The Lesbian Lorax, I Guess

House reads Cuddy to filth in this episode, he can tell that she feels guilty, like she did something wrong, but he doesn’t know what it is until he tells her. Cuddy's guilt about lying about House’s last patient, to House, is manifesting through what he sees as what could also be symptoms of pregnancy. He makes a show of pointing out what he believes to be Cuddy’s “symptoms” all throughout the episode—his typical leering at her boobs, at her ass, now given a “purpose” in being utilized as “evidence” of this make-believe pregnancy.

House is right, of course, Cuddy does feel guilty, though she is not pregnant. What’s interesting, though, is the connection made between guilt and physicality. Through the show, up to this point, House has been shown many times to have psychosomatic pain flare ups in response to strong emotions—one of them being guilt. This episode is no different, in his pain having returned to his leg spurred on by the guilt of his perceived “failing” of his last patient (the one Cuddy simultaneously also feels guilt about, as she’s lying about this failure). So, just as House’s leg pain flares as a sign of his guilt, he sees Cuddy showing symptoms of pregnancy (whether imaginary or not is a moot point) as a sign of her guilt.

Connections between Cuddy’s not-pregnancy and House’s not-recovery can further be made with help of the symbols prompted by the patient’s condition. The patient, a young boy, ends up having a condition that was caused in utero by IVF—the same treatments that Cuddy is currently undergoing in her attempt to have a child—that ends up having a huge amount of presentation in the boy’s leg—and I don’t think I have to explain to you the significance of leg relations when it comes to House. The patient, when we see his condition in symbolic means, in parallel to House and Cuddy, bridges the gap between both of their perils—their disabilities—and displays them as one connected entity, connected within one young boy.

And thus, House and Cuddy’s respective disabilities make one of their first in a long line of parallels to each other. As Cuddy assures House that she is not pregnant, House assures Cuddy that he is pain-free; both of them avoiding honesty in the realm of their disabilities. Though, chronologically, we do not yet know of Cuddy’s infertility, it speaks volumes that the show goes out of its way to make us think about Cuddy’s ability to become pregnant in tandem with House’s ability to have a functioning, pain-free leg. Over the course of the first half of the third season, we will end up seeing both of these characters “fail” in regards to “overcoming” their disabilities; Cuddy will “fail” to get pregnant, and House, as shown at the end of this very episode, will “fail” to prolong the functioning of his leg without reliance on his cane.