Last Night's "House": Milking a Lactating Ex-Gay Groom for All He's Worth.

Note: Serious spoilers for last night's episode ahead.

On last night's House the brilliant yet obnoxious doctor (played by Hugh Laurie) and his crack medical team have to find out why an ex-gay conversion camp graduate collapses at his wedding. And no, it's not simply wedding night performance anxiety. 

It's all very complicated and convoluted (and in medical terms defies credulity), but apparently the recent electroshock therapy the groom received at a conversion camp caused the base of his skull to swell – restricting the flow of spinal fluid and resulting in all sorts of weirdness.

Sometimes I think the obscure maladies and extreme symptoms on this show are pure bullsh*t. I mean every episode has to have the requisite scene where one of the doctors is checking a patient's vitals after an initial course of treatment and the patient says "I feel funny"... and promptly starts spurting blood out of one of their orifices.

Okay, in this case it wasn't blood. It was milk, and it was coming out of the guy's breasts.

As you can imagine, House milks that for comedy gold.

In a burst of insight, House finally figures out what ails the man. To test his diagnosis he needs to manually stretch the patient's cranium to relieve pressure. So he says "Give me your head." and then "I bet you never heard that with a possessive pronoun."

Honestly, if that were said by practically any other character on television it would be really offensive. But House is just, well, House. He's a prick to everybody. And hey, it was sort of clever.

And not everything was played for sick laughs in this episode. The gay groom – though seriously misguided – was at least portrayed with some sympathy. He isn't a bad person. Clearly he cares deeply for his fiancee, is in torment over his same-sex attraction, and really does want to commit to a straight lifestyle. He even soundly rejects his former male lover at the end so he can finally tie the knot in the church that means so much to him. The ex-boyfriend too is portrayed as a very decent guy, as is the extremely supportive but bewildered fiancee.

Thankfully, at the end of the episode the bride to be kisses her now ex-fiance goodbye. She (and hopefully by extension the audience) recognizes what he can't – that no matter how much religious faith or desire to change he has, he'll never be able to fully commit to her because of his attraction to men.

After the medical diagnosis is confirmed, the patient asks how the opening at the base of his skull was so narrow - so as to be affected by the electroshock swelling.

House gives him a cutting glance. "Like so many other things, you were born that way."

Well, at least we know where Dr. House comes down on the old nature or nurture debate – and obnoxious lout though he may be, he's still one of the smartest characters on television.

All in all, a great episode and the writers deserve a lot of credit for squeezing the laughs, finding the pathos, and sending out a very important message: That ex-gay conversion therapy can be extremely hazardous to your health.

Note: This is the second time this season we've been very pleasantly surprised with how House dealt with gay issues.