HOUSE, M.D.: 6. "The Socratic Method"
Micky DuPree
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 before.
LUCY: No one believes me.
HOUSE: I do.
This might seem unusually sympathetic on House's part, but I think it
had a solid basis in rationality as well. We know House is on the
lookout for things that other doctors have missed, and in the case of
mental illness, there's a tendency to dismiss what the patient reports,
the informative as well as the fanciful, once the "crazy" label gets
slapped on them. Lucy had a double whammy, the "crazy" label and the
"addict" label.
FOREMAN: I thought he liked rationality.
WILSON: He likes puzzles.
FOREMAN: Patients are puzzles?
WILSON: You don't think so?
FOREMAN: I think they're people.
They can't be both?
WILSON: Yeah. Well, he hates them, and he's fascinated by them.
Tell me you can't relate to that sentiment.
Was Wilson implying that Foreman hates House but is fascinated by him,
or was Wilson just indulging in a little latent frustration with
patients that he usually keeps to himself?
LUKE: No pickles, and it's cold now.
CAMERON: If it's a Reuben, that's the way he likes it.
Cameron's fetched House's food, too?
HOUSE: Luke, give us another half-hour with your mom. We need
to do some tests. [Luke exits.] Nice kid.
CAMERON: Happy birthday.
HOUSE: O.K. Whose?
CAMERON: I was going through your mail, and it was on a form.
Happy birthday.
HOUSE: Oh.
I didn't see where the running birthday theme contributed much to the
story. It did tell us that House doesn't observe birthdays any more
than he observes Christmas festivities, and that Cameron feels free to
encroach on House's personal life unbidden, but what that and the other
birthdays in this episode had to do with the rest of the story escaped
me.
HOUSE: No, I get it. You want her to slim down a little so she
can wear pretty clothes like yours. Love the bracelets.
Hey! What about matching outfits? You could be twins.
Huh! She can't be your daughter! It's impossible! You
look way too young!
I don't think I had ever seen a male clue into this aspect of the
mother-daughter dynamic before. It was really scary in this case, since
the kid didn't look like she had a weight problem.
HOUSE: Happy birthday. Get the kid a damned ice cream cake.
Echoing House's birthday, but the connection seemed spurious in the
clinic case, unless they were trying to make a point about House looking
out for birthday kids with "crazy" mothers, which is tenuous at best.
LUKE: You drugged her.
HOUSE: Actually, I didn't. I've taken her off all medications.
LUKE: Your guy Foreman gave her Haldol.
HOUSE: We needed blood for some tests. I assume that was the
only way to get it.
House waited until he and Foreman were in private to express his
disapproval.
LUKE: [Reads.] "If there be rags enough, he will know her name
And be well pleased remembering it -- "
The poem recited in the episode was "Her Praise" by William Butler
Yeats. <http://www.online-literature.com/yeats/778/> The title on the
cover of the book was _The Wild Swans at Coole_. It was extremely hard
to read the page that got spattered with blood, either the printed text
or the facsimile longhand, but the text didn't seem to match up with
what was spoken. I haven't figured out what connection, if any, the
poem had to the story, unless it was just a distant approval of what
Lucy did when she gave up her son for his own good.
As Luke turned to shout for help, I think you could see that trailing
out of the back of Lucy's hospital gown was the tube that was supplying
the fake bloody vomit.
ACT II
14:48
FOREMAN: She spit in my face!
HOUSE: That must have been so frightening for you.
FOREMAN: What was I supposed to do? Tie her down?
HOUSE: Yeah! Anything but give her drugs. That's basically
my point.
I'm with Foreman. Nonconsensual sharing of bodily fluids, even if it's
only saliva, shouldn't have to be part of a health-care professional's
job description. Maybe Haldol wasn't the right specific choice (in
fact, usually on this show they use Ativan), but I'd have knocked Lucy
out to draw blood too.
FOREMAN: I used my best judgment.
HOUSE: It turns out your best judgment is not good enough.
Here's an idea. Next time, use mine.
Wow. House was really pissed.
CAMERON: [To Chase] I think they're choosing a movie.
lol.
CAMERON: The clotting studies so far are normal.
HOUSE: Well, cover your ears if you don't want me to spoil the
ending. Everything was normal, except for a prolonged
PT time. Which means what?
FOREMAN: Usually it means whoever drew the blood didn't do it
right.
HOUSE: Oh, that's right,`cause YOU drew the blood. But you
were precise, because you knew the tube was purely for
the PT study.
FOREMAN: That's right.
HOUSE: And I'm right with you. I trust this result. For two
reasons: A) because you ARE a good doctor ...
Whoa. Were the planets in alignment?
HOUSE: ... and B) because five milligrams of IV Haldol makes
for a spectacularly cooperative patient. The prolonged
PT time makes me think she's got a vitamin K
deficiency.
CAMERON: Vitamin K would explain the bleed but not the clot.
HOUSE: Without vitamin K, protein C doesn't work. Without
protein C, she clots. Clotting and thinning, all at
the same time.
If memory serves, I'm going to want to revisit this medical point later
in the first season.
CAMERON: What about another drug interacting with heparin, an
antibiotic like ampicillin? That would cause the
bleed.
HOUSE: Clever, but she's not on ampicillin.
CAMERON: Two months ago, she complained of a sore throat and he
got her ampicillin.
HOUSE: Which she refused to take.
CAMERON: He just said she didn't take it. What is it,
"Everybody lies," except for schizophrenics and their
children?
This was the point at which the fellows might have reasonably wondered
if House was more emotionally involved with the case than usual.
(Technically, you'd expect the schizophrenics to be more delusional than
deliberately deceitful, but no more reliable.)
CHASE: It's more likely than malnourishment. Why not scurvy
or the plague?
HOUSE: Gee, I wish my idea was as cool and with it as yours.
What is yours, by the way? Do you have one?
CHASE: Alcohol. Simple. It causes immobility, which explains
the DVT. It also causes cirrhosis, which explains the
bleed and the prolonged PT time. Let's ultrasound the
liver.
HOUSE: Three theories. Check out her place for ampicillin and
diet. Then ultrasound her liver. Let's find out who's
right before she bleeds to death.
I also miss those days when House was willing to check out more than one
theory at a time without posturing about how real men go all in on just
a single theory at a time or else risk being called a wimp.
Just after the fellows departed the office, you could see the reflection
of a crew member, and possibly the camera as well, moving in the glass
of House's office.
Chase's wallet was embossed with "MICHAEL LAWRENCE".
I've never seen a credit card that could "slip" a deadbolt.
Eventually they're going to have to do a scene where House sends Cameron
down to the courthouse to bail out Foreman and Chase on a B&E charge.
FOREMAN: So House says the kid's sensitive, thinks he takes good
care of her.
Another clue that House was more personally involved with the case than
usual. His default position towards patients and their loved ones is
cynicism.
FOREMAN: He lays out her clothes?
CHASE: Enough organization, enough lists, you think you can
control the uncontrollable. Fix her meds, fix her
clothes, maybe you can even fix her.
FOREMAN: Pick that up on your psych rotation?
Of course, this would be significant later.
LUKE: It's all my fault.
Actually, though Luke didn't know it, feeding his mother only burgers
and booze was what saved her. Without the vitamin K deficiency, she
wouldn't have ended up in the emergency room. Without the alcohol, the
doctors wouldn't have ultrasounded the liver and caught the cancer.
FOREMAN: The kid's in a tough situation. You do what you gotta
do to survive.
CHASE: Feeding alcohol to an alcoholic is not a survival
technique.
FOREMAN: Where I come from, if it works --
Implying that Foreman came from a tough background.
CHASE: Yeah, right. I'm rich. I couldn't possibly understand
what this kid is going through. Just because you're
drinking pricier stuff doesn't mean you don't have a
problem.
FOREMAN: You've seen someone stagger down that road?
CHASE: No way vitamin K's the whole story.
Another early implication of Chase's background. And I think this was
the first indication that Chase was rich.
HOUSE: Not even fifteen. Almost, though. Two weeks away, maybe
a month.
LUKE: Last week. I was fifteen last week.
According to the IMDb, Aaron Himelstein was 17 or 18 when this was shot.
HOUSE: Happy birthday to both of us.
There was a bit of a parallel, since neither birthday was celebrated,
but I didn't see any sign that House really wanted his to be, whereas it
was easy to guess that Luke wanted normalcy.
HOUSE: I suppose your biggest worry isn't the booze. I mean,
you're fifteen, basically no mom. If child Welfare let
kids get away with that, well, they wouldn't need those
nice foster homes, and that would make them sad.
LUKE: They'd put her someplace too. My life is working.
HOUSE: Not the word I'd use.
Still, House seemed to share my low opinion of foster care, since he
didn't turn Luke in.
LUKE: If you turn me in, I'll sue you. That's privileged
information.
HOUSE: Oh, relax. It's not even your x-ray.
The scene where House tricked Luke into confessing his real age was
cute. House seemed to be very protective of Luke while taking great
pains to appear anything but. His treatment of this 15-year-old was in
sharp contrast to his treatment of another 15-year-old in the second
season.
CAMERON: She's awfully calm.
CHASE: [Ultrasounds Lucy's liver.] House wrote new orders.
[Hands Cameron an empty miniature booze bottle.]
Very unconventional, but I guess House was going on the assumption that
Luke had already figured out what worked and what didn't.
Because they made an issue of Chase's insistence, my guess would be that
he went ahead with the sonogram on his own initiative because he was
determined not to drop the alcohol theory even after House's theory
about the vitamin K deficiency turned out to be true, meaning that
despite making the wrong diagnosis, Chase's persistence was what caught
the cancer in time.
As Wilson broke the bad news to Lucy, and Luke turned away, you could
see the reflection of a guy and what I guess was the camera dollying in.
As the focus shifted to Lucy, you could see the reflection of what
seemed to be a gray table with an orange folder on it and maybe even
someone writing something with a pen.
ACT III
24:31
CHASE: We do nothing, she dies from liver failure within sixty
days.
CHASE: Joe Bergin does the gamma knife thing. Laser
cauterizes while it cuts, saves more liver.
WILSON: The tumor's way too big. He won't even consider it.
FOREMAN: Not a big risk-taker, Bergin. Won't even drink milk on
its expiration date.
Heh.
WILSON: He has no discretion. Five-point-eight centimeters is
past the surgical guidelines.
I had to wonder why no one simply asked, "What have we got to lose?" I
understand that surgery and anaesthesia are risks all by themselves, but
if you're going to be dead in 60 days anyway, why not go for broke? And
if the surgeon is so worried about screwing up his stats, then why don't
they start a new asterisked column in the stats for long shots so that
everyone is clear about it?
So Wilson was a willing accomplice in the tumor-shrinking scam.
Interesting.
CUDDY: Good morning, Doctor House.
HOUSE: Good morning, Doctor Cuddy. Love that outfit. It says,
"I'm professional, but I'm still a woman." Actually, it
sorta yells the second part.
lol! Cuddy's outfits usually do.
CUDDY: Yeah, and your big cane is real subtle too.
LOL! There just aren't any comedies this good on TV right now.
Someone was sitting at the secretarial desk in the antechamber to
Cuddy's office, a blonde woman, I think.
CUDDY: You should know by now my doctors have no secrets from
me.
HOUSE: I don't believe it. Who came running to Mommy?
CUDDY: It doesn't matter who. The point is, I know exactly what
you did.
HOUSE: You have no idea what I'm talking about.
CUDDY: Somebody knows about a bad thing you did. That's a big
field. But somebody you think might have told me. That
narrows it down quite a bit. Someone who views me as a
maternal authority figure. A young person, perhaps. How
am I doing? You think I'm gonna get there?
Pretty good job.
CUDDY: Presumably hospital business. How many patients --
HOUSE: It's Cameron. She found out about my birthday, and I
thought she told you, and I'd have to stand here and
smile while you gave me a sweatshirt or a fruit basket.
You know, made me feel that deep sense of belonging.
CUDDY: Actually, I was just gonna remind you, you owe me six
clinic hours this week.
HOUSE: Oops. [Exits.]
CUDDY: [Into phone] Hi, this is Doctor Cuddy. I need all the
charts on Doctor House's current patients. [Tosses
birthday card in wastebasket.]
This was one of the things I loved about the old Cuddy. House gave her
a plausible alternative explanation, one that fit the facts she knew,
but she still had the good sense to investigate House's activities
anyway.
The hiccuping clinic patient didn't do anything for me. Unlike the case
with the usual idiots that wander in the clinic door, he didn't bring it
on himself and I didn't see what else you're supposed to do if the
hiccuping is starting to affect your life.
HOUSE: Ooh. Girl in the boys' bathroom. Very dramatic. Must
be very important what she has to say to me.
Staging the ethics argument in the men's room was a brilliant stroke for
just that reason, and even having House say it out loud didn't undercut
it.
CUDDY: Yesterday your patient's tumor was five-point-eight
centimeters. Today it's four-point-six. How does that
happen?
HOUSE: Ah, at a guess, I'd say, "That Doctor House must be
really, really good. Why am I wasting him on hiccups?"
If House were being forced to spend time on primary care instead of
zebras, I'd agree, but from what we've heard, Cuddy would let him out of
clinic duty if he had a genuinely busy caseload.
HOUSE: I wash before and after.
Probably a good idea if you work in a hospital.
CUDDY: You also requisitioned twenty cc's of ethanol. What
patient was that for? Or are you planning a party?
HOUSE: Do me a favor? [Cuddy turns on a faucet.] I was gonna
say, "Leave," but that works.
lol. I'm still amazed at how well this combination of high-minded
ethical discussion and bathroom humor worked together.
CUDDY: You shrunk the tumor.
HOUSE: Only way to get the guy to do the surgery.
CUDDY: Fraud! Fraud was the only way. There is a reason that
we have these guidelines.
HOUSE: I know: to save lives. Specifically, doctors' lives, and
not just their lives but their lifestyles. Wouldn't
wanna operate on anyone really sick. They might die and
spoil our stats.
Again I have to ask: why can't there be a separate category in the stats
for operating outside the guidelines?
CUDDY: Bergin has a right to know WHAT he is operating on.
HOUSE: True. I got all focused on her right to live, and
forgot. You do what you think is right.
So Cuddy was evidently a collaborator as well. We would later hear that
she intervened on Lucy's behalf. All the regulars colluded. This was
one of the times when I felt that Cuddy was using House to vicariously
live out her frustrated desires to make patient care a higher priority,
when sometimes her job demanded more attention to money, liability, and
office politics.
This was also the first time we saw that there really are rest rooms in
the hospital.
CAMERON: It's a birthday. It's an excuse to be happy. You
think that's lame?
I think it's lame to need an excuse.
HOUSE: Why are you here? To buy me a pony?
I was wondering the same thing. As someone on the official Fox _House_
message board once asked, who appointed Cameron the feelings sheriff of
PPTH? On what authority does she presume to admonish other adults for
how they feel, especially when they keep their feelings private?
BERGIN: That tumor didn't just walk itself into a bar and order
up a double shot of ethanol. Someone shrunk it down.
CAMERON: I'm sorry. It was very, very wrong.
BERGIN: House is lucky I didn't just close her up. He tries it
again, that's what happens.
That was the first surgeon at the hospital that we saw House piss off.
CHASE: Luke, stop writing. If you stop for a second, it's not
all gonna fall apart. Give yourself a break once in a
while. The fact is, your mum's gonna have an extra drink
every now and then.
LUKE: No. No, she won't. She doesn't.
CHASE: Fine. There are some things you just can't fix. That's
all I'm saying.
LUKE: That's how you'd handle it, something like this? You'd
just give up?
CHASE: No. I'd do it just like you.
Undoubtedly telling us as much about Chase as about Luke.
WILSON: Cuddy didn't say anything about pushing Bergin to finish
the surgery?
HOUSE: Not a word. Some kind of mind game. She's waiting for
me to crack.
WILSON: Well, either that or she's just being nice.
HOUSE: Yeah, right.
I assumed this meant that Cuddy did intervene with Bergin on Lucy's
behalf and didn't take credit for it. That seemed more plausible than
House and Wilson just jumping to that conclusion when she didn't.
Otherwise, the primary credit would go to Bergin, and I assumed we were
supposed to give the credit to Cuddy, the regular. It could have been
more clearly worded, though.
LUKE: [Passes by.] You said you wouldn't call. You're a real
bastard, you know? [Exits with Child Services reps.]
HOUSE: [To himself.] Yeah. I get that a lot. [To Wilson] I
don't think Mom's crazy.
I'm a little curious as to why House had no suspicions that one of the
fellows or Cuddy had called Child Services, rather than Lucy. Luke did
look pretty young.
ACT IV
33:50
WILSON: Schizophrenics can make rational decisions.
HOUSE: On the small stuff, yeah: when to sleep, what to drink,
you know. "No lemonade, but I'll take some hemlock if
you've got it."
WILSON: Huh, your man Socrates.
HOUSE: But giving up your son, because it's better for him --
it's so sane, so rational. Self-sacrifice is not a
symptom of schizophrenia. It excludes the diagnosis.
Can't schizophrenics have lucid moments, or even lucid categories?
Serious question. Are paranoids paranoid about everything, or just some
things?
HOUSE: Look, she's thirty-six years old when she first
presents.
Time line note. If you trust the stated record (yeah, I know), then
this indicates that House's birthday is sometime after Christmas
(because Christmas was in "Damned If You Do"), but before New Year's
Day.
-- Lucy was 38 years old when she came to the E.R.
-- Lucy was 36 years old when she first presented with symptoms.
-- Luke told the employment case worker that Lucy first got the
schizophrenia diagnosis on May 11 of "last year," and that she
had worked up through April 6.
If "The Socratic Method" had taken place in January or February of 2005,
then spring of "last year" (2004) would have been less than a year
before, which means Lucy wouldn't have had time to pass two birthdays
and get to age 38. Logically, "The Socratic Method" would have had to
take place in the last few days of December 2004, meaning she got
diagnosed in May of 2003.
Therefore (if one feels inclined to trust "Humpty Dumpty" and "Daddy's
Boy"), House turned somewhere between 43 and 46 in late December 2004 in
"The Socratic Method."
Of course, we all know that the _House_ time line has unprotected sex
with script anomalies. The above bit of calculation is no exception and
I'll return to this point below.
HOUSE: [Arrives back at his office.] You think I'M crazy.
WILSON: Well, yeah, but that's not the problem. Didn't we just
leave your office?
At least they admitted they were walking in circles this time. :)
HOUSE: I like to walk.
Not to hear House tell it elsewhere, but he does pace and fidget
sometimes.
In this episode, House appeared to live on the third or fourth floor of
an old brownstone. Continuity would not rest gently upon this point.
The clock on House's mantlepiece said 3:35.
I could not identify the classical piece that House was playing on the
piano. (I searched the Fox _House_ forum and the TwoP _House_ forum for
the answer as well with no luck.) A friend suggested one of Brahms'
preludes, but couldn't be sure. Also on the soundtrack under the music,
there were some irregular clicks, which I was at a loss to pinpoint.
House seemed to get his "aha" moment after playing "Happy Birthday" and
taking a drink, but I couldn't for the life of me see a clear
connection. I really felt like there should have been an entry in
Luke's notebook saying, "I got Mom an appointment with the
ophthalmologist on her birthday, but we didn't go," thus justifying both
the "aha" moment and the running theme of birthdays.
Props: Cigar in the ashtray on top of the piano. Pale amber drink in a
glass on top of the piano. A deck of cards on the desk, along with
numerous books. "PRINCIPLES OF CELL BIOLOGY"? Dry cleaning still in
the bag draped over the back of the desk chair.
HOUSE: [Into phone] Is that Doctor Jeffrey Walters? Hi. My
name is Greg House. I'm a doctor at ... Oh, is that the
time? I'm, yeah, I'm sorry. My, my watch must have
stopped. Uh, listen, you treated a patient about
eighteen months ago, a woman named Lucille Palmero. I
wondered if you recalled running any tests ... [Takes
phone away from ear.] at all.
From House's reaction, I was inclined to think that he genuinely lost
track of time and was too heedless of social consequences to bother
checking the time, rather than that he realized the time and called the
first time anyway. Of course, the second call was pure calculation.
Nice attention to detail: Luke told the employment case worker that
Walters was the name of the doctor who had given Lucy the initial
diagnosis of schizophrenia.
Time line note/anomaly, one in a series, collect them all. This episode
was aired after the Christmas episode "Damned If You Do," and yet if Dr.
Walters diagnosed Lucy on May 11, 2003 and it was now 18 months later,
this episode should have taken place around Nov. 11, 2004 (which better
reflects the original production order).
I cannot even begin to fathom how an Englishman does a good impression
of an American doing a bad English accent. That was amazing, as well as
funny.
House never went to bed, so he was still wearing the same clothes from
the previous day, but he rallied the troops at oh-dark-hundred, so they
showed up in new casual wear. Since the action started on a Thursday,
this was very early on a Sunday morning. The fellows were bleary.
House was oblivious. :)
HOUSE: I have a headache. It's my only symptom. I go to see
three doctors. The neurologist tells me it's an
aneurysm. The immunologist says I got hay fever. The
intensivist can't be bothered, sends me to a shrink,
who tells me that I'm punishing myself `cause I wanna
sleep with my mommy.
FOREMAN: Maybe you're just not getting enough sleep?
HOUSE: Pick your specialist, you pick your disease.
All too true. I've seen that one in action.
FOREMAN: [To Lucy] Your body might be accumulating too much
copper. If it is, this should help us see something
called Keyser-Fleischer rings ... copper-colored
circles around your corneas.
Terminology glitch: The copper rings were around Lucy's irises, not her
corneas. That entire bit sounded like a postproduction overdub, though.
I bet they decided they needed a little more exposition to make things
clear to the audience, so they had Epps come in and record a couple of
lines that they wrote on the fly. The line about "corneas" might not
even be in the script.
An unfortunate effect of changing the broadcast order of the episodes
was that copper was implicated in two episodes in a row.
The liver cancer and the Wilson's disease made Lucy the first
acknowledged dual-diagnosis patient on the show (although they never did
find out what caused Brandon's cough in "Occam's Razor"). If you add in
the vitamin K deficiency, it was a triple diagnosis, but you could argue
that that was a sequela of the Wilson's disease, which caused her to eat
improperly and become malnourished. All the different diagnoses,
though, were an excellent illustration of how the show starts out as
plot-driven, but the plot elements are chosen to illuminate character.
In this case:
-- Vitamin K deficiency to keep protein C from working, which caused
the clot, which was what brought Lucy into the E.R. in the first place
and made House go, "Waitaminute, she's way too young."
-- Sedation with alcohol to set off alarms in Chase and foreshadow
things to come in his backstory, and to spark a clash of background
experiences in Chase and Foreman.
-- Cancer to make her bleed alarmingly so that they'd hospitalize her
long enough to keep House working on the case. (The E.R. doc was going
to send her home.) But it was also a professional pretext to involve
Wilson in the case and get him to collude in tumor-shrinking hanky-
panky, which in turn was a professional pretext to involve Cuddy in an
ethical clash and get *her* to collaborate in the end. So one tumor
managed to tell us something ethical about all the older doctors.
-- And finally Wilson's disease to cause the psychotic symptoms to
intrigue House and reveal his fascination with abnormal psychology. And
wasn't it great how the exact same clue as to why Lucy wasn't
schizophrenic after all (sending her kid to child welfare) managed to
also reveal House as a protector figure?
So every single problem, except possibly the first, started out by
driving the plot, but ended up illuminating character.
They spun the room around while Lucy was getting treated, a rare device
to indicate the passage of time. The whole thing took eleven seconds
but could have been meant to stand in for days or weeks.
New clothes for everyone, for a total of five distinct days represented,
the last day probably taking place some while after the first four.
I doubt in real life that a kid, once in the child welfare system, would
be discharged to meet up with his mother as she was being released from
the hospital. I'm sure she'd have to fight tooth and nail, personally
petitioning family court and providing a zillion documents saying she's
sane, independent, receiving treatment for both cancer and Wilson's
disease, and competent to care for a child again, before they'd let her
come and get him.
I could have sworn that Lucy's hospital bracelet had the word
"COMPLACENCY" on it, but there was no reason why it should have.
Nice touch, Lucy being discharged in the clothes she arrived in.
LUKE: I'm never thanking you. You turned me in. I told you we
were doing O.K. It was none of your business.
HOUSE: [Off Lucy's look. To Luke.] Look. I don't care how you
were living. I just wanted you out of MY life. That's
why I had Doctor Cuddy call Social Services.
I thought it was terribly sweet for House to take the heat for Lucy like
that at the end, but I have gotten an argument about that, to wit, that
it's wrong to lie even for a perceived good. I think that it just gave
Lucy more options as to when to tell Luke the truth once things were
back to something closer to normal and he could feel a bit more secure
about his life. But even if she never told him the truth, House at
least gave her the choice.
I found this to be a defining moment of first-season House. He not only
doesn't need the approval of others for his good deeds, he doesn't seem
to particularly want it either. He's almost indifferent to it.
WILSON: [To House] You O.K.?
From which I gathered that Wilson finally clued in as to the missing
element in House's interest in the case, despite letting it slide with
his next line.
HOUSE: You were right. It wasn't the DVT. It was the
schizophrenia.
WILSON: I know.
HOUSE: She's not nearly as interesting anymore.
WILSON: Isn't it your birthday around now?
I'm convinced that birthdays are by far the majority religion in the
West. Even atheists tend to be fanatical observers of birthdays, and
woe be unto you if you're an infidel.
Virtual architecture glitch. I know enough about the layout of the 2nd-
floor/4th-floor set now to definitively say that there's no way to match
it up with the 1st-floor set and the view of the fake building facade
that's visible through the doors of the main entrance to the hospital.
When characters board the elevator in the upper floors (as House,
Wilson, Luke, Lucy, and an extra did in the final minutes of this
episode), they turn and face the direction they entered, which is facing
down one end of the rectangle that constitutes the body of the hospital.
But when they exit the elevator on the first floor, presumably still
facing in the same direction, they're no longer looking lengthwise down
a long rectangle, but at a short walk across the lobby to an exit with a
view of another building's facade. They should have put the elevators
where the stairs used to be and vice versa.
Vicodin count: 0.
That surprised me. I might have hand-waved it as House being so
engrossed in Lucy and Luke's case that he didn't feel the need to reach
for a pill every 15 minutes, but he typically would have popped one when
he was feeling put upon by the clinic mother who wanted him to lecture
her daughter about the dangers of sugar.
Medical synopsis:
A plot
Diagnosis: schizophrenia
auditory hallucinations
2 oz. vodka
deep vein thrombosis, leg pain, pulmonary embolism, post-respiratory
arrest
intubation
blood alcohol .12
blood thinners (including heparin)
clotting studies, PT (prothrombin time), PTT (partial thromboplastin
time), Factor V, protein C and S
cessation of psych meds
5 mg. IV Haldol
bloody vomiting
prolonged PT time
Differential diagnosis: vitamin K deficiency, ampicillin interacting
with heparin, alcoholism
2 oz. distilled alcoholic beverage
liver ultrasound
cirrhosis
Diagnosis: liver cancer
tumor removal
chemotherapy
Keyser-Fleischer rings
Final diagnosis: Wilson's disease
Clinic patients
1) healthy child, no strep, weight-watching mother
2) hiccups
khal...@netzero.com
I am stunned by Laurie's fake British accent. How does he do that?
And what fun it must have been.
House says, "That's a good kid" twice in this episode. It's one of the
few times House forms a strong connection to a patient (or rather, the
family). And who can blame him for not wanting to damage Luke and
Lucy's fragile relationship?
Everything works together so beautifully, it makes me regret the second
season all the more. <sigh>
We'll see how the season ends before I make a decision whether I'll be
around for Round Three.
cloud dreamer
> This was my first House episode, and remains one of my favorites.
>
> I am stunned by Laurie's fake British accent. How does he do that?
> And what fun it must have been.
Ummmm...you mean fake American accent...eh?
..
JXStern
Presume that's what he meant.
And I still wonder if Laurie even *does* the accent, or if it's dubbed
in after, which he could still do, but since I've seen him on three or
four talk shows and he never has done it live, ...
Not that there's anything wrong with that!
J.
Chelsea Christenson
news:121c2pa...@corp.supernews.com...
Nope. There's a scene where House is phoning the patient's old doctors, but
doing it sort of incognito given the lateness of the hour, and he uses a
fake British accent on one of them. We're admiring the contortions of a
British actor playing an American character putting on a bad English accent.
cloud dreamer
Ah...okay...gotcha...ummmm...I think. :)
..
George W Harris
<inv...@invalid.com> wrote:
There are some scenes in the fourth season of
"Buffy the Vampire Slayer" where the American James
Marsters, who plays the English vampire Spike, does a
spot-on bad fake American accent. Sounds just like
when some British actors (I'm looking at you Kenneth
Branagh) try and fail at an American accent.
--
"It is always a simple matter to drag people along whether it is a
democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist
dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the
bidding of the leaders. This is easy. All you have to do is tell them
they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of
patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every
country."
-Hermann Goering
George W. Harris For actual email address, replace each 'u' with an 'i'.
Micky DuPree
: This was my first House episode, and remains one of my favorites.
It was one of my earliest episodes, as a repeat last spring, and I was
amazed at how rich it was in nuance. House could be both crude and yet
subtle in the same breath. He could be both unsentimental and
protective. He and Cuddy both bantered and bickered. Cuddy could both
take a hard line against House's fraud and also be an advocate for his
patient, and I bought both attitudes completely. Wilson could both not
get it, and yet get it in the end. I guess maybe the fellows weren't
fleshed out very three-dimensionally, but they do get their character
points doled out to them pretty slowly as a rule.
: I am stunned by Laurie's fake British accent. How does he do that?
: And what fun it must have been.
All I can think of is that the Brits have heard a lot of fake British
accents in American TV and movies over the years, so I guess they're
pretty familiar with failed American attempts by now. (Forty years
later and they still make fun of Dick Van Dyke's attempt at Cockney in
_Mary Poppins_.)
: House says, "That's a good kid" twice in this episode. It's one of
: the few times House forms a strong connection to a patient (or rather,
: the family).
How many other times does that happen in the first season? "Detox,"
"Control," and "Role Model"? And maybe, in a strange way, the brother
in "Mob Rules"?
: And who can blame him for not wanting to damage Luke and Lucy's
: fragile relationship?
Not me, but I know why some might.
: Everything works together so beautifully ...
Well, the birthday theme still strikes me as not really adding much, but
it's a small weakness in an episode that is otherwise swimming in
strengths.
: ... it makes me regret the second season all the more. <sigh>
They literally haven't been making them like that anymore.
-Micky
Micky DuPree
: On Mon, 13 Mar 2006 20:45:37 -0330, cloud dreamer
: <inv...@invalid.com> wrote:
:: khalleron wrote:
::: I am stunned by Laurie's fake British accent. How does he do that?
::: And what fun it must have been.
::
:: Ummmm...you mean fake American accent...eh?
:
: Presume that's what he meant.
Nope. As Chelsea said, it's the bad British accent during the second
phone call that's amazing. But the acid test is always how it sounds to
a native, and an English ex-pat friend of mine confirmed my suspicions.
To him, House sounded exactly like an American trying to do a British
accent but failing.
: And I still wonder if Laurie even *does* the accent, or if it's dubbed
: in after, which he could still do, but since I've seen him on three or
: four talk shows and he never has done it live, ...
Believe it. It's apparently a thing with Laurie. He uses the American
accent all day while working, even when the cameras aren't rolling, in
order to stay in the zone. But he doesn't do the American accent when
he's off the clock. The people who work with him independently confirm
this, as in this interview of Lisa Edelstein
<http://www.steppinoutmagazine.com/03_01_06/html/interview.html>:
[Q;] What is Hugh Laurie like off-camera, and does he talk with
an American accent or his home British accent?
[A:] He always speaks with an American accent at work. I never
hear the English guy unless I see him on the weekends. It's
kind of funny. He's a completely different guy on weekends!
When I first saw him on a weekend I thought, "Who is this guy?"
-Micky
Micky DuPree
: There are some scenes in the fourth season of "Buffy the Vampire
: Slayer" where the American James Marsters, who plays the English
: vampire Spike, does a spot-on bad fake American accent.
Oh, yeah, I had forgotten about that. Hilarious stuff. I still think
his English accent was dodgy, but he did manage to do fake-American
pretty well.
: Sounds just like when some British actors (I'm looking at you Kenneth
: Branagh) try and fail at an American accent.
I liked his FDR. The standards for doing an American accent in America
are pretty high. The best way to hear a bad American accent is to watch
British shows with American caricatures, all of whom seem to be rich,
crass, and from either Texas or California.
-Micky
Micky DuPree
: khal...@netzero.com writes:
:: House says, "That's a good kid" twice in this episode. It's one of
:: the few times House forms a strong connection to a patient (or
:: rather, the family).
:
: How many other times does that happen in the first season? "Detox"
: [....]
That should be "DNR," not "Detox."
-Micky