House: Coming Full Circle

House is back this week with a new bizarre medical case and the future of the Department of Diagnostic Medicine in jeopardy. The Patient of the Week is a video game developer who lands in the hospital when his hands begin burning as if they’re on fire. We’ll call him Flaming Hands; it sounds cool.

Flaming Hands is the perfect patient for House’s team because his symptoms continue to worsen. Only problem is, House has just quit and Cuddy doesn’t see much point in keeping the Diagnostics department open since he was the whole reason it existed in the first place. House claims his reason for quitting is because he needs a new environment to help him continue onto the path of recovery; the hospital would remind him too much of the past. Okay, sounds fair enough. I can work with this excuse for one episode.

Foreman quickly intervenes, however, and begs Cuddy to allow him to take House’s position. Foreman must be really full of himself if he thinks he’s good enough to take over for House. Naturally, Cuddy isn’t entirely convinced of Foreman’s abilities, but she gives him one shot. If he can cure Flaming Hands, then the department will remain open and he can take House’s position.

House, meanwhile, is told by Dr. Nolan that he needs to take up a new hobby to help keep his mind off the chronic pain in his leg. So House moves in with Wilson (slash fans, rejoice!) and takes up cooking. Turns out, he’s not such a bad cook! House even manages to save Wilson’s balls after they almost burn. Meatballs, of course, get your mind out of the gutter!

Back at Princeton Plainsboro, Flaming Hands ropes in the World Wide Web to help diagnose him since Foreman’s team can’t seem to find an answer. Also, did anyone else catch that jab towards Jeremy Piven and the whole mercury poisoning fiasco? Anyways, Foreman tries to be bad ass like House (and fails) and then there’s something about his and Thirteen’s relationship. I was over Foreman and Thirteen’s relationship before it even began. Oh, and Taub (“the one with the nose”) decides to quit now since House is gone. Even the producers didn’t care since he basically vanishes into thin air after his resignation scene. It’s as if Taub never existed (we can all wish).

On the House front, he continues to be plagued by the temptation to start using Vicodin again but manages to withstand it. The good news is he now has Dr. Nolan to talk to. I have to say, I like this Dr. Nolan.

Flaming Hands is getting desperate for a cure to put him out of his misery and offers up a reward of $25,000 for anybody who can solve his medical mystery. Foreman has a revelation à la House and thinks he’s solved the case – only to find out that Thirteen beat him to the chase after she read through the messages received by Flaming Hands and found the answer in there. Nevertheless, Cuddy is impressed and allows Foreman to keep the position. Foreman then decides he cannot continue working with Thirteen, but still wants to be in a relationship with her, so he fires her from the team. This makes no sense to me; why would Thirteen want to keep dating him after he just fired her?! How selfish.

Finally, we wrap up with House who confides in Dr. Nolan that he’s the one who solved his old team’s case when he saw Flaming Hand’s posting on the Internet. It turns out that when House solved the case, the pain diminished in his leg.

So long Chef House, it was fun while it lasted, but welcome back Dr. House!

Next week, House returns to Princeton Plainsboro to solve some cases and Chase and Cameron are back center stage now that Taub and Thirteen are presumably gone.

For another take on this episode, read House of Pain by Cameron Cubbison.

Season 6, Episode 2: Epic Fail (originally aired September 28, 2009)

For more on House, click here.

Tuesdays 8/7c on FOX

Photographs courtesy of Fox, NBC Universal, Larry Watson, and Michael Yarish