Directed by: Daniel Sackheim
Written by: Leonard Dick
The team, including Dr. Foreman, treat a teenage boy, Nate (Nick Lane), who is aggressive towards his classmates, his doctors and even his own parents. Dr. House prescribes magnetic stimulation to the boy's brain, and later mushrooms.
During the mushroom treatment, the boy becomes sexually aroused by Dr. Cameron and exposes himself to her, leading her to notice his abnormally small testicles. House orders a "hamburger test", in which the patient eats three hamburger beef patties. The patient refuses, until Dr. Chase threatens to have the nurses strap him down to force feed him.
A short time after that, the boy threatens to attack the hospital staff, but then he loses control of his bladder and urinates blood. House is now thoroughly stumped.
House gives the patient an adrenaline shot and plays Chess with him, using a chess timer. House seems to hold his own, taunting the patient as an awkward boy who can't get girls because he's creepy, not because he's "a tortured genius".
Soon the brat, defending from a check, explains how he can beat House in a few moves and urges House to concede. But before House can concede, the patient starts convulsing. House removes the table with the chess board as the nurses rush in. House orders a treatment, then turns his attention back to the chess board and determines that Nate would indeed have won as he predicted.
Still smarting from the kid beating him at chess, House says that at least one diagnosis has been ruled out. Foreman suggests it could be amyloidosis, except it doesn't fit one of the symptoms. So... House just erases that symptom, his horrible behavior, from the board.
Dr. Foreman had a job interview lined up at New York Mercy but suspects Dr. House called to cancel it on his behalf. House asserts it wasn't him; "I only sabotage people who are worth it." This leads House to accuse Cuddy, Cuddy to accuse Wilson, Wilson to accuse Cameron, Cameron to accuse Chase, and Chase to accuse House. It turns out that House really did cancel the interview and accused Cuddy to throw suspicion off himself and put everyone else at each other's throats.
Dr. Cuddy offers Dr. Foreman a higher salary and his own team.
At the clinic, Dr. House treats a man who fell asleep on his boat under the sun with about a dollar and a half's worth of coins on his chest.
This episode contains examples of the following tropes:
- Brand X: Dr. House buys a Chomp chocolate bar from a vending machine.
- "Eureka!" Moment: Confronting Dr. House about Dr. Foreman's sabotaged interview, Dr. Chase insistently taps one of the chess pieces on the board. This leads House to realize he ignored one important symptom: the weird way the patient holds chess pieces.
- Insufferable Genius: The patient, Nate, rivals Dr. House himself in this regard.
- Shout-Out: To Doogie Howser, M.D.: The bratty patient refers to Dr. Chase as "Doogie".
- Teens Are Monsters: Nate is a teen Jerkass who bullies his mother, insults everyone he meets just for the lulz, and is just a general all-around brat (after getting tired of all the tests, when asked for a urine sample, he pisses on the floor). His mother even uses the "he used to such a sweet kid 'til he became a teen" line. House only has his "Eureka!" Moment discovery of Nate's illness by realizing that Nate's utter jerkassery is not a symptom, he's just a teen a-hole. He also says that it's probably the mother's fault, which it usually is in more real cases of bullying or teenage rebellion.
