Some univerity/hospital systems offer tenure on hire as an incentive I didn't know that was possible, but if it is, then that probably is what happened, especially if he'd already been at PPTH for a few years previously (presumably without tenure). I can't imagine they'd want to create a new department and then have its head quit on a whim. I'm not sure he was actually working at PPTH for the full 8 years. If he'd worked in another department for 2-3 years, then Diagnostics for another 3-4, with a break in between for the infarction, he might not have bothered to subtract the time off from his total. Even if he was on leave for as long as two years (anyone know what would be a reasonable amount of time for that sort of injury and adjustment?), if he was still going to PPTH for follow-up care and still hearing all the PPTH gossip from Wilson (and possibly Stacy and Cuddy), he might still consider it time "at" PPTH. The bigger problem for me is Cuddy's comment that he was 6 years behind on his clinic duty. Even if he didn't do one single clinic hour between the infarction and the pilot, he'd still have had to shirk a lot more work before the infarction than I can imagine any boss other than Cuddy would have let him get away with.

she would have anticipated the many incidents to come in which someone would be telling her to fire House and giving him tenure would give her an out and make firing him harder Makes a lot of sense, sweet fern! I know House calls himself an "infectious diseases guy" and we see him harping on infection during differentials the same way the fellows harp on their specialties. But how do we see him operate as a nephrologist? I know he's supposed to be one, but I always got the impression it was less important to him than infectious disease (though probably more personally relevant these days). I am guessing that your average hospital would be more likely to have a nephrology department than an infectious diseases department, but I also figured that a teaching hospital might have both, especially in New Jersey given West Nile.

Aw shucks, thanks, Bedawyn. :oops: ...So does that mean I can have another cuppa joe now? :wink:

Here's an incredibly inane question that may have been covered somewhere, but it has only recently begun to bother me..... Why do we never see House clean shaven? Does he shave lightly to leave stubble? That seems prissy. It just bugs me.

Carrying this over from the OD,OR thread: The "Daddy's Boy" thread has reminded me of why I don't like the "don't make him an abuse survivor; he's just a jackass" argument. True, he could just be "incredibly annoying with an extra ass chromosome." And, yes, he does have his moments of almost unmitigated jackassery (with the Katrina girl, for instance). But most of the time, he just does not read to me as someone who's just a jackass. He reads to me as someone whose intentions are good and whose motives are usually pure, but who frequently just isn't processing the gap between what his priorities are and what society says they should be. And when he is aware of the gap, he hasn't mastered the social niceties necessary to navigate it and hasn't internalized the social mores that would tell him why he should bother to try. And I like things to have reasons. So while you could say that all of that is just randomly the way it is, it makes much more sense to me to see his personality as the result of an autistically inclined brain combined with the aftereffects of abuse (and concomitant lack of good social modelling).

I would assume House does it the same way Hugh does it. With an appliance that you use every day or every couple of days, but that leaves a bit of stubble according to the setting you use. I don't have a problem with that explanation with regards to House's supposed disregard for the way he looks. Because I don't think he's indifferent to it. He does have a casual style of clothing, but not completely random and neither his clothes nor he himself have ever appeared unwashed or anything. The nicely tailored jackets are another clue that he does care, IMO. (I don't iron anything at all myself, so I guess it's a matter of opinion whether that's significant :wink: ). And then there's of course the 'removal-of-the-fourth-wall' reason, that it would completely mess up the shooting schedule if they had to plan around Hugh's shaving days to keep a measure of continuity.

I would assume House does it the same way Hugh does it. With an appliance that you use every day or every couple of days, but that leaves a bit of stubble according to the setting you use. I had no idea there was such an appliance! And this did not slip by unnoticed: I would assume House does it the same way Hugh does it. - Was someone hiding in Hugh's closet watching him shave? :wink: If so, I'm jealous....

Well, Hugh has answered the question about maintaining the stubble several times. People with better memories than mine can probably point out the specific interviews. He even mentioned the setting he uses. And I think he does do it himself, just like I don't think that Omar relies solely on the hair people on set to maintain his beard. I'm straying into something that isn't relevant to this thread, aren't I? :roll: ETA: better listen to marykir than me. I tend to talk rubbish anyway :wink:

Hugh explained how he maintains the stubble in answer to a question from the audience in the Backstage West interview last year. If you haven't seen that hour long interview you should watch it. It's a treat. Probably marykir has it on her site(?). ETA: It's in marykir's Cast Interviews 21 Jan 2006.