House timeline discussion
So last night I had insomnia, and started thinking about the House timeline, because lying awake at 2 am makes you think of weird things. Thanks clinic_duty for the transcripts!
- Danny disappeared while Wilson was in medical school (The Social Contract), so approximately between 1987-1991 (Birthmarks, Lockdown).
- House and Cuddy meet while Cuddy is in medical school, which would have been 1988-1992 (Known Unknowns). Their conversation in that episode makes me think it was her first year of medical school, 1988, but that's not certain. Their relationship was cut short when House was expelled from medical school, and he didn't stay in touch with her. Interesting fact: Cuddy was married for six days in 1987, she would have been 20 (Small Sacrifices).
- Wilson and House met in 1991 or possibly early 1992 (Birthmarks, Lockdown) when Sam filed for divorce. (Sam and Wilson were married in 1990, Wilson would have been 23 or 24.)
- House and Stacy got together in 1995 (The Honeymoon, Need To Know). She was the hospital lawyer, we don't know if it was before or after he started working at PPTH but he wasn't working at PPTH when they met.
- Wilson saw Danny for the last time in Princeton in late 1995 or early 1996 (Histories).
- Cuddy applied for, and presumably got, the VP of Administration job in 1996 (Small Sacrifices). That was four years after graduating medical school (Humpty Dumpty). We don't know if she was already working at PPTH when she applied for the position or not, but given that she did fill out an application with HR I'm assuming she wasn't and that she therefore started at PPTH in 1996 as VP of Administration.
- House started working at PPTH in 1997 (Mob Rules).
- Cuddy became Dean of Medicine in 1999 (Humpty Dumpty, Small Sacrifices).
- House and Stacy broke up in 2000. He had the infarction sometime between 1995 (when they got together) and 2000, probably in 1999 or 2000 (The Honeymoon, Need To Know).
- Wilson started working at PPTH in 2000 or 2001 (Holding On), depending on whether you assume there's an extra year between S7 and S8 or not. If you don't (the writers seem to have forgotten it) then it's 2000. House told him there was a position available at PPTH and thought Wilson applied to be closer to House, but he actually hoped to find his brother whom he'd last seen in Princeton (The Social Contract).
That gives us the following facts that I'm throwing open for discussion.
- Cuddy really did hire House as was frequently stated on the show, the year after she began working at PPTH; for nearly her entire life as an administrator he's been her employee, in fact.
- House was with Stacy when Cuddy hired him.
- House and Wilson were friends for 8 or 9 years before they started working together, and wherever Wilson was he wasn't living in Princeton (The Social Contract).
- House and Wilson were also friends for ~4 years when Wilson spotted Danny in Princeton, and Wilson never told House about him and House never suspected.
- Wilson started working at PPTH after the infarction, or possibly around the time of.
- Cuddy was promoted to Dean of Medicine either before the infarction or at the time of.
- In Knight Fall Cuddy says she remembers what Wilson was like when Sam left him, but that would have been 8 or 9 years before they started working together. Either the writers flubbed that (in the same episode they stated that Wilson and Sam were married 12 years ago, later admitting it was a mistake and it had been 20 years as previously established in Lockdown) or he and Cuddy were friends before he was hired at PPTH. Cuddy said in Wilson that she made him Head of Oncology because he's thoughtful and caring, implying she knew him personally; if they were friends before he was hired at PPTH then she could have hired him as Head of Oncology, rather than him being promoted later.
Hector was born in 1990, the dog that Wilson and Bonnie got on their honeymoon (Family). If you choose to include that in your timeline it would mean that 1) he was already a full-grown dog when they adopted him (although Bonnie said they had him as a puppy in House Training) and 2) Wilson must have married her immediately after divorcing Sam, although House said in Knight Fall that Wilson suffered from that first divorce for years. Therefore I'm choosing to ignore the Hector timeline, as it's called. Without it we don't have any dates for Wilson's marriages to Bonnie and Julie, all we know is that he married and divorced Bonnie and then married Julie all between 1991 and 2004. We do know that Wilson was House's "best friend" when Wilson began dating Bonnie (House Training).
Cuddy was 38 in S5 and 43 in S7. I'm choosing the latter age as canon, it makes more sense.