Hugh Laurie stars as acerbic but brilliant New
Jersey medic Dr Gregory House in the fourth

series of the Emmy- and Golden Globe-winning
medical drama. In this episode, the team treats a
magician who suffered a heart attack during a
dangerous stunt. Meanwhile, House suspects
one of his team is hiding a compromising secret;
and the applicants are set a daunting challenge.
Kutner and Cole are attending a magic show
when the magician, Flynn, suffers a cardiac arrest
while trying to escape from a water tank. At the
hospital, Kutner tries to convince House that there
is something unusual about the case, but the
grumpy physician thinks it is simply a magic trick
gone wrong. House allows him to run tests on one
condition: if Flynn is not sick, Kutner will be fired.
Kutner’s tests draw a blank until he performs an
MRI scan on the patient’s lungs. As the scan gets underway, Flynn begins screaming with pain. He is rushed to surgery with internal bleeding and given a large transfusion. As the team speculates about this latest twist, House hits them with a question: “You guys ever wonder how he was going to get out of that water tank?”
House solves the puzzle when he marches into surgery, sticks his hand into Flynn’s belly and retrieves a metal key, which the magician had swallowed as part of the stunt. The key had been ripped through Flynn’s intestines by the magnetic field of the MRI scanner, causing the internal bleeding. It seems that the case is a simple matter of Flynn’s incompetence, and Kutner is fired. Flynn, however, insists that his cardiac arrest cannot be explained by his own mistakes during the stunt. “I don’t screw up,” he says. To prove his skill as a magician, he performs a card trick that leaves House stumped. Moments later, Flynn begins to bleed heavily through his nose, and House is forced to consider the possibility that Kutner was right all along. “A nose bleed that major means he’s actually sick,” he admits. Kutner is reinstated as Flynn’s condition worsens. House now believes the magician has a disorder called amyloidosis, but Kutner argues that his latest symptoms could be explained by a bad blood transfusion during his surgery. The doctors do not have time to test the blood for every possible contamination, so House proposes a simple – but potentially deadly – solution: he will receive a transfusion from the same supply. “Give me the blood,” he says, unrolling his sleeves. “I’ll be fine, we move on, treat for amyloidosis.” House takes the transfusion and soon shows worrying signs of fever. He refuses to accept the blood has made him sick, but his team has other ideas. They resort to House-like tactics by slipping him a drug to knock him out, and then running tests to establish the cause of his fever. But can they get to the bottom of the case in time? Also this week, House suspects the enigmatic Dr 13 – who still refuses to reveal her name – is hiding a medical condition. The wily medic uses a few tricks of his own to force her into revealing that her mother died of Huntington’s disease, an incurable illness that causes involuntary body movements. There is a 50 per cent chance that 13 has the disease, but she has never taken the test – believing it is better not to know. With 13’s health now showing signs of deterioration, she declares her intention to resign. “You don’t want a doctor on your team who is slowly losing control of her body,” she says.
Elsewhere, House stuns his applicants with a fiendish challenge. “I need you to bring me the thong of Lisa Cuddy,” he says. The winner of the challenge can nominate two colleagues for the sack. The competition results in a surprising winner when Cole appears in possession of the desired garment. But despite House’s entreaties, he refuses to reveal how he pulled it off. “If I tell you,” he says, “where’s the magic?”