- Cuddy: How did you know I liked roses?
- Lucas: I was in your house last night. No! I'm kidding! Who the hell doesn't like roses?
- ―Adverse Events
Adverse Events is the third episode of the 5th season of House which first aired on September 30, 2008. House and his team treat an artist. He is soon found out to be engaged in a series of deceptions. However, is a clue to his conditions to be found in his paintings? House has Lucas dig up dirt on his team and these revelations combined with the patient's lying to his girlfriend force Taub to confront his deceptions to his own wife. Meanwhile, Lucas takes a shine to Cuddy and offers to reveal some embarrassing things about House, or is it just a play for House to get leverage over Cuddy?
Recap[]
An artist finishes a portrait, but the man who commissioned it gets angry that his wife hasn't been portrayed properly. The artist is confused, but the artist's girlfriend sees the portrait and realizes that all the features are distorted.
House is meeting with his private eye, Lucas Douglas. Cuddy walks in and tells House that he's realized that House is trying to pass off his private eye accounts as hospital expenses. However, she actually rejected one real expense. Lucas compliments Cuddy's shoes, but House knows he really likes her legs.
The team is staring at the artist's paintings. Only the most recent have a distorted perspective. A stroke or brain tumor have been ruled out. Thirteen thinks it might be drugs, but House knows that the ER would have tested for that. House tells the team that his private eye has been investigating them. However, the private eye couldn't dig up dirt on Taub, only on Taub's wife, but he won't tell Taub what it is.
They decide to perform a contrast MRI on the patient. He is drawing normally again and wants to leave the hospital. His girlfriend convinces him to take the test anyway. Taub and Kutner go to do an environmental scan of the studio. They discuss whether Taub should be interested in what House has on his wife. They report back to House that they couldn't find anything, but the MRI is clean too. They discuss a brain biopsy, but Thirteen doesn't think that the patient will consent to it. House is intrigued that the patient was concerned about the contrast, which is fairly safe. He wonders how pretty the patient's girlfriend is and when Thirteen confirms she is "hot", House starts to realize why the artist's work isn't very good.
House thinks it is drugs, but instead tells the patient that he might have a brain tumor and suggests exploratory surgery. The patient refuses surgery, but appears not to be scared. House thinks that the patient is hiding something - he's taking drugs that wouldn't show up on a tox screen. House surmises that the patient isn't selling his art anymore and had to hide the fact by earning money some other way. He figures the patient is a test subject for a pharmaceutical company. The patient admits he's taking three different experimental drugs. House thinks that since his symptoms haven't returned, he will be fine, but decides to keep him overnight. He agrees not to tell the artist's girlfriend about it.
Taub comes to see House about what he found out. House tells him that his wife has a separate bank account. She's making deposits but not withdrawals. However, Taub tells him he already knew about it, but House doesn't believe him.
All of a sudden, the patient has a seizure. House still thinks the experimental drugs are to blame. They start to discuss the drugs, which House decides to give them cute names like "Bisexidrene" (referring to Thirteen's sexuality), an anticoagulant, "Cuckoldisol" (to add to his theory that Taub's wife is cheating on him), a drug for autoimmune disorders and "Worldssorestkneesasil" (referring to Kutner's Guinness record). Foreman thinks it might be a drug interaction. House orders dialysis for a rapid detox.
The patient explains that he can't tell his girlfriend the truth and Taub realizes that the patient just wants his girlfriend to stay happy by telling her what she needs to hear. Thirteen realizes that Taub didn't know about the account. However, Taub still isn't worried. He realizes his wife isn't perfect and she makes him happy.
The dialysis seems to be working. Taub confronts House about screwing with his relationships. House tells Taub he's going to wind up forgiving his wife for opening the bank account and confessing his deceptions to her. House tells him he shouldn't do that even though that's what he is going to do.
Lucas and House are arguing over the radio about House's obsession with his team's lives. Lucas points out that if House screws up Taub's relationships, Taub will probably quit.
The patient takes a turn for the worse when his throat starts swelling. They have to do a tracheotomy to restore his breathing even though Foreman has trouble finding the trachea under all the swelling.
The patient's face is swelling, but steroids aren't working. The team wants to do a differential, but House wants to talk about what his private eye found out. He still thinks it is the experimental drugs. He thinks it might be drug withdrawal. He wants to put the patient back on the drugs, then wean him off slowly.
Cuddy is looking for Lucas. She finds him in her office. He tells her it wasn't House's idea - he wants to ask her out, but she tells him that his "researching" is creepy. He reels off some of the things that he found out - all of them trivial. He leaves anyway, after giving her flowers. On the way out, he offers to spy on House, for a fee. When he agrees to do it for whatever Cuddy can afford, she agrees.
Taub is having dinner with his wife. He admits he found out about the secret account, but lies that he found out himself. She tells him she was saving the money and bought him a car, which will be delivered in a few days.
The patient starts to improve, but all of a sudden grabs Thirteen and tries to sexually assault her. Thirteen fights him off with a swift punch to the nose.
The experimental drugs don't appear to be the cause of the patient's problem, but they may have set off an underlying illness. Taub is demanding an apology from House. House admits he was wrong to bring it up, but he notes that Taub still thinks he doesn't deserve the car. House orders a cranial MRA.
House gets home and finds Lucas in his closet. They discuss what Lucas should tell Cuddy about House. It's all a plan to get something to use against Cuddy. Lucas talks about his attraction to Cuddy, but he figures House's real motive is to get close to Cuddy as well. He challenges him to see who will get there first.
The patient has narrow blood vessels, but if it were congenital, he would have had symptoms for years. Taub thinks it might be an arrhythmia causing low blood pressure. Taub goes to do the test. The patient is apologetic about Thirteen, but Taub tells him not to tell his girlfriend about it. Taub confronts House about not letting him go home to see his wife, but House is afraid what he will do when he sees her. They find an arrhythmia, and the patient starts to defibrillate, but the patient is still conscious. They go to defibrillate and stabilize his heart. However, House notices the patient has red hair in addition to his normal dark blond. The patient denies that he dyes his hair.
House realizes that the disease is affecting the patient's melanin. The patient needs an operation to separate his heart from his brain, but may not survive it.
Lucas finds a picture of House as a lacrosse cheerleader back in Hopkins and brings it to Cuddy, and in the picture House is carrying a woman that looks very similar to the mysterious Woman in Black that House hallucinated back in season 4. The private eye admits the picture is a fake, and Cuddy admits she knew. The private eye wants to know why she even agreed to meet him for such a cheap ploy.
Thirteen and Taub go to tell the patient about the procedure, but he doesn't recognize them. The visual agnosia is intermittent. Taub thinks they missed a toxin. Taub thinks it may have been stored in his fat and it's being released as he loses weight. Toxic paint would show up in his old paintings, and Taub realizes that he must have stored them somewhere because he hasn't sold any. House gives him an hour to prove he's right. Taub goes to the patient, but his girlfriend won't leave. The patient admits he's only sold two paintings since he met her three years ago and has been living off drug trial money. The girlfriend is upset he didn't tell her, but forgives him. Taub still wants to see the paintings that he didn't sell.
Chase prepares the patient for surgery. Taub goes to the artist's warehouse to look through the paintings. He finds others that show visual agnosia. He makes a note of the dates. He calls House to tell him the symptoms happen every other month. It has to be the experimental drugs. House realizes where the drugs have been hiding in the body when he learns the patient was on an antacid before the current set of drugs. House calls Chase to change the surgery - the patient has a bezoar - a ball of undigested food in his stomach that has been storing the drugs and releasing them all at once.
Taub's wife shows him the new car. He seems disappointed, but he instead tells her that they need to talk.
House comes home to find Lucas playing the piano. Lucas tells House Cuddy didn't fall for it. However, Lucas has found out that the photo was real. They start playing together with House on the guitar.
Major Events[]
- Lucas meets Cuddy and develops a crush on her.
- House reveals that Thirteen paid 12% interest on her car loan and that Kutner crawled 20 miles to get into the Guinness Book of World Records.
- Cuddy reveals that she has one sister, later shown to be Julia Cuddy.
- Lucas finds out House really was a cheerleader in college.
Zebra Factor 5/10[]
Bezoars are very uncommon in humans. However, pharmacobezoars, where drugs stick together instead of dissolving in the stomach, are well documented, particularly for medication that have coatings that are designed to either protect the stomach or not dissolve in the stomach for delivery of the drug in the duodenum.
Goofs[]
- When Brandon is painting at the beginning of the episode, the paintbrush is visibly dry and leaves no mark on the painting when brushed over the canvas. Additionally, when Brandon is punched and crashes into his canvas, there are no paint stains left on his shirt from the collision, nor is the painting smudged in any way, despite the fact that the paint would still be wet at that point.
Trivia & Cultural References[]
- Another reference to Vincent Van Gogh and his mental illness. If it had been neurosyphilis, there was very little that could have been done at the time. There were treatments, but they were dangerous and expensive and didn't work if the disease had progressed to its late stages.
- The English Patient was the 1996 film that won the Academy Award for best picture.
- Amnesty International is a Nobel Peace Prize winning organization that works to free political prisoners through letter writing campaigns.
- The Parker Quartet is a Grammy Award winning chamber music quartet.
- Beach Volleyball is a variation of volleyball played by two players on each side of the net on sand rather than a hardwood floor.
- In the picture that Lucas showed to Cuddy, we see young House as a lacrosse cheerleader carrying a woman on his shoulders that looks very similar to the mysterious Woman in Black that House hallucinated back in Season 4.
- More about Pete Best.
- Hairballs are the most common type of bezoar found in domestic cats.
- "It's like the Mod Squad, no one can stop them"
- ―House, about experimental drugs.
- The Mod Squad is a television series from the late '60s about three youthful undercover police detectives. Omar Epps himself starred in the 1999 film of the same name, as Lincoln, the role first played by Clarence Williams III. Like Foreman, Lincoln was a former juvenile delinquent who turned his life around.
- Despite being in the opening credits, Robert Sean Leonard (James Wilson) does not appear in this episode.
- Rachel Taub buys her husband a 2009 Porsche 911 Turbo S Cabriolet.
| Previous episode: Not Cancer |
Adverse Events |
Next episode: Birthmarks |