else." The treatment is a high-carb diet, rich in sugar, House explained. "When you were a porker, you were self-medicating," he said. Taub said they'd have to reverse her gastric bypass and get her back on a high-carb, sugar-rich diet. Rejecting House's offer of cake, Emmy instead wanted to try a drug managing the symptoms but wasn't a cure. Taub realized being pretty was more important to Emmy than being healthy.
Kutner went to the ER to check on his singing patient, but a nurse told him she coded and they tried to save her, but they couldn't.
Cuddy went into her newly redone office to find her desk from med school inside. She smiled when she realized House got it for her.
Thirteen told Foreman she wasn't freaked about her future when she saw the Huntington's patients in the waiting room; she was freaked out about her past. She said she wanted her mother to die, because at the time her mother screamed so much and even though her father said she didn't mean it. Thirteen lamented she didn't have a chance to say goodbye to her mother, "and she died with me hating her." Thirteen then bursts into tears. Foreman and Thirteen embrace.
Kutner and Taub saw their online patient in the morgue and worried that House was going to kill them. "Slowly ... and painfully," House said, sneaking in behind them. He yelled at Kutner for being so stupid to start the site in the first place, and at Taub for not ratting him out while the patient was still alive. House said what she had was easily treatable. He said it might still be possible to save her. He climbed on top of her and pressed on her chest a couple of times before she took a huge breath, sending Kutner and Taub into a screaming fit as they jumped backward.
He explained the woman was untrained, "at least, not in acting." House said the CT scan was hard to find, but was from a patient three years ago. "The hair, makeup, and getting Chase and Cameron to play along was much easier," he added. Kutner said he'd take down the Web site, but House told him to keep it going, as long as he gets 50 percent for letting Kutner use his name.
Cuddy walked happily toward House's office, where she saw him standing and chatting with the woman he used to trick Kutner and Taub. She looked dejected and walked away.
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