House: Do. Not. Get. Married.

That’s the lesson I learned from this week’s episode of House. Truth be told though, in my case, the showrunners were preaching to the choir. Everyone on the show is dealing with crumbling marriages or the lingering effects of failed ones. In short, everyone is miserable all because of a couple of rings and some words spoken and some cake eaten.

Teaser: A woman fools around with some stud in a nice hotel room. There’s a knock at the door: it’s the woman’s husband! Oh no! Except the wife seems less horrified than puzzled, and the other man doesn’t hide under the sheets. Then the husband comes in and introduces himself amiably. He didn’t mean to interrupt, he just showed up because their daughter needs some form signed. Ah, it seems these people have one of those fabled open marriages, what Taub refers to as a mythical unicorn. But then the woman starts gasping in pain. See, you just can’t win.

The team runs the usual battery of tests, but everyone—especially Taub—is more interested in the kooky sex arrangement. Taub takes his wife out to dinner and just ever so casually starts discussing the patient and her arrangement. He tells wifey that he only brought it up because he thought it was interesting, but she sees right through him and knows that he’s trying to broach the subject with her. Taub reveals that he hasn’t cheated on her (this time), but he does have eyes for a nurse at the hospital. Even though he hasn’t acted on the attraction, is Taub  being unfaithful to his wife by having the desire to cheat in the first place? Is cheating part of his true nature, and is he denying his true self by artificially constraining himself from dalliances? I say yes to all. Taub is a short, balding weasel. Why the hell doesn’t the wife leave him? How could she possibly love such a human dildo?

House, meanwhile has to face that he has become the third wheel on the Wilson/Sam relationship rickshaw. Wait a minute…no he doesn’t! This is House. What he has to do is engineer their breakup through petty tricks like loading the dishwasher wrong, putting the milk on the door of the fridge instead of in the core, using up all of the toilet paper and not replacing the roll. He figures that Wilson will blame these annoyances on Sam, and he figures right. These petty habits break them out of the doldrums and get them screaming at each other to the point where they are discussing why their marriage ended a decade ago and why they can’t make it work now. Whether or not House went to these lengths for himself or out of concern for Wilson is up for debate (I think it’s both), but damn if he didn’t get the job done. Or did he?

Basically, all of the dysfunctional relationships on this show are cyclical. They don’t work, they’re full of compromise and resentment, but people keep coming back to them because they don’t know how to be alone and think that somehow they’ll be happier in crappy couples than in satisfying solitude. I don’t understand it, and I don’t think they do either. I think that’s the point that House is trying to make. Solid episode, nothing spectacular. I do, however, consistently find myself still smiling at how engaged I am by Hugh Laurie.

For anther take on this episode, read The Open Marriage Fiasco by Stephanie Jaar.

Season 6, Episode 18: Open and Shut (originally aired April 26, 2010)

For more on House, click here.

Mondays 8/7c on FOX

Photographs courtesy of NBC Universal and IMDbPro.