#waubwatch

[frenchfriedgiraffe]

redrawing a scene from house md until i either get bored or give up….. part 1…… pilot…..

[cuddytism]

Contextually Fucked: On House and Cuddy's Subtextual Sex in Occam's Razor

Or: No, actually, I am being serious; they're having sex in this scene v

Occam’s Razor is a very strangely sexually-focused episode. The first scene we get in the episode is of the patient and his girlfriend having sex. Off to a banger (badum-tss). But we also get the heavily charged conversations between Cameron and Chase — one in which Chase’s potential hots for Cameron come heavily into question.

In both of the dynamics above, the woman in the situation is shown to have much more ground, much more control over it than the men. The patient’s girlfriend initiates, she is “rough”. Cameron continues to bombard Chase with talk of sex, well after it’s made abundantly clear that it makes him… let’s say “uncomfortable”. The discussions of sex indicate the women having the upper hand, whether it be literally and physically, or psychologically.

Who else do we know who’s a woman who’s shown to have the upper hand in a dynamic with a man?

In this episode, House and Cuddy’s games continue. They argue, they banter, and they make each other miserable. House is still reluctant to clinic duty, still trying to argue to Cuddy about it at any chance he gets; this is their main conflict for the better part of the season, pre-Vogler. The thing is that it never really is an even conflict, because House does do clinic duty. For a part of the episode, he does try to get out of it, does try to push it onto Cuddy, but after he does this once, Cuddy doesn’t fall for it anymore — she sends Wilson in to deal with House’s further “consults.” She has bested him at his game, which is smartly alluded to with the appearance of House’s gameboy; He’s playing a game, he’s just lost it.

“It’s not going to work. You know why? Because this is fun You think of something to make me miserable, I think of something to make you miserable: it’s a game! And I’m going to win, because I got a head start. You are already miserable.”

Cuddy points this out herself in this quote, and she cuts right to the core of it all. And the thing is, it is fun. You often see these two smiling at each other, or watching for just a moment too long as the other walks away from them. It’s more than just simple arguing; it’s banter, it’s fun, it’s a game.

Cuddy is the one with the upper hand here, from a psychological and verbal standpoint, as I already stated above, but also from a physical standpoint. Cuddy is the one that gets up from her desk, Cuddy is the one who walks up to House while monologuing (not dissimilar to Cameron talking to Chase earlier in the episode), Cuddy is the one who leaves the room, ending the conversation.

But let’s finally talk about sex. No, really. Let’s talk about it; because there isn’t any explicitly sexual dialogue in House and Cuddy’s interactions here, unlike the ones between the patient & his girlfriend, and Chase & Cameron. But they are related, aren’t they? As I’ve already pointed out, there’s parallels drawn between all three of these dynamics, mostly with the “forward women” thing. I’d argue there’s a line connecting them all: we go from the patient and his girlfriend’s overt sexuality, in actually having a sex scene, to Chase and Cameron’s referenced sexuality in Cameron having a monologue about it, to Cuddy’s forward monologue to House that isn’t about sex at all, but feels sexually charged, especially with Wilson asking if House “has a thing” for Cuddy directly afterward.

Sex is there, in terms of the first two encounters, but it isn’t with House and Cuddy. So why is it that we feel it? There’s the connecting lines, the parallels, but also the lack of sexual referencing in their own conversation. Let me put it this way: the first two dynamics are foregrounds, they are the layer for which House and Cuddy will be compared; the sexuality in these is overt and tangible. Sex already exists in the context of the episode, so the need to call upon it again isn’t necessary to make us think about it again. Instead, it contextualizes House and Cuddy’s verbal sparring and one-upmanship through comparison to sex. The show eroticizes their banter, their battle of wits, their give-and-take dynamic of power.

If sex is a means to harness control, if referencing sex is a means to harness control, it’s only fitting that House and Cuddy’s battle for control feels so eroticized, even in the textual absence of sex itself.

[pictorial-scribbler]

House MD — 1x01 the Pilot / Everybody Lies

[chaseblogging]

1x06 - THE SOCRATIC METHOD

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 chainsaws. Without Isaac Newton, we’d be floating on the ceiling.

after a few months away and after the entire last season of stranger things dropped, chaseblogging is finally back in business 😎 sorry it took so long for me to come back, i promise i wasn't planning on abandoning this project!! embarking on a rewatch with friends pulled me back in and this is a great episode to return with. the socratic method has always been one of my favourite season 1 episodes and revisiting it solidified my love for it.

an interesting tidbit i learned recently is that while this is the sixth episode of the show, it was originally written as the second. i'm glad they switched things around because i think paternity works much better as the second episode. we learn more about the characters and how they interact with each other. not to say that the socratic method doesn't do that, because it does (more on that later), but i think paternity just gives off second episode vibes. it's a nice followup to the pilot.

this episode, the all too important relationship between a mother and son is centre stage. i was really touched by the connection between luke and lucy in this episode. they both don't want to hurt each other. luke doesn't want to push his mother too far, and lucy thinks she's caused so much pain and suffering to her son and doesn't want him to go through any more. it's really just a mother and son trying their best, at the end of the day.

and yes, we're going to talk about chase. of course. this is chaseblogging, after all. i've talked before about how slowly chase actually gets integrated into the story of this show, and although we're not quite there yet, we're getting there. this is where the dam starts to break for him, albeit very slowly. he has some very real, very serious baggage, but at this point in the show, we don't exactly know what that is. i think this is the first case where chase really takes an interest in it because, as we'll learn in cursed, it mirrors his teenage years and what he dealt with growing up. you can clearly see it in his face towards the end of the episode, when he sees luke and lucy hugging.

also wanted to highlight one interaction between foreman and wilson that i have a new appreciation for after rewatching because i think it does a good job not only describing house as a character, but the show in general.

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.

WILSON: Yeah. Well, he hates them, and he’s fascinated by them. Tell me you can’t relate to that symptom.

patients really are puzzles in this show, and over the course of an episode the doctors (and viewers) piece them together. sometimes the pieces don't fit, and then they do. this episode is a great example of that - house and the team spend the whole episode thinking she's schizophrenic and only after putting the puzzle pieces together do they realize that she wasn't schizophrenic at all.

this was a great episode to reignite the rewatch, even though it's apparently house's birthday which gets changed like three times over the course of the series. then again, they also retconned chase's age and gave him a random sister eight seasons in, so am i surprised? not really. but the bit of house playing happy birthday on the piano was a nice touch nonetheless <3

[thefangedman]

i like the house md pilot a normal amount

ref shot:

[3scythes]

Dissecting House's Pilot

WARNING: LONG POST. Essay length, even. A full dissection/essay/analysis/summary of House's pilot. Contents below the cut.

To begin dissecting the pilot of House M.D., the first scene we see with House and Wilson is SO important. It tells us many important pieces of information, such as:

House's disability: This is the very first piece of information about House we receive: "They all assume I'm a patient because of this cane"

House's attitude towards interacting with patients: Wilson says: "Why not wear a lab coat like the rest of us?", and House responds: "I don't want them to think I'm a doctor." This implies that House, a doctor in this hospital, does not want to be recognized by patients as a doctor. To read this further, he does not want to be bothered by patients--implying he's slacking off, in a manner of speaking. (SIDEBAR: It's implied that Wilson knows House well. He knows why House wouldn't be wearing a lab coat, but he has to ask as exposition to the audience.) Wilson follows up with: “You see why the administration might have a problem with that attitude," implying that administration (read: Cuddy) DOES have a problem with House and his attitude.

House's attitude towards cases and diagnoses: When Wilson is describing the case of the new patient to House, he says: "...Brain tumor. She's gonna die. Boring." To any typical person, this would be an extremely serious diagnosis with heavy emotional weight in regard to the patient's prognosis. But House finds it boring. Easily solvable cases are boring to House, regardless of how the diagnosis affects the patient. It comes off, in my opinion, as House dehumanizing the patient.

House's specialty/job title: Wilson refers to House as a "renowned diagnostician"; House refers to himself as a "lowly infectious disease guy" (and tells us that Wilson is an oncologist). We've now established House's actual specialty, and his renown.

House's team, and his feelings about the team: Wilson says: "You've got three overqualified doctors working for you, getting bored." We get the impression that House isn't all that interested in the team he has, and he doesn't care much for taking on cases at a regular frequency. Also, that his team is overqualified, that the three doctors working for him are highly skilled.

House and Wilson's relationship: Wilson tells House that the patient is his cousin, which we find out later is a lie. This establishes House and Wilson's relationship by implying that Wilson's relation to the patient might change House's mind on taking on the case, meaning House cares enough about Wilson that this could sway his decision.

FINALLY, House's Vicodin use: four minutes into the pilot, we get our first shot of House taking Vicodin. I recorded every use of Vicodin in the pilot, with my observed total being 4. All 4 uses of Vicodin, I also noticed, are seen within the first half of the episode, which stresses the action’s importance.

Moving onto the next scene, we now get to meet the team! Some important things to note about this scene (per my observations):

House’s regular treatment of the fellows under him is shown clearly here. He addresses them with sarcasm and belittlement, as if they’re stupid. And we know they’re not stupid, these are overqualified doctors! It emphasizes House’s perceived gap in intelligence between him and his fellows.

This is the first time we hear the “Everybody lies” motif! It’s a prevalent theme in this episode, though somewhat misleading—the patient, from my recollection, never explicitly lies. She omits information, sure, but she likely has no idea what information would even be relevant. “Everybody lies” reflects House’s personal view of patients, regardless of the truth of the statement. He believes patient’s words are not reliable; the only thing that should be relied on are symptoms and proven facts.

Cameron provides a lot of exposition in this episode (mostly to Foreman, who can be viewed as an audience vessel in this episode), beginning when she explains to Foreman: “Dr. House doesn’t like dealing with patients.” This establishes that Foreman is new to the team, and that Cameron has been here awhile, long enough to be used to (and somewhat jaded by) House’s attitude towards patient care.

Foreman, meanwhile, is frequently saying what the audience would be thinking, which results in him arguing many of House’s points. In this scene, Foreman asks: “Isn’t treating patients why we became doctors?” To which House responds: “No, treating illnesses is why we became doctors, treating patients is what makes most doctors miserable.” Clearly, House’s opinion on what it means to be a doctor differs from Foreman’s (and, likely, the general public’s)—while Foreman believes being a doctor means to care about people, House cares more about the illness; solving the puzzle.

Returning to the “everybody lies” motif: House says: “If we don’t talk to them they can’t lie to us, and we can’t lie to them.” And he’s right! Everybody lies, not just patients. While patients are guilty of “lying” (more often omitting information, in my opinion), doctors do the same thing—and put a pin in that, because we’re going to come back to this in a bit when discussing Cameron and Chase’s interactions with patients.

We learn that to work for House, you really have to think outside the box, in a way that goes against what one might have learned in medical school. At first, Foreman thinks House’s ideas seem a little outlandish: “First year of medical school if you hear hoof beats you think “horses”, not “zebras”.” Foreman’s a bit confused here—this is basic training, isn’t it? Shouldn’t the simplest and most obvious explanation be the best one? But House is quick to shut down (in a belittling way, of course) this type of thinking: “Are you in first year of medical school?” In House’s mind, it’s this kind of thinking that’s naive and almost juvenile, and it sets up the audience for what they can expect from the show: lots and lots of zebras.

The first DDX is explained to us quickly and plainly: “Differential diagnosis, people! If it’s not a tumor, what are the suspects?” A general audience would have no idea what a differential diagnosis means, but it’s so easily explained in House’s second line—a DDX is the process of identifying the “suspects”, what the illness could be, ruling out what it can’t be in the process.

The following scene introduces us to a very important character: Dr. Lisa Cuddy, Dean of Medicine. Her presence is made known to us before we even see her—we hear the click of her heels in the distance as House is waiting for the elevator. Dr. Cuddy is ultimately the authority that House must answer to, and we get a glimpse into their dynamic here:

From her first line of dialogue, we know that Cuddy has authority over House—he was supposed to be in her office, after all. We also see how House disrespects this authority, ignoring their scheduled meeting with no remorse.

They banter, and through this their dynamic is clear: she signs his paychecks; he has tenure. She doesn’t have as much authority over House as she’d probably like to, and House both knows this and exploits it. However, their relationship is more than just frustrated boss and cocky employee—no, their banter is playful, almost jovial. She says “I can still fire you…” with a smile, all-too casually. She won’t fire him, and they both know it.

We also see a glimpse of Cuddy’s respect for House: his reputation is worth something to the hospital, she reminds him. She even says it clearly at the end of the day episode: “The son of a bitch is the best doctor we have.”

The next scene is the first we see of the fellows without House present. I don’t have too many things to say about it, other than us getting to see a bit of how Chase and Cameron each perceive House:

Chase’s dialogue, though simple, displays House in a negative light: when asked if he is Dr. House, his response is “thankfully, no.” Chase doesn’t want to present anything like House (to the patient, at least). In reality, as we see in episodes to come, Chase does respect House, and often emulates his behaviour and clothing. But when it comes to the patient, he doesn’t want to seem anything like House, because Chase cares about his image, how the patient sees him. More on this later.

Cameron’s following dialogue is quick to attempt to soften the negative image Chase has given of House. She says: “Dr. House is the head of diagnostic medicine. He’s very busy, but he has taken a keen interest in your case.” (Note: I believe this is the first time we get House’s official title.) Cameron respects House, despite his attitude/behaviour, and wants to reassure the patient that House does care about her case; the idea of House as a highly-regarded, busy doctor with a fancy title paints a much nicer picture than Chase’s. Cameron looks past House’s bitter, cynical exterior, to the revered genius she sees him as.

Now, back to House and Cuddy! We get to see Cuddy’s authority in action now—she’s put a halt to any testing on his patient until he complies with her terms! At the end of the day, Cuddy does have power over House, and now we get to see it! Some points on this interaction:

House bursts into Cuddy’s office, outraged and yelling. Cuddy, meanwhile, remains calm—she’s used to this behaviour, and refuses to engage with it. To her, it’s basically a joke: “Is your yelling designed to scare me because I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be scared of. More yelling? That’s not scary. That you’re gonna hurt me? That’s scary, but I’m pretty sure I can outrun ya.” She continues, cheekily, to throw House’s “philosopher Jagger” quote from earlier in the episode back at him: “…as it turns out “if you try sometimes you get what you need.”” Cuddy has power over House, isn’t afraid to exert it, and is confident in her ability to deal with his antics.

Our Vicodin count for the episode is raised to 2 in this scene.

When House leaves Cuddy’s office, he paints a very different picture of what unfolded to his fellows: “Do the MRI. She folded.” To his team; House wants to seem as if he’s the one in power here! However, as soon as the team leaves to do the MRI, House relays what really happened to Wilson: he’s agreed to her terms of clinic duty in order to resume tests on his patient. This gives us another point about House and Wilson’s relationship—House views Wilson as an equal, to at least some degree.

Cut to the team performing the MRI, where we get more insight into the fellows:

Cameron is shown to be kind, gentle, and reassuring to the patient. When something goes wrong, Cameron suspects it immediately, and wants to end the test prematurely to check on the patient.

In contrast with Cameron, Chase seems quite jaded and almost apathetic here. He believes the patient has simply fallen asleep (despite the patient having just said she didn’t feel well), and protests Cameron’s request to stop the test: “It’ll just be another minute.” Chase seems to be acting a bit like House in this scene, caring more about completing the test than the patient’s wellbeing.

Cameron and Foreman take action, realizing that the patient is in respiratory distress. They react with an appropriate urgency, but it’s frantic. Chase comes in after, calm and collected, with the surgical airway kit. He performs the tracheotomy with skilled precision, a glimpse into his specialty and ability to stay calm under pressure.

Additionally, the suspense and feeling of fear in this scene is executed fantastically! We experience the claustrophobia and jarring loudness of the MRI along with the patient, and when she suddenly can’t breathe, we can feel her panic. The sound design is phenomenal, from the suspenseful music to the unnerving loudness of the ventilator as the scene comes to an end.

At the beginning of the next scene, our Vicodin counter is up to 3, as we see House in the hallway taking a pill before switching our focus to the team in the patient's room. The main thing I felt worth noting in this scene is how Cameron and Chase interact with the patient: Cameron is once again kind, telling the patient to get some rest; however, Chase is reassuring to the patient, telling her the tube will be out later today, which feels a bit different than his attitude in the previous scene, beginning to show how his demeanor changes around patients.

House reconvenes with the team in the hall, one of their many walk-and-talk scenes. Now, House wants the team to get the patient's history, and Foreman questions House's logic: "I thought everybody lied?" To which House responds: "Truth begins in lies. Think about it." It's contradictory to what he's said previously, and Foreman is justifiably confused by House's response; meanwhile, the other fellows shrug it off. This kind of nonsense is the norm here.

Next, we follow House as he begrudgingly clocks in for clinic duty. There's a little more banter with Cuddy here, and in that conversation we can infer a few more things about House and Cuddy's relationship. In this scene, we see that Cuddy has made sure House's first patient was interesting (orange guy). We know that Cuddy is desperate for House to actually do his job, but she does want to make it more bearable for him, and she knows him well! Cuddy does like House.

As House's clinic duty begins, our Vicodin counter reaches 4! We get to see a bit of House's "genius" here: he easily deduces that the orange man's wife is having an affair, but is incredibly rude and condescending about it. This sets the standard for how House treats patients (clinic patients especially), and his next clinic patient is no different—except, with this patient, he has a revelation about the case.

As we cut back to the team and patient, House refuses to go into the patient's room, instead beckoning the team into the hall to discuss his revelation and treatment plan. While this is happening, we get to see House's silhouette behind the closed blinds from the perspective of the patient: first, she sees his face; then, his cane. It reiterates what House said to Wilson at the beginning of the episode, that people will always make assumptions based on his cane.

Jumping to the next scene, with Chase and Cameron in the patient's room, we'll finally be delving into more of the contrast between how each of them interacts with patients:

When Chase is talking to the patient, he keeps things vague and casual. She asks about her treatment, and he brushes it off as "just part of the treatment," immediately changing the subject with: "You haven’t had many visitors. No boyfriend?" Whenever the patient changes the subject back to her treatment and tries to ask further questions, Chase gives a basic answer and changes the subject yet again: "We’re just trying some alternative medications. So, where’s your family from then?" When she pushes further, he finally gives her an answer—but it's incredibly vague. "The tests weren’t really conclusive."

This is when Cameron cuts in: "We’re treating you for vasculitus, it’s the inflammation of blood vessels in the brain." The patient is relieved at the notion that she doesn't have a tumor after all, and when asking Cameron to confirm, Cameron simply smiles—but doesn't answer.

In this scene, neither of them are being honest, but in different ways. Chase puts on the charm, tries to distract the patient, and keeps his answers vague; meanwhile, Cameron tells the patient what she wants to hear, omitting any details that would cause her to worry. Their end goals are similar—both wanting to put the patient at ease—but both of their approaches have flaws: Cameron wants to give the patient hope, even if it's false hope, while Chase would rather keep the details vague as to not give the patient any new reasons to worry, but also no reasons to have hope: truly neutral. They argue about this in the hallway—Chase believes it was wrong for Cameron to give the patient false hope, but she believes any hope was better than none at all.

Notably, this is where we begin to see both Chase and Cameron's flaws: Cameron, caring too much to the point where it gives the patient false hope because she thinks it's the right thing to do; Chase, remaining neutral, staying in the background unless he's absolutely sure he's right.

Cut to Foreman sniffing a classroom floor. I don't have much to say about this, other than it's funny, and Foreman explaining what he's doing to the kids in the classroom feels very exposition-y: "explain to me like i'm five" taken literally.

The next scene of importance is House and Foreman in the hospital cafeteria. Here, House is trying to convince Foreman to break into the patient's home to check for environmental explanations for her illness. They argue about trust—Foreman wants to ask the patient for the key, and House disagrees. He uses a cafeteria worker as an example—look at her, she's sick, and policy is to stay home but she probably needs the money, and she made that sandwich you're eating, so what do you think? Should we trust her? Foreman's still against breaking into the patient's house, and it's here that we learn of Foreman's juvenile record, the real reason House hired him. At the end of the scene, Foreman makes a display of finishing the sandwich, and it's symbolic: he trusts people.

Back in the clinic, Cuddy finds House slacking off in an exam room. This behaviour does not surprise her—in fact, she's really only concerned with why House gave the patient steroids with no good reason to support that treatment, comparing him to a nazi. And she has a point—the treatment truly is experimental, and House has a history of treating patients as less than human. In fact, House isn't even bothered by Cuddy's comparison; he almost seems impressed. It's not until Cuddy threatens to take the patient off of the steroids that he feels the need to justify the treatment. Cuddy is finally showing frustration with House's attitude: "You don’t have any evidence. And nobody knows anything huh? Then how is it that you always assume you’re right?" It's also verbalizing the audience's thoughts: why does he always think he's right? Why should we root for him?

The answer comes in the following scene: Cuddy goes to check on the patient, and surprise! The patient is doing much better! As Cuddy leaves the room, she finds House waiting outside smugly. "You got lucky," she says, but from an audience perspective we're shown that House has done the right thing, and that his actions are justified.

In the following scene with Wilson, we get more exposition on House—or, more accurately, how Wilson views House. In this scene, the patient acts as an audience vessel: when Wilson explains that he doesn't believe House is a good man, but he does believe that House is a good doctor, the patient asks what we've all been thinking: "Can you be one without the other? Don’t you have to care about people?" However, Wilson seems unbothered by the fact that House doesn't seem to care about people: "Caring’s a good motivator. He’s found something else." The patient then asks about House being Wilson's friend—and if the audience didn't already gather this from their first few interactions, it's being laid out plainly here. Wilson wants to believe that House cares about him, and when the patient says "It’s not what people say, it’s what they do," Wilson says, confidently, that House does care about him. This is one of House's major traits: regardless of all of the horrible stuff he says, it's House's actions that define who he truly is.

Jumping forward a bit, the patient has had a seizure, lost her vision, and is having intermittent altered mental status. They're running out of options, and House suggests taking the patient off all treatment. It's the urgency of this situation that pushes Foreman to finally give in, and he takes Cameron with him to break into the patient's house, regurgitating the same explanation House gave him: "For all we know she could be running a meth lab out of her basement."

In the montage that follows, Cameron and Foreman go back and forth, Cameron justifying House's behavior while Foreman questions it. It's clear that Cameron respects House greatly, but Foreman, at this point, is questioning why. We find out here that Foreman was the top of his class, and fought hard to get this position. Finding out that he only got the job because of his juvenile record, paired with the process of actually breaking into a patient's home, seems to be the thing that breaks him: this is ridiculous, and House is ridiculous! Meanwhile, Cameron is starting to have a crisis of her own: she wasn't top of her class, doesn't have a relevant criminal record, so why did she get the job?

Finally, when the team reconvenes, we get to see Foreman's intelligence in action! It's Foreman that deduces that the patient isn't actually Wilson's cousin, in part because Foreman paid enough attention to the patient to know her name, a detail Wilson has repeatedly gotten wrong, but that House didn't care to learn in the first place. It's through Foreman's supporting evidence in this revelation that House realizes what's wrong with the patient— tapeworms—and, of course, he belittles Foreman for not realizing the ham in the patient's apartment would be an important detail. (Sidebar: we learn Foreman's specialty here: "Mr. Neurologist.")

It's after this revelation that we finally see House talk to the patient, when she's reached her limit and is refusing any further treatment, having lost all hope. Even though House calls her an idiot, the patient is completely justified: from her perspective, she's been put through hell trying to figure out what's wrong with her, and each answer the team has come up with previously has turned out to be wrong. Why should she believe that this next treatment is going to be the cure?

It's then that we get an explanation of what happened to House's leg, and he attempts to use this story to his advantage—if only the right diagnosis had been made in time, he wouldn't be in pain! But the patient sees right through him: "So you hide in your office, refuse to see patients because you don’t like the way people look at you. You feel cheated by life so now you’re gonna get even with the world." In the next bit of dialogue, House argues that there is no such thing as death with dignity: we can live with dignity, but not die with it. It's this stance that gives us the idea that maybe House does care about patients after all--or at least preserving human life if it can be saved!

After this conversation with the patient, House has gained a new respect for her, and doesn't intent to push her any further: the case has been solved, after all. It's then that Chase finally speaks up, offering a brilliant idea to prove the existence of the tapeworms. Chase has, up until now, contributed very little to this case. We can interpret, from Chase's inaction, that he doesn't want to speak up unless he's sure his idea will be well-received. This is just the start of his approval-seeking behavior, but it really sets the stage for what we can expect from him in future episodes.

In the last several minutes of the episode, House finds Cameron waiting for him in his office. She's desperate to know why House hired her, and is extremely dissatisfied with the answer: "I hired you because you are extremely pretty." She, like Chase, yearns for House's approval and respect; in her frustration, she lists her accomplishments: she did an internship at the Mayo Clinic! She was in the top of her class! Cameron needs to be recognized for her achievements and efforts. But when House prods at her past, we start to see a different side of her, hinting at what's to come: "But you are damaged, aren’t you?"

The episode ends sweetly: Chase and Cameron sneak the patient's students into the hospital, and House and Wilson come back to their conversation from the beginning of the episode, bantering about Wilson's lie that got House to take the case. As the episode is coming to an end, cutting to an aerial view of the hospital, a familiar lyric plays in the background:  “You can’t always get what you want.”

[some-pacas]

PATERNITY

"Guatemalan, I think."

-

When Dr. Cameron had been hired, she'd worn a lot of blouses buttoned all the way to the neck. Chase didn't know anything about women's fashion; only noticed because it was spring and then summer and it felt prim, made him think of the rare girls who actually followed school uniform rules where the rest of them were leaving their ties as loose and skirts as rolled up as they could possibly get away with. Swotty, basically. Not worth the bother.

In August, Cameron started leaving her blouses unbuttoned.

"Everything okay?" Cameron asks, tartly. They're in the conference room; Cameron sorting mail and Chase doing a crossword. Theoretically.

Chase blinks and looks up, meeting his colleague's eyes: she's frowning. "I like your necklace," he says, innocently as he can.

"Really. You were staring at my necklace." It's not quite a question, but he sees the way the corners of her mouth twitch upward before Cameron resumes frowning.

He widens his eyes. "I was! It's pretty. And you're not the type to wear jewelry just because, so I bet it means something to you," he coaxes, having already learned the best way to head her off is change the subject.

Sure enough, she reaches up to touch it. "I went on a backpacking trip in college." Cameron's smile fades slowly; her gaze sharpens. "And I guess you're an expert in Central American jewelry?"

He leans back in his chair, trying to gauge the situation, his gaze quickly darting towards House's office: empty, he hasn't shown up to work at all this week. It leaves Chase feeling safer; oddly bolder. "You want me to admit I was looking at your breasts?" he asks, pretending to be aghast.

"I think you just did," tartly again, but she's smiling.

"I was thinking," Chase corrects -- he'd been thinking, actually, that he normally likes bigger tits on a girl, but there was something for how many buttons Cameron could leave undone without it seeming pornographic as it would on another woman, that maybe there was something for it after all -- "you never used to leave your collar open."

Cameron looks a bit uncomfortable, and he isn't sure why. "You and House barely follow the dress code, so why should I?" she retorts.

"Starting to settle in, are you?" he teases, and, yes: She's definitely a bit embarrassed. Interesting. And endearing, Chase leans forward again.

"It has been four months," Cameron says primly, sneaking a glance at House's office. She touches her necklace again; Chase does the math. Four months. He'd been alone, Martinez fired and Ulrich quit, by his third in diagnostics. There's something unsettling about this revelation; Chase pushes it aside.

"It's nice," he drawls. "Now that you're relaxed, I mean. Getting to see your jewelry."

"That better be all you're looking at," Cameron says, fighting a smile. She fidgets with the buttons of her blouse, but doesn't close it up.

[beingintentionallydense]

S1E1: Everybody Lies

Rewatching the pilot is fun because everyone is so different. There's the immediate dissonance of the camera, sure, everyone's orange, but also these people are new! They're learning each other! The show's learning itself, figuring out its own grooves.

The lighting in this season is different, more moody, more dreamy, compared to the more realistic cold and bright hospital lighting of the later seasons. The cold open is long—we see the patient running late, we get a reference to a boyfriend that isn't at all related to anything about her illness or diagnosis, we get to see her friend, her dealing with students. The show is, I think, trying to get us to care for her before we see her fall ill, make us have a personal stake in this. As the cold opens get shorter (and have bait and switches), the show's purpose changes to making us interested in the patient, not necessarily care about them or who they are beyond a puzzle for House.

The dialogue is a touch clunky—"I'm just the lowly infectious disease guy"—but it gets its job done, and the show does get better about it very quickly. It is also interesting to see what the pilot reveals about the characters. It's the very first episode, it has the duty to establish a lot of important characters.

Right off the bat, before we even see House, we're informed that he has a cane by his own voiceover, implying that regardless of what everyone else sees, House's perception of himself is very much centred around the cane. We're also told, both in his conversation with Wilson and later Cuddy, that House is a slacker, House does not care for treating patients, but he does enjoy solving interesting cases. We're also shown his pills, though it is not implied (yet) that he has an issue.

Wilson lies very early into the episode, and cut exposition from the script implies that this is not a one-off thing. House has treated many of Wilson's "cousins" before. This immediately shows two things: House and Wilson are not friends in the typical sense (the script says you'd be hard pressed to call them friendly), and also even though House apparently takes patients based entirely on how interesting they are, the fact that the patient is Wilson's cousin does affect whether he takes the case or not. The script also has a scene where Wilson grabs House's cane to stop him, implying that Wilson (despite House's claim) does not really treat House differently due to his leg.

One of Cameron's first lines is explaining House's methodology to Foreman, showing Foreman as the new guy and Cameron as someone who wants to help him out. Cameron also lies to the patient, further establishing her as someone who cares for patients, takes a personal investment in cases, and is the only one of the fellows who believes in House's diagnosis. She also later defends House to Foreman, something she'll continue doing throughout the seasons despite literally never being rewarded for it. The pilot also sets up her character arc and hints at her backstory—her damage, so to speak—in her conversation with House.

Foreman is very clearly set up to be the main character from the fellows. The show starts with him as the newest fellow. He disagrees with House in the ddx, but very quickly comes around and suggests a corollary to House's motto, pleasing House immediately. The script calls him Grasshopper, and it is implied that the mentor-mentee relationship he has with House is supposed to be very important. Foreman gets the first one-on-one scene with House, where he (as the audience stand-in) is the only one who gets an explanation for House's cynical perspective of the world, and he's surprised House by not immediately folding and doing whatever House wants.

Chase is. there. He is very much a non-entity, the only one of the og3 to not get a one-on-one with House in the Pilot, the only one House didn't pick himself. He is implied to only have gotten the job because of a call his father made. The script mentions that Chase's brilliant idea apparently came from a book his father wrote. We get a smidge of personality—Chase maintains neutrality, or apathy, if we're being less generous. The patient almost dies because Chase thought she fell asleep. He doesn't believe in House's diagnosis, but he doesn't fight it like Foreman does. He thinks Cameron shouldn't have given the patient false hope, but he also didn't do anything to stop her in the patient's room. Even when he gets an idea, he prefaces it with disclaimers.

Cuddy is so much more involved in this case than she is in other cases House takes on as the show goes on. She's set up to be an… antagonist of sorts, provide friction to House's madness, someone to be the straight man and stop him from treatments with no proof. Also establishing that they do have somewhat of a relationship beyond just employer/employee, with Cuddy apparently researching the reference House makes to fire back at him later, and her being entirely unphased by House yelling at her, both of them separately trying to bring the elevator quicker to get away from each other, and Cuddy apparently letting House not do clinic duty for years, only bringing it up when he's finally showing some interest in actually doing his job again.

And the Pilot ends with House finally talking to the patient. The conversation is very revealing about House in two ways: one, that he does actually care, and that's why he stays away from patients, not because he's apathetic—he dislikes caring, he dislikes opening up. And two, House is a cynic. He doesn't think there's a difference between dying on a hospital table due to another misdiagnosis and dying in your home at peace, he doesn't understand why the patient is choosing to do this at all. Which is probably why this conversation does not work in getting Adler to agree to the treatment.

The Pilot is a very fun episode, and it's great to see what they discard and what they keep from here as they go further. And it's always fun to see a more sombre version of House.