Meaning

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Mrs. McNeil: "I’m taking care of him for the same reason you helped us."

House: "Some guy shot you and you hallucinated?"

―Meaning

Meaning is the premiere episode of the 3rd season of House which first aired on September 5, 2006. A pain free House returns to work and to rigorous exercise. Without argument, he accepts two seemingly routine cases. He quickly solves one, but his team and Cuddy worry that he’s obsessing so hard about finding a cure for the second that he might actually kill the patient.

Recap

An uncommunicative man who had been treated for brain cancer and is currently confined to an electric wheelchair suddenly drives the wheelchair into his family's pool in an apparent suicide attempt.

Meanwhile, thanks to the fact he was treated with ketamine during treatment for his gunshot injury, House's leg is pain free and he is running eight miles before coming into work each morning.

Cuddy and Wilson are discussing cases that they think will interest House. They are astounded that House has run to work. Although it's only been eight weeks since he was shot, House is raring to go. Cuddy tells him that she has a 26 year old woman who is paralyzed from the neck down despite no obvious injuries. He also agrees to take the case of the guy who drove into his pool even though there does not appear to be any real diagnostic problem. Wilson wants to know why House is taking the second case. House says it’s because he may be able to treat the patient for his pain, but Wilson doesn’t believe him.

House's team welcomes him back, and Cameron reveals the the shooter was never caught. They start a differential on the paralyzed woman. Suddenly, House sees his own blood on the carpet. He says he wants to keep the stain. He then starts on what to do about the wheelchair bound man, and suggests tendon surgery to deal with pain from his atrophied muscles.

They proceed with the surgery on the wheelchair patient. His family is denying he would try to commit suicide; His son thinks he was confused. House thinks it is promising the father attempted suicide because it shows his brain is still active. The wife thanks House, astounding Cameron, who has never seen a patient thank House before. When she demands he tell her why the wife thanked him, House avoids answering by quickly running away.

Chase tells House the patient flinched when they inserted a needle for the test, meaning the woman's muscle and nerve control are slowly getting better. House burns her to show she can move, and claims that she is faking. However, the patient denies that she's faking. House orders her to be discharged.

Wilson is also astounded that a patient thanked House, and that he was with the family during surgery. House admits he didn't have any emotional response to being thanked. Wilson tells him it will come back.

Cameron comes to say the woman patient is having trouble breathing. House threatens her with a needle but she continues to have trouble. He then notices something on her neck. He puts her on her back and draws blood from her pericardium, showing it's a genuine heart problem.

The team has to keep drawing blood from around her heart. House suggests exploratory surgery to look for a spinal tumor, even though they don't know exactly where on the spine to look.

House goes to see the wheelchair patient. Cameron sees House being kind to the patient and teases House about it. He astounds Cameron by asking her out for a drink. Cameron gets very uncomfortable until House tells her he did it to prove she was only interested in him while he was ill.

House goes to see Cuddy. She won't let him do the exploratory surgery because it's too dangerous. When House tries to bargain, Cuddy pulls rank.

However, when House does more tests and can’t find anything, Cuddy finally gives in and approves the surgery. Wilson starts dogging House about how he practices medicine. They go to the woman patient's surgery when House spots that one of her toenails is cracked and discoloured. He orders them to stop the surgery. House realized that she has scurvy from Vitamin C deficiency. She had a diet that didn't contain any.

House turns his attention to the wheelchair patient. He wants to discharge him. His wife is grateful that House treated his pain. House asks why she hasn't institutionalized him. She says she wants to take care of him. House thinks she does it because not taking care of him would make her miserable. As she goes to get him out of bed, House hears him make a noise. He asks the patient to do it again. He tells the wife that her husband was trying to talk.

House brings the wheelchair patient's medical records to the team. He tells the team the patient spoke, but they realize he grunted. He orders them to review the patient's medical history. Wilson accuses House of being bored while House attempts skateboard tricks. Wilson tells House to tell the wife the patient just grunted, but House refuses. Wilson leaves and, after he does, House grabs his right thigh in pain.

The team is dissecting the wheelchair patient's medical history and finds 214 symptoms, all of which go on the whiteboard. However, even Chase is able to eliminate all possible unusual diagnoses. Cameron thinks the symptoms are essentially random and don't show any underlying disease. House decides to perform an endoscopy to look for infection. Chase does the procedure, but the patient can't even respond to simple commands. The patient's throat collapses during the procedure, just as the team warned. They perform an emergency tracheotomy.

House can't understand why the patient gagged during the endoscopy while he was under anasthetic. House denies it was a spasm, and believes that his throat locked down. House wants to look into his brain for cancer, but the amount of dye necessary would be life threatening. House tells the wife that if it is cancer, it is a new cancer. When the wife asks if the husband could get better, Cameron shouts "No!". Although the wife realizes the test is risky, she admits her husband is all but dead and consents to the test.

The team starts the procedure and injects the contrast material. Unfortunately, the patient starts bleeding from his ear, again as the team predicted. Worse yet, the scans show nothing. House gets Foreman to review his previous radiology. Finally, the team has had enough and only Chase is willing to help with new tests.

Cuddy confronts House about his judgment. He points out that House never says he wants to help someone, he comes in with a prediction of catastrophe. She orders the patient discharged. Even Wilson refuses to help him. House then admits to Wilson his leg hurt, but has since gotten better. Wilson tells him it's nothing more than aches from the running and skateboard tricks. He refuses to prescribe him Vicodin. He accuses House of trying to get high either from drugs or solving problems.

House goes running and stops by a fountain to cool off. He then gets an idea and runs to Cuddy's house. He wakes her by knocking on her window and tells her that the patient dove into the pool because he was overheating. He thinks he has hypothalmic damage that has shut down his adrenal glands causing Addison's Disease. He asks her to inject the patient with cortisol. Cuddy blows him off - she says he is guessing, not acting on evidence. He reminds her there is no risk to the shot. She tells him he has to learn to hear the word no.

Wilson finds House despondent in his office, expecting him to try to inject the patient instead. House admits he had no reason to think he was right.

Cuddy meets the patient as he is leaving. She gives him a shot of cortisol. However, the patient doesn't respond right away. Cuddy is despondent, but all of a sudden the patient starts moving and releases the seat belt on his wheelchair. He then stands up, although with difficulty. His wife and son rush to him.

Wilson tells Cuddy she can't tell anyone. She admits she had no medical reason to inject the patient. Wilson reminds Cuddy that House was just lucky this time, and if he tells House, he won't back down. When Cuddy says she can't do it, Wilson reminds her everybody lies as the strains of You can't always get what you want start to play.

The episode ends with House entering Wilson's office, taking one of Wilson's prescription pads, and writing himself a prescription for Vicodin.

Zebra Factor 7/10

Both of the diagnoses in this episode are uncommon, but not terribly rare. Scurvy is almost unknown but does occur in people who exclude citrus from their diets. Addison’s Disease is also fairly rare, but it has numerous causes.

Major Events

House returns to work after being shot.
It is also revealed that it's been two months since House received ketamine which helped him regain the full use of his right leg once again.
House is shown running for the first time.
Cameron reveals that Jack Moriarty, the guy who shot House, was never caught.
House watches a patient's surgery and also talks to the patient's family as well.
House begins experiencing pain in his leg again and soon confides in Wilson about it. When House asks for a prescription of Vicodin, Wilson refuses to give him any.
House tells Cuddy that he hasn't taken any drugs for three months.
Cuddy successfully cures the paralyzed patient, but Wilson forbids her from telling House.
House breaks into Wilson's office and writes a script for himself, knowingly forging Wilson's signature in the process.

Trivia & Cultural References

Stephen Hawking is a brilliant theoretical physicist who has been confined to a wheelchair for forty years due to ALS
The Butterfly is a swimming stroke where both arms are brought forward simultaneously. Until the development of the Australian Crawl, it was the fastest swimming stroke.
Most of the exterior scenes were shot on the campus of UCLA. House runs up the Janss steps from the Wilson Quad. The scene where the team is sitting outside was shot at the Dickson Terrace between Royce Hall and the Powell Library.
When Wilson and House discuss the levels of happiness, they are drawing from The Four Levels of Happiness developed in Greek philosophy and later worked into early Christian teachings.
Cuddy seemingly pulls the number "24 times a year" out of thin air. In fact, it was the exact number of episodes in Season 2 and Season 3
The fountain House douses himself in is just a prop.

Goofs

Although it is perfectly plausible that House could give up his cane after the pain in his leg disappears, it is unlikely that he could walk without a limp given the continuing absence of his thigh muscle.
When the team write up Richard's numerous symptoms on the whiteboard, they misspell diarrhea as "diarea" in one place even though it is spelled correctly in at least three other places on the whiteboard.
House screws up the prescription he is forging. He writes a prescription for Vicodin extra strength, which contains 7.5mg of hydrocodone and 750mg of acetaminophen, but the dose is written at 5-500 (5mg of hydrocodone and 500mg of acetaminophen), the strength of regular Vicodin.

Music

House jogs to "Feel Good Inc." by The Gorillaz
You can't always get what you want plays over the final scene
"Desire" by Ryan Adams
"So What" by Miles Davis

Reviews

Reviews of the episode were generally positive. Blogcritcs was particularly impressed by the use of imagery in the episode to communicate House's mood and his fear of the return of the pain.

IMDB users rate the episode 8.9, with 44.9% rating it a 10.
TV.com users rate the episode an 8.8

Cast

International Air Dates

United States - September 5, 2006 on Fox
Canada - September 5, 2006 on Global
United Kingdom - March 22, 2007
Netherlands - June 21, 2007 on SBS 6
Germany - September 4, 2007
Czech Republic - November 12, 2007 on TV Nova
Hungary - November 21, 2007
Belgium - December 6, 2007 on KanaalTwee
Estonia - January 4, 2008 on TV3
Sweden - February 5, 2008 on TV4
Japan (limited release) - May 18, 2008
Japan (full release) - May 27, 2008
Norway - July 17, 2008 on NRK1
Finland - August 7, 2008 on MTV3

Links

Previous episode:
No Reason

Meaning

Next episode:
Cane & Able