“Insensitive” spoilers below:

Things that happened

So much happened!! A cornucopia of stuff. It’s Valentine’s Day at Princeton-Plainsboro. But love is certainly not in the air. It starts out with a girl and her mom arguing in the car in a snowstorm. They get hit by a truck and the mom is unconscious, but the girl manages to call 911. Because of the storm, the ER is short-staffed and Foreman ends up examining the girl, whose name is Hannah. House comes in, believing he and his followers are far too good for ER duty and in three seconds diagnoses Hannah with CIPA, the very rare disease in which those afflicted can feel no pain whatsoever. Hannah doesn’t care, she just wants to know about her mom, who is in the longest surgery ever. However, something else is wrong with Hannah too, not just CIPA, so House orders lots and lots of tests. They all come back negative and then he wants a spine biopsy. He’s a demanding guy, that House. The followers don’t like this but are far to lame to do anything about it.

House decides to harass Cuddy who has apparently taken up Match.com as a possible love connector. She is on a date with Luke from Studio 60! She grants him the biopsy, mostly because she really wants him to leave. Meanwhile, Chase is going all doctor on everyone’s ass and figures that because CIPA patients don’t not have pain, their pain is just reduced, increasing her pain will tell them where it hurts. Go Chase! They subject her to various torturing exercises, luckily none which include brain-frying, which, as we have learned from a previous episode, is a bad idea. during Foreman’s bone drilling test, she fakes pain and threatens to jump off the balcony. While Hannah is up there, her legs give out and she falls all the way down to the ground. She breaks things. Eventually, this all leads to Cameron suggesting thyroid storm and House ruining Cuddy’s date again. Here we find out the following: Cuddy is an endocrinologist and totally thinks House loooooooves her! Luke gets all sad, saying that Cuddy either loves her job or House and that’s the woman he wants to be with, but since he can’t, he’s leaving. Why can’t he say the same damn thing to Harriet? House gets pissy and goes to Wilson, who totally calls him on experimenting with Hannah in hopes to try to save his leg. Apparently he can cut her painlessness into a protein then into himself and he can skateboard freely once again. Or similar. Science is complicated.

Hannah keeps getting worse: she’s guilty, paranoid, feverish, occasionally convulses, all these awful things, and they still don’t know what’s up. Hannah’s mom finally gets out for surgery and when Cameron takers Hannah to go see her, she freaks out and ends up in serious pain. House visits Wilson again- they are so gossipy old ladies in this episode and I love it- and has an epiphany. He forces a screaming Hannah into surgery and pulls out a super gigantic tapeworm. Case solved, and they all can go home. Good work everyone. But wait! Foreman needs to break-up with Wendy because that’s the nicest thing anyone can do on Valentine’s Day and Cameron needs to proposition Chase because that’s the second nicest thing anyone can do on Valentine’s Day, and everyone goes home. Alone.

Things that were good

• The interactions between the main character were all so good in this episode. They are finally using Wilson perfectly! Him and House play off each other so well when Wilson isn’t being all high and mighty. Cuddy and House was really great too.
• Foreman’s and Cameron’s conversation in the lab.
• The ‘who has it worse’ fight between House and Hannah. So brilliantly deceptive, House. He should be a professional con artist.
• Cuddy is an endocrinologist! And it only took three seasons to find out!
• The look on Chase’s face at the very end of the episode. It was hopeful and impish and a little bad ass.
• The way the medical mystery was used in this episode! This is the way House episodes should be made- using the case as the axis around which all the characters move and collide….maybe an atom is a better analogy? Or a pinball machine? Hmm……

Things that were not so good

• Hannah was annoying. I guess I would be annoying too, if I had a gigantic tapeworm inside my stomach.
• Cameron’s refusal to admit why she really married that dying guy. C’mon you insecure, attention-loving, commitment-phobe. Be straight with your co-workers.
• The tapeworm was groooooosssss!!
• I’m a little scared the Cameron/Chase lovenest might be badly done. But I’ll keep my fingers crossed.
• This show is leaving me for three weeks!

Worth watching if….

Why wouldn’t you watch this episode? It was so well done! There was so much going on, I’m sure every time I blinked I missed something. It was a well written, well executed episode. These characters are so great, and when they are well used, I love them so much that I don’t even hate Cameron.

In Five Words

That’s a fucking huge tapeworm.