This week's episode of "House M.D." started with the mad doctor himself rubbing his leg. Now, we haven't seen him pop a pain pill since he's been out of the big house, so I'm betting this is some Grade-A foreshadowing.

But for now, we got to see the team split in two, where House (Hugh Laurie) ruthlessly followed his puzzle-based addictive personality to try to solve a case where the patient, a young child, was already dead. Meanwhile, his team was hard at work trying to solve the case that Forman (Omar Epps) had given them: a young girl who went into shock opening presents at her birthday party.

After Taub's (Peter Jacobson) baby-capades, this time it was Chase's (Jesse Spencer) turn for the side story merry-go-round. Park (Charlyne Yi) endlessly questioned him as to why he kept showing up neatly groomed: eyebrows waxed, manicures, all that good stuff. Chase has always been a pretty boy, but this was overboard even by his standards. Turns out he had taken a television spot pretending to be an Australian doctor, which was a worthless side arc minus the laughs of hearing and seeing Chase as a doc from the land down under.

The girl's case ended up being the more interesting of the two. First she was pregnant but without a boyfriend in the picture, then she finally fessed up. There was a boy, but he was abusing her. House cracked her multiple personality disorder by questioning her about this boy, revealing that there really wasn't one after all. It was interesting -- and the scene where one of the split personalities delved back into a traumatic car-crash memory was actually kind of powerful.

The personality disorder wasn't the end, however, as it wasn't the root of her symptoms. A final twist revealed that the pregnancy was a false positive caused by the real disease, but for a case with such potential it just kind of fell flat. The reveal was such a letdown that at the end of the episode I had to go back and think whether or not they had even resolved it. It just happened without much fanfare, but House didn't really care that much about the case to begin with.

I did like the two cases working back and forth, however, even if the end results of both were meager at best. It gave the team time to try to figure things out without House being too overbearing, and it gave House a chance to do what he does best: push boundaries and break rules.

On House's case, he grave robbed, trespassed, and violated his parole on his path to the truth. Luckily for him it wasn't until he finally solved the case that his antics caught up with him, and it brought to light the same old questions: should House be redeemed of his sins because he saved a life in the process? Does the life even matter to House? And how many times will House get punched in the face this season?

Given all the work-up here, especially between Wilson (Robert Sean Leonard) and Foreman, I was surprised how easily the show let House off the hook once again. I'm curious why we went through so much just to have it fall apart. Why have Foreman be dead-set on proving his authority over House if he actually wasn't going to? I for one don't want to see House go back to jail, but if you are going to dedicate so much time to sow conflict, it seems odd to just have it dissipate so easily. Is this a sign that Foreman is going to take Wilson's advice and just "manage" House, not try to control him? I'm not sure, but given how long Foreman has waited for a moment to hold something over House's head he sure isn't asserting his big-dog-on-campus mentality very well.

Fizzled ending aside, it was one of the strongest episodes in quite some time. Suspense and intrigue had me going for most of the hour, and the show's creative team managed to walk to the end of the high bar, but they just need to learn to stick that damn landing.