My initial reaction to this episode was that there was something left to be desired. But and it's quite a big but,....there are some very interesting aspects that caught my eye throughout the episode. First of all, the title. Why the plural? The POTW is the main plot runaway, in the more literal sense. In subsequent sub plots there is Foreman, who runs away from his affair, Taub, who initially runs away from bonding with his daughters, and House, who goes as far from the hospital as he can, because he can (ankle monitor free).
The POTW is a young homeless runaway who comes into the clinic in order to con an unsuspecting doctor for drugs. Unfortunately, or fortunately as the case may be, she gets House. She starts bleeding from her ear and House admits her into hospital. Adams wants to call social services but House understands the girl's reluctance to contact her abusive mother and go into the system, and so he stands up for her. Her mother, or biological mother as House calls her, is a drug addict who emotionally abused her daughter as a child by taking drugs in front of her and making her the caretaker of the family. House needs the mother's permission to operate on the patient and bluntly tells her that she is nothing but the egg donor, and that the daughter is much better off without her. House even tests her by leaving his bottle of Vicodin next to her, but she resists temptation to try and become a better mother. There appears to be resonances of a personal anger here, relating to House's tenuous relationship with his father, who he admits (in One Day, One Room) abused him. Reversely, in House's case, John is not his biological father but served the purposes of one, and House wishes he had not. House likely sees himself in the girl, she has the opportunity to live free from the abusive parental treatment that he lived through. However, poignantly, without the mother's presence, the eventual diagnosis of intestinal worms would not have been possible.
House follows Foreman around, making use of his new found freedom for the usual purposes of blackmail and extortion. He threatens Foreman with photos he took of him with a married woman he is having an affair with. This leads the wife to tell her husband the truth. She believes it will make Foreman feel less guilty but it leads Foreman to push her away. Without the exhiliration of doing something secretive and adventurous that he shouldn't, Foreman loses interest. House jokes that the only thing missing from a snapshot of Foreman's life is a cane. The more Foreman runs away from becoming House, the more he becomes him.
Taub is feeling a lack of connection with his daughters. This biological dad lightly parallels to the POTW's mother who neglected her daughter as a child. He tends to read magazines rather than try to have a relationship with them. Eventually Wilson advises him to find common ground and we see them beginning to bond, through baby style sport talk.
There were also some wonderfully Housian scenes in terms of humour. Chase talking to the babies about how men love commitment free sex in baby talk was fantastic. Also, House feeling the need to go clay pigeon shooting (mostly to con Adams) and bet on turtle races just because he can were true to his nature. The episode isn't one of my favourites, as I still feel there was something missing in terms of that underlying oomph we find in episodes that really make us connect. However the look into House's nature, his connection to the POTW and the possible glimpse into his past intrigued me.
PS. Odd clinic patients.
