User Reviews

I really enjoyed the Series Premiere of this show. It's good. It's not freaking amazing, but the show does get better. I mean, what show has a spectacular first episode, that puts all other episodes to shame? None.

In this episode, a young kindergarten teacher, Rebecca, collapses in her classroom after she starts talking gibberish. She is now under the care of Dr. Gregory House, and his team of find diagnosticians. House is quite bitter, and rude, but you still can't help but love him. His team, including Dr. Foreman, a guy who annoys me for some reason, Dr. Chase, who annoys me because of all the inside Australian jokes he makes throughout the show (I'm Australian, so it's okay), and Dr. Cameron, more than just a pretty face, all help him solve the case. House also has to answer to Dr. Lisa Cuddy, his boss, but makes her life a little bit harder everyday. And House's best friend, Dr. Wilson is just awesome.

Overall, I give this episode an 8 out of 10, which in my ratings book is: Awesome.

The show's creator, David Shore, writer and executive producer on other long-running series such as 'Family Law', has revealed that the inspiration for the show was an unfortunate experience he had as a patient at a teaching hospital at the hands of a particularly misanthropic doctor. He was also determined to base the central character of Dr Gregory House on Conan Doyle's most famous literary creation. Both share an uncommon flair for deductive reasoning, and both become dependent on one confidant and companion, with Dr Wilson performing this role for House as Watson did for Holmes.

In securing the role of this cantankerous yet ingenious expert in diagnosis, Hugh Laurie had to submit an audition tape recorded in a cramped, darkly lit, Namibian hotel bathroom, as he was in the midst of filming the remake of the 'Flight of the Phoenix'. The series producer, Bryan Singer, had been adamant that the titular role be given to an American actor, and was so taken in by Laurie's American accent that he failed to recognise the actor's true origins. With regards the casting of Wilson, though in the process of auditioning for 'Numbers', the opportunity of playing the sole companion who can tolerate House's sardonic contempt drew Robert Sean Leonard to this project instead.

With regard to the story development, this pilot, the first of ten episodes across the eight series to be penned by the creator himself, established the long-running format which would characterise every episode. This involves House and his team working on various possibilities, and, through trial and error, narrowing down potential treatment. In this pilot, the plot centres on a young kindergarten teacher, who begins to babble incomprehensibly before suffering a seizure. In another nod to Holmes, this patient, played superbly by Robin Tunney, is named after the only female to have ever bested, and affected emotionally, the great detective, Irene Adler.

House's first reaction to the prospect of taking on the case at Wilson's bidding is in rejecting it is a simple case of a brain tumour. However, his involvement and that of his team is triggered both by Wilson's falsely stating the patient is his own cousin, and his jibe that House's team are highly-qualified but sitting around getting bored. What follows is an engrossing fight against time for House and his young diagnostic team to pinpoint the cause of her symptoms and the reasons behind the series of reactions to their experimental treatments.

Meanwhile, a wonderful sub-plot to further establish our protagonist's curmudgeonly attitude towards patients has House contend with being taken to task by the hospital adminstrator, Dr Lisa Cuddy, for not fulfilling his own clinical duties, and blocking his team's tests until he does so. Laurie excels in the series of acerbic dismissals of the clinic patients' lack of medical awareness and misplaced self-diagnoses which follow. Among these are the 'Orange Man', whose issue is quickly attributed to an excess of carrots and certain vitamins, but to which House astutely adds that any wife not reacting to such a stark physical change suggests she is having an affair.

A further illustration of House's outspokenness and lack of concern for political correctness relates to how he treats his team, and in particular, his frankness concerning their selection. Not only does he reveal that physical attraction played a part in Dr Cameron's joining the team, but also that it was Dr Foreman's juvenile criminal record which made him a valuable addition. Thus, in a wonderful exchange, House persuades the latter to break in to the patient's apartment to try and uncover any evidence as to the patient's condition.

Having failed in treating the patient with steroids for what House believed was a case of cerebral vasculitis, or inflammation of the blood vessels, our kindergarten teacher tires of the experiments and demands to be left to go home to die with dignity. It is at this juncture that the weakest aspect of plot development links Foreman's 'break-in', and causal observation that the contents of the patient's fridge with House's astonishing 'leap' to a successful diagnosis. This is that the patient is suffering from 'Neurocysticercosis', which is a condition brought about by ingestion of a tapeworm from insufficiently cooked pork. This could have occurred years earlier, during which time the eggs have left the digestive system, passing into the bloodstream and flourishing everywhere, including the brain. The tapeworm only becomes detected by the body's immune system as it dies, causing the infected area, in this case the brain, to swell.

It is the last of House's trio of assistants, the largely overlooked Dr Chase, who arrives at the solution of X-raying the area to show the presence of a tapeworm, thereby allowing House finally to visit the patient firsthand and appeal to her to give them one last opportunity to cure her. It is at this point that our kindergarten teacher earns her name, and uses her sharp psychoanalysis of House's character to challenge his standpoint that as "everybody lies' the practitioner should deal with the illness and not the patient. As such, Adler wonders whether this is House's veiled sub-conscious protecting his own psyche faced with his paranoia that no one wants to be treated by a doctor with a walking cane.

Despite the fact that Robert Sean Leonard maintains that this remains his favourite episode ever, with House maintaining this shadowy influential presence while the team do the work, the episode fared badly, with many reviewers questioning how such a caustic character could attract audiences. How wrong they were.

Here we have the pilot episode of the successful medical-themed television series "House M. D.". Like all the others, a massive amount of way over 150 episodes, it runs for under 45 minutes and features British actor Hugh Laurie, at that point mostly known for its involvement with Blackadder, as the complicated genius physician Dr. Gregory House. This episode here is already about a crucial case, but it is also a presentation, not only of House himself, but also the three doctors working under him as well as his boss. We learn quite a bit about all those, but it is just the side action. At the center of it all are a sick teacher played by the stunning Robin Tunney and the team's efforts to find out what exactly is wrong with her when she develops a speech impediment, has a dangerous allergy and even suffers from cardiac arrest at some point. Quite a lot she goes through here you can say for sure, so maybe it is no huge surprise that she lost all her power towards the end and just wants to die. Not even House overcoming his approach to not talk to patients in person can change that. But the right diagnosis and an idea how to prove it does. So there is a happy end to this episode and if you have seen some of the other episodes, then you know that this is not always the case. People have died with far less significant symptoms and conditions you can say. But maybe they did not want to launch the show on a downer. The director here was Bryan Singer who has enjoyed his success on the big screen too in the almost two decades since this episode and also of course with what he did before November 2004, so yeah this means that this episode is now pretty much exactly 19 years old. It has aged well I would say. I liked it back then. I still like it after today's watch.

The key story is gripping and the actors are all doing a nice-enough job. But it is also the minor inclusions that contribute a lot and are the exact opposite of filler material, like House treating patients with less dangerous conditions that always make for a bit of a good laugh with how annoyed House is because of those. Or you could wonder about the exact connection between Wilson and the patient. Honestly, I was surprised how he talked to her if they were really cousins, but this is also because we do not only have "you(r)" in German, but two different forms, one that people use when talking to people close to them, the other when talking to not-so-close colleagues or strangers. Let's not get into detail there any more though. Moral questions, if not dilemmas, have always been a vital inclusion with House. Here you got the idea of treating patients vs. Treating illnesses, some elaboration on racism and one doctor's criminal past and also a question mark behind the employment of an attractive female doctor. I quite liked House's explanation there towards the end and what he told her about his reasons. I also liked how he spoke to the sick woman when he finally agreed to see her. It was really well-written. But me giving props to David Shore comes pretty easy as I am a big fan of the Law & Order universe. They got an expert on board there. But you can also say that it was actually really smart that she did not just change her subjective mind right away, even if the speech was great. It took more than that.

Finally, it was quite a coincidence that I came across the Rolling Stones song featured during this episode only a day before rewatching the episode. It's a nice number, even with the kids voices there. Kinda fit nicely together with the somewhat sweet ending of the kids visiting her after she started getting better. But at the same time I must say that it did feel a bit rushed how they included the song so briefly again right before the credits rolled in. Not the episode's best moment, no matter how good the song may be. Anyway, what is of course also interesting is House himself elaborating briefly on his own physical condition that is always there from beginning to end of the series, but not super often talked about. At least not with actual medical details. The animations we had during this episode that took us inside the sick woman's body were also something I liked and if I remember correctly they kept going with those in future episodes too. If so, then good choice. I will know as I keep watching. This show is in a way also really useful to learn basics about medicine in general, about human biology. One question that did come to my mind though when the solution was presented was why they never really x-rayed her leg earlier. I guess because none of the symptoms justified a suspicion there might be something in there? Okay. I just thought they would just check out the entire body this way if they are looking for a complicated diagnosis. Anyway, as you can see from my rating and review, I consider this episode a big success. I am not one bit surprised the show became as popular as it did and I think most of the awards attention it scored during pretty much all major small-screen awards was not undeserving. If you still want to get into "House M. D." two decades later, I say go for it. It is absolutely not too late. A big thumbs-up for this pilot episode. Couldn't have started much stronger.

I hate pilots. Not the plane kind, the tv kind. Especially after watching a series for a long time. Seeing the ups and downs and meta-writing that takes place as the show runners and production get into a groove, then going back and comparing it to the rough draft of the show is painful. Sometimes I do not envy some of the calls executives have to make. Its like gambling your life savings on a pair of 8's (talkin texas holdem). Not great but it has a good chance of going the distance. Or fold and wait for a better hand.

Luckily house is an Ace Five suited. Hugh Laurie is magnetic even IF in the early days he has to leash his more diabolical side in favor of a serious edge. The case is bit boring: Kindergarten teacher tries to sing the hokie-pokie backwards while she convulses on the floor. We get a long drag on the sweet mistress of melodrama that the show can never really help steer itself into every once in a while. Treated to the woman's bleeding heart for her kids contrasted by the introduction to House's utter indifference. Eventually the culprit is found to be a tape worm (very rare in the NA) in her brain (EXCEEDINGLY RARER).

But the point isn't the case, its the intro to the characters and their relationships. We see House and Wilson's rocky friendship. House's superiority over his plucky likeable staff. Cuddy's police chief energy. House's ongoing battle against authority and the dreaded clinic hours. We see his vicodin addiction, he explains a bit about his limp, and the formula for the episodes are laid out in precise fashion.

Again, its a solid pilot and good precursor to season 1, which itself is solid if not a bit safe. It will be sometime before the Ace King suited gets to truly shine but a great first step into House's crazy world.

House Quote #1: "Hello, I'm doctor House."

Watching first episode. Girl with ongoing seizure. Mri brain with contrast done shows nothing. Directly diagnose with neurocysticercosis. It is impossible to get seizure without any active cyst on mri. There are criteria for diagnosing neurocysticercosis.

Absolute, major, and minor criteria. If you are diagnosing some disease, firstly learn about the disease. Patient coming with seizure. First diagnosis by the doctor is tumour. What??

Differentials - stroke, vasculitis. Firstly go for the common causes. No eeg was done at that time. Young patient facing seizure. Ncc will be first differential.

We watch as Ms. Rebecca comes into the school late and greets her students. She talked to another teacher earlier about her one night stand with a new guy. While talking to the students she starts babbling. Rebecca wakes up in the hospital where she sees every doctor besides Dr. House. House is a crippled doctor, had a heart attack in his thigh and the only symptom was pain. He ended up crippled. A pretty doctor comments to the black doctor he went to Hopkins, a better school than she went to. The black guy is not happy House found out he has a criminal record from breaking into a home when he was 16. He worked his butt off to maintain a 4.0 GPA he tells the pretty woman. House says he only hired him because of his record. Later the pretty woman talks to House in his office and finds out he hired her because of her genetically good looks. She is shocked and he says she could have married rich or become a model. Gorgeous women do not go to med school - unless if they are broken in some way. She cannot reply when he asks about it. Rebecca Adler has tapeworm that has been in her for years. She is told to just take two pills a day with a meal for a month.