Wednesday, October 25 2006 House Beautiful
With huge ratings and juicy plot twists, the hit medical drama is looking sharper than ever! by David Hochman 
Well, well. What have we here? Just off the main lobby at Princeton-Plainsboro Hospital, there's a plastic Baggie stuffed with amber-colored prescription bottles of every standard shape and size. It's Dr. Gregory House's entire stash. Exactly which bottle he chooses on screen depends on the situation.
"He uses a larger bottle with smaller pills if he's taking a whole bunch of them," explains Tyler Patton, property master on Fox's hit medical drama
House. "Or he uses a short, squat bottle if he's taking one big Vicodin."
Either way,
House always gets his fix, though this week — spoilers be damned! — the doctor pops one pill too many in an episode that catches House, played by Hugh Laurie, killing pain on the wrong side of the law. David Morse (
St. Elsewhere,
Hack) guest stars as a patient who also happens to be a cop. The multi-episode story line begins when House, cranky as ever, downs a self-prescribed Vicodin during the patient exam. And as Laurie puts it during a break between scenes on the Fox Studios set in Los Angeles, "It doesn't help that House keeps the patient waiting too long with a thermometer dangling — and I'm not talking about the oral kind of thermometer."
Rarely does such a wretched bedside manner draw so many return appointments.
House's first season premiered to 7 million viewers, and the second opened with around 16 million. Earlier this month, Season 3 premiered to roughly 20 million viewers. And House the character has needled his way into the world beyond the hospital doors. Although Laurie was shut out of the Emmy race this year, his in-character diagnosis of Emmy host Conan O'Brien ("… subject could be anemic; possibly albino…") was the funniest moment in the funniest awards show in memory. Laurie will get another chance to show his funny side when he hosts this week's
Saturday Night Live. Will there be an SNL parody of
House? How could there not?
Off camera, the British-born actor is finally enjoying the kind of royal treatment in America he's been getting for decades in the U.K., where he's revered for his cheeky BBC comedies. (He and wife Jo Green split their home life between L.A. and London. "It's not ideal," Laurie says, "but then not many things are. It's actually weird that it's not weirder: Within half a day, you're going, ‘What was the weather like back in London?'")
The normally unflappable Laurie, whose latest contract reportedly earns him nearly $300,000 an episode, sounds a bit giddy talking about House's boom. "Last night a few of us went out to a bar that was positively heaving with humanity," he says, "and I thought, ‘We'll never get in.' But the maître d' took one look and—chop-chop—‘Right this way, Mr. Laurie. Here's your table, Mr. Laurie. We're here to serve, Mr. Laurie.' I thought, ‘Well, perhaps people are watching.'"
No doubt viewers will keep watching this fall, as House feels the heat during the investigation of the doc's narcotics habit. Morse is scheduled for six episodes, during which his detective "puts his entire life into making House's entire life miserable," Morse says. Adds House creator David Shore, "House finally pisses off the wrong guy, and now he and everybody around him are going to pay the price."
House began taking pills for chronic pain after developing an infarction in his right leg, which also explains that famous cane of his (prop-master Patton keeps six canes on hand — "one for every bad mood House has," he says). But while the drug habit was treated merely as a character quirk until now, it's about to become a full-on vice. "House is an addict, and we wanted to deal with that in an honest way," Shore says. "We're very aware that this is a real problem. Rates of addiction among doctors are higher than in the population at large, and we couldn't keep playing this for fun."
Then again, even Laurie was in denial about what House was taking until very recently. "I knew they weren't real pills, of course, but it wasn't until this season that I asked what they actually were," says Laurie, who looks relaxed despite House's perpetual five-day grizzle. It turns out the prop tablets are made of a Lactaid-like compound. "The other day, I took some and they were very sweet and the crew guys said, ‘You didn't eat those, did you?' and I said, ‘Uh, yeah.' And they said, ‘Uhhh, you'll probably be fine.'"
Everything is bigger this season on
House....
Can't get enough of
House? Find exclusive features, video, photos and more at
Fox.com/house.
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