Potential spoilers for later episodes: I do some pretty obvious hinting
about future character developments, but I think that the episode itself
made some pretty clear implications in that regard. I grumble about how
the second season isn't as good as the first because they've dropped
certain elements, which I guess constitutes spoilers if you're a purist,
but I tried not to get specific and give away particular episodes.
Elapsed time numbers are for the DVD copy.
Once again, I had no trouble believing the guest performances, either
from the actress who played crazy Lucy, nor from Aaron Himelstein, who
played Lucas, her son, and whom I've seen do a creditable job as
Friedman the obnoxious twit on _Joan of Arcadia_. It was nice to see
him in a sympathetic role.
Though not a flawless episode, this was still intelligent, humorous,
touching, and one of my early favorites. I found myself more drawn into
Lucy and Luke's story than I usually am with A-plot patients, presumably
because House himself was atypically drawn into their lives.
PROLOGUE
Sign:
New Jersey
Department of Employment Development
I would have thought that benefits for non-work-related medical
disability would come through social services or even Social Security,
not through an employment office.
The episode guide at TV.com identifies the name of the Department of
Employment Development case worker, played by Sonya Eddy (one of the
many faces of God on _Joan of Arcadia_), as "Sally," so I went with
that.
SALLY: The first diagnosis --
LUKE: Schizophrenia. Doctor Walters, May eleven last year.
The letter's in the medical file.
SALLY: And April sixth? That was the last day she worked? But
she received unemployment benefits for that week.
Time line note.
SALLY: And you're the dependent?
LUKE: No. That's my little brother. I'm eighteen. Just
helping out.
I was a little surprised that the case worker didn't turn the family in
to social services since the mother was clearly unfit and she had a
dependent listed in her record. Yeah, Luke lied and said he was the
older brother, but he wasn't likely to have been his fictitious younger
brother's legal guardian. But I guess it was a case of "not my table."
They cheated the shot of Lucy's right eye in the prologue. It was a
pretty tight closeup, but there was no sign of the copper ring around
the iris that they'd show at the end. (Not that one person in ten
thousand would have clued in even if there had been discernible copper
rings around her irises at the beginning, so I can forgive them saving
money on the CGI.)
FROG: Hey! I'm talking to you. The cat's first. Now it's your
turn, Lucy.
The frog was uncredited. It's been tough getting work since
_Wonderfalls_ was cancelled.
The first time I watched this episode, I thought that Luke's hurt wrist
was a gratuitous instant injury, a pretext for House to "x-ray" Luke and
get him to confess his real age. This time through, though, I noticed
that Luke did seem to come down hard on his left wrist when Lucy fell
over in the employment office. They should have made it a little easier
to notice that on first viewing.
ACT I
3:02
I assume Luke was supposed to be waiting in the emergency room. It was
really the second-floor waiting area redressed, with the atrium covered
over by wood panels. He rubbed his left wrist when he was in the
waiting area, but given that he was also pacing impatiently, I probably
originally dismissed the gesture as a sign of frustrated worry, not of
injury.
P.A.: Doctor Gregory House, please call Doctor Cuddy at
extension three-seven-three-one.
Heh. At least hiding out from Cuddy gave House some kind of excuse for
being in the right place at the right time, but it continued his lucky
streak of catching zebras by sheer propinquity, from just happening to
hear about two babies in "Maternity," to being assigned a clinic zebra
at random in "Damned If You Do," to just happening to be in earshot of
the latest zebra case in this episode. We never did find out why Cuddy
was paging him, but it's not like he doesn't routinely give her reasons.
Once again, unlike most people, House didn't have to consciously pay
attention to notice what was going on around him. In fact, I don't
think he could turn this faculty off even if he wanted to.
On the newspaper that House was reading:
front:
Girl Scout Saves Family from ???
back:
Millions Watch Televised Execution
By process of elimination, the E.R. doctor who gave Luke the rundown on
his mom had to have been the character listed as "Clark" in the credits.
However, we were never told his name onscreen. Despite the fact that we
learned the name of a hospital surgeon in this episode, it's easy to get
the impression that the Diagnostics Dept. works in complete isolation.
CLARK: Your mom's blood alcohol was point-one-two. Ten thirty
in the morning.
LUKE: I gave it to her. Two ounces of vodka. It cools her
out. But that's the first since Monday. That was three
days ago.
Time line note. The action started on a Thursday.
LUKE: She hears voices.
CLARK: She's schizophrenic. Explains the DVT. The alcohol
makes her pass out. She's immobile for long periods of
time --
That's frustrating, to hear doctors latch onto a pet theory that then
makes them impervious to alternative explanations. Chase jumped on this
bandwagon as well.
CLARK: I'd be happy to refer you the case, Doctor House. You
seem so interested.
Lots of people would remark on House's interest in this case. Also,
this indicated that other doctors at the hospital knew House by name, by
sight, and by reputation.
HOUSE: On the other hand, we don't really know anything about
schizophrenia, so maybe it is connected.
WILSON: Well, schizophrenia explains one mystery: why you're so
fascinated by a woman with a bump in her leg. It's like
Picasso deciding to whitewash a fence.
HOUSE: Thanks. I'm more of a Leroy Neiman man.
Inspiring an entire style of _TV Guide_ covers in my adolescence.
Demotic of House.
HOUSE: And it is only about the DVT. She's thirty-eight-years
old. She shouldn't --
WILSON: Right, solve this one and you're on your way to
Stockholm.
HOUSE: We don't even know how to treat it. Come on.
Fumigation of the vagina?
Must have been particularly painful for male schizophrenics.
WILSON: A little louder. I don't think everyone heard you.
LOL. The nurse looked like she wanted to lock House up.
HOUSE: Two thousand years ago, that's how Galen treated
schizophrenics. The Marcus Welby of ancient Greece.
WILSON: Oh, clearly you're not interested.
HOUSE: Oh, I'm interested. I'm interested in how voices in the
head could be caused by malposition of the uterus.
WILSON: There's a better place for it?
Safety deposit box, where it can't get into trouble.
HOUSE: And now what do we got? We got lobotomies, rubber
rooms, electric shocks. My, Galen was so primitive.
WILSON: Where are you going?
HOUSE: Going to see the patient. That all-important human
connection. Thought I'd give it a whirl.
WILSON: You won't talk to patients because they lie, but give
you a patient with no concept of reality --
HOUSE: If it wasn't for Socrates, that raving untreated
schizophrenic, we wouldn't have the Socratic method, the
best way of teaching everything, apart from juggling
chain saws.
I didn't see strong evidence of use of the traditional meaning of
"Socratic method" in this episode (though House would employ it in other
episodes), so I assumed they were going for a different meaning with the
episode title here: listening to madness in order to divine its method.
Of course, there's far from universal agreement that Socrates and Newton
suffered from schizophrenia, but the former did claim to hear voices and
the latter did run off the rails for a few years in middle age before
suddenly and inexplicably achieving clarity again.
HOUSE: Without Isaac Newton, we'd be floating on the ceiling.
WILSON: Dodging chain saws, no doubt.
Heh. Wilson did a pretty good job of keeping up.
HOUSE: And that guitar player in that English band, he was
great. You think I'm interested because of the
schizophrenia.
WILSON: Yeah. I'm pretty sure.
I was intrigued by the degree to which the story made an issue of
House's interest. It was the central subject of this conversation. I
think Wilson was right about House's interest in the schizophrenia, but
given the point at which House involved himself and what happened over
the course of the episode, I had to suspect House also wanted to help
the kid.
HOUSE: Galen was pretty sure about the fumigation thing. Pink
Floyd.
From classic Greek to classic rock. I miss this House.
Wilson was holding a copy of the _Placebo Journal_ (medical humor
magazine).
HOUSE: [To Lucy] Nice kid. How much do you really drink?
FOREMAN: He's really talking to a patient?
CHASE: I don't know who I am anymore.
rotfl.
FOREMAN: It's a blood clot. What's so fascinating about that?
CHASE: He likes crazy people, likes the way they think.
Unfortunately, House would be derisive of another mentally ill patient
in the second season.
FOREMAN: They think badly. That's the definition of crazy. Why
would he like --
CHASE: They're not boring. He likes that.
Another indication that Foreman was the new kid, while Chase had worked
for House longer and could therefore explain him to Foreman. This was
the sixth episode aired, but only the third one shot. It also implied
that Chase had seen House fascinated by a crazy person
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