House, MD: Season 1 Episode 11

MASSIVE Plot Hole

House, MD is the best medical TV drama ever. The MoD turned me on to it about a month ago, and I'm hooked. If you have not watched the show, it stars British actor Hugh Laurie (you may remember him from Spice World) as Dr. House, a crippled, sarcastic, misanthropic, drug addicted genus who is willing take any risk necessary to reach a diagnosis either to the patients detriment, but ultimate survival, or to the patients death but the survival of other patients. I won’t go into everything else about the show, but trust me when I say that it's very solid. When I say there is a network TV show that I like, you better damn well watch it because I say that less then once per year. There is, however, somthing that I just can not overlook in tonight's rerun.

“Detox” Season 1 Episode 11 Plot Synapses:

A 16 year-old car accident victim begins to show symptoms of a more serious injury after several days in the hospital. The staff is baffled when the boys red cell count and liver function start dropping like rocks. Meanwhile, House is challenged to stop taking Vicodin for a week, as everybody except House know that he is addicted. House accepts the challenge in exchange for some time off, but quickly begins to show withdrawal symptoms.

The boy’s condition starts declining rapidly; blindness in one eye, anal bleeding, and hallucinations. House and the staff narrow the boy’s diagnosis down to Lupus, or the extraordinarily rare Hepatitis E. House decides to risk not treating the boy for Lupus in favor of ruling out Hepatitis E, by using a drug that will harm the patient, but the side effects will prove if he has Hep E or not. The test fails, and so does the boy's liver. He now needs a transplant. The staff believes that House is making mistakes because of his withdrawal symptoms, and is risking the boy’s on life on a million to one chance. House learns from the boy's girlfriend that the boy had a cat that had died recently. Some other doctors dig up the cat so House can perform an autopsy on it, while the boy is being prepped for a liver transplant. After examining the cat, House stops the transplant by barging in on the surgeon and blowing his nose on him. Everybody now thinks that House is insane and the boy is doomed. After a scuffle with the father, House announces that the cat died of naphthalene poisoning due to a massive termite infestation of his home. House goes on to say that naphthalene is stored in the fat cells, and while the boy was in the hospital, he started losing a lot of protien due to the hospital diet, so his body started burning fat cells to compensate, releasing the naphthalene into his blood stream. House prescribes the right treatment, the termite infestation is confirmed, the boy recovers, and House starts taking Vicodin again.

The Plot Hole

I can not believe that this was overlooked. The show takes place in New Jersey. Everybody knows the only termite known to produce naphthalene is the Formosa Subterranean Termite or Coptotermes formosanus. Coptotermes formosanus is only found on islands in the Pacific Ocean, Texas, and the Deep South. This is unbelievable! Did a team of crack addicted apes write this episode?!?! I really hope somebody got fired for that one.

-Tommy Masterson