“Family” spoilers below:

Things that happened

A boy, Matty is donating his bone marrow to his brother, Nick, who has leukemia. Wilson is their doctor, which means he gets a surprising amount of screen time this episode. Matty needs to be perfectly healthy in order for Nick to be able to take his bone marrow, and just as Wilson is about to extract it, Matty coughs! Not good!

They don’t know what is wrong with Matty, and they can’t find Foreman. Foreman apparently took up Chase’s advice from last episode because he is in church. He’s still upset about killing someone last week. House is a little grumpy about this, but understands. That is, I think he understands until he tells Cuddy he’s giving Foreman slack for four days and if he doesn’t get back up to speed, he’s fired. Uh-oh!

Foreman and Chase go talk to Matty about his symptoms and things he could have come into contact with that would make him sick. The poor kid’s special place hurts and is really swollen. With these new symptoms, House gives his followers a list of tests to run, but Foreman is playing it very safe and wants to check and re-check.

Chase takes this moment to remind Cameron he likes her. This exasperates Cameron! Ha! Aw, Chase,go find a girl who actually likes you.

While doing so (Cameron flirting not finding someone new), Chase has an epiphany about Matty’s condition, leading him and Foreman to check out the kid’s house. They live in the suburbs, but have a water pump in their back yard that could have made him sick. A water pump! In a suburb! I think that’s a little weird!

This leads them to finding a giant growth in Matty’s heart and need to perform open heart surgery that will leave him crippled in order to harvest his marrow in time to save Nick. Nick ,by the way, looks freakishly sick. The parents consent to this crazy plan, but don’t tell Matty he’s going to end up just like House! However, during the surgery, they realize that the growth is fibrous and this expensive and risky surgery was unnecessary. Every time this happens, I can’t help but wonder how much those American insurance companies hate PPTH.

What’s most interesting about all this is that Wilson is all gung-ho for the risky and expensive procedures — because he believes they should protectt their family as a whole — as is House — who always goes for the risky expensive stuff. Foreman doesn’t agree, however, and this is getting on everyone’s nerves.

After a couple more misdiagnoses and making these parents make really difficult decisions, Matty gets really, really sick. Like, going to die soon sick. House thinks that the only way to save Matty would be to give Nick his infection, figure it out and save Matty, as opposed to testing it the old fashioned way, which could take months, and increasing the probability both these kids will die. Again, Wilson is on board and Foreman is not. Foreman is so much not on board that he goes behind House’s back to present to the parents a safer option that is less risky but has fewer benefits. As in both the kids could still die.

In retaliation, House goes behind the parents’ back and convinces the fourteen year old kid to die for his brother. Things are not looking good. At this point I was convinced that there ware going to be back-to-back death weeks on House. However, while Wilson and Foreman were talking, and just before House was about to kill Nick, Wilson tells Foreman that a water pump(!) in a suburb (!) is weird (!) and figures out Matty’s infection! They can save him! It had something to do with the water and chicken feces because their house was built on farmland. Ew.

Also, that dog House took last week? He’s turned into House — limp, Vicodin addiction and everything — but Wilson’s ex-wife wants him back.

However, Matty is still too sick to donate his marrow to Nick. Or is he? It’s risky, but Foreman can extract Matty’s marrow unsedated, marinate it in antibiotics and give it to Nick. He doesn’t get this idea in the office then get the parents’ consent though. He gets it while treating Matty with drugs and, in the spur of the moment, tortures the poor kid (bone marrow extracts HURT), but saves both kids! Yay, Foreman is back! Both kids live! PPTH is back to normal!

But it really isn’t. Foreman gives House his two weeks’ notice.

Things that were good

• There was a lot of overlap from the last episode, especially in regards to Foreman dealing with killing someone. This makes a lot of sense, because if a doctor got over his first major screw up in like a week, what kind of doctor would he be? Oh yeah, he’d be House.
• Chase is adorable, reminding Cameron like that, and also trying to be a good friend to Foreman even though they aren’t really friends normally. And besides, no one can wear a sweater-vest the way he can!
• They put that family through some agonizing and painful decisions. They made the right call in the end, but if their kids weren’t at PPTH, they’d both be dead.
• The last minute double play! (The baseball analogy is apt because both the kids loved baseball!) While death on this show sometimes is refreshing, death on this show regularly is painful!

Things that were not so good

• Has Cameron’s specialty ever been useful? Ever?
• Foreman better change his mind about quitting. Remember when Cameron quit? Even though I don’t like her, the episode without her in it was weird!
• There have been a lot of environmental cases this season. A freakish amount.
• The entire dog sub-plot was ridiculous and lame.
• Foreman going behind House and Wilson’s back was unprofessional and ridiculous. I understand he wants to stop killing people, but you don’t back stab your boss like that – especially over something as important as this and especially when Wilson agrees about the procedure—and not expect to be fired.

Worth watching if…..

…you watched last week and appreciate a solid episode from House. This is also a good episode if you want to see two parents emotionally suffer every ten minutes as they have to pick their favorite son because their favorite is the one that gets to live! It was an innovative medical mystery and interesting emotional exploration of Foreman (who is way too much like House already that I don’t think quitting is going to help him much).

In Five Words

Open Heart Surgery? Completely Useless!

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