Dun dun dunnnn
A few things that aren’t necessarily ‘strange’, just very pointed as regards relationships, etc. Mama Cuddy does seem awfully House-like, though - bitchy, even putting Cuddy down. In House’s office, her body language is more like Cuddy’s - feet up on the desk. (Wouldn’t that be uncomfortable, for someone with a hip replacement?) But her attitude is like House. Could he be conjuring her from his own mind too? And Martha seems to keep going back and forth between the ‘inexperienced’ med student, and someone with knowledge and poise beyond her years. o_O I dunno. Pick and choose your own weirdness, this ep.
Carrot or Stick
- Okay, so the POTW’s story clearly seems very House-like, with the military, daddy-issues and all of that. And yet, the show doesn’t *really* peg it in? Can’t fathom that one.
- House is humming on the way into the office…usually only happens when he’s happy.
- Foreman about Martha - “She’s brilliant, but, uh, new to the real world.”
- On the wall in the barracks - “Change Your Life - Become Your Dream - …Give It, Earn It - ….ity Through ….”
- Waldenwood’s seal says ‘Founded 1923’. Isn’t 23 a bit of a theme too? Has it only been 23 years they’ve known each other, maybe?
- Chase goes to the trouble of blowing up his FacePlace picture, to try to find another clue in it besides the hotel name off the towel. Come on - they’re putting this kind of thing IN the show…they’ve got to be wanting us to do the same thing.
- House to Martha - “Means he’s running out of time. Means you are, too.”
- More brain scans on House’s wall - but the patients issues don’t involve the brain. ?
- House is bragging about Rachel to the clinic patient. The clinic patient?? House has been unusually open to random strangers lately, it seems.
Okay, the biggest thing here that could be clue-like (rather than just significant for House and his general situation/daddy issues) is the words on the barracks wall, I think. Change your life, become your dream. A clue that House is, in fact, dreaming, and he’ll have to change something to make that dream a reality?
Family Practice
- OOH! The ep starts with the Cuddy ladies shopping in what seems, frankly, kind of an odd shop - it’s so personal-attention, old-fashioned, practically like a bridal salon. BUT. The MUSIC. Is Mr. Sandman. As in, ‘bring me a dream’? This is so totally the way House would imagine it to be - including the ‘Italian hooker’ line, and probably the fact that Cuddy’s bra is showing, too. (Also, ‘if you didn’t want to be insulted, you wouldn’t have invited me’. That’s *classic* House.)
- Cyanotic toes in the morgue, camera moves from them to House. (Probably just a location-establishing shot, nothing further intended, but still.)
- Cuddy - What about the macrocytic anemia? House - Borderline, which is the lab equivalent of imaginary, which, by the way, matches the rest of her medical history.
- Arlene: Aye… Not her fault. This "Dean of Medicine" stuff - very impressive at parties. But she's forgotten how to be a real doctor. (That sounds exactly like a House-insult-towards-Cuddy.)
- What’s with the weird Western photo of the Cuddy ladies? Besides that Arlene is gazing at Julia and ignoring Lisa in it? (More Butch Cassidy-ish?)
- Arlene: You think I'm a hypochondriac?
House: Well, let me answer this way- maybe you're imagining that I think you're a hypochondriac. - Arlene’s voice: Dr. Kaufman's single. Did you know he went to Harvard Medical School?
Cuddy’s voice: Mom, stop yenta-ing for one minute!
Arlene’s voice: If you want gloomy and unable to commit, then stick with the goyishe one. (Again - probably something that House would worry about/conjure up.) - Another brain scan of another kid, another car accident, with a ‘bleed in his brain’. Just like Jack Cannon, supposedly? (A kid with messed-up legs, no less.) (Later, nothing’s wrong with the kid, which is ‘good news for him’.)
- DDX over a coma patient.
- Book on Cuddy’s shelf is Diagnostic Pathology, 4th edition. No idea what it could mean, except that it is in focus so we can read it, and only loses focus later. It’s also not the book Cuddy pulls off the shelf.
- Right after that, the camera’s on Cuddy, but the reflection/shadow next to her is Martha’s. The shot makes it look like it ‘ought’ to be Cuddy’s reflection, shots are often done that way, but it’s clearly Martha. It’s a little strange.
- All the tense scenes have pouring rain in the background - simple drama, or more ‘weird weather’?
- Major emphasis on ‘this patient is the highest priority’.
- Arlene keeps coming to see Cuddy in the clinic….and yet, House has never seen her, or has any idea what she looks like? That is NOT the nosy, snoopy, observant House we know.