Season Two Episodes: |
- House: They’re looking for something. If you’re happy you’ve got nothing to look for.
- Cameron: His wife arranged it for an anniversary present. If you ask me if two people really trust each other, a threesome once every seven years might actually help a marriage.
- House: Okay, I say we stop the DDX and discuss that comment.
- — Clueless
Clueless is a 2nd season episode of House which first aired on March 28, 2006. A man who started having dyspnea while role-playing with his wife is quickly diagnosed with Lupus by the team, but House thinks that the wife may be poisoning him. Meanwhile, House and Wilson discuss the terms of their new living arrangements.
Recap[]
While doing a rape roleplay with his wife, a man starts choking and turning blue from a swollen tongue.
Meanwhile, House is awoken by Wilson blow-drying his hair. House confronts Wilson and asks him to move out of 221B Baker Street. Wilson is upset by the request but tells House he should be out the next day.
After visiting several doctors who quickly rule out allergies or a panic attack, the patient is referred to Dr. House where Cameron does the intake examination. The couple admits they were engaged in sex play at the time of the attack.
Foreman thinks it might be neck trauma, but there is no sign of it. Cameron says the patient and his wife are very open about their lives, but House is doubtful and automatically assumes they are miserable - he bets $100, and Cameron takes the bet. They continue the differential. House tells them to make sure that the patients lungs are all right.
Cameron tests the patient's lungs and talks to the wife about their sex life. The wife puts down failed relationships to people who cover who they are during dating. The tests show interstitial pulmonary fibrosis, but the team can't find the cause. House adopts a waiting attitude and is right - the patient starts getting an unbearable itch.
House continues a new differential for the lung scarring and the rash while he heads into the men's room. Foreman and Chase follow. Foreman suggests Lupus, and Chase suggests a food allergy. Cameron is forced to join the others in the men's room because he needs an allergy consult. House believes heavy metal poisoning is the only thing that could cause both symptoms. However, the source of exposure is still a mystery. House orders a medical history, an environmental scan of the home, and blood tests for mercury, lead and arsenic.
House comes home to Wilson eating a meal. Wilson has found an apartment he can move into the following Monday. They discuss their respective eating habits. They start talking about exposure sources for lead, ruling out the possibility that the patient was poisoned by lead-glazed ceramics while on vacation.
Foreman and Cameron go to the patient's house and start testing and asking the wife questions. All Foreman can find is that there are ants in the house. House wants to know what type of ant they are and rules them out as a source. There is no other source of heavy metals, and all the tests are negative. House is still convinced that it is heavy metals and tells the team to start treating him for lead poisoning but also agrees to let the unit run tests for food allergies.
During the scratch test, the patient's feet start hurting severely during the allergy tests. Foreman suggests Lupus again, but House brushes it off because the symptom repoints to heavy metal poisoning. Soon after, the patient stops breathing again. They realize he can’t be intubated, and the team has to perform a tracheotomy.
The patient's urine tests show elevated proteins, which again suggests Lupus. Foreman insists on starting treatment for it and then testing to confirm Lupus because there is still no trace of heavy metals in the patient or his environment. House still thinks it is heavy metal poisoning because the symptoms match that too. The patient tries to console his wife.
Wilson confronts House about eating his lunch. While discussing the clinic patient, House starts to suspect the wife is poisoning the patient as he is getting worse. House thinks it is a rare heavy metal - one that they don't usually test for. The patient isn’t responding to Lupus treatment. House tells Cameron to search the wife, but Cameron refuses, and House goes to do it himself. The wife agrees to the search, except for her vagina.
House goes to Cuddy and argues with Cameron about whether the wife is guilty. Cuddy refuses permission to do a body search of the wife and tells House to stay away from her.
House talks to Wilson about his theory. Wilson talks to House about his wife, and how she fired the maid. Wilson offers to pay to let the maid clean House's place as he feels bad that his wife fired her. The patient has a cardiac arrest. They revive him, but they fear he has suffered a stroke, but he soon regains consciousness. Wilson doubts House's theory on the basis that the wife's concern looked real.
The team starts another differential diagnosis. House thinks it might be a viral infection. There is no fever because the patient's immune system is suppressed because of the steroids they used to treat the Lupus. He orders interferon. The wife resists, but given the patient's organ failures, they don't have any other possible treatment.
The patient admits that he cheated - he sat behind his wife in the 9th grade and copied her test. She admits she let him cheat.
The interferon doesn't help. Meanwhile, while House is with the clinic patient, the clinic patient's wife removes her gold ring. House tells Cameron to stop the interferon, test the patient for gold, and not to let the wife use the bathroom. He rushes home to get his boyhood chemistry set. The wife finally insists on going to the washroom, just as House returns. House finds her in the ladies' room. He tells the wife about how he hunted for treasure in Egypt as a boy but instead learned about how Ancient Egyptians learned that stannous chloride turns gold bright purple. He holds her hands, and she comments that his hands are wet; he has put a stannous chloride solution from his chemistry set on his hands. He looks at her fingertips, which have turned purple showing she has been using gold sodium thiomalate, an arthritis remedy available where she traveled in Mexico, to poison her husband. Chase comes in to say that the husband's blood test for gold was off the charts.
The wife is arrested. The patient is given chelation therapy. He still needs a lung transplant. Cameron thinks House is gloating about being right, but he denies it. He still takes Cameron's $100.
Foreman and Chase are given the task of telling the patient about how he got sick. In the last scene, House receives a message that the owner of the apartment that Wilson is going to buy needs a better offer, House then erases it, implying now he wants Wilson to stay.
Clinic Patient[]
A patient has trouble urinating. House diagnoses him with herpes. He tells House the only person he has had sex with is his wife, and House puts the patient and his wife on a prescription. House guesses the wife is cheating with the daughter's karate instructor and writes a prescription for him too.
The wife comes in and denies the affair or giving her husband herpes. House wonders if the husband was looking for an opportunity to blame the wife for giving him herpes after he caught it from another woman.
House meets the husband and wife, and as they blame each other, House suggests one of them might have gotten it from a toilet seat. The wife rejects the suggestion, but the husband agrees it might be a possibility. House believes the husband's belief is based on trying to get an out while the wife's refusal to accept it is based on her innocence.
Major Events[]
- House deletes a rental agent's message to Wilson.
- Cameron loses a $100 bet to House.
Title[]
The title refers to the three main plots, meaning:
- House's team was pretty much clueless the whole episode about the patient's increasing symptoms.
- The patient was clueless that his wife was pretty much killing him.
- Wilson was (during the episode's ending act) clueless that House deleted the realtor's message.
Trivia and Cultural References[]
- The programs on House’s TiVo are SpongeBob SquarePants, Monster Truck Jam, The New Yankee Workshop, Blackadder, a British comedy series that aired in the UK from 1983 to 1989 (Hugh Laurie (Greg House) made his debut appearance as a recurring guest star, first in the Blackadder II episode, "Beer" as Simon Partridge and the Blackadder II episode, "Chains" as Prince Ludwig the Indestructible. He later became a member of the main cast, playing the Prince Regent in "Blackadder the Third" and Lieutenant George in "Blackadder Goes Forth" and The O.C..
- Beyonce is Beyonce Knowles and the other references is to Halle Berry
- More about the Army Ant and the Australian Bull Ant
- Yet another reference to Clue.
- Although the patient's name is given as “Bob Palko” in the credits, the prescription on his interferon reads “Robert Prodeman.”
- The song playing in the last few minutes of the episode is "Love and Happiness" by Al Green.
- This episode's plot is a rare case in the series that a patient's symptoms or condition is the result of someone(his wife) intentionally trying to kill him instead of accidental or naturally occurring causes.
Zebra Factor 7/10[]
Heavy metal poisoning is pretty common, but gold poisoning is very rare. Even people who work around gold (such as miners and jewelers) are unlikely to contract it. The body has a fair tolerance for gold (small amounts of gold leaf are often added to expensive high-end desserts as a garnish). A lethal dose is around 50 to 500 mg/kg, meaning a person weighing 60 kg can be killed with 3000 mg of gold [1]
However, heavy metal poisoning from gold can and does occur. Many doctors in the US decline to prescribe it as a treatment unless it is the last line of options for a patient due to the potential health risks.
Cast[]
- Hugh Laurie as Gregory House
- Lisa Edelstein as Lisa Cuddy
- Omar Epps as Eric Foreman
- Robert Sean Leonard as James Wilson
- Jennifer Morrison as Allison Cameron
- Jesse Spencer as Robert Chase
- Samantha Mathis as Maria Palko
- Eddie Mills as Bob Palko
- Peter Birkenhead as Vincent Lambert
- Stephanie Erb as Charlotte Lambert
- Yareli Arizmendi as Lady
Video[]
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Clueless |
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