"Adverse Events" is the third episode of the fifth season of House and the eighty-ninth episode overall. It first aired on September 30, 2008. Breckin Meyer guest starred as an artist who has an unexplained visual problem.
Plot
Brandon is painting a portrait of a nude woman. Upon seeing the finished product, the woman's husband becomes angry and punches Brandon. The painting is horribly distorted, but the artist is seeing it as perfectly normal. At the hospital, Brandon protests that he is getting better and shows some quick sketches that he has done, which look normal. Kutner and Taub search his house, but find nothing significant. When Thirteen points out Brandon's reluctance to submit to tests, House deduces that the patient knows he's fine, and Brandon admits that he volunteered for clinical trials to make money. Foreman believes it is impossible to determine the interactions between the different drugs and suggests dialysis to clear out Brandon's blood. Brandon suffers another seizure with facial swelling after the dialysis is completed. House orders surgery to deal with Brandon's abnormal heart rhythm, but Taub suspects lingering toxins when Brandon presents distorted vision again. After investigating Brandon's storage, Taub finds that his paintings show distortion every other month. House discovers that whenever Brandon took the experimental antacid, undigested food caused a bezoar to grow bigger and absorb the pills. The heart surgery is cancelled and the bezoar is surgically removed. During the diagnosis, House is constantly fed information concerning his team from Lucas, the private investigator he hired with hospital money. Taub is disturbed when he learns from House of a secretbank account that his wife set up. Taub confronts his wife, but she reveals that she had been saving to buy him a new car. Cuddy catches Lucas in her office sorting through her desk for 'research'. As he is leaving, he offers to give her embarrassing information on House, in exchange for going out with him. Lucas has lunch with Cuddy and finds out she knows that she is being set up by House. Lucas later reports to House that Cuddy didn't fall for their trap. The two argue that using a photo-shopped picture of a younger House on the cheerleader team wasn't the best idea, before Lucas confesses he found out that the picture is real. Lucas states that it is too bad Cuddy didn't see him in a different light, even worse that she didn't even believe it is possible. House replies 'people hate people who have theories about people', and the episode ends with House and Lucas playing a blues song together.
