Failure to Communicate (House episode)

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House episode
"Failure to Communicate"

Episode No	HOU-210
Airdate	January 10, 2006
Writer(s)	Doris Egan
Director(s)	Jace Alexander
Guest star(s)	Sela Ward as Stacy Warner, Michael O'Keefe as Fletch, Erica Gimpel as Elizabeth, Mimi Kennedy as Greta
House Season 2 September 2005 - May 2006
Acceptance Autopsy Humpty Dumpty TB or Not TB Daddy's Boy Spin Hunting The Mistake Deception Failure to Communicate Need to Know Distractions Skin Deep Sex Kills Clueless Safe All In Sleeping Dogs Lie House vs. God Euphoria, Part 1 Euphoria, Part 2 Forever Who's Your Daddy? No Reason
All House episodes

Failure to Communicate is the tenth episode of the second season of House and the thirty-second episode overall.

1 Plot Overview
- 1.1 Diagnosis
- 1.2 Clinic Patients
2 Arc Advancement
- 2.1 Characters
3 Trivia
- 3.1 Allusions and References

[edit] Plot Overview

A famed journalist collapses in his magazine's office. While he acts nonchalant after getting up, it soon becomes clear from his word salad inflected speech that he is suffering from aphasia. While Cuddy wants to kick the patient to another hospital, Foreman wheedles her into giving the case to him. The team consults with House via telephone while he's stranded by snow in Baltimore, with a suddenly interested Stacy.

[edit] Diagnosis

The final diagnosis was cerebral malaria.

[edit] Clinic Patients

[edit] Arc Advancement

Stacy admits problems with Mark to House when they are stuck in Baltimore. The two begin to have an affair in Stacy's hotel room before House's lackeys call for his help with the patient. House then spends the rest of the episode focusing on the illness in the patient, leaving Stacy back in the room.

[edit] Characters

[edit] Trivia

A scene late into the episode mirrors a scene in The Great Escape: House is sitting back against a wall, bouncing a baseball against a wall and then catching it. Steve McQueen did the same thing while he was being held prisoner in The Great Escape. This is also a habit of Toby Ziegler in the West Wing, who shares a number of traits with House.
Near the end of the episode, in explaining his understanding of what his patient with aphasia is actually saying, House gives a relatively common riddle about a room with an all southern view and a polar bear to his lackies. This is the exact same riddle given by Sherlock Holmes to Watson in Young Sherlock Holmes, and being another nod to the parallels between Holmes and House.