House: Known Unknowns

Baseball is over and the misanthropic doctor is back in the office, this time to treat a teenage groupie named Jordan whose ankles and hands began to swell intensely after supposedly spending a wild and crazy night partying with her favorite band. Hey, I had my ankles and hands swell up last year, but I figure it was probably just a reaction to hating my deviance and social control class. And I wouldn’t have wanted House to diagnose me because I was all too happy to miss a few seminars. Anyway, I lied when I said House is back in the office. Indeed he doesn’t spend much time at work because Wilson convinces House to go with him to a pharmacology conference. House agrees because Cuddy is going to be there.

So House works the case peripherally, but mainly it falls to his old team: Chase, Cameron, and Foreman. Unfortunately, the team seems more concerned with their own personal issues than with treating Jordan. Yeah, that’s what you want in a doctor. You see, Chase is still whining to himself about having killed Dibala. My advice: shut up and congratulate yourself, you had the balls to do the right thing. And Cameron knows something is wrong with Chase and that he’s hiding something from her, so naturally, being the moron that she is, she assumes he’s having an affair and starts following him all over the place. And Foreman has to listen to both Chase and Cameron whine to him separately about all of that. Man, I never thought I’d feel sympathy for Foreman before.

Before House and Wilson leave for the conference, House sees Wilson give his dying patient the morphine button, and House also gets Jordan to confess that she and her friend didn’t spend the night with the band. That’s just what they told their other friends so they could sound cool. Ah, the perils of peer pressure. No, they ditched the band and instead followed around a famous comic book author they idolize at his hotel. Of course, all this is complicated by the fact that one of Jordan’s symptoms causes her to lie compulsively. So the team has a near-impossible time determining what really happened that night and therefore can’t get an accurate medical history. Cameron, again being the presumptuous moron she is, automatically assumes that the comic book author drugged and molested Jordan (not the case).

Luckily House doesn’t have to really worry about all this. He watches the case from afar, but after stealing another doctor’s nametag at the conference, is much more concerned with having fun…and saving Wilson from essentially confessing to murder in front of all of his colleagues at the conference. Yeah, I’ll just let you chew on that one.

Other highlights include House and Cuddy attending a costume party and telling us more about their ancient history, and a rather significant twist involving the unexpected return of an old character. It’s a solid episode and the writers keep doing their best to keep the House formula from becoming stale.

For another take on this episode, read The Secret Lives of Teen Girls by Stephanie Jaar.

Season 6, Episode 6: Known Unknowns (originally aired November 9, 2009)

For more on House, click here.

Tuesdays 8/7c on FOX

Photographs courtesy of NBC Universal, Michael Yarish