Cane and Able

Template:House (TV series) episode

Cane and Able is the second episode of the third season of House and the forty-eighth episode overall. The episode's title is a double pun referencing the biblical siblings Cain and Abel.

Plot

House's ego has taken a blow believing he failed to diagnose his last case, and it's affecting him physically. He is in pain again, although he denies it. House's new case is seven-year-old Clancy, a product of in vitro fertilization, who's been admitted to the hospital with rectal bleeding and proclamations of being tortured by aliens. As the team runs tests on him, they discover the same test is giving conflicting results. House thinks the kid is having nightmares with the one symptom of having a bleeding disorder. But the tests on the bleeding disorder are first negative and then positive and both Chase and Foreman think the other made a mistake. But the tests keep going back and forth. When Clancy claims to have a tracking device in the back of his neck and the team discovers an unknown metal object exactly in that spot, they aren't quite sure what to think. The metal in the back of his neck was likely the remnants of a surgical pin that had not been completely removed several years prior and had migrated via the circulatory system.

Amidst this, Cuddy and Wilson decide not to tell House the truth about his last case, thinking that perhaps he will learn some humility if he believes he's not always right. Cameron discovers the lie and is outraged, but Cuddy convinces her to hold off telling House. When House and the team discover cells with a different type of DNA in Clancy's body, they are forced to give Clancy's alien claims a little more credence, but a frustrated House gives up on his young patient, forcing Cuddy to re-think her desire to hold back the truth she's hiding. She finally tells House the truth about his last case, House is relieved that his idea was right and suddenly realizes what Clancy might have. House tells the parents that Clancy has chimerism, where there are two sets of DNA in one body - in effect Clancy's twin brother had merged with him in the womb. In order to remove the "dead" cells in his brain, they have to perform brain surgery by inducing electric shocks to the brain to find the part of the brain that was creating hallucinations. Once they find the hallucinations, House orders higher and higher voltage shocks to create a hallucination. He finally induces a hallucination in Clancy by scaring him.

Goofs

In this episode, House's team also created an antibody that bound only to the protein encoded by the patient's chimeric DNA in a span of a few hours or, at most, a few days. Antibody design and production takes weeks or months and often does not result in an antibody with such high specificity.

Notes

The song Gravity by John Mayer is played at the end of the episode.

When Cameron confronts Wilson and Cuddy about misleading House over the success of his previous case, she chides them to "come up with a cunning plan, and fast". This could be a possible reference to Blackadder ^{[citation needed]} - a show Laurie was previously in.

When House watches the heart echo on increasingly large screens, his line, "We're going to need a bigger boat" is a famous quote from Jaws.

When Cameron tried to make a metaphor, House said "I didn't know what she meant, but I can smell what The Rock is cookin'". This is a reference to former WWE superstar The Rock.

When the team discusses the exam mess up both Foreman and House make fun of Chase. After the team finishes discussing what to do next, Chase tries to get back at Foreman by making a "Yo mamma" joke.

When Wilson and House are discussing why the success with the Patient from the episode before Wilson says "we didn't want you to think you were God and fly to close to the sun" this is in reference to Icarus from Greek Mythology.

References

External links