Don't Ever Change

Don't Ever Change is the twelfth episode of the fourth season of House which first aired on February 5, 2008. A woman who has recently embraced Hasidism collapses at her wedding. House quickly sees her recent change from a rock producer lifestyle to devout religious belief as a symptom of her illness, enraging the patient's husband. After Cuddy convinces them to let House keep working on the case, the patient keeps getting worse and when more aggressive action is called for, the patient falls back on her faith as a reason to delay treatment to the consternation of both her husband and her rabbi, who both quickly agree that deception is the better course of action. On the romance front, House confronts Wilson about his new relationship with the "Cutthroat Bitch" and plots to break them up.
==Recap==
At a traditional Hasidic wedding ceremony, the bride starts to feel ill, then realizes she is bleeding on her dress. She collapses.
Meanwhile, at Princeton-Plainsboro, House is challenging Wilson's decision to date Amber. House doesn't think Amber is needy enough for Wilson. Wilson bets $100 that he can make it last two months. Wilson thinks that Amber breaks his pattern of going for needy women.
The team presents the bride's case to House. She has incontinence and blood in her urine. Kutner already knew Amber was dating Wilson. The patient is suffering from low sodium and they discuss possible diagnoses. House thinks she may have tried to commit suicide by taking poison. However, House agrees to tests for endometriosis as well.
Foreman and Taub go to do an environmental scan and Taub says, although he's Jewish, he doesn't respect orthodox traditions like arranged weddings. However, Foreman discovers that the patient used to be a rock record producer. They talk to her and she admits having used heroin and living a wild lifestyle before she converted to Hasidic Judaism six months previously. She has already told her husband about it.
Amber arrives home to find House waiting for her. He thinks it's a gambit to get hired. She admits it. He figures she's lying and has another gambit to get hired. She admits it. He thinks that she's just trying to get back at him. She admits it. She tells him that he has three mutually incompatible guesses and he has to guess whether she's trying to get back at him or just trying to be with Wilson.
The tests are negative. They start a new differential. House thinks her conversion to orthodoxy may be a symptom of an illness - porphyria. When Kutner brings up Taub's choice to give up his plastic surgery practice to work as a fellow, Taub admits that people don't change on a whim. House orders treatment for porphyria.
They try to treat her for porphyria and have to admit they think her current religious beliefs are a symptom. The husband objects and asks for a new doctor. Cuddy wants to treat her for cryoglobulinemia. The husband walks out when House compares himself to Yahweh. Cuddy argues changing lifestyles is a good idea if you don't like your life.
Meanwhile, the patient has developed respiratory arrest, showing Cuddy's diagnosis is wrong.
The patient stabilizes, but porphyria is eliminated as a diagnosis as well. The team thinks it is Wegener's disease, but House rejects it because he still thinks the conversion is a symptom. Thirteen fights him on the point. House orders a stress test despite the risk of a heart attack.
House deliberately runs into Wilson and Amber at a restaurant. Amber calls House "Greg". House calls her "Cutthroat Bitch". She invites House to join them and goes to get a table. Wilson agrees that she's very forceful. Amber gets them all a table. House realizes that Wilson likes Amber because she's forceful. House then realizes to his horror that Wilson likes Amber because Amber is just like House.
They perform a stress test on the patient. The husband starts to worry that treatment will change her back to the person she was before she converted. Taub and the husband talk about how much you should love your spouse when you get to know them better. The patient's heart is fine, but her leg is in pain when she gets off the treadmill and she falls. They start looking for blood clots which could explain the leg pain.
They do a MRI of the patient's brain function and Foreman and Thirteen discuss how the brain works. Foreman reveals that he believes Thirteen is bisexual and that's why she keeps things secret. The MRI shows no clots and the fMRI showed no problems. House then orders them to put the patient in pain to determine if she is a masochist as it may be medically relevant. When they put her in pain, her pleasure centers light up. However, the patient says she was praying at the same time because she knew Foreman was going to do something bad. As she sits up, the patient's vital signs crash, but when she sits back down, they stabilize. House orders them to put her on her feet, and her vital signs crash again, but after she collapses she's fine again.
They start a new differential, but the team still thinks the religious conversion isn't a symptom. Kutner thinks it might be a heart arrhythmia and House agrees to the test.
Wilson admits to House that he likes Amber because she is like House, but House tries to deny it. House calls Amber a needy version of himself, but Wilson says that he was dating her long before House fired her. However, House knows from Kutner they've only been dating since Amber was fired. Wilson starts wondering what House is trying to avoid.
They start a scan of the patient's heart. Kutner tells Taub about his love of Star Trek. The patient is under sedation and starts talking, telling them not to gossip. They can't find any arrhythmia and think it might be a problem with her nervous system. The patient tells them that Foreman thinks Thirteen is bisexual.
House asks Cuddy to sleep with Wilson to save him from Amber. She declines saying she has to sleep with people in accounting first. House says Wilson's pattern is to save a woman before betraying them. Cuddy thinks Amber will take House's place, but tells him not to worry.
They test the patient's central nervous system by seeing if she sweats appropriately under stress. The husband doesn't want to be there because he might see her without her clothes on. All of a sudden, the patient has a seizure.
They realize the patient had hypothermia even though she was in a warm room. They realize that her body is doing the opposite of everything it's supposed to do. They think it might be Addison's disease and Thirteen goes off to test the patient.
Cuddy talks to Wilson about Amber. Wilson says he enjoys being with Amber. Cuddy tells him that Amber will always look out for herself before she looks out for him.
The cortisol makes the patient feel better. She tells her husband that he's much better looking that she was led to believe. Thirteen notices the patient's abdomen is swollen. All of a sudden, the patient goes into shock. The patient is bleeding internally, but they can't find the source.
Chase suggests exploratory surgery. He admits that this won't cure her if they find the bleed, but it will keep her alive. She won't have the surgery until after sunset and the beginning of the Sabbath, so that she can enjoy at least one ritual meal with her husband. Her rabbi, as well as her husband, want her to proceed right away, but she still refuses.
Chase goes to speak to House about the patient, and House invites him to sit in on the differential. They discuss why the patient is refusing surgery. Chase suggests that they speed up the clocks in her room. They take her back to her room for her Sabbath meal after darkening the hallways.
Amber comes to see House at his request. He offers her a job if she solves the patient's case as long as she dumps Wilson. She says she's with Wilson because he both loves and respects her, and tells House she doesn't want the fellowship. However, she guesses DIC. House says "You've changed," to which Amber replies, "I hope so." House rules out DIC because the patient's platelet count is normal, House says to Amber "Good try, though," and Amber smiles, to which unexpectedly House faintly smiles back.
The team suggests more diagnoses, but House points out reasons to reject each of them. However, House gets an idea. Before they start the surgery, he makes the patient stand up again. While she's standing, he grabs her right side, and she feels better. He lets go, and she collapses again. She has a floating kidney - it's not properly attached to the rest of the body. It dropped a few centimeters every time she stood up. They always scanned her lying down, and since she would have been lying down during surgery, they never would have noticed it. They proceed with surgery to reattach the kidney and realize the bleeding has to be from that vicinity.
House goes to Wilson and says he could do worse than a female version of House. Wilson asks if House believes people can change. House denies it, but Wilson believes that House might be self-sacrificing for Wilson's benefit. House still denies it.
==Major Events==
*House confronts Wilson over the fact that Amber is his new girlfriend.
*Cuddy also talks to Wilson about his relationship with Amber.
*House announces to his team that Wilson and Amber are a couple. Kutner reveals that he already knew about them as he asked Amber out but she turned him down, saying that she'd just started seeing someone.
*Wilson lies and says that he and Amber have been together for four months.
*House later exposes Wilson's claim that he and Amber have been going out for four months as a lie and tells him that they've only been together for four weeks.
*House offers Amber a job on his team but only if she agrees to dump Wilson. However, she refuses.
*House confronts Amber and assumes that she's only with Wilson because she wants to get revenge on House for firing her.
*Thirteen is revealed to perhaps be bisexual. House starts teasing her about it.
*Chase once more draws upon his days in the seminary to quote from the book of Joshua as his inspiration for the idea to fool the patient into having the surgery before sundown.
==Zebra Factor 1/10==
Floating kidneys are actually a fairly common occurrence, particularly in women. Estimates are that up to one in fifty women have a problem of this nature, although the condition usually doesn't present with any symptoms. In addition, House is a specialist in nephrology, so it should have been at the top of his list.
==Trivia & Cultural References==
*More about Hasidic Judaism.
*The reference to Darwin in the Galapagos is from the second voyage of the HMS Beagle.
*Dark Victory was a 1939 film starring Bette Davis and George Brent.
*The Final Four is usually a reference to the final two rounds of the NCAA Division 1 Men's basketball tournament, but is often used to refer to the final two rounds of any NCAA championship tournament.
*Amber is wearing Wilson's McGill sweatshirt.
*The reference to the last helicopter out of Saigon is from the American final withdrawal from South Vietnam in 1975.
*Yes, Virginia, there is such a thing as a Hanukkah bush, although many Jews see it as merely another name for a Christmas tree.
*The Planet of the Apes is a long running series of several movies and a television series about an Earth where the roles of humans and apes are reversed. They are all based on a 1963 novel originally written in French. The latest movie based on the idea was released in July 2017.
*Manischewitz is an American producer of kosher food products, primarily matzoh and wine.
*The reference to "drinking the Kool-Aid" is from Jonestown, Guyana, where the leader of a religious cult, Jim Jones, convinced over 900 of his followers to drink Kool-Aid laced with cyanide when they feared that the U.S. government was coming to repatriate the group.
*During the 19th century American disputes over range land, sheep herders and cattlemen often got into range wars about grazing rights, since, if sheep overgrazed land, they would kill the grass outright.
*The Shema Yisrael is one of the standard daily morning and evening prayers for observant Jews.
*Shabbat is the Jewish Sabbath, from sunset Friday to sunset Saturday.
*The story about the prophet Joshua making the sun stand still in the sky is from the Book of Joshua, Chapter 10, verses 13-14,
*The Eisheth Hayil is found in the Book of Proverbs, Chapter 31, verses 10-31 and praises a good wife.
*Shabbat shalom is a common greeting on the Sabbath.
*"Mental Yentl" refers to the short story "Yentl the Yeshiva Boy," a short story by Isaac Bashevis Singer, later a play and film.
==Inconsistent characterization==
In the Season 2 episode Who's Your Daddy? when Cuddy mentions that she is considering sperm donor #613, House immediately ties it together with the Jewish mitzvot - the 613 canon of biblical law. However, in this episode, he just guesses at the number 600 and he has to be corrected by Jonatan, who reminds him the correct number is 613.
==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
*Laura Silverman as Roz
*Eyal Podell as Yonatan
*Fay DeWitt as Mrs. Silver
*Karen Strassman as Female Guest One
*Yossi Mintz as Rabbi
*Yanky Lunger as Cantor
*Brent Katz as Uncle Moishe
*Heather Joy Shur as Female Guest Two
*Bobbin Bergstrom as Nurse
*Rosemary Garris as Doctor
*Michael Obey as Jerry Carter
*Maria Zambrana as Hasidic Wedding Guest
Category:Episodes
Category:Season 4
Category:Zebra Factor 1