'House': A Most Excellent Adventure

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We also got quite a peek into House's complex father complex. He didn't want to go to his father's funeral because he hated his Marine Corps dad, who we learn is not House's pop at all. (It turns out that Mrs. House hooked up with some guy who looks like Sean Connery while her husband was in Okinawa.) When House reluctantly gave his crappy one-minute eulogy for the old man in the box whom he hated, House was describing himself, obviously:

"If the test of a man is how he treats those he has power over, it was a test my father failed. He was incapable of admitting any point of view but his own. He punished failure. He loved doing what he did. He saw his work as some kind of sacred calling. "

Okay, we got it. And House did too. He stopped during this revelation to fake cry by the casket so he could snatch a tissue sample from Mrs. House's dead husband with a fingernail clipper and test the DNA to confirm that this effed up man was not his father. And, even though this class-act duo was not a genetic match, House is his father's son (see crappy eulogy) and he eventually did falter at the realization that his father was really dead. (And didn't you just know, from the sheer flippancy of Wilson's earlier dismissal of the idea, that House would be right about his lineage?)

So one mystery was solved — and, though I was not on pins and needles (a pun!) wondering about the patient's medical mystery last night, I did note that there was no shortage of pins or needles in this episode.

Cuddy got evil pleasure out of dosing House with something stronger than Sleepytime tea so that he would pass out and Wilson could kidnap our antihero and take him to his father's final goodbye party. I love that she chose to jab a needle full of night-night medicine into House's gluteus maximus, after insisting that this "anti SARS drug" worked better if she shot it into his hindquarters. Ah, did you feel sexual undercurrent there? I expect a lot more from this kinky couple soon.

I was mesmerized by the aha! moment when House solved the mystery of the alcoholic patient who fell ill while searching for her birth parents in a Chinese temple run by scam-artist monks. (BTW: Did Scooby Doo write that opening sequence?) I'm not sure how House guessed that the patient was in danger of being killed during her imminent MRI because her father stuck 3 pins (!) into the fontanel of his baby girl's head when she was still an infant. The powerful magnet that is the imaging machine would have caused these metal interlopers to shoot out of her brain if the procedure was not stopped in time. Ow. Plus...ow! Now they've gone and touched off one of my biggest fears.

So, a little inadvertent House PSA for Goth kids: Always remember to remove your piercing before an MRI so your jewelry doesn't get sucked out of your body.

What did you guys think? Did House's statement about parents messing up their children put too big a bow on the episode's theme? And how much would you have given for a flashback to that medical convention where House and Wilson met?