TV-Reviewed

Things looked bad for Foreman in last week’s episode. He didn’t like the way things went when he lost a patient and thought he was turning into House. In this week’s episode, “Resignation,” Foreman signs the paperwork to officially resign. Despite his official resignation, Foreman helps House, Chase, and Cameron on their case.

It involves a young female boxer who suddenly drops to the ground and excessive amounts of blood come rushing out of her body. The doctors do the normal tests to rule out possible explanations, but they couldn’t figure out what was killing the woman.

While House visits Wilson in his office, House is surprised to see Wilson is yawning. He immediately goes into doctor mode and tries to diagnose him, but Wilson explains that he was up late last night.

After learning of Foreman’s resignation, Chase asks Foreman about it, but Foreman’s not willing to discuss it. Things get a little weird when Chase decides to analyze Foreman’s reactions and determines Foreman is ashamed about something. In a separate scene, Foreman tells Cameron why he’s resigning and she assures him he’ll not turn into House… he’s just too good of a person to do that.

Over in the clinic, House meets with a male patient who has noticed his bowel movements have been floating. He and his girlfriend are vegans, as it turns out. House comes to the conclusion that he’s been cheating on her… with a burger. While the boyfriend confesses, House takes a liking to the man’s girlfriend, an attractive nutritionist.

In order to get Wilson to stop yawning, House decides to give Wilson some meds. Of course, House can’t go up to and hand them to him. Instead, House crushes up three amphetamine pills and puts them into Wilson’s coffee. What happens afterwards is pure comedy. Wilson’s acting very oddly. He’s incredibly jittery and hyper. When he’s called away for a breast exam, Wilson accidentally hits on the young woman he’s hitting on and is embarrassed. When he checks his heartbeat (185 bpm), Wilson comes to one conclusion: House slipped him meds.

Wilson confronts House at his home and House confesses to slipping him the “speed.” Wilson then yawns, which confirms something House had suspected: the yawning is a side effect of something. You shouldn’t be yawning after taking speed, for pete’s sake. After some prodding, Wilson admits he’s taking antidepressants and the yawning is a side effect.

Back to the sick young woman, Addie, we learn she’s getting worse. Her kidneys are shutting down and will likely be dead soon. House thinks she’s got a certain protein deficiency, but the test is a little difficult to watch: inserting a needle into the eyeball. Yikes!

Some time has passed and Addie goes into ventricular fibrillation, but Foreman is able to bring her back. House goes in and tells Addie and her parents that she’ll die soon and there’s nothing they can do. Strangely, Addie doesn’t want to know what’s killing her. This really sets House off; he just can’t believe it. In this time, he learns he’s been smiling while telling Addie she’s going to die. This doesn’t make sense, unless Wilson slipped him some antidepressants.

Once House leaves Addie’s room, he talks to Wilson and during this time, he comes to an entirely different diagnosis: she is depressed. House makes his way back to Addie’s room and talks to her alone (after asking the parents to leave). She tried to kill herself with drain cleaner, but instead of drinking it, she placed it in a gel cap and swallowed it. This way, it didn’t start to dissolve her GI tract until it hit her intestine. where it ate a hole. Scar tissue covered the hole, so the bleeding stopped, but the damage caused an vein and artery to grow together, and this mixing of venous and arterial blood is causing infections throughout her body. A surgery will be able to repair everything, but Addie will definitely need to seek therapy for the psychological problems.

By the end of the episode, we find House in a bar, chatting with the young female nutritionist. He’s blatantly honest with her about all of his character flaws, but she doesn’t seem to mind one bit.

It was quite an episode. The case wasn’t the center of the episode, in my opinion. Instead, there was much more to do with Foreman’s resignation and all the little stuff between House and Wilson. I didn’t mind it so much, as the House/Wilson comedy was great. Seeing Wilson hyper was hilarious. It must have been a blast on the set when Robert Sean Leonard (Dr. Wilson) had to be so… out of character.

I did have a few problems with the episode, however. Usually there is a search of a patient’s residence, but this wasn’t done in “Resignation.” Surely they would have found drain cleaner and empty gel caps somewhere!? Also, the floating bowel movement diagnosis is wrong. Only excessive amounts of gas can make them float. The amount of fat someone consumes doesn’t play a big role in this matter.

House - Resignation
Original Air Date: May 08, 2007

Rating: 8.7