House Review: The Reveal

“I just don’t want our relationship affecting our job…or anything else,” Cuddy proclaims to House.

Sorry, Cuddy, let’s be real. We all know their personal relationship will affect their work relationship but that’s what will keep it interesting. Last week, Huddy camped out in House’s apartment. This week it’s back to work and time for the big reveal about their relationship, which seems to throw the pair off their game a little.

Cuddy and House agree to go public with their relationship—Cuddy wants to formally tell HR and House agrees to wait to tell everyone else. But did we really believe that was going to happen? Of course not, as soon as possible, House tells his team and Wilson. Their reactions are not a consensus for the happy couple: Wilson is in disbelief, Foreman is in favor, Taub is indignant and Chase is indifferent. House mentions that he wants a female perspective and glosses over the fact that he might know something about Thirteen’s whereabouts. Foreman hopes Cuddy will mellow House out, Taub is afraid he will become more cranky and the ladies’ man, Chase, who is dating four different women, could care less. To help convince a disbelieving Wilson that they are dating, in an awkwardly long scene, Cuddy grabs House’s crotch.

In the HR meeting, House and Cuddy sign consensual relationship agreements and Cuddy will remain House’s supervisor. But the revealed relationship is beginning to affect their work relationship. To start, House is voluntary performing his clinic hours. Yes, you read that correctly, shocking right? House checks out a father who is 102 years old and a son, twenty years younger, who live together. House insists that the father’s symptoms are just old age but they ask him to run tests. Individually, they admit to House they are sick of living together, to fake the tests and tell the other that the father should move into a nursing home. Everything seems normal until House learns the father can’t feel hot or cold—turns out he has zinc poisoning from his denture cream.

This week’s primary patient: a 14-year-old girl, Della, who collapsed while pushing her handicapped brother, Hugo, in his wheelchair at a skateboarding event. House first wants to run a “scare test” but then cancels it, without a fight, because Cuddy wants him to. Della’s kidneys begin to fail and the docs suggest that she receive bone marrow from her brother. But Della refuses since her brother has CMD and it could make his illness worse. Della’s condition worsens, including bleeding out through her lung. The relationship strikes again—Cuddy, against her better judgment, approves the riskier treatment but House realizes she disapproves and does the opposite. Della receives a donor lung but her body begins to reject it. The question is do they now treat for the rejection or possible infection? Taub jokes that they should just go with the safer route of treatment because that is what Cuddy will say and House now does exactly what she says. The point becomes moot because House has a revelation about Della’s condition after hearing more of her symptoms and that she never gets sick—sickle cell trait.

As an aside, House and Cuddy admit that their relationship is screwing them up at work. Duh! She decides to talk to HR and try to find another supervisor for House.

Meanwhile, Della’s situation becomes more serious. She will die unless she receives another lung. Unfortunately, since she already received a donor lung, it is unlikely she will be approved for a second transplant. House, for the first time, goes against Cuddy and tells the parents about another option—that Della could receive marrow and half a lung from their son but because of his disease, this could cut his life expectancy in half. This leaves the parents with the impossible choice of choosing between their children. Della tries to take the choice out of their hands by unplugging herself from the machines to let herself die.

Cuddy reports back that she must remain House’s supervisor because no one else wants to do it. House reveals to Cuddy that he already told the parents about the marrow/lung from brother option as the parents walk up. Della’s parents explain their decision not to take marrow/lung from son. House is furious with the parents for choosing what he thinks is the “crappier option.” Then, Cuddy and House get into an intense argument, which the son, Hugo, overhears. Get your tissues ready for this next scene…Hugo convinces his sister, despite his disease and shortening his life, to take his marrow and lung to save her saying, “This is the great thing I can do with my life.”

House and Cuddy realize and discuss that their fight was the first honest interaction that they had all day. Moving forward, they decide to be brutally honest with each other to make their work relationship work.

Well, Huddy survived day one as a couple at Princeton-Plainsboro. Although I can’t imagine their “brutal honesty” rule is going to make things easy in the future, especially if it results in more heated screaming arguments. I enjoyed the supporting cast’s diversity of reactions to the Huddy relationship and I wouldn’t be surprised to see opinions change in future episodes.

The romantic relationship has not changed Dr. House’s bedside manner. The sarcastic Dr. House had plenty of humorous one-liners this week, like, “people who have not seen Cuddy naked shouldn’t throw stones.”

In this week and last week’s episodes, Cuddy was not seen spending time with her daughter, I’m hoping this will change. It will be interesting to see House interact with her daughter.

Does House know more about Thirteen’s whereabouts then he let on? Much less of a storyline this week but it has definitely peaked my curiosity. I wonder where she is but your guess is as good as mine.

Season 7, Episode 2: Selfish (originally aired September 27, 2010)

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Mondays 8/7c on FOX

Photographs courtesy of Adam Taylor/NBC Universal.