Moving the Chains

"Moving the Chains" is the thirteenth episode of the sixth season of House. It aired on February 1, 2010.

Plot

The Case

The team takes on the case of 22-year-old Daryl, a large offensive guard who repeatedly banged his head against his helmet shortly after attacking a fellow player during a fit of rage, on a college football practice field. House presumes Daryl is taking drugs to enhance his performance on the field, believing it to be the underlying cause. Foreman dismisses this, thinking it could be a pituitary adenoma, which results in a raised GnRH. Daryl develops paroxysmal tachycardia, proving that he was not lying about not taking steroids. House suspects hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and tells the team to stress the patient's heart until symptoms develop. In the process, House notices that the patient's hands are unusually white. With this new symptom, the team suspects lymphoma. Their diagnosis is confirmed when the patient starts itching, but is refuted later. As Daryl's blood is being drawn, Foreman realizes that it clotted immediately, leading the team to suspect cryoglobulinemia. Daryl wishes to play a game in front of NFL scouts and leaves the hospital, even though treatment is not finished. Foreman accompanies him, and when Daryl starts to experience blurred vision and eventually goes blind, he is readmitted. Foreman admits to having drugged Daryl with nitrates to get him back in the hospital. While House is looking over Daryl's chart, he realizes that he only lost one pound and concludes he has melanoma, which was hard to detect due to Daryl's dark skin.

Foreman's Brother

After everyone leaves House's office to do the tests for GnRH and the adenoma, he tells Foreman that his older brother, Marcus (Orlando Jones), needs to be picked up from prison. House tells Foreman to take the day off, but Foreman says he is busy with work. Later, Foreman discovers that House hired Marcus as a personal assistant, much to Foreman's dismay. In his typical fashion, House tries to "dig dirt" on Foreman by interrogating Marcus; House discovers that their mother died three months ago and Foreman refused to deliver the eulogy. Despite Marcus' pleas, House blurts out their mother's death in front of the entire team, which enrages both brothers (causing Marcus to quit the job) but coerces them into talking, thus bringing the brothers closer together. According to Wilson, that was House's plan all along and House is "secretly a nice guy." At the end of the episode, Foreman appears at the halfway house where Marcus is staying and offers him to come stay with the family; he also offers Marcus the job back, but Marcus argues that once House knows Foreman is OK with it, the job offer will no longer be valid.

House and Wilson

Wilson chastises House for using the bathtub in his bathroom in their new apartment. Later, when Wilson finds an opossum in his bathtub, he assumes House has played a prank on him. Later, House uses Wilson's bathtub again, and the handicap assistance bar that he had installed breaks off. When confronted, Wilson denies responsibility. When they conclude that someone else is tricking them, they lie in wait at night, and the fire sprinklers go off, flooding their apartment, causing damage to Wilson's flat screen TV, leaving them both bewildered as to who the culprit is. Later, Cuddy's boyfriend Lucas admits that it was him, angry that they outbid Cuddy and him on the apartment (in the episode "Wilson"). Cuddy tells Lucas that she figured out he was pulling pranks on House and Wilson, but tells him to let it go.

The Soldier

A man comes to House, pretending he has an eye problem. When House finds out that he was lying, the man tells him he is a soldier and that his contract should have expired at that time, so he and his wife planned on having a baby, and she became pregnant. Because the Army prolonged his contract, he wants House to play along so he can get discharged for his fake eye problem so that he can spend more time with his wife. House declines and tells him that real men would have "either moved to Canada or shot themselves in the foot". After a while, House finds the same man in the hospital, after he shot himself in the foot. House tells him one of his toes is going to get amputated, and the man gets excited, but then House reveals that the army has no trouble having nine-toed infantrymen if they can walk and run. House then leaves him for the second time. At the end of the episode, after a talk with Wilson, House sees the man in a wheelchair pushed by his pregnant wife; his foot has been amputated. The man stares back at House and then smiles.

External links

• "Moving the Chains" at the Internet Movie Database