Watching House

Family is walking away from a man who looks like he’s dying (It’s Meatloaf – all of a sudden ‘I would do anything for love’ is ringing in my head.) He tells his wife that he was selfish and that he never gave her the trips and things that she wanted. He says that he’s ready and looks like he’s dying, but suddenly the wife can’t breathe and starts choking. He gathers the strength and yells for a nurse to help his wife.

House gets the chart and wonders where Kutner and 13 are – Taub tells him that Thirteen is busy with a patient and that Kutner’s dog is sick and that he’ll be in by lunch. House wonders if Taub is covering for Kutner. We find out that the POtW’s husband (herefore called Meatloaf) is dying of lung cancer. The patient wants to be released to go back to her husband, Eddie. Taub says that he has an idea.

He wheels Meatloaf into his wife’s room and tells the wife that now they can focus on making her better.

House is back on clinic duty! In front of him is a little girl who is dressed up in pageant wear. The mother is worried about the girl – she’s staring into space and isn’t paying attention.

House: Well I can cure her, but it’s going to cost you $3.25. Well I’m not going to give you my coffee for free. (he hands the cup to the little girl). Think if it as sober juice.
The Mother: She’s drunk?

The daughter had been sneaking into the bathroom and using her mother’s mouthwash.

House: Did you spit it out?
Little Girl: Mommy doesn’t. (HA!)

Foreman tells House that the patient’s treatment worked and that she can be released. House notices that Kutner still isn’t there and asks the crew to find out what or who he’s doing and to get him to work. As House leaves the crew gets beeped about their patient, Charlotte (POtW). She’s unable to breathe again. Taub goes into her room and Meatloaf is suddenly looking a heck of a lot stronger, sitting up on his own.

Foreman and Thirteen go to Kutner’s apartment and Thirteen has a key that she opens the door with. They start wandering around and Thirteen spies Kutner laying on the floor in his bedroom, a gun nearby! Foreman calls 911 and says that there is a gunshot wound to the left temple. A huge pool of blood is on the floor and the two start doing CPR (behind a wall – we can only see his legs). Thirteen sits back, blood on her face and all over her from the pool of blood.

Thirteen: He’s cold. Eric….

Oh My God! You think that’s something, you haven’t seen anything yet - the rest of the recap below!

After commercial we’re back to the ducklings (minus one) and House. Thirteen has had a shower and House is rubbing his neck.

House: He didn’t say anything…to any of you? Family problems? Bad relationship? Financial pressures?

Thirteen swears that Kutner didn’t reach out to the rest of them. Foreman believes that they missed something. Taub? Well…

Taub: Killing yourself also kills all other options. Makes Kutner an idiot. So pity, yes, but guilt, no.

Taub wants to focus on the patient. Foreman thinks about passing the POtW’s file off, but house thinks they should keep it because they need to work.

Cuddy shows up when they start diagnosing. She tells them that she’s hired a grief counselor and that they’re allotted time off, which she’s sure none of them will take advantage of. House tells the crew to start the POtW on meds and walks to his office, Cuddy following him.

He tells Cuddy that Wilson has been leaving him alone, and he thinks it’s because Wilson thinks he’ll work through it better alone.

Cuddy: I’m sorry for your loss.
House: Thanks. It’s not my loss.
Cuddy: Than I’m sorry you don’t think it is.

Foreman and Thirteen tell House that Taub is giving treatment, but that they would like to go see Kutner’s parents. (his adoptive parents – his biological parents were killed when he was young). House says that he’ll join them.

Taub is giving treatment to the POtW and she’s in pain. Meatloaf tells her to close her eyes and starts having her envision what it’s like to finally go to Rio (where she’s always wanted to go). She says she doesn’t want to go without him. He tells her that he wants her to go. Taub tells Meatloaf that he’d like to run a test on him, as he’s sitting up and looks strong.

At Kutner’s parents house, his parents are showing Thirteen, House, and Foreman pictures of him as a young child. She asks them if they had any idea what happened, but Thirteen and Foreman said that they had no idea. House, however, starts saying that he thinks that Kutner didn’t feel like he fit in. That being thrust into a white household and given an Anglo name caused things to get worse. (even though the parents are insisting that Kutner came up with the desire to want their last name on his own). That his pain got buried deeper until finally he put a bullet…

Foreman: House. Go back to the hospital.

House gets up and says that he’s sorry about Kutner, then leaves.

Back at the hospital, Taub tells House that the meds had no effect on the wife, but that the husband is still improving. That maybe he’s going into remission. House remarks that Taub hasn’t asked about the visit with the Kutners, and he assures House that he knows House would have told him if there was anything important.

Taub: I don’t think suicide is always a call for help. Sometimes you just don’t want help.
House: Good thing you got some, or you would’ve tried again and gotten it right.

House goes into the patient’s room and says that the patient is faking her recent illness, because the longer she fakes, the longer her husband will be fine. That her breathing problem was real but the recent pain isn’t. She admits to faking so that she could be close with her husband for just awhile longer and then screams out in pain. She says her leg is hurting her and they pull the sheet back to find a huge bruise showing up on her leg.

Back from commercial, House admits that he’s going through Kutner’s rolodex and is calling Kutner’s friends to try to figure out why Kutner killed himself. He goes to Cuddy and points out a police report with Kutner’s name on it. She says that it’s because he streaked at a football game in college. She tells House that he should be upset, because he pushed boundaries like House and thought like House.

House: If he thought like me, he’d have known that living in misery sucks marginally less than dying in it.

Thirteen is doing a CT scan on the POtW and asks the woman what it’s like to live with someone for 30 years. She says that it was great for her, and hopefully good for him. That she loves him in a different way than he loves her – that he didn’t really want to spend a lot of time with her.

Thirteen: Then why did you stay with him?
POtW: Because I didn’t need him to live me the way that I loved him.

She then stops talking and the monitors go off and Thirteen rushes out to help.

Taub is checking out Meatloaf (Eddie), and Meatloaf says that he’s heard of cancer patients who go into spontaneous remission. Taub looks at the ultrasound of Meatloaf’s heart and finds that the chamber walls are barely moving, which means that Meatloaf is definitely dying.

Wilson is in his office and Cuddy comes in. She tells Wilson that House needs a friend, but he says that he can’t deal with “all of this” and House too. She says that he needs a friend too. She tells him that House blamed Kutner’s parents and then walks out, leaving Wilson looking shocked.

Charlotte’s on the table and Chase is fixing her ruptured spleen. Taub is in the observatory waiting to biopsy for rheumatoid arthritis. Chase tells him that he’ll do it and tells Taub to go home. Taub replies that Charlotte isn’t Chase’s patient and Chase remarks that Kutner wasn’t his friend.

Taub: Kutner wanted to die. Charlotte doesn’t, so in a contest for my concern and interest, she wins.
Chase: Okay, either you’re a cold hearted bastard or you’re too miserable to face it. Go home and cry.

House is in Kutner’s apartment and is looking around. Wilson joins him.

Wilson: For the record, I’m uncomfortable violating a dead colleague’s dignity.
House: It’s only violating if we find something. Good to see you. (wow – House got soft there for a minute!)

House insists that Kutner was hiding and wants to figure out why. He finds a picture of Kutner with his biological parents right next to one of him with his adoptive parents, which, to House, says that he was honest about the pain, so that if it got worse he should’ve been honest with that too.

Wilson says that they’re going to handle the situation by going to a bar and drinking and talking about Kutner. House keeps walking around. He goes into the bloody bedroom and starts looking, trying to figure out what he’s missing.

Wilson says that House isn’t there because he is concerned with what happened to Kutner, but because of the puzzle.

House: We didn’t miss anything because there was nothing to miss. He didn’t kill himself. He was murdered.

Wilson walks off.

Back in the classic room, House is writing on the backside of the whiteboard, hiding whatever he’s writing from Thirteen and Taub. Thirteen asks where Foreman is and House says that he took up Cuddy’s offer for time off. She looks a bit strange when he says that.

He turns the board around and has a list of motives for murder, trying to figure out why Kutner was murdered. Thirteen says that she’s not going to waste times chasing ghosts, no matter how much they wall want to know why Kutner did it. Taub says he’s curious about why a man who embraces the rational is suddenly irrational.

House breaks off his train of thought and tells the team to run for something called Alpha One.

Taub’s with Charlotte and she tells Taub that she wants him to give Eddie her organs if she dies. He tells her that it’s not too late for her. She asks if it’s too late for Eddie, and he says that it is.

Thirteen goes knocking on Foreman’s door.

Thirteen: Remy Hadley. I also answer to Thirteen, I sometimes sleep with you…

Foreman says that he should have called, but that he needs some time alone. He tells her that he’s worked through a lot of bad stuff in his life and always done it solo. Close to tears, Thirteen leaves.

Cuddy finds House snooping around Kutner’s email. He says that Kutner testified at the murderer’s trial and that the murderer is about to be paroled. Cuddy, however, says that the police have ruled it a suicide, as he was shot in the temple, with his own gun.

Taub tells House that Charlotte’s liver is shot, and that she’s dead in 24 hours if she doesn’t get a new liver. Turns out she’d tried to kill herself in order to get a new organ to her husband. Suddenly House goes down to talk to Cameron.

He tells Cameron that he needs an incurable romantic in order to talk to an incurable romantic. She tells House that Kutner wasn’t murdered, that House wants him to have been murdered because it means that House didn’t miss something.

House asks her to talk to Meatloaf because he’s got a liver that his wife needs. The plan is that he’ll donate a part of a liver, but die on the table (he’d never survive the surgery) and will end up giving the wife a whole liver.

House: But if he’s going to do this, he’s going to do this for love. I thought he should talk to someone who understands the language.

Cameron tells Meatloaf about the surgery, and about how he’ll likely not survive. He asks if he can say goodbye, and Cameron says that he can’t.

Cameron tells House that she doesn’t think that Meatloaf has heart failure, but that something else is wrong because he has nodules on his finger tips. He tells Cameron that the guy who killed Kutner’s parents died of an aneurysm a few months ago. She tells him that Kutner hid from everyone, and that he should do the test on Eddie to find out what’s wrong.

House goes into Eddie’s room with a paper and tells him that his heart condition was caused from mold, and that a few months of treatment will cure him. He tells House that he doesn’t want the treatment, and that he was ready to die. House doesn’t understand.

Eddie: If you won’t do it, release me, and when I get hit by a car and show up in your morgue, you can give her my liver then.

Thirteen and Taub are in House’s office and Thirteen says she’s not going to commit murder.

Taub: I will. We’ve already had one pointless death.

Taub walks Eddie into Charlotte’s room and tells her that Eddie has a curable disease and that he wants to die to save her. She says “Eddie, don’t” and starts having a hard time breathing again.

Back with diagnosing – Taub tells House that Charlotte’s got a fever and that her body is infected all over. He says that he should fire Taub, while Thirteen’s focused on the infection being a new clue.

House: What is she hiding?
Taub: You don’t know…
House: Either we have all the clues and we’re idiots or we don’t have all the clues!!

He gets the “I figured it out” look and goes into the patient’s room. He says that she’s actually been to Rio, and not Hawaii like she told her husband. That the disease bearing sand flies are completely different.

She admits that she traveled to Rio because she got tired of waiting for her husband to take her, the way he’d always promised to. House tells Taub to start her medications and to get Cuddy to find her a liver.

In the hallway, looking in, House speaks again.

House: They were ready to die, for guilt or love.
Taub: You can’t feel that much guilt without love.

Cuddy says that she’s found a liver, but Taub tells Cuddy to have the medical team to turn around, that they diagnosed Charlotte too late and her medical treatment isn’t working.

The entire crew is heading to Kutner’s funeral. Wilson confronts House and tells him that he thinks House is terrified that he missed something and that he’s terrified that he’s losing his gift, who he is.

Wilson: And I’m terrified of what you’d do then.
House: Unless you feel there’s more to do here to cure me, don’t you have a funeral to go to?

And Wilson leaves.

At Kutner’s funeral, a full house is packed in, mourning Kutner. Thirteen turns and finds Foreman there, alone, staring at the casket.

Scenes switch off – Eddie sitting in his bed near his dying wife, house in Kutner’s apartment, the funeral and Thirteen and Foreman paying their respects as pall bearers. House is focused on the picture on Kutner’s wall of both of his families. Taub is standing by as Charlotte is dying. Eddie kisses her hand and she dies.

At Kutner’s funeral they are all outside. House is looking through the photos of Kutner at his apartment. Thirteen is standing and Foreman’s hand slides into hers. Taub is sitting alone in the hallway and breaks down, crying. House finds a picture of a troubled-looking Kutner as the show goes off. We get a quick shot for NAMI.ORG.

Kutner is dead! What do you think about this development? I mean, we knew that someone was supposed to die, but Kutner?! I’m sorry - I’m still in shock that Kutner was killed off! What do you guys think?!