Last night, House returned with a torn-from-the-headlines case involving a "subway hero" and a formidable new adversary played by... "Murphy Brown." Meanwhile, Dr. Taub's likeness is chosen for a hospital marketing campaign, and hijinks ensue.

Since House has a new Pollyanna character in the person of Amber Tamblyn's Med-student Martha Masters, this week's mystery — a man leaps onto subway tracks to save an epileptic woman but then faints himself — is primarily used as an opportunity to dredge up Dr. House's "heroism is a symptom of mental illness" theory. As the sparks fly between Polly-Amber and the rest of House's jaded team, the focus shifts to the real conflict: Dr. House versus The Mom.

Those of us with crazy parents know that there's no greater enemy to the relentless logic of a character like House than the determined righteousness of a person who ends every argument with the phrase "because I'm a mother." To no one's surprise, House does everything he can to avoid the encounter — a dinner celebrating Cuddy's brithday — completely:

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Did you catch Hugh Laurie's little squeak at the end of that clip? It might deserve its own Emmy.

We're shown the dinner scene itself in two parts. In the first, Cuddy spends most of her time attending to her own daughter, who is going through a picky-eater "phase." (and we put "phase" in quotes here because those of us with younger siblings know that average duration of such a "phase" is roughly three decades) Grandma Cuddy uses this as an opportunity to passive-agressively criticize her daughter's parenting skills by highlighting her own flawless, time-tested routines. House demonstrates remarkable restraint in holding his tongue until the second part of the scene, after the munchkin is put to bed:

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Both "Greg" and "Lisa" then silently agree that this double-secret sedation is truly the best possible outcome. In our opinion, this was actually a cute and clever way to show how close the characters have grown in their relationship, and it allayed a lot of our skepticism regarding the dangers of this season's primary plot arc. What do you think?

Speaking of relationships, the series has been paying significant attention to Dr. Taub's rocky marriage this season. Although his subplot as the handsome trustworthy face of Princeton-Plainsboro's latest marketing campaign is initially played for laughs, the ads end up being a catalyst for the disintegration of Taub's marraige, and by the end of the episode, he asks his wife for a divorce. Cue the contrast between House's (outrageously) humorous defacement of Taub's image and Taub's own emotional destruction:

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As for the mystery of the fainting subway hero? He had Chicken Pox. Chicken Pox!!!