"House M.D." Pilot (2004)

User Rating:

8.6/10   

Director:

Bryan Singer

Writers:

David Shore (creator)
David Shore (written by)

TV Series:

"House M.D." (2004)

Original Air Date:

16 November 2004 (Season 1, Episode 1)

Genre:

Drama | Mystery

Plot:

Young kindergarten teacher Rebecca Adler collapses in her classroom after uncontrolled gibberish slips out of her mouth while she is about to teach students.

Plot Keywords:

Doctor | Medical Doctor | Medicine | Maverick Doctor | Pain

US TV Schedule:

Tue. July 21

10:00 PM

USA

Pilot

#1.1

Cast

Hugh Laurie	...	Dr. Gregory House
Lisa Edelstein	...	Dr. Lisa Cuddy
Omar Epps	...	Dr. Eric Foreman
Robert Sean Leonard	...	Dr. James Wilson
Jennifer Morrison	...	Dr. Allison Cameron
Jesse Spencer	...	Dr. Robert Chase
Robin Tunney	...	Rebecca Adler
Andrew Airlie	...	Orange Colored Patient
Rekha Sharma	...	Melanie Landon (as Reika Sharma)
Maya Massar	...	Asthma Mom
Dylan Basu	...	Asthma Boy
Ava Hughes	...	Sydney (as Ava Rebecca Hughes)
Kyarra Willis	...	Kid #2
Ethan Kyle Gross	...	Molnar (as Eitan Kyle Gross)
Candus Churchill	...	Substitute Teacher

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Certification:

Portugal:M/12 | Australia:M | Japan:Unrated | USA:TV-14 | Netherlands:12

Company:

Bad Hat Harry Productions

Goofs:

Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): Gregory House suffers with chronic pain from his right leg and uses the walking stick in his right hand. In real life such a person would use the stick in the opposite hand (ie the left hand in his case), to offload the weight on the affected side and form a stable tripod base when mobilizing. This is basic knowledge for anyone in the medical profession.

Quotes:

Dr. Lisa Cuddy: Your reputation won't last if you don't do your job. The clinic is part of your job. I want you to do your job.
Dr. Gregory House: But as the philosopher Jagger once said, "You can't always get what you want".

Movie Connections:

Referenced in "Scrubs: My House (#6.4)" (2007)

Soundtrack:

You Can't Always Get What You Want

You can't always get what you want...

Is it really possible to replicate CSI's case-of-the-week structure inside a hospital setting à la ER? David Shore believed it to be no problem at all. In fact, he threw a little Sherlock Holmes into the mix as well as basis for the main character, and along came House M.D., one of the most intelligent postmodern serials of the 21st century.

Much like the pilot of CSI, the series starts with no need to introduce the various characters and explain the motivation. Instead, we get a teaser where a school teacher (Robin Tunney) starts speaking gibberish before having a seizure, and only then are we allowed to get our first glimpse of Gregory House (Hugh Laurie), head of the Diagnostics Department at Princeton Plainsboro Hospital in New Jersey. At first sight, one would never guess he's a doctor, and not just because he refuses to wear a lab coat: he's rude, acerbic and refuses to shave, plus he walks with a cane because of chronic leg pain to which he responds with far too many pills. In addition, he diagnoses patients without ever seeing them, since he believes total detachment is necessary to crack the "case".

Not that he does any of this alone: he has a team of assistants, which includes neurologist Eric Foreman (Omar Epps), immunologist Allison Cameron (Jennifer Morrison) and Robert Chase (Jesse Spencer). Apart from being regularly insulted by their boss, they run all the tests and occasionally break into people's homes to find out what might be wrong. Not exactly part of the team, but important nonetheless, are oncologist James Wilson (Robert Sean Leonard), House's best (and only?) friend, and Lisa Cuddy (Lisa Edelstein), the misanthropic physician's boss.

This opening episode is a practically perfect combination of three separate efforts (the only defect is the purple-ish cinematography that doesn't occur in the rest of the show): firstly, there's Shore's script, which manages to do to medicine what Aaron Sorkin did to politics, namely make the subject interesting with the assistance of fast-paced, smart dialogue and none of the sloppy sentimentality that characterizes Grey's Anatomy; then there's the director (and executive producer) Bryan Singer, who took a break from superhero films to concentrate on a smaller, character-driven mini-movie, albeit one where his familiarity with special effects does come in handy sometimes (one sequence in particular, where the mysterious disease is headed towards the patient's brain, reminds of the opening credits of the first X-Men).

And last but not least, there's the essential ingredient of quality TV: a good ensemble cast. Everyone pulls it off admirably, with a special mention for Leonard who hadn't been in anything this relevant since Dead Poets Society, but in every scene it is clear that House would only be half as good as it is if it weren't for Laurie, who does the best job of his career: throwing away the flamboyant insanity of his British television roles (Blackadder etc), he nails the required American accent perfectly and infuses his postmodern Holmes-like role with a healthy does of sarcasm that goes along well with the cynical seriousness, most notably when he quotes the "philosopher" Jagger: "You can't always get what you want". A neat summation of his view on life, and one of the countless reasons to watch the show.