1x02 Paternity

The second episode of House, M.D., cleverly titled “Paternity”, was written by Lawrence Kaplow and directed by Peter O’Fallon. It starts off in the middle of a game of lacrosse, where a teenage boy appears to suffer from confusion and double vision shortly before being hit pretty hard by an adversary. Three weeks later, we find Dr. Gregory House at Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital with no cases to work on. And while most of his team of specialists has been sitting on their hands, Dr. Allison Cameron has been answering his mail for him. However, it seems that she has taken her newly-assigned responsibilities a bit too seriously, as she has decided to take on a case on House’s behalf, but without his consent. As it turns out, the lacrosse player at the beginning of the episode was Dan, a sixteen year old high school student who had been suffering from night terrors and whose brain seems to be losing control over his body, which is why Dr. House decides to take the case anyway. Oddly enough, it won’t be the unlikely nature of the illness, the youth of the patient or the particular circumstances of his family that will capture the viewers’ attention for the duration of this episode, but rather the paternity bet on Dan’s father that House comes up with and how it unfolds. There is very little character development here, even though we do get to see a bit more of Dr. Cameron’s idealistic nature and it becomes noticeable that House seems to favor Dr. Eric Foreman over his other two team members. Beyond that, it’s House’s brilliant deductive skills, his quips and the way in which he can goad others into falling for his tricks that truly make this unremarkable episode fun to watch.