House, M.D./The Right Stuff

The Right Stuff
Season 4, Episode 2
Airdate	October 2, 2007
Production Number	402
Written by	Doris Egan & Leonard Dick
Directed by	Deran Sarafian
Stream
← 4x01 Alone	4x03 → 97 Seconds
House, M.D. — Season Four

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The Right Stuff is the second episode of the fourth season of House, M.D., and the seventy-second episode overall.

Starring: 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)

Guest Starring: Anne Dudek (Dr. Amber Volakis), Edi Gathegi (Dr. Jeffery Cole), Peter Jacobson (Dr. Chris Taub), Kal Penn (Dr. Lawrence Kutner), Olivia Wilde (Thirteen), Carmen Argenziano (Henry Dobson), Andy Comeau (Travis Brennan), Meera Simhan (Jody Desai), Essence Atkins (Greta Cooper), Melinda Dahl (Twin 15A), Caitlin Dahl (Twin 15B), Jonathan Sadowski (Mason), Jason Manuel Olazábal (O'Reilly), Heather Fox (Ashka)

Co-Starring: Kathryn Adams (#23), Larkin Campbell (Dave), Jaimarie Bjorge (Beautiful Doctor), Bobbin Bergstrom (Nurse)

Arc Advancement

Happenings

• Hiring Gauntlet: Out of the 40 potential doctors to get the jobs with House, all but 10 of them are fired for varying reasons. One of the "final" applicants, Henry Dobson (#26), is offered a position as House's assistant because he didn't actually go to medical school. But, because of his ingenuity and the skills he picked up from auditing classes at Columbia Medical, House sees a use for him. The remaining doctors are Amber Volakis (#24), Chris Taub (#29), Lawrence Kutner (#6/#9), Twins #15A and #15B, Jeffrey Cole (#18), Jody Desai (#32), Travis Brennan (#37) and "Thirteen" (#13).

Characters

• Dr. Cameron: Despite being told otherwise by Dr. Wilson, House eventually discovers that Dr. Cameron has been working as the senior attending physician at the Princeton Plainsboro ER for the past 3 weeks. He also finds out that she dyed her hair blonde, a move that he believes makes her look like a prostitute.

• Dr. Foreman: Although House is convinced that he saw Foreman walking the halls of the hospital, both Dr. Cuddy and Dr. Wilson insist that Foreman has taken a job running New York Mercy's diagnostic department.

• Dr. Chase: Chase has also taken a job at the same hospital he was fired from. He mentions being part of the surgical team, although he doesn't explain what his role is or who he's working for. A page for him to go to the operating room can be heard over the intercom after he shows up to diagnose House's patient.

Trivia

Allusions and References

• Buddy Ebsen: As mentioned during House's first hypothetical patient situation, Buddy Ebsen was an actor who was originally cast as the Tin Man in the 1939 adaptation of The Wizard of Oz. Ebsen was first cast as the Scarecrow, but Ray Bolger convinced producers to switch his part with Ebsen's. Nine days into production, long after Ebsen recorded the songs and went through rehearsals, Ebsen suffered a nearly fatal reaction to the aluminum powder make-up. After breathing in the powder, his lungs seized and forced him to be hospitalized. While Ebsen was in the hospital, MGM studios refused to publicize the incident to anyone, even Tin Man replacement Jack Haley. Ironically, Ebsen outlived all of the Oz cast members and went on to creative a lucrative television career on The Beverly Hillbillies and Barnaby Jones.

• 2001: A Space Odyssey: Greta's hallucinations take on a similar look as the "wormhole" graphics from the Stanley Kubrick film 2001: A Space Odyssey. At the end of the movie, after dispatching the mad artificial intelligence which killed his crew, David Bowman finds himself traveling through a "star gate" that hurtles him through space and time. In this sequence, one frequent motif is a close up on his eye which fluctuates in color.

• Schrödinger's Cat: Wilson makes a joke about the theoretical "Schrödinger's cat" paradox. The paradox puts forth the following hypothetical situation: a cat is penned in a steel chamber with a fence preventing interference with a geiger counter attached to a canister of gas. The canister is set to trigger if the geiger counter senses the decay of a small radioactive particle. However, because there's only a 50% chance that the gas will trigger and because the act of observing the experiment would cause entanglement, Schrödinger hypothesized that a scientist must assume that the cat is in a state of superposition, or both alive and dead at the same time.

Wilson: No, but since she's not a dead cat, it is scientifically impossible for her to be in two places at once.