House walks into Cuddy's office without knocking and does a shitty job of waiting out her studious ignorance of him. She snaps, "Whatever happened to keeping our professional and personal lives separate?" "I'm not the one talking about our relationship at work," House says. Rather than pointing out the obvious hole in that argument, because she knows damn well it'll turn out to be a rabbit hole, Cuddy asks what he's holding behind his back. Her presents her with the "peace penguin." "What room should I return it to?" she asks, and he immediately says 243, so at least he cared enough to remember. House tells her that Alice Tanner wants a vagina. Actually, House, I think she wanted a whole doctor. "I'm pretty attached to mine," Cuddy says, not that you'd know that by who she provides with access to it. She reminds him that he was supposed to hire a temporary replacement for Hadley two weeks ago. "I've been busy," he says. "Doing what?" she demands. "You," he answers. Sure, he already used a variant of that joke once this episode, but that was with Wilson. Might as well get as much mileage out of it as he can. She agrees to help with Alice if he hires a new female doctor by next week. "You think we just sit around talking sports and belching and farting when the chicks aren't around?" House asks before agreeing. That was a pretty good belch he threw in there, but I'm glad that's as far as it went. I hate sports talk.

Alice now has two other women in her room: Cuddy and Christina, with the latter puttering around uselessly while Cuddy explains about the mercury poisoning theory and how they need more tests to prove it. Cuddy also tries to talk Alice out of ditching House's team, but Alice is more interested in the perfume Cuddy's wearing, a gift from House. Which must be why Alice smelled it on House last night, and which is still on Christina's cardigan. "Something you'd like to tell me, dear?" she asks her maid coldly. Yeah, and Cuddy too? Oh, wait, last night at Alice's house we saw Cuddy with her arm around Christina and her one cardigan, so that explains the smell transfer. Especially if, as I suspect, House mixed the perfume himself in his sink using animal pheromones and musk. Christina, knowing she's in trouble with her boss, says she just doesn't want to see Alice suffer any more. So Alice obligingly fires her. Cuddy rather heatedly comes to Christina's defense, so Alice tells her, "Send the men back. At least they're not a bunch of dewy-eyed crybabies." Has anyone remembered to add "acts like an asshole" to Alice's list of symptoms? Or do they all just spend so much time around House that it seems normal?