House's writers had to combine them, and sometimes the medicine suffered badly. Runners Down: Writing about medicine is hard so is writing soap opera. There are no drugs that act as truth serums nor can an MRI really tell if a patient is lying, as occurs in the episode. The problem, Morrison writes, is that the symptoms don’t match oyster poisoning at all. In the end, she was poisoned by bacteria in oysters. One of his doctors gives the girl a drug to serve as a “truth serum” and insists she’s been poisoned by a date-rape drug. He initially insists she has rhabdomyolysis, a disorder that results when muscle is damaged, leading to problems elsewhere in the body. The next day, one of them begins to have extreme swelling in her extremities, resulting in her being admitted to the hospital and seen by House. Great high concept: two teenage girls manage to sneak into a rock band's after party. The Worst: Season 6, Episode 6: ‘Known Unknowns’
“An average House episode may rate a C,” he says, “but that is still miles above any other show out there.” He is as tough on House as House is on other doctors. Since sometime during season one he has rated each episode using academic-style A-F letter grades not only on its plot, but on the quality of its medicine. But how realistic was the medicine behind those adrenaline- and vitriol-drenched storylines? There’s really only one authority on that: Scott Morrison, a physician in O’Fallon, Illinois, (and, previously, in the Air Force) who has reviewed every single episode of House, M.D., on his blog, Polite Dissent.