- House tries every delaying tactic available when Wilson forces him to attend his father's funeral. Meanwhile, the team tries to find the cause of a young woman's abdominal pain and hemorrhage that occurred in China.
- As the team is about to treat a woman they think suffers from SARS, House gets word that his father has passed away. House would rather stay and treat the patient than attend the funeral and eulogize his father, but Cuddy intervenes, and he finds himself going to the funeral with Wilson. Secrets from House's past are revealed.—Jesse Sanchez
- An Asian woman in her 20s approached an older Chinese couple in China (with a translator) to introduce herself as their daughter. They balked at the suggestion, claiming they had no daughter. She prayed to a Buddha statue for them to understand how much it meant to her that they acknowledge her as their daughter. As she tried to raise the statue a second time, she seized up, vomited what appeared to be blood and collapsed.
House (Hugh Laurie) came in with news his dad died, but wanted to focus on the patient. The team wanted him to call his mom, but he refused. House noticed Taub's baggy eyes and knew Taub (Peter Jacobson) told his wife he'd cheated on her. He said she didn't kick him out, but they stayed up all night talking -- which he said was what House should be doing with his mom. Foreman (Omar Epps) offered to do the ultrasound on the patient so House could deal with his father's death. House said he "didn't even like the man." He said he wasn't avoiding "something deep," he was avoiding "something shallow".
The patient's adoptive parents asked House if her drinking caused her illness. They'd found alcohol in her house and they thought she'd quit.
Cuddy (Lisa Edelstein) gave House her condolences for his father. She told House to go to Lexington to attend the funeral and deliver a eulogy.
They decided the patient had SARS and put her in isolation. They gave everyone IV shots if they'd come in contact with her. She asked if House would be alright because she'd coughed on him. In the meantime, in his office, House collapsed. Back in isolation, the woman went into shock and Kutner (Kal Penn) realized her liver was failing. She didn't have SARS. Cut to House, in a car, waking up in a daze and finding that Wilson (Robert Sean Leonard) was driving. Wilson said, "I am not doing this because I care." House smiled.
House realized Cuddy drugged him and that his mom called Wilson, not Cuddy. Wilson had taken House's Vicodin. He gave him one tablet. House's cell phone rang with Hanson's "Mmm Bop" as the tone. Wilson had his phone, but House said it was his team calling, so he should take the call. They had to figure out which genetic illness her parents handed down. House told Wilson his ring tone for him was "Dancing Queen" by ABBA.
House said he could talk about the summer his dad decided he wasn't speaking to him. "Two months, not one word. Anything he had to say, he typed up and slipped under my door," House said. Wilson told House to indulge his mom, who just wanted to think for one moment that she had a happy family. House demanded his cane and said he'd go to the funeral. Wilson gave it to him, House used it to knock Wilson's keys out of his hand and they fell into a grate. "I said I would go to the funeral," House said. "I didn't say when."
Kutner lost the patient and found her outside smoking. He connected with her by telling her he was adopted by a white family when he was 9. He drew blood, but she started bleeding intensely.
Wilson asked House to hold a flashlight while he fished for the keys with a wire hanger. House dropped the flashlight down the grate. Wilson, always prepared, had another one. Wilson told House he was just delaying and his mom would hold the funeral until they got there. House explained that his father was "a punctual man. Two minutes late for dinner, you didn't eat." He said his mother wouldn't disrespect him by starting his funeral late. "Yeah, you clearly have no issues to work through," Wilson said. Wilson got the keys.
Cameron (Jennifer Morrison) tried to send flowers to House's mom, pretending they were from him. Wilson tried to explain to House he was biologically programmed to have some feelings for his father. House told Wilson his father wasn't his biological father. He gave some reasons why, but Wilson didn't believe him. House saw a cop car ahead on the highway and used his cane to press down the car's accelerator and speed past the cop, who pulled Wilson over.
The team called House to tell him there was a mass on the patient's pancreas. Meanwhile, Wilson was getting arrested. House was next. The cop, Sheriff Costello (Lou Conley) explained there was a warrant for Wilson's arrest in Louisiana. Wilson looked unsurprised but annoyed.
The team tried to figure out what House meant when he started to explain the mass was like a steamroller. House and Wilson sat in the police station and Wilson told him, "You told me you'd taken care of this. First words you ever said to me." The charges were vandalism, destruction of property, assault. Wilson started to explain there was a medical convention in New Orleans. Wilson said aloud House was avoiding his father's funeral and the cop looked up. He wanted to hear the story.
Wilson explained he'd set off a bar fight by throwing a glass at an antique mirror after someone wouldn't stop playing Billy Joel's "Leave a Tender Moment Alone." House bailed him out even though he didn't know him, saying he was bored at the convention. Wilson realized the basis of their friendship was that House was bored one weekend. The cop said they could go because Louisiana didn't want to pay to get Wilson sent back. The cop told House to "stop acting like such an ingrate and go pay your respects to your father."
House and Wilson pulled up to the funeral home and his mother, Blythe (Diane Baker), said it was a load off her mind to see him there. She thanked Wilson for bringing him and told Wilson to stop looking so worried because she knew House would make her proud. "You must know him better than I do," Wilson said. House insisted he wasn't going to speak, but when his mother called him up, she went.
He went up and talked about how his father mistreated those over whom he had power. House said he was who he was because of his father. Then he went over to the open coffin, bent over and kissed his father on the forehead -- and clipped a piece of hair from his ear for his secret paternity test.
In another part of the funeral home, Wilson and House fought over what the real issues were. Wilson was frustrated that House made Amber's death and his father's death about himself. House told Wilson that he, Wilson, was afraid of losing their friendship, which was why he walked away. He taunted Wilson, repeating, "Admit it! Admit it!" Until Wilson finally picked up a bottle of booze and hurled it through a stained-glass window. "Still not boring," House said.
House explained to Wilson he'd noticed back in New Orleans he'd been carrying around an express package but didn't open it. He knew Wilson's first wife had served Wilson with divorce papers. Bailing him out was the first nice thing House had done for him. House called for an update on the patient and they told him the ultrasound images were grainy. He said they weren't grainy images, the visual effect was the result of iron overload. He told them to do an MRI for a better view "and call me and tell me you're embarrassed because my eyesight is better than yours 500 miles away."
House called the village where the woman had gone to find her parents and the man she used as a translator told him he didn't think they were really her parents. He said the potential father was adamant they didn't have a daughter and the woman looked genuinely frightened. House and Wilson deduced the man had tried to kill the patient when she was born, which was when China's one-child policy was still in effect. As they broke down clues together, House told Wilson, "This is fun."
House realized the woman's father had stuck pins in her brain, but they didn't kill her. When she tried to lift the Buddha statue, there was a magnet inside that shifted positions and shifted one of the pins in her brain, causing her seizure and vomiting. Her adoptive parents wanted her not to know because she was fragile. Kutner showed them an X-ray of her brain, showing that one of the pins in her brain was pressing on her "addiction center." He suggested that her alcoholism wasn't her fault.
Wilson found House "celebrating" his DNA didn't match his father's. But he was depressed because it didn't make any difference.
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