House drops us right in the middle of a several story lines bent on collision this week. Cuddy has anointed Cameron as her replacement House-sitter while she stays home with her new baby, Thirteen and Foreman’s budding romance is strained while Foreman wrestles with his medical ethics and most pressingly, a young special education teacher spitting up blood from every direction. Truth is, the legs of this episode lie entirely in two ideas and as usual, the patient is just a prop. The first, Cuddy isn’t adapting to her new role as adopted mother; and second, that Cameron as Cuddy’s surrogate just isn’t up to the mental gymnastics that House puts her through.

Cameron, flushed with new power, throws House a curveball by playing his mind games to a stalemate. Answering “yes” when he predicts “no” and “left” when he imagines “right , she keeps House off guard for a while. He orders tests the patient doesn’t need, not performing them when Cameron approves them and generally makes an ass of himself. The patient’s mysterious sickness only grows as the various insane tests (performed and not) turn up very little. It all comes to a head in the climax where, given the approval to cut the top of the patient’s skull off, House is finally stopped by a screaming Cuddy over the phone. House’s epiphany finally comes, realizing that the patient’s problem is actually in her heart. Its pretty vague how cracking opening up a patient’s noggin’ would help this diagnosis, but then again, this show is a quarter step away from Sci-Fi anyway.

Speaking of Cuddy, now at home with her newly adopted daughter she isn’t bonding with the baby. She wonders if she is up to motherhood at all, even considering returning the child. Again, I am annoyed by the woman as helpless in the face of the motherhood/ career conflict. Cuddy as a medical professional would know that emotional bonds take time, even with a child that isn’t adopted. There seems no way that she’d be in the throws of this kind of depression so soon. The bond does arrive though as the special ed teacher with the missing skull soothes Cuddy and her child over the phone during the previously mentioned brain test. Consequently, Cameron quits he job as House-sitter and Cuddy is forced to return to work, but with her new motherly bond cemented.

In the closing moments of the show, we see a conflicted Foreman changing the labels on new girlfriend Thirteen’s medication. All episode he has talked with friends and colleagues about Thirteen’s placement in the placebo group of his drug trial. To a person, they all agree that his tampering with the trial will put his career at risk. He seems resigned to remain uninvolved, until he speaks with House. House suggests that “people in love to stupid things” and Foreman takes it to heart. Next week’s episode looks like an exciting (if predictable) barn burner.