House wakes a man from a ten-year vegetative state to get a family medical history for the man's dying son, then takes him on a road trip to Atlantic City while the clock runs down on the drugs keeping him conscious. The diagnosis lands on MERRF syndrome, a mitochondrial condition passed through the mother that explains a generation of deaths blamed on clumsiness and alcoholism — but Kyle needs a heart transplant he can't qualify for, and his father decides to solve that problem himself.

The episode is the clearest distillation of House's ethical logic: he breaks rules because he's right, helps people he doesn't like, and lies to the ones he saves. Gabriel's road trip scenes with House double as a character excavation, surfacing the story of the Japanese janitor-doctor that explains everything about how House sees himself. In the background ...