House Episode 5.17 – “The Social Contract” Recap

The episode began at a dinner to celebrate an author’s newest book being published. The author stands to thank the dinner guests and his editor starts trashing him, the book and everyone else. Then he apologizes, starts bleeding from his nose and collapses.

House enters his office to find the team studying the chart of the new patient. Foreman tells him that the patient suffers from Frontal Lobe Disinhibition. Nothing showed up on the MRI so House told them to “go stick a scope up Phinneas’ nose and see what you find.”

Taub and Kutner enter the patient’s room and he confronts them, telling them that they look “excited” about him being so sick. He had been playing cards with his daughter, who has an auditory processing disability. The patient insults Taub’s nose, then his wife’s job and the test begins.

Kutner (Kal Penn, R) treats a patient (guest star Jay Karnes, L) who can’t stop himself from saying everything he’s thinking, no matter who it hurts.
[Photo: ©2009 Fox Broadcasting Co. Cr: Adam Taylor/FOX]

House and Wilson were walking down the hall of the hospital and House entices him with talk of a monster truck show. Wilson can’t make it, but doesn’t say why. Then he breaks down and tells House that he doesn’t really like monster trucks. House is very shocked at that news. But then he asks Wilson what he’s really hiding. Just then, Kutner joins then to tell House that the patient doesn’t have nasal cancer and that his marriage is in trouble if he keeps saying everything he thinks.

Wilson: You always led me to believe you were one of a kind.
Kutner: Luckily, jerkiness is temporary for this guy.
House: No, it’s not. We may be able to fix his impulse to say his thoughts out loud, but he’s always going to be the guy who thinks them.
Wilson: But he’s also going to be the guy who doesn’t say them. If he spent his whole life constructing this nice-guy persona, isn’t that as much who he really is as anything else?
House: You would argue that. You’re all persona.
Kutner: I agree with Wilson, this guy’s Harry Potter. The sorting hat was going to put Harry in Slitherin, based on his nature. He refused, so he ended up in Gryffindore through choice.
House: There’s damage, somewhere in his brain. Go find it.

Kutner (Kal Penn, L) consults House (Hugh Laurie, R) and Wilson (Robert Sean Leonard, C) when the team treats a patient who can’t stop himself from saying everything he’s thinking – no matter who it hurts.
[Photo: ©2009 Fox Broadcasting Co. Cr: Adam Taylor/FOX]

Thirteen and Forman take the patient for another MRI. He acts like a jerk to them, starts to hit on Thirteen and just then, Cuddy walks in. He says some inappropriate remarks about her and she looks shocked. The patient continues his inappropriate remarks about both Thirteen and Cuddy.

House and his team treat a patient (guest star Jay Karnes) who can’t stop himself from saying everything he’s thinking – no matter who it hurts.
[Photo: ©2009 Fox Broadcasting Co. Cr: Adam Taylor/FOX]

Cuddy: Where’s House?
Foreman: House isn’t here.
Cuddy: Oh, he wouldn’t have paged me if he couldn’t watch and enjoy…

Just then, House turns on the light in the observation room so they could see him watching. Cuddy walks out. House follows her.

House: You’re welcome.
Cuddy: That was for my benefit?
House: You’re 40 years old…
Cuddy: Thirty eight.
House: …administrator of a hospital…
Cuddy: Dean of Medicine.
House: People don’t get personal with you, except for me and you’ve dismissed me as a jerk who’s jerking you around. But that guy can only tell the truth. And he prefers your body to that of a smoking young hottie.
Cuddy: So, that was your way of saying that I look good today?
House: You don’t get the slightest kick out of that?
Cuddy: Don’t be ridiculous, House.

As the elevator doors closed, you could see her grin to herself.

In the MRI observation room, Foreman tells Thirteen that she is second to no one and asks if the patient’s comments about Cuddy upset her. She says they didn’t. They ask the patient some indiscreet questions to watch the brain activity. They conclude that the problem could be neural sarcoidosis and decide to give him steroids because it’s too close to the brain stem to operate.

Taub & Kutner are in the cafeteria line and Taub asks if his nose is too big. Kutner asks if his bedside manner is lacking. Taub suggests that it’s the Social Contract for people to tell him his nose suits his face and that Kutner is a people person.

House walks in with an empty plate and approaches Wilson alone at a table.

House: Anyone sitting here?
Wilson: Just my persona.
House: (grabbing some of the food off Wilson’s plate) You know, it’s amazing the way people cling on to insults. Or what they think are insults.
Wilson: So, that wasn’t an insult?
House: (Pulls a fork out of his jacket pocket) I’m not suggesting that like our patient, you’re hiding a dark, sarcastic core in a candy shell of compulsive niceness.
Wilson: I’m not always nice. I’m not nice to you.
House: ‘Cause you know nice bores me. Hence, still nice. No, I’m suggesting that you have no core. You’re what whoever you’re with needs you to be. OK, I guess that could be insulting. But the interesting question is why? Why do you think the world will end in chaos and destruction if you’re not there to save it?
Wilson: Because when my parents put me in the rocket and sent me here, they said, “James, you will grow to manhood under a yellow sun.”
House: Why did you lie about monster trucks?
Wilson: I didn’t.
House: You changed your appointment book. You’ve got tomorrow night marked off, but you didn’t put down what you were doing. So, you thought someone might look at it.
Wilson: I’m playing racquetball tomorrow night with Taub.
House: Why wouldn’t you write that?
Wilson: Because the world revolves around you. If I devote time to anyone else, you end up stalking me and harassing them.
House: You say as though it wouldn’t be fun! [LOL!]
Wilson: And maybe I didn’t want to rub your nose in something you can no longer do. Because I’m nice.

Foreman rushes to the patient’s room to find him in distress. He says the heart is fine and puts him on kidney dialysis.

Back in the office, the team discusses the patient. Taub is looking at his nose’s reflection in a spoon.

House: Hey! Cyrano DeBerkowitz! Let it go.

House confronts Taub about playing racquetball with Wilson. He goes on about how he’s Jewish and isn’t athletic. House continues to question Taub while the team talks about possible diagnoses. House tells Kutner to test the daughter for peripheral nerve damage and Taub to run a glucose tolerance test.

House: Oh, and the nurses have been working so hard. You can do the blood draws yourself.
Taub: They have to be done every couple of hours. You’re punishing me because you’re jealous that I’m spending time with your best friend.
House: No, you’re petty. I’m punishing you because you’ve joined my best friend in lying to me. Let me know when you’re ready to confess everything.

Kutner runs the test on the little girl, but she doesn’t seem to have the level of sensation in her extremities that she should. Just then, she screamed. She thought that the longer she held out before telling them it hurt, the better her father would be. She got burns on her hand.

In the patient’s room, he asks Taub to keep Dr. Hadley away from him because he doesn’t want to share his inappropriate thoughts about her. He tells Taub that he doesn’t want his private thoughts to be what he is to people, especially his wife.

Patient: My real choices are my actions. I’ve never done anything to hurt her. I’ve never cheated. [Then suddenly he looks at Taub] You’re kidding me, you’ve cheated?
Taub: No. Why would you say that?
Patient: Because you look guilty as hell.
Taub: Are you serious? Of course you’re serious.
Patient: Yes, as everyone knows. God, they must think you’re a creep. …They might not know, they might be idiots. [Taub leaves the room]

House pages Taub to the morgue and wants him to update House on the patient’s condition…while bouncing a ball off the wall. He tells Taub that he expects people that work for him to rise to a challenge…unless they don’t want to work for him.

Taub picks up a racquet and starts to hit the ball against the wall. He misses the ball repeatedly, then it bounces into some glass beakers on a shelf and beaks them all.

Taub: Fine. I’m not playing racquetball with Wilson. I was never playing racquetball with Wilson. I have never played racquetball with Wilson. I thought it would be helpful if a department head owed me a favor. But it’s not worth this.
House: Not bad. You put on a good show. You studied up. Wilson actually booked a court. But if you really were a racquetball player, you’d know you are holding a squash racquet.

He tells him to have Kutner perform a thyroid reuptake scan and he left the morgue to take a nap in an on-call room.

In the patient’s room, the patient starts to insult his daughter, saying that she isn’t disabled, she is just under average. The wife gets very upset and understandably tries to keep the daughter from being hurt by the patient’s words. Then he tries to make the daughter feel better and insults the wife again and tells the daughter that he didn’t want her at the hospital. She runs out of the room. The wife follows.

Just then, Kutner realizes the patient is running a fever and has fluid in his lungs.

House tells Kutner to go get a very detailed medical history on the patient and tells Taub that he’s going to be busy with something else.

Taub sticks his head in Wilson’s office and invites him to lunch. Taub tells him that he’s been made and that House sent him back as a double agent. Wilson looked frustrated.

Kutner reports back to House about the patient. He tells him the patient has almost no risky behaviors but that the wife rescued a Rottweiler that drank out of his glass once. House concludes that the problem is bacterial and prescribes the meds for that just as Taub leaves Wilson’s office.

Taub tells House that he told Wilson he was to get info. He printed out Wilson’s emails and his deleted emails. He handed the stack to House.

House discovers there are messages to a doctor of oncology, Dr. Gonzales, at New York Mercy hospital and sits down to the computer to investigate further. Taub tells him that there had been a patient’s file attached and that it was password protected. House suspects that the patient files are for Wilson himself, but doesn’t understand why he would go all the way to Manhattan to get a consult. When he checks the articles she had published, he sees one about suicidal cancer patients. Taub asks if Wilson is depressed and House says no.

Foreman & Taub tell the patient that they managed to get rid of the infection that caused the problem but that the damage it had done can’t be fixed because it’s too close to the brain stem. He asks about getting another doctor to do the surgery. Foreman tells him that the slightest mistake would kill him. When they try to encourage him he tells them to get out of his room.

Wilson enters the hospital and checks for phone messages. House confronts him about whether he actually went for a walk or not. He confronts him about the doctor in New York.

Wilson: Taub, another graduate in the school of being a dick.
House: Private dick.
Wilson: I’d love to stay for the full Inquisition, but I need some hot coffee.

House follows him and asks why he left his coat upstairs when it’s cold outside. Wilson gets defensive and storms away.

House walks into his office to find the patient waiting for him.

Patient: Nick Greenwald. I hear you’re the guy in charge. I’m the patient with the disinhibition.
House: If you’re here to say thanks, you’re welcome. Go away.
Greenwald: I’m not thankful, I’m pissed.
House: Oh. All the more reason to go away.
Greenwald: They’re talking about sending me home. To what? To a life where I’ll continually drive away anyone who, for a second, might care about me?
House: Those are the breaks.
Greenwald: You could operate.
House: You could die.
Greenwald: So I’m either better or dead? I’m ok with that. I’ve always been kind of an impatient guy. But I kept my mouth shut. I made my wife happy. I made my little girl happy. I want that back. Otherwise, it’s no life.

House goes to talk to Chase and asks him to remove the problem. Chase tells him that he’s not a neurosurgeon. House insists that his boss is and he could assist. He goes on to tell Chase that his boss would do the surgery because he’s an egomaniac:

House: I know, ’cause I see him at the club.

House goads Chase to get him to do it. Chase wants to know why House cares since the surgery is so risky.

House: The patient has a quality of life issue.
Chase: He says awful things. Hardly a medical condition.
House: When he leaves here, he’s going to lose his family. He’s going to alienate the people he works with. And if he ever finds a friend who’s willing to put up with his crap, he’ll be lucky. Until he drives them away too.
Chase: I’ll see what I can do.

[House seemed very sincere and it was like he was talking about himself...]

As Chase and the surgical team get ready to operate, House watches from the surgical theater. Wilson walks in and sits next to him. Wilson’s wearing a heavy coat.

House: You’ve apparently got this whole coat thing backwards.
Wilson: I may have overreacted.
House: You definitely overreacted.
Wilson: I knew you’d meet me halfway. (shakes head)
House: Let me think. You only snap on one subject. Losing people. So I went back to the intel and it’s true. There’s only one doctor named Gonzales at New York Mercy, but there’s a Javier Gonzales who’s a nurse in the psych ward. Who could you lose that would end up there?
Wilson: The reason I don’t always open up to you is that it’s redundant.
House: Daniel Wilson. Once you’ve got a name, it’s amazing how much stuff you can learn on the phone. I mean, if you’re a doctor and you lie freely. They found your brother sleeping in the lobby of an office building in Manhattan. He got aggressive when they asked him to leave and the cops took him to the Mercy psych ward.
Wilson: There have been new anti-psychotics developed since he ran away. He’s been on them for a couple of days. By tonight, he should be in shape to talk to me.
House: But you’re not sure if he wants to.
Wilson: I’ll be in New York in a few hours and I guess I’ll find out.
House: Why wouldn’t you tell me this?
Wilson: House, you and I…we don’t have the normal social contract. I don’t expect you to tell me the lies.
House: I am fully capable of lying to you. I’ve lied plenty of times.
Wilson: I mean, collaborative lies. Giving someone a hand who maybe needs to deceive themselves. Just a little. For two days I’ve been thinking about how Danny’s going to react when he sees me. If I said that to anyone else, they’d say, “Don’t worry. It’ll be alright.” But you wouldn’t.
House: this might all go horribly wrong.
Wilson: (laughs) Yeah. Yeah, it might.
House: …in which case, you might want some company.

In the recovery room, Foreman and Taub remove the patient’s breathing tube. The wife is there (??) when the patient tells them his name.

Foreman (Omar Epps, L) and Kutner (Kal Penn, C) treat a patient (guest star Jay Karnes, R) who can’t stop himself from saying everything he’s thinking – no matter who it hurts.
[Photo: ©2009 Fox Broadcasting Co. Cr: Adam Taylor/FOX]

Greenwald: Nick Greenwald. Former S.O.B. Thank you.

But then, sadly, he continues to insult the wife and she begins to cry. Then he starts to crash and Foreman calls for the paddles.

Foreman: Clear!

In the office, Foreman tells the team that his hypothalamus is fine but his temperature keeps dropping and he’s headed for hypothermia. Taub tries to call House, but gets voice mail.

Foreman decides to run a full-body scan even though they all know that House hates them.

In a waiting room, Wilson waits very nervously while House brings him a cup of coffee and sits down. Wilson tells how he saw his brother 13 years before, after he was already homeless. Just then, House’s phone starts to ring and he told Wilson that the team already texted him that they’re doing something stupid. Wilson chuckles.

House: The spell correct in Kutner’s phone has got a hair trigger. Either that, or that or the patient has a cyclone in the floral of his lungs. [LOL!] (to Wilson) You took a walk in 45 degree weather, but you left your coat behind.
Wilson: go ahead.
House: I think you were punishing yourself. I think you wanted to know what it would feel like to be homeless in a New Jersey winter. That tells me…guilt. It tells me, something happened.
Wilson: The schizophrenia started when he was a teenager. When he was in college, he was on meds, but he’d still think a professor was out to get him because he got a B. Or he’d have a fight with his roommates, because he never showered.
House: Where were you?
Wilson: Med school. He called me very day and talked for hours. I didn’t have hours.
House: Interesting. (looks at Wilson, thinks, shakes head) Later for that. Go on.
Wilson: I was tired of being the guy that everybody counted on. So one night, Danny called, crying, upset about something. I had to study for an exam so I hung up. I took my things and went to the library so I wouldn’t hear the phone ring.
House: I wonder how that turned out.
Wilson: My mother called me the next day. Danny had run away and left his meds behind. Which I knew meant that he’d never be able to choose to come back, because he’d be so detached from reality.
House: So you made your one effort to live a normal, selfish life and the universe immediately smacked you down. I guess we’re wired to find meaning in semi-random events. You decided to never be that careless again.
Wilson: You don’t think that’s a little facile?
House: Actually, I don’t. I think you did it consciously. You developed your people-pleasing talents the way an Olympic athlete develops his muscles. Talk about an overreaction to a single event.
Wilson: It was a pretty big event. Hanging up the phone? That’s what you’re blaming all this on. That’s the behavior you’ve been trying to correct. As if nothing else went wrong in your brother’s life. Of course, he overreacted too, but… (thinking) …his glucose was normal…
Wilson: We’re not talking about my brother any more, are we?
(House calls the team to explain what to do next for the patient)
Wilson: Since this is a significant moment in my life and all…
House: …Yeah.
Wilson: …I think I’ll just go in then.

House explained to the team why a simple fibroma could cause the patient’s problems and that if they take it out, he can be a happy hypocrite again in no time. He turns to see Wilson isn’t there.

Back at Princeton-Plainsboro, the patient was packing to leave the hospital when the wife walked in to tell him she had been offered a more important job. He reacted appropriately happy for her. She seemed a bit distrusting of his response, but doesn’t say anything. She wheels him out of the room.

House and Wilson walked into the lobby and House asked if he was ok. Wilson told him that he was going to see Danny the next week and he wanted House to meet him.

House: Sure. Sounds interesting.
Wilson looked as if he had more to say.
House: go on.
Wilson: I thought seeing him again would change everything. It would be wonderful or terrible. Instead, we’re just strangers. It’s kind of anticlimactic.
House: Which is better than terrible.
Wilson: Go on.
House: Does it bother you that we have no social contract?
Wilson: (laughs) My whole life is one big compromise. I tiptoe around everyone like they’re made of china. I spend all my time analyzing, “What will be the effect if I say this?” Then there’s you. You’re a reality junkie. If I offered you a comforting lie, you’d smack me over the head with it. Let’s not change that.
House: Ok.
Wilson: No, see, if you were implementing a social contract, you’d say that, but only because it makes me feel better.
House: It is kind of fun, watching you torture yourself.
Wilson: Do you think things will work out with my brother?
House: No. but when it does go wrong, it won’t be your fault.
Wilson: Thanks, House.
House: You do actually like monster trucks?
Wilson: Absolutely.

Wilson (Robert Sean Leonard, R) keeps a secret from House (Hugh Laurie, L) in the HOUSE episode “The Social Contract” airing Monday, March 9 (8:00-9:00 PM ET/PT) on FOX.
[Photo: ©2009 Fox Broadcasting Co. Cr: Adam Taylor/FOX]

Wow! What a great episode!! I think House was truly affected by the problem the patient had. It really caused him to do some self-evaluation and that’s why he was able to be there for Wilson when he needed him. And I love it that they talked about the nature of their friendship and it’s more clear now why they are so good as friends. And what about that crazy way to compliment Cuddy? Great episode!!

What do you think of the episode? How do you think this will change House & Wilson’s relationship? Or will it? I’d love to hear your comments!