The Wife:

I feel like my complaints from last week’s episode regarding the complete exclusion of Kutner from the POW story arc is validated again this week when Thirteen gets her second POW arc. Come on, guys, let’s give Kutner some love, shall we? Thirteen is getting plenty of love, it seems, as her Huntington’s diagnosis turns out to be worse than previously thought, leading her to spend most of her nights out partying and cruising lesbian bars for the hottest babes she can shag in some sexy Shane McCutcheon-style one-night stands.

Unfortunately, Thirteen’s most recent conquest took the term “one-night stand” a bit too literally and collided with a night stand at Thirteen’s apartment as she was suddenly overcome by a seizure. Thirteen accompanied her new friend to the ER, where Dr. Cameron updated House on the details of the case. Obviously, House is delighted at Thirteen’s exercise in reckless bisexuality, allowing Thirteen to be primary care administrator for the case just to watch her touch her lover and to make jokes at the pair’s expense.

“You’ll have to excuse Dr. House. He mistakes immaturity for edginess.” –Thirteen

House recognizes the POW as someone who had written him for years to try to get him to take her case. Upon hearing this news, Thirteen becomes incredibly angry, accusing the girl of using her to get to House, to which she fires back that Thirteen was only using her for sex anyway, so why should it matter?

House insists that, since the seizure happened at Thirteen’s apartment, he return to the scene of the incident to find out of any environmental factors influenced the patient’s sudden onset of illness. Foreman goes with House to mitigate any additional snooping House had intended to do to dig up dirt on Thirteen. At her apartment, they find her inhaler and a brown recluse spider, so House insists that the POW be examined to see if she has any spider bites. (FYI, a brown recluse causes flesh to go necrotic, so I’m pretty fucking sure someone would have noticed that by now.) Thirteen does the exam, simply to get more girl-on-girl action in the episode, and she notices that the POW cannot feel Thirteen’s hand on her hip. The team now assumes the patient has RTA from kidney stones.

Foreman confronts Thirteen with the information about her Huntington’s diagnosis that she had hoped to keep from her employer. He calls her out for acting recklessly just because she thinks she’s dying: drinking, doing drugs and having sex with strangers. She insists that she’s merely trying to cram “as much life into [her] life as [she] can.” Foreman’s knowledge of her situation doesn’t stop her from bringing her reckless behavior into the workplace, though, and shortly after this encounter Cuddy catches Thirteen pumping herself full of IV fluids to get over her previous night’s adventures. Cuddy calls House in and demands that Thirteen be drug tested. Instead, House chooses to save Thirteen’s ass from drug testing, but then turns around and fires her for her behavior.

“A slutty party girl is fun until she pukes on your shoes, then she’s just a pain in the ass.” –House

Refusing to let go, Thirteen continues to work on the case as a civilian, even coming in to perform an emergency tracheotomy when she realizes that the POW’s lungs are filled with cysts that will burst if Kutner and Taub put her through a treadmill test, which they had already administered. The team tries their best to get Thirteen’s job back, citing her attention to the case as evidence. They assume that the patient has Lam, a degenerative lung disease in which her cysts will continue to develop in her lungs until they stop working entirely.

Give her some of that bisexadrine we found at Breckin Meyer's place. She should be fine.

House allows Thirteen to deliver this news to the POW, as she knows the patient and knows what it’s like to receive a death sentence. As the two women bond over the mutual demise, Thirteen notices that the POW is bleeding where her cysts were removed. The development of this aplastic anemia leads House to believe that she has a blood disease. For Thirteen’s commitment to the patient and admission that her disease is worse than she originally thought, House rewards her with her job. Then House has his epiphany when he notices Thirteen’s cracked lips and asks her if the POW cried when she received the news of her impending doom. Thirteen can’t remember tears and House solves the case: it’s Sjogren’s disease. The patient will live – she just has no tear ducts or glands – and Thirteen has Candida from making out with her. At least one of these two women will go on to have a somewhat normal life, and Thirteen can spend her final days helping other people instead of being hell-bent on self-destruction.

“Another life saved by girl on girl action.” –House

Note: It turns out that Angela Gots, who plays Spencer (the POW), has a 5-episode arc on the fifth season of The L Word, which I’ve yet to watch. I am now no longer surprised that she reminded me so much of Kate Moenning’s Shane McCutcheon in appearance and diction.

The Husband:

It’s weird, because it’s not November sweeps for another week-and-a-half, but other than Privileged and Eli Stone, it seems that every show on network television is having top-notch episodes. This week, House proved once again that it can easily mix harsh drama and hilarious comedy and get away with it, slingshotting its tone without getting whiplash.

And no, it’s not just that there was lesbian sex (which was highly over-advertised for how little there was, but I expect the PTC will still find some way to complain about it) that got me to like it, but everything about Thirteen’s state-of-mind, one that is slowly falling apart due to her impending death in only a matter of years. I’d actually be surprised if she makes it through the entire rest of the year (and thus television season) as a doctor at Princeton-Plainsboro, because she’s really hitting the wall.

I also usually tend to be bored at any Wilson story, but I guess Bobby Sean saw something in his plot this week that got him to break out of his mild acting slump and give it his all. Hell, it’s definitely fun to play a prank on House and convince him that you’re in love with a prostitute and doing drugs, simply to prove that you guys are, in fact, back to normal friendship-wise. I hope Wilson can continue to be a little less…depressed in coming episodes, because it felt like a welcome respite from all of his Amber mourning.