Moving the Chains

"Moving the Chains" is the thirteenth episode of the sixth season of House. It aired on February 1, 2010.

The team takes on the case of 22-year-old Daryl, a large offensive guard who repeatedly banged his head against his helmet shortly after attacking a fellow player during a fit of rage on a football practice field.

House suspects hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and tells the team to stress the patient's heart until symptoms develop. Daryl wishes to play a game in front of NFL scouts and leaves the hospital, even though treatment is not finished. Foreman accompanies him, and when Daryl starts to experience blurred vision and eventually goes blind, he is readmitted. Foreman admits to having drugged Daryl with nitrates to get him back in the hospital. While House is looking over Daryl's chart, he realizes that he only lost one pound and concludes he has melanoma, which was hard to detect due to Daryl's dark skin.

After everyone leaves House's office to do the tests for GnRH and the adenoma, he tells Foreman that his older brother, Marcus (Orlando Jones), needs to be picked up from prison. House tells Foreman to take the day off, but Foreman says he is busy with work. Later, Foreman discovers that House hired Marcus as a personal assistant, much to Foreman's dismay. In his typical fashion, House tries to "dig dirt" on Foreman by interrogating Marcus; House discovers that their mother died three months ago and Foreman refused to deliver a eulogy. Despite Marcus' pleas, House blurts out their mother's death in front of the entire team, which enrages both brothers (causing Marcus to quit the job) but coerces them into talking, thus bringing the brothers closer together. According to Wilson, that was House's plan all along and House is "secretly a nice guy". At the end of the episode, Foreman appears at the halfway house where Marcus is staying and offers him to come stay with the family; he also offers Marcus the job back, but Marcus argues that once House knows Foreman is OK with it, the job offer will no longer be valid.

Wilson chastises House for using the bathtub in his bathroom in their new apartment. Later, when Wilson finds an opossum in his bathtub, he assumes House has played a prank on him. Later, House uses Wilson's bathtub again, and the handicap assistance bar that he had installed breaks off. When confronted, Wilson denies responsibility. When they conclude that someone else is tricking them, they lie in wait at night, and the fire sprinklers go off, flooding their apartment, causing damage to Wilson's flat screen TV, leaving them both bewildered as to who the culprit is. Later, Cuddy's boyfriend Lucas admits that it was him, angry that they outbid Cuddy and him on the apartment (in the episode "Wilson"). Cuddy tells Lucas that she figured out he was pulling pranks on House and Wilson, but tells him to let it go.