house: meaning (1/24) 21.00–22.00

Hugh Laurie returns as the curmudgeonly medic in the third season of the acclaimed hospital drama. In this opening episode, House is back at work after recovering from multiple gunshot wounds and takes on two cases simultaneously – all the while baffling his colleagues by displaying a distinct change in his attitude towards the patients.

It looks like House’s days of limping around the Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital may be over, as today he has decided to run the eight miles to work. It’s his first day back, and Cuddy and Wilson anticipate that he’ll want to return to some intriguing cases. They find him two: Richard, a man who was paralysed after brain cancer surgery eight years ago and has just driven his wheelchair into a swimming pool; and Caren, a young woman who was paralysed after a yoga session but has no spinal damage. Never one to refuse a challenge, House decides to take both cases.

House’s staff can’t believe how fit and healthy he looks, and are surprised when he launches straight into a discussion of the two cases. And as House begins to diagnose and treat the patients, the team notices a distinct change in his attitude. Richard’s wife Arlene (guest star Kathleen Quinlan, ‘Apollo 13’) is touched when House suggests tendon surgery to make her husband more comfortable, and thanks him for his sensitivity to Richard’s situation. An astonished Cameron catches this exchange when she comes to tell House that there’s been a change in Caren’s condition, and teases House about the fact that he might just care about his patient. But when Wilson brings up the same subject, House confesses that he doesn’t know what he’s supposed to feel.

When it transpires that Caren can actually move, House orders her to be sent home. So when he sees that the patient appears to be suffering from sudden tightness of the chest, House thinks Caren is bluffing again. She’s not – she has a congested heart. Cuddy is unimpressed when House orders exploratory surgery to discover the link between this and the strange paralysis, telling him: “You’ve been back at work for 24 hours and you’re already playing hide-and-seek in a woman’s spine!” However, as the procedure is about to begin, House notices that the patient has discoloured toenails and cancels the surgery – Caren is suffering from scurvy.

Caren has been successfully diagnosed and should soon be able to return home, and Richard is also about to be released. But when he hears Richard apparently attempt to speak, House orders the team to dig through eight years of medical records and come up with a new differential diagnosis. Wilson thinks that he is only doing this to make an apparently normal case more interesting for himself, and accuses House of giving Richard’s family false hope. Regardless, House believes that there is a chance that Richard might walk again, and is led to explore various ultimately fruitless avenues and surgeries in an attempt to find out if this is the case.

While out on a run, House is suddenly hit by inspiration: what if Richard has Addison’s disease and, suffering from hyperthalmic disregulation, drove himself into the pool to cool himself down? He puts this theory to Cuddy, suggesting that it could be treated with a cortisol injection, but she refuses, saying that he is just guessing without grounds for doing so. However, if House is right, Richard’s life could be changed forever – but will Cuddy allow herself to find out?