Mr. Continuity
Just a quick post to answer a few questions. First: yes, House went to Michigan first. I am charmed by the idea that, like Lex Luthor of Smallville, House was thrown out of more than one school. No, this was not a bit of carelessness we’re trying to quickly retcon after the fact - note that House says “thrown out of my first med school,” implying there was more than one. Just to make sure we were in lawful territory, when we were writing this we went back and pulled every reference to House and Cuddy’s past from every episode where it was mentioned. Mind you, sometimes mistakes can creep in because writers are used to hearing ideas that never make it to script, or reading things in scripts that never make it to air, or watching episode cuts that go on to lose scenes before the audience sees them. Those things can lodge in your mind. So we were careful to get the final transcripts - and then, in one case, corrected a reference to something that changed after the final draft was written, and hadn’t been updated in script form. Recently I heard from a couple of people who referenced a tweet I’d made, in which I “tried to explain my mistake.” So, my friends, I challenge you: if anybody can point to a line of dialogue anywhere in the show where it was stated that Hopkins came first, I will take you out to lunch personally and tell you how clever you are. While I’m as amused as anyone by our occasional tumbles from the railroad of continuity, this was not one.
(I used to wonder, actually, where the whole “Hopkins was first” thing came from, till someone told me it was once on Wikipedia. In fact, the person who told me this was an assistant at House whom I’d asked to double-check my continuity accuracy, because we were being, well, careful. When I heard this, I figured that a fan somewhere made an assumption. Since we aired the episode, I’ve also heard that the Fox site might have said so as well. I can’t confirm this personally, but if so, I can only wonder whether the Fox site got it from Wikipedia (stuff like that happens) or vice versa; such is the serpent ouroborus of TV-fan interaction in these exciting times.)
As it happens, continuity is one of my personal bugaboos. When I read a script that says, for instance, that Wilson’s second wife has a dog who’s 17 years old, I completely rebuild my mental picture of how long House and Wilson have known each other, because that is the kind of girl I am. (“But, Doris, they could always have gotten the dog when he was already old.” Me, stubborn as a toddler: “No, they couldn’t, because the dialogue says they got him as a puppy.” Thus do we get the origin story in “Birthmarks.”)
In this obsessive spirit, when we first started talking about how House and Cuddy might look back at their first meeting, I originally wanted them to have entirely dueling versions of it, a kind of Rashomon meta-joke on the occasional continuity tangles a show in its sixth season can get into. But as the scene was refined, I realized it would work better for them to have more or less the same memories, but interpret them differently. I loved the idea of House in the campus bookstore, a local legend who could mercilessly analyze innocent students from their syllabi. So there’s Lisa Cuddy, at the opening of the semester, one of a line of students halfway around the block. She gets to the counter, gives the guy her list, and gets a load of unasked-for and troublingly accurate personal information along with her books. She goes away, intrigued.
For House, of course, she was one of the teeming masses of students looking for books. He doesn’t notice her till later, when he hears her arguing with the professor in endocrinology. He doesn’t remember her from the bookstore; he doesn’t even know (then) that she’s an undergrad. But he’s intrigued. He tracks her down at a campus dance. It’s their first dance together, and from his point of view, this was all his own idea. He picked her out; he pursued her.
He goes on thinking that as the next few months pass. Cuddy knows differently. One night they’re at a party given by one of their classmates, a mutual friend, and she makes her move. They spend the night together.
And then he disappears. She gets that something happened, she gets that he's not around - but not even a phone call?
So all this time, House has assumed the determination of their relationship had been in his hands; that he had planned it and courted her. Actually, it was strong-willed Lisa Cuddy who’d singled him out; Cuddy who knew what she wanted in school and (she thought) in life; Cuddy, the future endocrinologist, who talked her way into attending classes undergrads weren’t supposed to get into; Cuddy who came out of the whole thing thinking that maybe what she’d wanted this time just hadn’t wanted her back. And that’s colored her relationship with House ever since.
So House learns that their relationship didn’t begin the way he thought; and Cuddy learns that their relationship didn’t end the way she thought. There’s nothing more poignant than knowledge that comes too late. (As my favorite episode of Babylon 5 attests.) And when we were going through actual programming schedules from medical conferences, and the first one we read listed an 80s dance, it seemed serendipitous. Where better to discuss the 80s? (As someone who lived through that decade, the idea of an 80s dance always feels to me like having a party on Wednesday in honor of Tuesday. But I digress.) (I also have a compulsion to give characters "their moment," a drop of honey in the cup, particularly when they've had bad times before, or have bad times ahead. I once argued passionately on Smallville to let Clark take Chloe to the prom in season one; that poor girl had been passed over all year. The character deserved her moment!)
So. Yes. Continuity? I may not always be perfect. Sometimes, in fact, I make stupid mistakes, and the doom of television is that they never go away. But I happen to give a damn.
(I used to wonder, actually, where the whole “Hopkins was first” thing came from, till someone told me it was once on Wikipedia. In fact, the person who told me this was an assistant at House whom I’d asked to double-check my continuity accuracy, because we were being, well, careful. When I heard this, I figured that a fan somewhere made an assumption. Since we aired the episode, I’ve also heard that the Fox site might have said so as well. I can’t confirm this personally, but if so, I can only wonder whether the Fox site got it from Wikipedia (stuff like that happens) or vice versa; such is the serpent ouroborus of TV-fan interaction in these exciting times.)
As it happens, continuity is one of my personal bugaboos. When I read a script that says, for instance, that Wilson’s second wife has a dog who’s 17 years old, I completely rebuild my mental picture of how long House and Wilson have known each other, because that is the kind of girl I am. (“But, Doris, they could always have gotten the dog when he was already old.” Me, stubborn as a toddler: “No, they couldn’t, because the dialogue says they got him as a puppy.” Thus do we get the origin story in “Birthmarks.”)
In this obsessive spirit, when we first started talking about how House and Cuddy might look back at their first meeting, I originally wanted them to have entirely dueling versions of it, a kind of Rashomon meta-joke on the occasional continuity tangles a show in its sixth season can get into. But as the scene was refined, I realized it would work better for them to have more or less the same memories, but interpret them differently. I loved the idea of House in the campus bookstore, a local legend who could mercilessly analyze innocent students from their syllabi. So there’s Lisa Cuddy, at the opening of the semester, one of a line of students halfway around the block. She gets to the counter, gives the guy her list, and gets a load of unasked-for and troublingly accurate personal information along with her books. She goes away, intrigued.
For House, of course, she was one of the teeming masses of students looking for books. He doesn’t notice her till later, when he hears her arguing with the professor in endocrinology. He doesn’t remember her from the bookstore; he doesn’t even know (then) that she’s an undergrad. But he’s intrigued. He tracks her down at a campus dance. It’s their first dance together, and from his point of view, this was all his own idea. He picked her out; he pursued her.
He goes on thinking that as the next few months pass. Cuddy knows differently. One night they’re at a party given by one of their classmates, a mutual friend, and she makes her move. They spend the night together.
And then he disappears. She gets that something happened, she gets that he's not around - but not even a phone call?
So all this time, House has assumed the determination of their relationship had been in his hands; that he had planned it and courted her. Actually, it was strong-willed Lisa Cuddy who’d singled him out; Cuddy who knew what she wanted in school and (she thought) in life; Cuddy, the future endocrinologist, who talked her way into attending classes undergrads weren’t supposed to get into; Cuddy who came out of the whole thing thinking that maybe what she’d wanted this time just hadn’t wanted her back. And that’s colored her relationship with House ever since.
So House learns that their relationship didn’t begin the way he thought; and Cuddy learns that their relationship didn’t end the way she thought. There’s nothing more poignant than knowledge that comes too late. (As my favorite episode of Babylon 5 attests.) And when we were going through actual programming schedules from medical conferences, and the first one we read listed an 80s dance, it seemed serendipitous. Where better to discuss the 80s? (As someone who lived through that decade, the idea of an 80s dance always feels to me like having a party on Wednesday in honor of Tuesday. But I digress.) (I also have a compulsion to give characters "their moment," a drop of honey in the cup, particularly when they've had bad times before, or have bad times ahead. I once argued passionately on Smallville to let Clark take Chloe to the prom in season one; that poor girl had been passed over all year. The character deserved her moment!)
So. Yes. Continuity? I may not always be perfect. Sometimes, in fact, I make stupid mistakes, and the doom of television is that they never go away. But I happen to give a damn.