The entire thread can be read at Google Groups: Subject: HOUSE, M.D.: 2. "Paternity" From: MDuPree@theworld.com.snip.to.reply (Micky DuPree) Newsgroups: rec.arts.tv,alt.tv.house-md Date: Sun, 25 Dec 2005 14:31:08 +0000 (UTC) Organization: The World : www.TheWorld.com : Since 1989 Message-ID: Lines: 671 Continuing with my desire to comment on a first-season episode whenever there's a week without a new second-season episode. I don't think I've included any episode-specific spoilers beyond "Paternity," but I do take advantage of a general knowledge of the series through the early second season, which the purists would indeed consider to be spoiling information. Elapsed time numbers are for the DVD copy. PROLOGUE Visual continuity glitch: Dan's lacrosse jersey was reversed right to left in one shot. The stunt guy who doubled as Dan didn't look that much like the actor who played Dan, but he wasn't onscreen for long. ACT 1 1:37 The magazine that House was reading a copy of in the exam room: Bio James Finds True Love The Crown Prince First time House ate a lollipop onscreen. HOUSE: Close the door. Close the door! WILSON: [Complies.] Is Cuddy down the hall counting to fifty? lol. House took his first Vicodin of the episode while talking to Wilson in exam room one about slacking on clinic duty. WILSON: Just tell Cuddy you've got an urgent case. You had to leave early. HOUSE: That would be lying. WILSON: And that would be wrong. But luckily, the definition of 'urgent' is fungible. HOUSE: Not the definition of 'case' though. House did seem to prefer more indirect forms of deception to outright lying in the old days if he could manage them. WILSON: You have no cases? You have NO cases? It was such a simple scene, and yet it has made me snicker even on multiple viewings. Wilson is a wonderful character foil, wonderfully played, the intelligent but normal counterpoint to House, who is brilliant, brilliantly played, and well off the beaten track. It's just usually easy for Wilson to get lost in the shuffle, since his primary function is not to illuminate himself, but to illuminate House by offering the normal person's reaction to House. The friendship between Wilson and House is one of the deeper mysteries of the show to me. Why Wilson? Yeah, he's a nice enough guy and evidently a good doctor, but the same could be said of the other doctors on the show. What sets Wilson apart? Did he take a thorn out of House's paw or what? WILSON: You've got handpicked doctors, specialists, working for you, and they're sitting on their hands? HOUSE: Cameron's answering my mail. WILSON: Oh, time well spent I'm sure. Foreman and Chase? HOUSE: Research? I read somewhere that the scene where the fellows were killing time in the office -- answering mail, doing crosswords, looking bored -- was transplanted from the unaired version of the pilot that was distributed in magazines as an advance promotion. The wardrobe of Foreman and Chase bore this out, as they seemed to be wearing the same clothes they wore in the first office scene in the pilot. (You couldn't see Cameron's street clothes in the transplanted scene.) When House went back to the office for the first differential diagnosis session in "Paternity," he was wearing the same clothes as before, but Foreman and Chase weren't. Actually, I should say that House was wearing almost the same clothes as before, because he emerged from exam room one wearing different sneakers from the ones he was wearing inside the exam room. According to the production codes, "Paternity" was the fifth episode to be shot, but the second to be aired. I've never read an interview explaining why the decision was made to air it second, but my suspicion is that the opening scene to Act I, with House slacking in the exam room and the scene of the bored fellows humorously spliced into the middle of that, was added to the episode last to make for a better flow from the pilot because clinic duty was still a brand-new burden for House at that point. So the slacking scene could have been shot quite a while after principal photography for "Paternity" had finished, which would explain why they could still find most of House's original wardrobe for it, but managed to misplace the shoes. The text around Chase's crossword puzzle was an article on George Stephanopoulos. (No, it's not relevant, but I just love rubbernecking with the zoom function on the DVD player.) Nine down really did look like it said, "Iodine deficiency in children." The word "CRETINISM" was already filled in before Chase asked Foreman what the answer was. Foreman has a tattoo near where his left thumb joins his left forefinger. I couldn't make it out. It reminded me of a stick figure parachuting with one of those arch-like sports chutes. There was what appeared to be a light-skinned woman with long brown hair in a pony tail in Cuddy's secretary's office. The text of Cameron's forged letter to Dan's parents. This one actually did contain some relevant information: I want to first say thank you for contacting my office in regards to your son, Daniel. I am sorry[...] about your son's present condition. I have reviewed the data you forwarded to my office. There certainly are some interesting results[...] Daniel's testing thus far. I also have some concerns from the CT Scans[sic] I reviewed. Although I respect[...] the work of the physicians you have consulted previously, I do feel it is time that Daniel met with a[...] specialist. I feel it is imperative for Daniel to seek advanced medical treatment immediately. Often[...] neurological condition, time is the patient's greatest enemy. I am unable to make appointments in my office at Princeton-Plainsboro teaching hospital. I only consult on patients that are referred to my office from within the hospital. I do however see patients daily at our walk-in clinic. This clinic is designed to treat patients who need to see a physician within Princeton- Plainsboro Teaching Hospital. We are unable to schedule appointments within the walk-in clinic. I am scheduled to see patients daily, Monday through Friday between the hours of 3-6 PM. Thank you for contacting my office and I look forward to consulting you and your family. Sincerely, [signed] Gregg House Gregory House, M.D. While House can obviously be a champion slacker when he wants to be, this made it sound like at least part of the difficulty in seeing him is administrative because you can't see House via an outpatient appointment. You either have to be admitted to the hospital or else seek him out at the clinic. CAMERON: It's impossible to get to you through normal channels. They have called, emailed -- HOUSE: Perseverance does not equal worthiness. Next time you want to get my attention, wear something fun. Low-rider jeans are hot. Since Cameron seemed to be shocked and thrown off her game at House's admission in the pilot that he had hired her because she was pretty (among other reasons), I wonder if he didn't start the sexual harassment until after she reacted that way. CAMERON: Sixteen-year-old male. Sudden onset of double vision and night terrors with no apparent cause. The kid's been to two neurologists and he -- HOUSE: Night terrors? As in big scary monsters? CAMERON: Yes. [House gets up.] Well, where are you going? HOUSE: To see the family. CAMERON: YOU'RE going to examine a patient? HOUSE: Nine times out of ten there's no reason to talk to a patient, but night terrors in a sixteen-year-old is a VERY good reason to talk to this family. Good work. I really liked this about House. There's nothing particularly zebra-ish about sexual abuse, unfortunately, but he got off his ass and made a beeline for the patient when he thought it was going undiagnosed. HOUSE: You're an only child, aren't you? CAMERON: Why would you say that? HOUSE: Because everything is about you. Morrison had a good reaction shot here but damn, she looked like an affronted puppy. She has that kind of rosy-cheeked twenty-something face that they would cast on the WB to play a teenager, and yet they're asking her to play close to 30 here. At least they started making up her face to look older later on. HOUSE: Fifty bucks says I'm right. FOREMAN: I'll take your money. The first onscreen bet between House and another regular. CAMERON: No, parents said he was conscious during the event and didn't remember anything afterwards. That's a night terror. CHASE: "Parents said"? HOUSE: That's a good point. I loved Chase's self-satisfied chomp on his pencil at this. They really laid it on thick with his eagerness for approval in this episode. Jesse Spencer is last billed and rarely shoved to the forefront, but he does some good nonverbal stuff when the director's getting coverage of Chase, and the editor sometimes takes the bait. They lightened Cameron's hair a bit from its extremely dark color in the pilot. Over time, I think they lightened Chase and Wilson's hair slightly too. It seemed like the same truck was parked out in front of the hospital in all those first-season aerial establishing shots whether it was daytime or night. Night filters? There did seem to be remarkably well- differentiated shadows in the night shots. Anamorphic lens for the nightmare of House cutting off Dan's toe? Visual continuity glitch: Foreman and Chase appeared to be in their next-day clothes when they were setting up for the sleep study. When they saw the night terror on the EEG screen, though, they were back to their clothes from the day before. ACT II 10:43 CHASE: Meningeal enhancement. My bet is viral meningitis. HOUSE: Excellent. You see what he did there? He took a small clue that there's a neurological problem and wasn't afraid to run with it. FOREMAN: There's no evidence of meningitis on that MRI. HOUSE: No, there's not. He's completely wrong. CAMERON: Then what clue are you talking about? HOUSE: He knew that I saw something on the MRI, so he figured there must be something there and took a guess. Clever, but also pathetic. Heh. Chase was the kid who always put his hand up first in school. CHASE: There's some bowing, there. An upward arch. HOUSE: Are you guessing? CHASE: Yes. HOUSE: Too bad. You're right. Hee. FOREMAN: He probably just moved. Nobody stays perfectly still for their entire MRI. HOUSE: Yeah. Probably got restless and shifted one hemisphere of his brain to a more comfortable position. lol. Hm. There seemed to be some dates on Dan's MRI scans: 22-SEP-1969 15-SEP-1997 But since Dan was born around 1988 and admitted to PPTH in 2004, I have to assume these were artifacts of the real-life patient the scans were taken of. There was a silent nurse or tech assisting Foreman during the radionucleotide cisternogram. While sometimes they just dispense with nurses and techs on this show, I also think it's sometimes easy not to notice the extras who don't have lines to say. Foreman was observant enough to notice the eye flecks in Dan and his father, but not observant enough to notice the cleft-chin clue, which I would have thought was a more well-known genetic trait. (Then again, I missed it too the first time, and I had even heard about it before.) Interesting quasi-"invisible" cut between the nurse running out of Dan's empty room to Cameron running in to tell Foreman about the security cameras. Quite a set of stiletto heels on Cameron. Very professional. There were two cigars in House's ashtray at home. At least one of them was smoking. On House's piano: Sohmer & Co. The nightmare of House cutting off Dan's toe was grotesque, but the lacrosse field at night, with Chase trying to talk Dan out of it, was downright eerie. There were skyscrapers behind Chase and Dan in the medium shots during the rooftop scene. In that part of New Jersey? Digital compositing to put the human figures on top of the long shot of the PPTH roof? ACT III 21:36 HOUSE: How'd you talk him down? FOREMAN: Actually, Chase tackled him. HOUSE: How come you didn't do it? FOREMAN: Right, well, I am black, but he was closer. Loved Foreman beating House to the punch. House almost seemed to smile. HOUSE: Why does everybody always think I'm being sarcastic? Operant conditioning. HOUSE: [To Foreman] You want some of this? [Indicates coffee.] FOREMAN: Yeah, sure. Heh. House not only got coffee for Foreman, but he knew without asking what to add to it. CAMERON: What about sex? HOUSE: Well, it might get complicated. I mean, we work together. I'm older, certainly, but maybe you like that. CAMERON: I meant maybe he has neurosyphilis. HOUSE: Heh. Nice cover. I'm surprised House couldn't see any way that this might backfire. HOUSE: Show of hands. Who thinks I'm not in my right mind? [No one moves.] And who thinks I forget this fairly basic neurological fact? [No one moves.] Who thinks there's a third option? [Chase raises his hand.] Very good. What's the third choice? CHASE: No idea. You just asked if I thought there was one. Chase taking guesses based, not on what he knew, but instead on what he figured House had to know, was a great running gag. Betting on House is the percentage guess (Chase was the only one not to weigh in on the paternity bet), but it doesn't exactly test your own skills. HOUSE: Yeah, pain'll make you do stupid things. House took a Vicodin while examining the infected leg in the clinic. This was also the second and, I believe, last time he shared a Vicodin with a patient. HOUSE: Now, why would you drive seventy miles to get treatment for a condition that a nine-year-old could diagnose? It's the free-flowing pus that's the tipoff. FUNSTEN: I was in town. HOUSE: Not for family. Not for work. My first guess as to why Funsten, the litigious clinic patient, drove out of his way to get treatment was that he was having an out-of-town affair. My second guess was that he was known by the closer hospitals to be wanted by the law. CUDDY: How's your hooker doing? HOUSE: Oh, sweet of you to ask. Funny story, she was going to be hospital administrator, but just hated having to screw people like that. CUDDY: I heard you found her on the roof. HOUSE: You have very acute hearing. CUDDY: You notify the parents? HOUSE: In due course, of course. lol. HOUSE: My guy knows a guy who can get you in for fifty bucks. CUDDY: Fine. Tell your guy if I win, you attend the faculty symposium and you wear a tie. HOUSE: And if I win, no clinic hours for a week. Smart wager on Cuddy's part, since I can't imagine any amount of money inducing House to wear a tie. On the other hand the particulars of the bet should have had everyone holding onto their wallets. Maybe the fellows hadn't been around long enough to know better, but surely Wilson and Cuddy already knew that House didn't make medical bets on a whim. Robert Sean Leonard is a good-looking guy, but sometimes I could swear he looks a little cross-eyed. Since the hallucinatory voices weren't credited, I wonder if the same people who played Dan's parents voiced the hallucinations as well. ACT IV 28:20 HOUSE: [To Funsten] Uh-uh. These are mine now. I'll see you in court. If you annoy House, he'll take it as a challenge be more annoying back at you. It's funny when he does it to people who have no business being annoying. There was a young light-skinned brunette secretary (possibly the same one as before) in the outer chamber of Cuddy's office when House burst in on the meeting with Dan's parents. The woman did look like she was about to protest what House was doing, but House was too fast for her. HOUSE: [To Cuddy] Can we get off my screw-ups and focus on theirs? Theirs is bigger. [To the parents] You're not Dan's parents. House cleverly admitted to screwing up only because he had the means to deflect attention to something else. HOUSE: [To Cuddy] Again, why are we getting hung up on what I did? [To Dan's parents] Your medical history is useless. DAD: No, we gave you a detailed history of his biological mother. MOM: Her history: nonsmoker, good health, low cholesterol, no blood pressure problems. DAD: Dan was adopted two weeks after he was born. You have his history. There's nothing you need to know that we didn't tell you. HOUSE: Was she vaccinated? The biological mother, when she was a baby, did she get her vaccinations? So the title of the episode was a red herring. The case didn't hinge upon paternity at all, but upon maternity. But if House had to ask this question, then that meant there was no record of maternal vaccinations in the medical history. House made it sound like the problem was that he was given the wrong maternal vaccination history (i.e., Dan's parents screwed up), but to get this line to make sense, the problem had to be that the Diagnostics Dept. failed to ask about any maternal vaccination history at all (they screwed up). Given the later dialogue, this couldn't have been the writer's intention, but if we follow this line of reasoning, then it wasn't like House would have been able to figure out the solution if only the adoptive parents had told the truth about the adoption from the beginning. In fact, it wouldn't even be clear why the answer finally dawned on House at that moment rather than back when he was scaring the antivaccination mom in the clinic, which would have more typically been the moment of greater _satori_. No doctor after my college's health department has asked me about my own vaccinations, much less about my biological mother's. In fact, my current doctor insisted on running an antibody test before she'd give me the chickenpox vaccination that I asked for. (I tried to tell her the test was a waste of money, but she wouldn't listen.) The automatic assumption seems to be that everyone in the U.S. has been vaccinated for all childhood diseases that they haven't had, which isn't a safe bet these days. Even in this more enlightened age, you're probably lucky if you get a single typewritten page of medical history on the biological parents of a child put up for adoption. When Team House discussed the correct diagnosis, there were two lines in the original broadcast closed captions that did not have any audio counterpart on the soundtrack and were not included in the DVD subtitles. Ordinarily, I would just chalk it up to last-minute revision. In fact, I could buy this in the case of the first line. However, the absence of the second line from the soundtrack struck me as stranger because the dialogue would have made more sense to me if it had been left in. The dialogue with the two missing lines replaced in all caps (attribution uncertain): FOREMAN: Subacute sclerosing panencephalitis. ?????: MISSED IT ON MY BOARDS. HOUSE: I know. There's only been twenty cases in the United States in the last thirty years. FOREMAN: I suppose you could make an argument the kid's still in stage one. Once SSPE moves to stage two -- HOUSE: -- boom. Stage two is universally fatal. CAMERON: I assume it's impossible to know when he might move into stage two. HOUSE: He's already started showing symptoms. Could be a month, could be tonight. CAMERON: Can we treat it? HOUSE: Ask the neurologist. FOREMAN: Intraventricular interferon. CHASE: We're not gonna shove a spike into his brain and drip interferon without confirming this diagnosis. HOUSE: Tap him. FOREMAN: We won't get a reliable result for measles antibodies in his CSF, not after everything we've given him. HOUSE: So the wrong treatment kills any hope of the right diagnosis. Why do people lie to me? CHASE?: BRAIN BIOPSY WILL CONFIRM IT. HOUSE: It could also kill him. Your ball, Foreman. Tell me I don't have to biopsy his brain. "After everything we've given him"? Did they actually start Dan on drugs for multiple sclerosis? Because the only drug they mentioned by name was penicillin. Twenty cases in the U.S. in 30 years? That's some long odds. Also, House continuing to harp on the parents' lie reinforced my sense that the writer meant for there to be a false maternal vaccination history in the medical record and didn't adjust the dialogue accordingly. FOREMAN: [To Dan] The needle travels to the back of the eye, which is where we perform the biopsy on your retina. From the sound of things, the two needle-in-the-eye shots on this show have caused more vicarious viewer suffering than all the blood-&-guts shots put together. (Me, I can eat dinner while watching _House_.) On the other hand, it's probably pretty gross to be awake while they're drilling through your skull. The sound via bone conduction alone ... HOUSE: If not for the paternity bet, I never would have taken their DNA. Without their DNA, we never would have discovered that Dan was adopted, which was the key to this case. Again, the direct implication that there was a false maternal vaccination record in the medical history. CUDDY: [To House] Fine. I will let you out of clinic duty for one week, after you pay the thirty-two hundred for the PCR test. I love it when Cuddy holds the line. And when House slapped his cane down, she just laughed. I started out simply ignoring the final song, but the more I hear it, the more I hate it. It's intolerably sappy and sentimental. They shot both lacrosse scenes at the same field (which would be the practical thing to do to save production money), but the director tried not to make it obvious. The game at the end had bleachers and advertisements. The game in the prologue showed no bleachers, advertisements, or even seated spectators, giving a much more low-budget feel to the event. House couldn't have been attending one of Dan's games. House rooted for number 18 ("one-eight") on the Comets, who were playing against the Raptors. Dan was number 29 for the Tartans, who had been playing against the Adrenaline[sic] (which was evidently product placement for a line of sportswear). Seen on signs at the lacrosse field at the end: South Swell LACROSSE www.southswellsports.com (a real California-based sporting goods company) Columbia Sportswear Company columbia.com (a real sportswear company) I originally thought the final lacrosse scene was a flashback to House's youth and that #18 was House himself, but now that I've seen a better copy of the episode, I have to take into account the potential anachronism of the web URLs on the signs. Now I'm wondering if maybe House had played in an adult league of some sort, so the memory wasn't quite as distant. The only alternative is that House picked a game to watch at random, which is kind of lame (no pun intended). In any event, though, the way he moved and held the cane, as if mimicking holding a lacrosse stick, seemed to be designed to say that he had once played lacrosse himself. Based on wardrobe changes and dialogue, the action took place on seven or eight distinct days. The first day, when Dan collapsed, was approximately three weeks before the second. The rest were probably continuous, except for the last one or two, which may have been after the final treatment had started to show results. Vicodin count: 2 Medical synopsis: A plot sudden onset of double vision and night terrors initial diagnosis: sexual abuse head injury diagnosis: concussion myoclonic jerk polysomnograph CT, MRI, CBC, Chem-7, chest x-ray bowing of the corpus callosum diagnosis: blockage of CSF (cerebrospinal fluid) radionucleotide cisternogram insertion of a shunt in the brain VEP (visual evoked potential test) oligoclonal bands and an increased intrathecal IgG (Immunoglobulin G) diagnosis: multiple sclerosis conscious hallucinations diagnosis: neurosyphilis penicillin in the spinal cord auditory hallucinations EEG (electroencephalogram), left and right EOG (electro-oculograph), esophageal microphones retinal biopsy final diagnosis: SSPE (subacute sclerosing panencephalitis) caused by a mutated measles virus in the brain from having been infected after being born of a biological mother without antibodies, but before having been vaccinated at six months interferon dripped directly into the left hemisphere of the brain Clinic patients: 1) unvaccinated baby with a cold 2) litigant with a thigh abscess -- .