The entire thread can be read at Google Groups: Subject: HOUSE, M.D.: 6. "The Socratic Method" From: MDuPree@theworld.com.snip.to.reply (Micky DuPree) Newsgroups: rec.arts.tv,alt.tv.house-md Date: Sun, 12 Mar 2006 16:45:43 +0000 (UTC) Organization: The World : www.TheWorld.com : Since 1989 Message-ID: Lines: 1069 Potential spoilers for later episodes: I do some pretty obvious hinting about future character developments, but I think that the episode itself made some pretty clear implications in that regard. I grumble about how the second season isn't as good as the first because they've dropped certain elements, which I guess constitutes spoilers if you're a purist, but I tried not to get specific and give away particular episodes. Elapsed time numbers are for the DVD copy. Once again, I had no trouble believing the guest performances, either from the actress who played crazy Lucy, nor from Aaron Himelstein, who played Lucas, her son, and whom I've seen do a creditable job as Friedman the obnoxious twit on _Joan of Arcadia_. It was nice to see him in a sympathetic role. Though not a flawless episode, this was still intelligent, humorous, touching, and one of my early favorites. I found myself more drawn into Lucy and Luke's story than I usually am with A-plot patients, presumably because House himself was atypically drawn into their lives. PROLOGUE Sign: New Jersey Department of Employment Development I would have thought that benefits for non-work-related medical disability would come through social services or even Social Security, not through an employment office. The episode guide at TV.com identifies the name of the Department of Employment Development case worker, played by Sonya Eddy (one of the many faces of God on _Joan of Arcadia_), as "Sally," so I went with that. SALLY: The first diagnosis -- LUKE: Schizophrenia. Doctor Walters, May eleven last year. The letter's in the medical file. SALLY: And April sixth? That was the last day she worked? But she received unemployment benefits for that week. Time line note. SALLY: And you're the dependent? LUKE: No. That's my little brother. I'm eighteen. Just helping out. I was a little surprised that the case worker didn't turn the family in to social services since the mother was clearly unfit and she had a dependent listed in her record. Yeah, Luke lied and said he was the older brother, but he wasn't likely to have been his fictitious younger brother's legal guardian. But I guess it was a case of "not my table." They cheated the shot of Lucy's right eye in the prologue. It was a pretty tight closeup, but there was no sign of the copper ring around the iris that they'd show at the end. (Not that one person in ten thousand would have clued in even if there had been discernible copper rings around her irises at the beginning, so I can forgive them saving money on the CGI.) FROG: Hey! I'm talking to you. The cat's first. Now it's your turn, Lucy. The frog was uncredited. It's been tough getting work since _Wonderfalls_ was cancelled. The first time I watched this episode, I thought that Luke's hurt wrist was a gratuitous instant injury, a pretext for House to "x-ray" Luke and get him to confess his real age. This time through, though, I noticed that Luke did seem to come down hard on his left wrist when Lucy fell over in the employment office. They should have made it a little easier to notice that on first viewing. ACT I 3:02 I assume Luke was supposed to be waiting in the emergency room. It was really the second-floor waiting area redressed, with the atrium covered over by wood panels. He rubbed his left wrist when he was in the waiting area, but given that he was also pacing impatiently, I probably originally dismissed the gesture as a sign of frustrated worry, not of injury. P.A.: Doctor Gregory House, please call Doctor Cuddy at extension three-seven-three-one. Heh. At least hiding out from Cuddy gave House some kind of excuse for being in the right place at the right time, but it continued his lucky streak of catching zebras by sheer propinquity, from just happening to hear about two babies in "Maternity," to being assigned a clinic zebra at random in "Damned If You Do," to just happening to be in earshot of the latest zebra case in this episode. We never did find out why Cuddy was paging him, but it's not like he doesn't routinely give her reasons. Once again, unlike most people, House didn't have to consciously pay attention to notice what was going on around him. In fact, I don't think he could turn this faculty off even if he wanted to. On the newspaper that House was reading: front: Girl Scout Saves Family from ??? back: Millions Watch Televised Execution By process of elimination, the E.R. doctor who gave Luke the rundown on his mom had to have been the character listed as "Clark" in the credits. However, we were never told his name onscreen. Despite the fact that we learned the name of a hospital surgeon in this episode, it's easy to get the impression that the Diagnostics Dept. works in complete isolation. CLARK: Your mom's blood alcohol was point-one-two. Ten thirty in the morning. LUKE: I gave it to her. Two ounces of vodka. It cools her out. But that's the first since Monday. That was three days ago. Time line note. The action started on a Thursday. LUKE: She hears voices. CLARK: She's schizophrenic. Explains the DVT. The alcohol makes her pass out. She's immobile for long periods of time -- That's frustrating, to hear doctors latch onto a pet theory that then makes them impervious to alternative explanations. Chase jumped on this bandwagon as well. CLARK: I'd be happy to refer you the case, Doctor House. You seem so interested. Lots of people would remark on House's interest in this case. Also, this indicated that other doctors at the hospital knew House by name, by sight, and by reputation. HOUSE: On the other hand, we don't really know anything about schizophrenia, so maybe it is connected. WILSON: Well, schizophrenia explains one mystery: why you're so fascinated by a woman with a bump in her leg. It's like Picasso deciding to whitewash a fence. HOUSE: Thanks. I'm more of a Leroy Neiman man. Inspiring an entire style of _TV Guide_ covers in my adolescence. Demotic of House. HOUSE: And it is only about the DVT. She's thirty-eight-years old. She shouldn't -- WILSON: Right, solve this one and you're on your way to Stockholm. HOUSE: We don't even know how to treat it. Come on. Fumigation of the vagina? Must have been particularly painful for male schizophrenics. WILSON: A little louder. I don't think everyone heard you. LOL. The nurse looked like she wanted to lock House up. HOUSE: Two thousand years ago, that's how Galen treated schizophrenics. The Marcus Welby of ancient Greece. WILSON: Oh, clearly you're not interested. HOUSE: Oh, I'm interested. I'm interested in how voices in the head could be caused by malposition of the uterus. WILSON: There's a better place for it? Safety deposit box, where it can't get into trouble. HOUSE: And now what do we got? We got lobotomies, rubber rooms, electric shocks. My, Galen was so primitive. WILSON: Where are you going? HOUSE: Going to see the patient. That all-important human connection. Thought I'd give it a whirl. WILSON: You won't talk to patients because they lie, but give you a patient with no concept of reality -- HOUSE: If it wasn't for Socrates, that raving untreated schizophrenic, we wouldn't have the Socratic method, the best way of teaching everything, apart from juggling chain saws. I didn't see strong evidence of use of the traditional meaning of "Socratic method" in this episode (though House would employ it in other episodes), so I assumed they were going for a different meaning with the episode title here: listening to madness in order to divine its method. Of course, there's far from universal agreement that Socrates and Newton suffered from schizophrenia, but the former did claim to hear voices and the latter did run off the rails for a few years in middle age before suddenly and inexplicably achieving clarity again. HOUSE: Without Isaac Newton, we'd be floating on the ceiling. WILSON: Dodging chain saws, no doubt. Heh. Wilson did a pretty good job of keeping up. HOUSE: And that guitar player in that English band, he was great. You think I'm interested because of the schizophrenia. WILSON: Yeah. I'm pretty sure. I was intrigued by the degree to which the story made an issue of House's interest. It was the central subject of this conversation. I think Wilson was right about House's interest in the schizophrenia, but given the point at which House involved himself and what happened over the course of the episode, I had to suspect House also wanted to help the kid. HOUSE: Galen was pretty sure about the fumigation thing. Pink Floyd. From classic Greek to classic rock. I miss this House. Wilson was holding a copy of the _Placebo Journal_ (medical humor magazine). HOUSE: [To Lucy] Nice kid. How much do you really drink? FOREMAN: He's really talking to a patient? CHASE: I don't know who I am anymore. rotfl. FOREMAN: It's a blood clot. What's so fascinating about that? CHASE: He likes crazy people, likes the way they think. Unfortunately, House would be derisive of another mentally ill patient in the second season. FOREMAN: They think badly. That's the definition of crazy. Why would he like -- CHASE: They're not boring. He likes that. Another indication that Foreman was the new kid, while Chase had worked for House longer and could therefore explain him to Foreman. This was the sixth episode aired, but only the third one shot. It also implied that Chase had seen House fascinated by a crazy person 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. 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