| "Lockdown" | |
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| House episode | |
| Episode no. | Season 6 Episode 17 |
| Directed by | Hugh Laurie |
| Teleplay by |
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| Story by |
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| Original air date | April 12, 2010 |
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| Season 6 episodes | |
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| List of House episodes | |
"Lockdown" is the seventeenth episode of the sixth season of the American medical drama House. It aired on April 12, 2010. This episode also marks the directorial debut of Hugh Laurie on the show.
This episode has five storylines: When the hospital is sent into lock-down mode due to a missing infant, all of the doctors must remain where they are, leaving Foreman and Taub in the file room, Wilson and Thirteen in the cafeteria playing truth or dare, House in a room with a patient (David Strathairn), and Chase with his soon-to-be ex-wife, Cameron, as Cuddy tries to help police locate the infant. This episode is one of the show's rare instances when no medical mystery is presented, though House still deals with his "patient of the week".
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A father visits his newborn daughter with his son. Meanwhile, Cameron comes to the hospital and confronts Chase with divorce papers at the hallway. Chase refuses to sign the papers until the two discuss their marriage. Cameron realises that she made a mistake by coming to Chase, but as she heads out the hospital goes under a lock down. The newborn has gone missing, and Cuddy has ordered security to keep everyone in their rooms until the baby is found. Trapped in the clinic room with Cameron, Chase accuses Cameron of abandoning their marriage without making any effort to reach out to him. Cameron reminds Chase that he had murdered Dibala.
Meanwhile, Taub is in the file room under the pretense of looking for a patient's records. Foreman comes down to the file room on the same errand, and the two are trapped in the file room by the lock-down. Employee records have been brought down to the file-room to be digitized, so Taub and Foreman take the opportunity to look through House's records, but only find prank records House has put there including a fake malpractice settlement for a "botched penisectomy" on a patient named Lisa Cuddy. Foreman pulls out a bottle of Vicodin he had confiscated from a patient earlier, and he and Taub enjoy painlessly assaulting each other whilst intoxicated.
House has been trapped in a room with a dying patient whose case he had refused previously. He learns the dying patient has only a few hours left to live, and the two connect. In an unusual moment, House actually shares some emotions with his patient. Meanwhile Chase and Cameron continue to argue. Chase asks Cameron if she has ever loved him and she tells him that she does not know. Chase treats this answer as no. Cameron bursts into tears, and says that while she did love Chase, the emotional and mental entrapment she had with her late first husband doomed her and Chase's marriage from the outset. After they mutually apologize to each other for their wrecked marriage, Chase pulls out his pen and signs the divorce papers.
As the vicodin effect begins to wear off on Taub and Foreman, Foreman reveals he knew about the employee records, and had come down to remove an offense before it becomes digitized. Taub reads Foreman's files and discovers a minor offense from during his college years. Foreman reads Taub's records that indicate a stellar early career, something Taub also wants to hide, as he does not feel his career has lived up to his early potential.
Meanwhile, Wilson and Thirteen have been trapped together in the cafeteria. Out of boredom, the two have decided to play truth or dare. Wilson accidentally admits that he's planning on dating someone and Thirteen probes into what else he's been doing without House's knowledge. Thirteen dares Wilson to steal a dollar from the cafeteria's cash register. Wilson succeeds in shooing the cashier away in an obnoxious manner, but then triggers the alarm bell on the register. Thirteen admits she has not been playing well either: she had earlier claimed her father was supportive of her bisexuality when in fact she had never come out to him at all. Wilson is amazed that Thirteen would limit herself just to cater to her father. Wilson tells Thirteen that he had met his first ex-wife and has been troubling himself over whether he should reunite with her. Thirteen suggests Wilson would have asked his ex-wife out again if he had not been catering to House.
After speaking with several nurses, Cuddy turns her suspicion on to the stepson. The boy denies having moved the baby anywhere but confesses to Cuddy that he did not like the baby girl. Cuddy inadvertently discovers there are more towels stacked in the shelf above the toilet than there are supposed to be and goes to see the nurse who was previously in that room, only to realize that she was actually having a series of seizures and had been acting on auto-pilot throughout the day. Suspecting that she might have mistaken the baby for dirty towels, Cuddy rushes into the laundry room where she finds the baby in a laundry cart.
In the clinic room, Cameron and Chase are no longer arguing. Chase and Cameron decide to recap some of the best times they had together before and during their marriage, dancing to "Alison" by Elvis Costello. The two share a "goodbye" kiss, and then exploit the privacy of the lock-down to sleep with each other again.
In the patient room, House's would-be patient refuses House's offer to be sedated with morphine for his last few hours. The patient is holding out to call his grown daughter, who he has not spoken with since she was six. After the patient purposely calls her answering machine just to hear his daughter's voice, House redials and tells him to 'say what he's gotta say.' The patient leaves the final message saying he loves his daughter, and indicates he'd like to take House up on his sedation offer. Security intrudes to tell House that the lock down has ended, but House continues to stay. Just before the patient loses consciousness, House tells him he is sorry he did not take his case.
In the final scenes, the baby is shown reunited with her family while Chase and Cameron are shown sleeping together in the clinic room. Foreman leaves the file-room, having decided not to do what he intended with his file. Taub stays behind and shreds the part of Foreman's file that Foreman had intended to destroy. Wilson tells Thirteen that he has made a dinner date with his ex-wife. At the very end, Taub is at the Hospital entrance/exit, and remarks "Interesting night" to Thirteen. Thirteen flashes her breasts at Taub as she walks by, fulfilling one of Wilson's dares. Taub reiterates "Interesting". The camera pans up to reveal a Latin inscription on the wall above the hospital door: Omnes te moriturum amant ("Everyone loves you when you are about to die").
Director of photography Gale Tattersall used Canon EOS 5D Mark II cameras to film the scene with newborn babies. The cameras are primarily designed for still-picture photographs, but are also capable of video recording. The production crew went on to use these cameras alone to film the entire season finale.[1]
The AV Club gave the episode a B- rating.[2]
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