House's father has died, and Cuddy and Wilson conspire to get House to the funeral he is refusing to attend — Wilson drives while House, stripped of his Vicodin, negotiates, sabotages, and finally delivers a eulogy that is honest about John House's cruelty before secretly swabbing his father's corpse for DNA. Meanwhile, the team manages without him: a Chinese-American adoptee who collapsed at a Buddhist temple cycles through collapsing diagnoses until Wilson, at a roadside diner, cracks the case — the girl's birth father had been ordered to kill her as an infant, and the metal pins placed in her brain in infancy were shifted by a magnet beneath the temple statue, causing everything, including her hidden alcoholism.

The episode reframes the Wilson-House rupture by showing its origin: Wilson once smashed a bar mirror and House bailed him out  ...