Paternity
- Episode aired Nov 23, 2004
- TV-14
- 43m
The team helps a high school boy (16) who has double vision and night terrors. (Clinic Cases: Unvaccinated baby, man with boil on leg.)The team helps a high school boy (16) who has double vision and night terrors. (Clinic Cases: Unvaccinated baby, man with boil on leg.)The team helps a high school boy (16) who has double vision and night terrors. (Clinic Cases: Unvaccinated baby, man with boil on leg.)
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Did you know
- TriviaAccording to many, Hugh Laurie fooled many people (unintentionally) with his made-to-order American accent. However, in this episode, at about the 8:00 mark, he opines: "...either way, this kid's gonna be picking up his diploma in diapers and a wheelchair." His accent fails just enough to say, "...either way, this kid's gonna be picking up his diploma in diapahs and a wheelchair."
- GoofsWhile taking a retinal biopsy, the probe is shown passing through the cornea (i.e. front of the eye through pupil). In this case, the probe passes through an optically clear medium important for refraction, namely the cornea and lens, which would be damaged if done this way. To avoid this, the probe usually enters in sideways, through the sclera (white of the eye), so that the probe can directly pass behind the lens without touching the it.
- Quotes
Dr. Gregory House: [examining a baby whose mother isn't vaccinating him because she feels it's a scam; House takes the child's stuffed frog] All natural, no dyes. It's a good business - all-natural children's toys. Those toy companies, they don't arbitrarily mark up their frogs. They don't lie about how much they spend on research and development. And the worst that a toy company can be accused of is making a really boring frog. Gribbit, gribbit, gribbit. You know another really good business? Teeny tiny baby coffins. You can get 'em in frog green, fire engine red. Really. The antibodies in yummy mummy only protect the kid for six months, which is why these companies think they can gouge you. They think that you'll spend whatever they ask to keep your kid alive. Want to change things? Prove 'em wrong. A few hundred parents like you decide they'd rather let their kid die then cough up forty bucks for a vaccination, believe me, prices will drop REALLY fast. Gribbit, gribbit, gribbit, gribbit, gribbit, gribbit.
- ConnectionsReferences General Hospital (1963)
The diagnostic case is that of a 16-year old boy who suffers from double vision and night terrors. However, while Foreman, Cameron and Chase try to find out what's wrong, House is more interested in knowing if the boy's father is in fact his real father, and makes a bet with the staff. Unsurprisingly, his methods are criticized by the parents, and also by his clinic patients: a man who has a habit of suing hospitals, and a mother who can't understand what is wrong with her baby.
The episode introduces a theme that will become quite common on the show, namely messed-up father-son relationships, and does so with the right mixture of humor and drama. What really sticks with the viewer, however, is the brilliance with which Laurie delivers the story's sharpest, most unforgettable scene: upon learning that the aforementioned baby wasn't vaccinated because the mother doesn't have faith in the system (go figure), House crushes her beliefs with an utterly cruel, spot-on speech. Close second is the episode's funniest line which, unusually, is not spoken by the main character, but by Foreman, who gets to be a little sarcastic on his own: "It's dangerous, it could kill him. You should do it." And to think Omar Epps once played an intern on ER...
- MaxBorg89
- Jan 31, 2010
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