“The Jerk: spoilers below:

Things that happened

In this episode, not one but TWO mysteries need to be solved! A medical mystery, involving a kid who is an even bigger jerk than House, and a REAL mystery, involving figuring out who screwed up Foreman’s job interview.

Some jerk-face kid, whose name is Nate, kicks the shit out of another kid after beating him at a chess tournament. House thinks the kid is suffering from cluster headaches, and these headaches are also what is making him a total jerk. When normal and abnormal treatments don’t work, House dupes Cuddy into allowing him to give the kid mushrooms. The kid (he’s so annoying, I’m refusing to call him by his name) uses this opportunity to hit on Cameron – I knowing flashing me always works – and they discover that he has undersized testes. Then he passes out and Chase discovers he is jaundice. Man, nothing is going right.

House decides the kid is allergic to nitrogen or something and to test this, they need to feed him hamburgers. When this doesn’t work, they need to starve him. This results in him going into a fit of rage and peeing blood all over the floor.

After Chase spazzes out on the kid and his mother admits she hates him, House goes with Foreman’a diagnosis, which involves a bone marrow transplant. However, after the nerve biopsy comes back clean, Chase and Cameron’s genetic tests are negative, House plays chess with the kid, and House has an insightful conversation with Chase, House realizes it’s just an insane iron build-up that can be treated with dialysis. Unfortunately, this means that the personality disorder is non-existent and the kid is just a jerk.

In the other mystery, Foreman had a job interview at another hospital. Well, he did, until someone at PPTH pretended to be him and cancelled it. Foreman thinks it is House, who is too immature to say straight up “Stay!” House blames Cuddy, who wants him to stay because it would be good for the hospital. Hmm…this gets fishier when Cuddy offers Foreman a position equal to House – his own practice and diagnostic team. Foreman turns this down because he hates House.

Cuddy blames Wilson, because she thinks Wilson thinks House needs Foreman. Wilson blames Cameron because she still loves House. Cameron blames Chase, because she thinks he is a jerk. Chase blames House, and guess what? He is right!

Also, during all this, Foreman flips back and forth between being useless and feeling guilty about it and doing his job. He also gets really mad at House for being a jerky baby. However, by the end of the episode, Chase still loves Cameron, the kid is still jerky, House is still jerky, Cameron is still useless and Foreman’s future is still up in the air.

Things that were good

• I liked Chase and Foreman and House being rude to the kid. I HATE that kid.
• So many sweater vests!!!
• Who knew House was that good at chess? Who knew I’d be this surprised by it?

Things that were not so good

• House is the worst boss ever. Yes, he is a great doctor and teacher, but he cannot handle the administrative stuff. If he just sucked at it, tht would be fine, but deliberately messing with someone’s future is stepping over so many lines.
• Cameron’s excuse for blaming Chase was petty and weak and made me like her even less.
• I know the kid had a really rare disease, but mushrooms and hamburgers? Where are real medical techniques? Surely we have progressed beyond “let’s give him this and see what happens!” high-school-cafeteria style.
• The kid’s was weak and lame. While I don’t blame her for hating THAT kid, she was a whiny, annoying and useless character.
• I HATE THAT KID.

Worth watching if…

….I didn’t really like this episode. I got nothing new from the main characters and the medical mystery bugged me. I know it’s a really rare disease, but I think it is one they done before, and, frankly, I just wanted that kid to die. That can’t be good.

In Five Words

Stupid Kid. Please Just Die!!

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