Directed by: David Platt
Written by: Peter Blake
House treats a young married couple (Ricky Ullman and Jurnee Smollett) whose confusing symptoms may or may not be related. Meanwhile, a patient in the clinic objects to House's rude bedside manner and demands an apology. Original Air date: October 31, 2006.
This episode contains examples of the following tropes:
- Abusive Parents: Jeremy's father was physically abusive to Jeremy and Tracy. He broke his son's arm and threatened to kill both of them if he ever saw them together again.
- Actor Allusion: Jurnee Smollett plays a dying patient in Grey's Anatomy whose boyfriend is also named Jeremy and who is also dying.
- The Alcoholic: On top of being a racist pill popper, Jeremy's abusive father drank a lot.
- Armor-Piercing Response: Tracy delivers one to Foreman when he tries to justify that she and her husband Jeremy are not really half-siblings because they didn't grow up together.Tracy: We have the same father!
- Artistic License – Medicine:
- Hereditary Angioedema (HAE) is not actually a disease easily treatable by prescription pills, but instead by very expensive injections.
- Early in the episode, the team theorizes that a patient may have been infected with salmonella by smoking marijuana. Bacteria cannot be transmitted via smoke.
- Awful Truth: What House and his team discovers about Jeremy and Tracy. Jeremy and Tracy are revealed to be paternal half-brother and half-sister. They have the same father, Jeremy's allegedly racist father. Jeremy's father had an affair with Tracy's mom. This explains why Jeremy's father flipped out when Jeremy and Tracy started dating in their teens and tried everything to prevent the couple from being together. As for the angioedema, Jeremy's father was sick with the same disease too and had to take many medications for it, hence the pill-popping.
- Bigotry Exception: House says that Jeremy's father beating up his son for dating a black girl didn't mean he was racist. Maybe he just didn't like this one black girl.
- Big "NO!":
- Jeremy says this when learns that he and his wife are Half-brother and sister.
- Tracy screams this in her sleep when she hallucinates Jeremy's father breaking Jeremy's arm in front of her.
- Boyfriend-Blocking Dad: Girlfriend blocking dad in this case. Jeremy's father didn't approve of his girlfriend/wife Tracy and the man went to great lengths to try to keep them from being together.
- Black Gal on White Guy Drama: The young couple admit they get weird looks on the street from other people because they're an interracial couple.
- Brother–Sister Incest: Unintentional on their part. Husband and wife Jeremy and Tracy are revealed to be half-siblings and neither of them knew until their hospitalization. This causes the breakup of their marriage.
- Can't Spit It Out: Jeremy's father never once told Jeremy and Tracy about their heritage and instead chose to verbally threaten them and physically harm them instead. This only pushed the couple together.
- Dating What Daddy Hates: Jeremy's father beat up his son for dating a black girl. It turns out to be much more than just that.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Jeremy reveals to Foreman that his father broke his arm and threatened Tracy when they were teenagers. They ran away together and Jeremy's father committed suicide.
- Driven to Suicide: Jeremy reveals to Foreman that his father hanged himself a couple of years ago.
- "Eureka!" Moment: After learning that she and her husband are half-siblings, Tracy immediately realized that this made sense why Jeremy's father was against their relationship, and why her skin color was lighter than both of her parents, and why people saw similarities between them and their green eyes.
- Everything Is Racist: Jeremy is hostile to the doctors treating him and his wife because of this, considering the bigotry him and his wife have had to endure from both his abusive father and from random people in public. Foreman assures him that's not the case.
- Forbidden Love: Jeremy and Tracy consider themselves to be "star crossed lovers" as they're an interracial couple forbidden to be together.
- Foreshadowing:
- Both husband and wife suffering from the same illness.
- Jeremy's father trying to keep Jeremy and Tracy from being together.
- Jeremy's father taking many pills.
- Both husband and wife happen to have green eyes.
- Tracy reveals that her color of skin is lighter than both of her parents.
- Life Saving Misfortune: If it wasn't for the burglars threatening the restaurant that Jeremy and Tracy were in, Jeremy and Tracy wouldn't have gotten sick and discovered their heritage.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Jeremy is willing to die for his wife Tracy just so she'll get better, even requesting that the doctors to biopsy him without knowing what may go wrong if they do.
- High-School Sweethearts: Jeremy and Tracy fell in love when they were sixteen and got married not long afterwards.
- Incest Standards Are Relative: Foreman actually believes this. He ships Jeremy and Tracy belong together even after discovering they're being half-siblings. He then tells them that just because they weren't raised together as siblings, then there should be no reason why they shouldn't stay together as a couple. Tracy is appalled by this to say the least.
- Love-Obstructing Parents: Jeremy's father was furious when Jeremy and Tracy fell in love and tried to prevent them from being together.
- Married Too Young: The skeptical House believes Jeremy and Tracy are too young to actually be a couple and asks what kind of idiots would marry at a young age.House: Who the hell gets married at 20?Foreman: I'm guessing people in love?
- Mistaken for Racist: Jeremy's father is presumed to be racist because he tried to stop his son from falling in love with a black girl.
- Oh, Crap!:
- Everyone in the restaurant when the burglars take hostages.
- Jeremy, when he sees Tracy choking and struggling to breathe after the burglars attack.
- Tracy, when she sees Jeremy's father by her bedside threatening her and breaking Jeremy's arm. Even though it was all a hallucination.
- Jeremy and Tracy's reaction when they learn they're half-siblings.
- Parental Marriage Veto: Jeremy's father opposed Jeremy and Tracy from being together so the young couple decided to run away together.
- Poor Communication Kills: If Jeremy's father had just told Jeremy and Tracy the real reason why they shouldn't be together instead of not saying anything and resorting to threats and physical violence, the couple wouldn't be in the situation they're in.
- Pregnancy Scare: Tracy admits she knew about the condoms and that the condoms and contraceptive pills were her idea because she recently had a pregnancy scare and she and Jeremy are young to have kids yet.
- Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: The burglars threaten to rape Tracy unless her husband Jeremy did what the burglars told them to do.
- Red Herring: The second attempted burglar coughing repeatedly in the episode's opening. Despite his illness, he's not the one who ends up going to the hospital.
- The Reveal: Jeremy's father was not a racist, Jeremy and Tracy are paternal half-brother and half-sister, and Jeremy's father was actually trying to prevent his children from being together because of this.
- Right for the Wrong Reasons: Jeremy's father tried to split up Jeremy and Tracy when they started dating. Not because Jeremy is a white man and Tracy is an African-American woman but because they're half-siblings.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Tracy immediately requests to have her own hospital room away from Jeremy following the revelation of their being half-siblings.
- Selective Obliviousness: Jeremy refused to believe that he and his wife Tracy are half-siblings.
- Shout-Out: The episode title is a reference to the play Fool for Love by Sam Shepard. It is a potential spoiler for this episode if the viewer is familiar with the play.
- Single-Target Sexuality: Jeremy admits to the doctors that Tracy is the only girl he's had sex with.
- Spotting the Thread: House thinks through the couple's sudden shared illness, the father-in-law's racist opposition to the coupling, and the couple's matching green eyes, causing House to clue in on a proper diagnosis. Hereditary angioedema in both patients, suggesting they are related.
- Surprise Incest: Husband and wife Jeremy and Tracy are paternal half-brother and sister. Neither husband and wife had any knowledge of their being related. When Foreman reveals the news to the couple of their relation, they are shocked.
- Take Me Instead: Jeremy asks the doctors to biopsy him instead of Tracy so that she doesn't get sicker. He knows the risks and he still begs the doctors to do so.
- Teen Pregnancy: House assumes this, thinking a teen pregnancy would explain why the 20-year-old couple are married so young.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Jeremy's father being the main instigator of Jeremy and Tracy's union as he never told them the truth why they shouldn't be together and his opposition to the couple only made them get together even more.
- Wham Line: House about the young couple, "Half-brother and sister.".
- Westermarck Effect: Foreman references this in trying to justify his reasons why Jeremy and Tracy shouldn't split up despite being half-siblings. They didn't change each other's diapers or had fights in the back of car rides, they just happened to meet and fell in love as teenagers.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Tracy's angry reaction when Foreman suggests that she and her husband Jeremy should stay together as a married couple despite just learning that they are half-siblings.
