No More Mr. Nice Guy

No More Mr. Nice Guy is the fourth season episode of House which first aired on April 28, 2008. House suspects an emergency room patient has a bigger problem than the E.R. initially diagnosed based on the fact that the patient is too nice. Skeptical House questions the patient's sunny disposition as the team tries to get to the bottom of his illness, but disagrees with House that niceness is a symptom. Meanwhile, House and Amber are at odds about how much time they each get to spend with Wilson, and Cuddy demands House give his team performance reviews.
==Recap==
After defusing a confrontation on a picket line, the husband of one of the picketers collapses.
The hospital is in chaos - it's the nurses on strike. House shows up in the emergency room to hide from Cuddy during the crisis. House notices the husband, sitting quietly and smiling next to two meal containers. House gets confused about why the patient isn't upset that he's been sitting there long enough to get two meals. House hits him with his cane and the husband brushes it off as an accident.
House gets interested and calls together his team. He's wondering why the patient is being so nice - he's been acting that way for 11 years. Kutner thinks he's just an outlier - an unusually nice person - the anti-House. The team thinks niceness is not a symptom, but House thinks otherwise and orders an environmental scan and tests.
House goes bowling and invites Chase to join him. Chase wonders if Wilson is busy that night, and House confirms he's with Amber. House is planning to break them up. However, Chase doesn't think House is up to the challenge.
House goes to Amber and Wilson and proposes joint custody. Wilson tells Amber that House is being reasonable, which is not like House. Amber and House start negotiating. Wilson stays uninvolved because he knows if he takes sides they won't be able to work it out.
Kutner and Foreman do the environmental scan. The patient turns out to be a very nice guy, helping out with charities. They find hydrofluoric acid, which explains all the symptoms except the niceness.
Cuddy is called in to negotiate a settlement between House and Amber. Cuddy starts giving House his performance review. Cuddy agrees to give House and Amber a ruling if he gives his own team a performance review. House agrees and Cuddy rules that House gets Wilson Wednesdays until 11 and alternate weekends.
Kutner and House start to talk about the case. The patient's calcium level is normal despite the hydrofluoric acid and House realizes this means the patient's level is actually too high and has been artificially lowered. House goes to the patient and starts insulting his wife, and the husband doesn't react. He thinks the patient has William's syndrome, a genetic disorder that makes patients lack suspicion. However, the team points out that the patient has none of the other symptoms, such as low IQ (he's a carpet cleaner) and elvin appearance (he's obese). It's clear to everyone when he starts singing (Williams patients have perfect pitch) that he doesn't have it, but the patient suddenly has a stroke.
House admits he was wrong and starts giving his team their performance reviews, but it's just a copy of Wilson's review. House thinks it might be syphilis, and Kutner agrees to test for it. Foreman notes that House is intimidating Kutner, and he also agrees to do the real performance reviews.
The patient doesn't think he has syphilis and he trusts his wife. He was also tested when he went into the Peace Corps ten years ago.
House is angry with Wilson and Amber for being late. They were late because they had sex.
Foreman meets with Thirteen. She tries to convince Foreman that it's a PFO, but Foreman gives her a performance review. When Kutner comes in, he tells Foreman that House was right - the patient tested positive for syphilis.
Taub talks to Thirteen about how married people feel when one of them has an STD. The patient figures that his previous syphilis test was wrong. The wife denies having an affair to Kutner. She tells Kutner why she's in love with her husband - his niceness made her a better person. Kutner tells her that if it is syphilis, the patient's personality will change as he gets better. She doesn't think her husband will change. Kutner tells the wife to get tested for syphilis.
Foreman tries to do Taub's review, but Taub "reviews" Foreman instead. Taub and Kutner tell Foreman that House only let him do it to screw with him. Kutner realizes that if the patient's personality can be affected by syphilis, House's personality might be being affected as well.
House and Wilson are enjoying a night out. Wilson doesn't want to get drunk so he won't be impotent. The team calls House that the patient is continuing to get worse despite the penicillin. House orders liver studies, even though it will keep the team at the hospital all night. House admits he's getting Wilson drunk so he will get into a fight with Amber. Wilson leaves so Amber doesn't get mad at him.
The team is doing tests, but Kutner announces he tested House's blood and found out he has syphilis as well.
The team finds House in his office watching Prescription Passion, and tell him the patient has tested positive for hepatitis. They then tell House he has syphilis. They give him a prescription and leave. They tell Cameron and Chase, who think that the syphilis may explain his personality. They wonder if the cure will change House's personality or brain. Chase wonders if Cameron slept with House.
Amber and House fight about House getting Wilson drunk. Amber threatens to get rid of House. She adds penalty clauses to the shared custody agreement. House sends Amber out to talk to Wilson alone. House is afraid Wilson will tell Amber what he wants to tell him, and walks out without telling him.
Foreman gives House a performance review. He asks for authority over the team. House tells Foreman he has to humiliate him in order to get the rest of the team to fear him. Taub tells House the test for sarcoidosis was negative. House orders him to test for everything he can think of.
The patient is more combative, screaming at his wife. He suddenly has a heart attack.
House gives Kutner the chance to write on the whiteboard. They try to explain the patient's rage. Thirteen keeps pushing for PFO. House pressures Foreman to decide who's right, and he sides with Thirteen.
They discuss why House seems to be getting nicer. Thirteen notes that House now has no opinions.
Wilson promises not to tell Amber, and House tells Wilson he faked his own syphilis by swapping out a blood sample. He's pretending to get nicer. He invites Wilson to go bowling.
Kutner and Taub do an echocardiogram to look for the PFO. Amber comes in to tell the team that House doesn't have syphilis. However, after Kutner thinks about it for a minute, he realizes the patient might not have it either.
Kutner finds House and confronts him about faking the test. He admits Amber told him. However, Kutner also has a theory - the patient doesn't have syphilis either. Kutner thinks it is Chagas disease from the patient's time in the Peace Corps. He would test positive for syphilis if that were the case, and it explains the other symptoms. The niceness can be explained by related encephalitis, and Kutner has done a scan to confirm - the steroids they gave him made it detectable on scans. House can't do anything but agree.
They go to tell the patient, and also tell him his personality will probably change once he is cured.
House brings reviews to Cuddy. Cuddy notes that the reviews are well put together, but identical. There is also a review of Cuddy. The nurses' strike is over. Cuddy rules that Amber and House are both to be penalized for breaking the joint custody agreement.
The patient is improving and is eating his food when he realizes that he doesn't like ketchup anymore. His wife looks worried.
House and Amber are punished by having to deal with the care of comatose patients. 
From a distance and outside the door, Wilson looks on and smirks in amusement.
==Major Events==
*It's shown that the nurses are on strike. But by the end of the episode, it's shown as the strike is over as Cuddy tells House that they've been back for two shifts 
*House asks Amber for joint custody of Wilson but both are unable to come to some sort of agreement. In the end, Cuddy is called in to help create a contract.
*Cuddy agrees to do a ruling but only if House gives his team performance reviews but Foreman ends up doing them instead.
*Amber confronts House over the fact that he got Wilson drunk.
*As punishment as breaching the agreement, House and Amber are both forced into cleaning the beds of comatose patients.
*Kutner reveals that House has syphilis.
*House tells Wilson that he actually swapped his own blood with a patient with syphillis.
*Amber tells Kutner and Taub that House doesn't have syphilis at all.
*Kutner confronts House over his blood-faking scheme.
*House drops hints of Thirteen being bisexual.
==Zebra Factor 7/10==
Chagas is almost unheard of in New Jersey, but it is fairly common in people who have spent time in Central America, where it is endemic.
==Trivia & Cultural References==
*The title is a common idiom for a change in attitude to a more combative position in the face of poor treatment. It is also the title of a song by Alice Cooper.
*Baby Im-a Want You was a hit for Bread in 1971, getting as high as #3 on the Billboard chart.
*Miley Cyrus is a popular entertainer.
*Another reference to The L Word, a show about lesbian relationships.
*The fourth Marx brother no-one can remember is Zeppo. He stopped making movies with his brothers in 1933 to start a career as an agent.
*Vincent van Gogh was mentally ill during the last few years of his life and the reference to chelation therapy is based on a theory his illness was caused by lead poisoning.
* It is unlikely Ritalin would have helped Hitler. In elementary school, he finished at the top of his class and was awarded a medal for bravery during World War I. It is unlikely that the problem was Attention Deficit Disorder. (However, the compound used in Ritalin, methylphenidate, has been known to be an effective antidepressant and anti-psychotic treatment when used in smaller doses, the latter being most effective when mixed with other compounds. An occasional side-effect of Ritalin and other ADD medicines is a lack of passion or motivation. Either of these effects could have curbed Hitler's rise to power.)
*The bit of seeming nonsense House spouts when Taub interrupts his and Foreman's conversation in order to cover the subject under discussion is actually a classic mnemonic which is used by novice sailors to help them to remember how to tie a bowline knot.
*Diana Ross and The Supreme's "You Keep Me Hangin' On" plays in the background in the last scene between House and Amber.
==Goofs==
* The bowling scene is faked. Chase throws a Brunswick Twisted Fury down the lane. On the last shot, it cuts to show him striking again, but as House walks away and the scene zooms out to showing Chase, you can see that he actually only got six. The strike was not actually bowled by Chase. You can also tell because in his first shot, the ball is in the middle of the lane by the time it reaches the end of the camera, but when the angle switches, the ball is on the outer portion of the lane, and hooks in. When Chase threw the ball there was almost no rotation on it yet the ball has high revs when the strike is shown.
* Chase is very concerned about whether Cameron had sex with House while she says it's nobody's business - but in Half-Wit, Cameron told House (in front of Chase) that she was glad they never slept together.
==Cast==
* Hugh Laurie as Gregory House
* Lisa Edelstein as Lisa Cuddy
* Omar Epps as Eric Foreman
* Robert Sean Leonard as James Wilson
* Jennifer Morrison as Allison Cameron
* Jesse Spencer as Robert Chase
* Peter Jacobson as Chris Taub
* Kal Penn as Lawrence Kutner
* Olivia Wilde as Remy Hadley
* Anne Dudek as Amber Volakis
* Paul Rae as Jeff
* Chad Morgan as Deb
* MJ Gazali as Delivery Man
* Christopher Emerson as Young Man
* Dina Defterios as Luisa Maria
* Bobbin Bergstrom as Nurse
* Jason Lewis as Dr. Brock Sterling
==In another languages==
*Latin American Spanish: "No más señor amable" (direct translation)
*Spain Spanish: "No se puede ser tan bueno" (it can be translanted as "It isn't posible to be so nice")
==Links==
*Episode article at Wikipedia
*Episode page at IMDB
*Episode summary at TV.com
*Episode page at House MD guide
*Episode review at AOL TV
*A list of the music tracks, at Heard on TV
*Quotes at House MD Quotes
*Episode page at USA Network
*Houseisms at the official FOX site
*Promo page at The House of Fan
*Review at IGN
*Review at Blogcritics
*A review of the medicine at Polite Dissent
*Episode recam at TV Rage
*Episode recap at Television Without Pity
*Review at TV Fodder
*Episode rundown at Buzzsugar
 
Category:Episodes
Category:Events
Category:Season 4
Category:Spanish