Games (House episode)

"Games" is the ninth episode of the fourth season of House and the seventy-ninth episode overall. It aired on November 27, 2007.

Plot

Cuddy orders House to make a final decision on which two candidates he's going to permanently hire. She says that if he doesn't make a decision, she'll reduce his salary and move his parking space. House visits Cameron in the emergency room to try to find a new case to help him make his decision, and he finds an uncooperative punk rock musician with a multitude of health problems. Although most of the candidates (particularly Amber) argue that the patient's woes are due to his high risk lifestyle and drug abuse, House orders them to look into his symptoms, all while scoring each on a points basis for inclusion into his team. A few months ago Wilson told one of his patients that he was about to die, but now Wilson discovered that he was wrong, and his patient is fine. When he tells him, instead of being happy, the patient complains. He says he was planning to sell his house, and now that he's going to live, he'll have to cancel the sale, and won't be able to afford to pay the broker. Wilson tries to compensate him from his own checkbook, but the man decides to sue Wilson for even more money, because his potential death let him live in the present, which brought him happiness. Wilson deduces that House is the one who counseled the patient to sue Wilson. House tells Cuddy that he wants to keep all four of his candidates, but Cuddy insists that he can only keep two. House asks Cuddy for her advice on who he should keep. At one point, he brings all four candidates into her office to highlight their strengths; although all their theories are wrong, each contributed to the correct diagnosis that the patient has measles. Cuddy, however, still will not budge from her position. House calls the team into the lecture room for a final time and tells Amber to stand up. Amber asks House if it's bad that he called her by her real name for once instead of "Bitch" (for "Cutthroat Bitch", her nickname). House tells Amber that while she plays the game better than anyone, she can't handle losing or being wrong. House goes on to say that if she is going to work for him, she has to be able to deal with and accept these things (House's team is often wrong multiple times in their diagnoses before finally solving a case) and fires her as a result. As Amber sits in her desk sobbing, House tells Thirteen to rise. House fires her as well but notes that if he was allowed to keep three team members, she would have been hired. Cuddy later approaches House in the lecture hall, telling him he can't have an all-male team and orders him to hire Thirteen along with the two male candidates. As Cuddy walks away from House, his face turns into a mischievous grin. Cuddy realizes that he kept Taub and Kutner because he knew that if he did, Cuddy would tell him to hire Thirteen too, so he'd get to keep a third candidate. Cuddy agrees to the hiring of all three and says that with the final team hired, at least all the games are over; House continues grinning and asks her: "How long have you known me?"

Trivia

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• Song played at the end of the episode is Spirit In The Sky by Norman Greenbaum.
• The guitar composition played in the background during the elimination of the team was composed and played by Hugh Laurie
• This episode also mirrors a theme in a past episode of Scrubs, in which a patient is wrongly diagnosed with cancer and subsequently sues the doctor who made the misdiagnosis because he had to face his mortality and then he finally did not have to die.
• Both episodes in fact were based on real-life events, most publicly the situation of John Brandwick, an Englishman who was given six months to live and sued the hospital over his poor financial condition which he argued was caused by the incorrect knowledge of his imminent death.