Beleaguered by the continuity conundrums of this episode? St Doris to the rescue.

When he shouted that he had slept with her, I assumed she thought he was talking about years ago, since they did sleep together years ago, but she wasn't thinking that he was referring to the previous night, since they didn't sleep together the previous night. She was outraged that he was dragging that up from the past to embarrass her. He was, of course, deluded about the previous night. They have been at cross purposes for years. And now that they know that she started things and he didn't end them like she thought, they both have some food for thought. Egan's post clarifies many issues, so thanks chippers for posting that.

Thanks for this link, chippers. Egan's blog was terrific on so many levels: the knowledge that the writers care so deeply about continuity was wonderful, as was her detailed outline of the House/Cuddy origin story. I was particularly struck by this line: So House learns that their relationship didn’t begin the way he thought; and Cuddy learns that their relationship didn’t end the way she thought. There’s nothing more poignant than knowledge that comes too late.

That is an excellent post and clears up a lot of questions, but there's still that one matter of the age difference. They are 12 years apart if you believe Cuddy's claim that she's 38 and House's claim that he's 50 (he hasn't actually *said* he's 50, just told Nolan he had "50 years" worth of issues. So he could be 48 and rounding up, but most of us middle-aged folk do not round *up* our ages!) Even if Cuddy was a freshman when they met, and House was in his last year of med school, that's only an 8-year gap. (And it's unlikely he was in his last year, as he refers to being expelled from his "first" medical school.) So either Cuddy was a prodigy who skipped grades in elementary school and/or finished high school early, or House took some time off between high school and college and/or between college and med school. Or both. I guess they're all plausible, but there's still a lot of hinky continuity stuff in the timeline. Take "Three Stories," in which she appeared to (a) already be dean -- at 29? -- and (b) not know House. (OK, one-night stand, a decade or more ago, it's possible she forgot, but how do you forget a guy with a name like Gregory House -- we're not talking John Smith or Steve Brown here -- who is supposedly "a legend" at your school?) Or "Top Secret," where the one-night stand is revealed, but only after she says she hired him "because he couldn't get hired at a blood bank, so she got him cheap." That fits with the scenario in this episode (I can see her having followed the career of this guy she had a fling with, because she found him fascinating, and knew about his career crashes and burns), but flies in the face of "Three Stories." I'm not trying to pick on Doris. Really. And I'm not trying to nitpick the Huddy story line because I'm a Hameron shipper. It's because I love the show and its wonderfully complex characters that I tend to hold it to a higher standard than, say, "According to Jim." If William Hung sings off-key, I don't care. If Whitney Houston does, I cringe.

Doris replied spoke briefly in the comments about wanting to do some sort of episode that dealt with "House: The Lost Years," as in, time away from school. She also said this: House and Cuddy were not in med school at the same time. She was an undergrad. I believe she also graduated a year early. I'm not saying there may not be continuity issues, here or elsewhere; but it's also legitimate to note that when characters speak colloquially they talk the way people talk -- they round numbers up or down, and they joke. I've never forgotten that once on the X-Files Mulder told his ex-girlfriend, "I'm cursed with a photographic memory." I assumed at the time he was saying in his smartass way that he couldn't forget the hurt she'd caused him, and I was taken aback by the number of fans who interpreted it absolutely literally and felt it was later contradicted by canon. I'm not saying that it might not have turned out to be literal; I'm just saying that when people talk, they don't speak with the exactitude of Wikipedia. Similarly, when a woman says that she's 38, one may choose to believe it or not. When the guy fixing my sink argues with me about the cause and says, "Look, lady, I've been doing this for 20 years," I don't count backwards to exactly that month 20 years before and assume that's when he got his plumbing license. Again, I'm not saying the House timeline is free of continuity tangles. I know for a fact it's not. (And since I'm often trying to patch new and old canon together, may I say, boy do I know.) But there seems to be a certain amount of slack that's understood in real life that is not always offered to fictional characters. We actually discuss this when debating our options with lines of dialogue -- and I mean, not only writers, but actors and directors. How if a certain line were changed to something more specific it might fit better, but it would sound weird. You do the very best you can and hope that that part of the audience that's paying close attention will understand.

Take "Three Stories," in which she appeared to (a) already be dean -- at 29? -- and (b) not know House. (OK, one-night stand, a decade or more ago, it's possible she forgot, but how do you forget a guy with a name like Gregory House -- we're not talking John Smith or Steve Brown here -- who is supposedly "a legend" at your school?) A -- we only know she was taking over his case, not that she was dean. She may have been head of a department and one of the interns who reported to her screwed things up from the start. B -- No one's name was ever used (with the exception when House yelled out "not her real name") to keep everyone's identity secret. So not getting into Cuddy and House's history or having them call each other by name keeps with that non-disclosure element that is common practice in describing past cases. (Besides, there were bigger issues at the time than catching up with old flames.) And C -- I have no problems just shrugging and going with the reality that in the first season they were still developing some of the background intricacies. And regardless, there's nothing in the dialogue that disputes the additional canon. It's not as if either House or Cuddy said: "Hello stranger, I have never met before ..."

A few of the people who were complaining about character backgrounds and the timeline on DE's site were annoyingly rude about it, but they still made some points. I don't take much of it seriously. It's TV. It's fiction. But the one 'fact' that does bother me a bit is this idea that House could be kicked out of not one, but two medical schools and still get into a third. Get kicked out of medical school and get into Hopkins? I don't think so. Get kicked out of Hopkins for cheating and still get into another? Ridiculous.

Even if Cuddy was a freshman when they met, and House was in his last year of med school, that's only an 8-year gap. (And it's unlikely he was in his last year, as he refers to being expelled from his "first" medical school.) It still doesn't work for me. If House was that far along in medical school, he would be doing rounds in the hospital, not still taking classes that freshmen could take or audit. It's not eight years of classes. A Perfect Storm of events would have to take place in order for all of this to be plausible. Cuddy would have to begin medical school at a young age for one reason or another. House would have to dropped out of the college scene for more than a year or two in order to overlap with Cuddy at some point, but we've already been told that he had been practicing for 20 years when he was in his mid-40's, so we don't really have more than a year or two - at most - to play with. Cuddy taking upper division courses as a freshman is somewhat believable, but House still being in those classes at that point in time is not, so that window of opportunity is practically non-existent, in my opinion. A writer shouldn't have to post long explanations on her personal blog to answer a lot of WTH? questions. It's because I love the show and its wonderfully complex characters that I tend to hold it to a higher standard than, say, "According to Jim." If William Hung sings off-key, I don't care. If Whitney Houston does, I cringe. Word.

By the way, was it me or were those new glasses House was sporting at the beginning of "Known Unknowns?"

By the way, was it me or were those new glasses House was sporting at the beginning of "Known Unknowns?" They looked new to me as well.

DOB1234, if we find out that he graduated from Harvard or Stamford, I will join you in yelling "foul." My guess is that he ended up somewhere like Belize

Remember this is also the show that put an intensivist in Surgery and made an immunologist head of the ER. Doris cares, and she's trying, but if the show has to give up realism for drama, it has no problem letting go of realism.