1.05 Damned If You Do
From tv.com: A nun whose hands are red, swollen and cracked is sent to House. The nun believes it is stigmata, but House suspects an allergic reaction. He gives her some pills, which cause her to become unable to breathe. As her condition worsens, her fellow sisters pray for her while House and his team work to discover the cause of her illness while House has to wonder if he misadministered the illness.

This was the first episode of the show I saw and a wonderful introduction to everything about it. It's easy to follow and the characters are actually written well to their purposes.

aww, Juliet was a nun before she got on the Lost island ;) This episode has one of my favorite H/W moments ever in it and for that I will always love it. Yes the conversation at the clinic desk between H and W and the very end when they are eating together. It makes me happy just thinking about it.

Yes, one of my favorite episodes ever! the conversation at the clinic desk between H and W and the very end when they are eating together Besides these, there is the opening scene with them and Cuddy. I love that scene, they are so playful and funny! Those were the days...

It's definitely one of those episodes that is story-driven as opposed to relationship or action.

Yeah, this is one of the episodes that made me fall in love with House. I can watch it again and again. House as detective is when he loses himself in the case and he is so thoroughly himself when he is on the scent: it's great stuff. One tiny bit I love is the foreshadowing that they do in many episodes. You likely miss those bits the first time around but on second (and subsequent) viewings,they jump out at you. In this one, it's when House goes to see the Mother Superior and there's an establishing shot where you see the giant copper pots and pans hanging above House and the nun. It's beautifully composed and a big clue as well. Then when he tastes the tea, well the game's afoot... Agree with sasmom about the Silent Night as played by HL: it's so beautifully and unsentimentally played, my very favorite version. Good times...

I've just been making my way through a rewatch of the whole series, and when I came to this episode, I decided to watch for something that became a big deal later in the episode. Did House grab the right syringe when the nun was having the attack in the clinic? You decide for yourself, but it looks to me in this screencap as if there are in fact two different doses in the larger syringes in this compartment, one about ten times the size of the other, and House does indeed grab the smaller one, as he will later insist that he did. What do you think?

I think he grabbed the right one. The figwort tea, not the injection explained the heart attack. But that must be the most idiotic way of keeping emergency medications imaginable. And, if point 1 ccs is the standard dose, why do they even have 1 cc syringes in there. After the injection, the used syringe would go in a medical waste container for proper disposal. As it is a logical thing to do (keep people from getting stuck and receiving accidental dose of meds or an infection from the patient) this is a rule House would comply with. We even saw him properly dispose of the syringe after he gave Cuddy her second dose of fertility meds in Whose Your Daddy? I have never understood why they didn't just open up the medical waste container and check which syringe was in there. (I guess it's because the episode would have been 20 minutes too short if they did that.)

I never for a second thought that House picked up the wrong syringe; he's recklesss but not careless. As for the rest; I think we have to accept that medical procedures (as well as time ) are not a fixed construct when the drama demands it. :)

Well, okay, plot holes and medical discrepancies aside, I suppose my real question is this: Do you think the producers or director and prop department worked together on this detail and placed syringes with the correct doses in the drawer, then made sure the right one was picked up in this insert? I know that the tea combined with even the smaller dose would have caused the heart attack and that fact pretty much clears House of wrongdoing, but House himself returned to the clinic in an attempt to check himself. It's a human thing that we all do, like locking your car doors or turning off the stove - you do it on auto pilot and later can't remember actually doing it, but 99% of the time, you did. The syringes appear to be identical, apart from the amount of liquid in them, so I don't know what good digging it out of the waste container would have done. It does seem like a stupid way to store them, though, especially if they're to be used in an emergency situation when one doesn't want to be fumbling around for the right dose. I can only guess that 1cc is a standard dose for some other condition, while .1cc is the standard dose for an asthma attack.