Paternity

Peter O'Fallon directs this episode featuring Scott Mechlowicz (Peaceful Warrior) as a 16-year-old who has night terrors.

Despite several attempts at finding what it wrong, all the attention focuses on a bet House (Hugh Laurie) makes that the father is not the father. It is only when that is resolved that they discover the boy has a disease that only about 20 people a year get.

One of the best things about watching the earl episodes of House is his time in the clinic. Here he really shows his sarcastic humor and it is often the best part of the show.

His interaction with Cuddy (Lisa Edelstein) is also great here.

This one involves a young guy (sixteen year old) who falls apart during a lacrosse match. He has double vision which sets him up for a harsh check and a concussion. But there is so much more. He has night terrors of the worst kind. He has a dream where House is going to cut off one of his toes. As the docs wad through a series of diagnoses, they get down to a form of MS. At least they think so. What is most important in this one is that the parents haven't been forthcoming with his actual history. We get a bit of a lecture on the need for vaccinations, both from this case and a young mother. Of course, our hero plays fast and loose with the rules, especially a DNA test that was not approved.

With the purple-ish tint in the cinematography gone and the rest of the series exactly as it was established in the pilot, Paternity is the first truly great House episode, expertly relying on the show's key strengths: mystery, sarcasm and Hugh Laurie.

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...

While the episode in question appears to be about a young man who is suffering from a perplexing symptoms after blacking out on the lacrosse field, it is really about the lies people tell. By the conclusion, House has determined the nature of the kid's illness but with no thanks to his deceitful parents, who harbor what they consider a terrible secret. House makes them understand their prevaricating could have killed their son. In this way, the episode is not dissimilar to the one about a sickly kid whose father harbors a terrible secret that could cost the boy his life. Meanwhile, in the clinic, House treats a sickly baby whose mother has decided not to vaccinate it. She does not get off easily, and we some real passion on the part of House.