House: Mass HystAIRia (Get it? ...Get it?)

Last night’s episode of House played on a number of my fears: Getting sick on an airplane, getting the bends after scuba diving, getting stuck on an airplane full of crazy people, and most of all, old ladies having sex.

So we’ve got patient number one, a horny old lady who’s returned from going on a bender in Venezuela only to pass out in front of the prostitute she’s hired. With Cuddy and House off joining the mile high club or something on their way back from Singapore, Wilson and the gang are forced to actually diagnose something on their own. It goes about how you’d think it would go—Foreman spends his time bitching at Chase for agreeing with his fuck buddy Cameron instead of with Foreman, Chase and Cameron spend their time having sex in the old lady’s house in front of her cat, and Wilson spends his time hitting on the prostitute. By some miracle, right before Foreman cuts open the patient’s skull, Chase manages to fight through the sex haze to figure out that she was accidentally fumigated, or something. And then Cameron breaks up with him because he’s in loooove with her. So…the day pretty much comes out even for Chase, I guess.

Meanwhile, 35,000 feet over the sea, House and Cuddy are on their way back from a conference in Singapore when some Korean dude on their plane gets really sick really fast, followed by a teenage girl and Cuddy herself, and then every other damn passenger on the plane. At first it looks like meningitis, but it turns out that Cuddy’s just insane in the membrane (insane in the brain), along with everyone else on the plane. Yes, it’s just a good old bout of mass hysteria, complete with group vomiting, shaking, and fever. Charming. See, this is why I could never be a flight attendant. People get crazy up there! Also, seeing people barf is gross to the extreme.

So yep, all’s well that ends well. Oh, except for the Korean dude, who’s getting worse by the minute. Just as House is about to cut open the guy’s stomach to root around for cocaine-filled condoms (Vicodin just isn’t doing the trick these days), he realizes that the patient is actually suffering from a terrible case of the bends after scuba diving without decompressing properly. Yikes. Oh, and anyone want to bet that House totally kept that sack o' meds he collected from other passengers when he thought there was an outbreak on the plane? You know he did.