Lisa Cuddy

Dr. Lisa Cuddy
File:Lisa Cuddy.jpg Lisa Cuddy in the Season 3 Premiere
First appearance	"Pilot"
Portrayed by	Lisa Edelstein
In-universe information
Occupation	Dean of Medicine

Lisa Cuddy, M.D., is a fictional character on the Fox medical drama House. She is portrayed by Lisa Edelstein. Cuddy is the Dean of Medicine and hospital administrator at Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital.

History

Lisa Cuddy is Jewish. She is the only character of whom the show has never given any family information on. It is unclear whether or not she has siblings or whether her parents are dead or alive.

Cuddy attended University of Michigan where she was an undergraduate. During this time, she met Gregory House who had already been a legend on campus. Her dream of being a doctor began when she was twelve, graduating medical school when she is twenty-five as second best in her class, and becoming the first woman and second youngest Dean of Medicine ever at age thirty-two.

Cuddy has known House before the show took place. She meets him at the University of Michigan but he later transfers to another school, John Hopkins University. Later on, when House got an infarction in his right leg, he was treated at Princeton Plainsboro where Cuddy was not yet Dean of Medicine (specified in the unaired version of "Honeymoon"). His doctors could not figure out what was wrong with his leg and so, Cuddy became his attending doctor. House refused to amputate, saying he liked his leg and wanted to keep it while his girlfriend Stacy Warner was telling him he should cut it off to survive. It was Cuddy who then told Stacy that there is a middle ground between amputating and keeping the leg. They'd have to cut out the dead muscle, which would have a 50/50 percent chance of failing (resulting in him limping for the rest of his life and being in pain) or succeeding (resulting in him being able to walk properly). Cuddy later put him into a chemically induced coma after Stacy consented into executing the middle ground surgery.

Development

There is a degree of sexual tension between the Gregory House and Cuddy. It is later confirmed in "Top Secret" that they have had a one night stand sometime in the past. This conversation took place:

House: "Give me a break. You hired me."

Cuddy: "Because you're a good doctor who couldn't get himself hired at a blood bank, so I got you cheap."

House: "You gave me everything I asked for because one night I gave you everything."

In Season 1, Cuddy mainly played the plot of a "foil" for Gregory House where she would have to constantly order him to finish his required hours of clinic duty, as he is known to slack off all the time. She also had to make sure he didn't get into any legal troubles and prevent him from doing anything dangerous to his patients.

By the end of Season 2, Cuddy's character began to expand. In the episode "Forever" it is revealed that Cuddy wants a baby. She had kept it a secret and had strangely asked James Wilson to have dinner with her (which was actually a secret audition to see whether he'd qualify as a dad, though Wilson was not aware). The morning before the "date", Wilson told House she had asked him, not vice versa. Suspicious, saying Cuddy would never be interested in Wilson, House stole her garbage can from her office to look through it. There, he found Red Clover, an herbal booster. To confirm his suspicions, he later confronted Cuddy in her office, saying he knew she was taking Red Clover and that Wilson's date wasn't a date at all. She admitted to him that she was considering having a baby.

In "Who's Your Daddy?", Cuddy tells House that in order for her to get pregnant through in-vitro fertilization, she needs injections twice a day. She asks him to help inject her twice a day, since she can't do it herself and because he is the only one who knows she wants a baby. Surprisingly, despite his usual personality, House obliged and kept her secret - even from his best friend Wilson.

In Season 3, Cuddy still has not succeeded in pregnancy. House often teased her and falsely accused her of being pregnant, EX. talking to her stomach and commenting on her breasts being firmer.

In "Finding Judas" however, Cuddy acknowledges that her in-vitro fertilization attempts have failed after House yells at her in a dangerously stressful situation:

"It's a good thing you failed to become a mother because you'd suck at it!"

She seems like she has lost most of her hope for being a mother, tearfully confessing to Wilson that she has had a total of three attempts at impregnation, one of which was miscarried (which means that House's constant remarks about her being pregnant in the earlier episodes of Season 3 may have been correct). She also says that the time he yelled at her was "the only time [she'd] ever seen him be mean, just because he could." (Because House usually tries to make a point by being mean, but this time, there seemed none but to want to hurt her)

In Season 3, House's career was threatened by Michael Tritter, whom had a grudge against House. There was a court hearing, where the result could end up with House going to jail. Cuddy chose to protect House however, risking her career, by committing perjury at the hearing when she was still under oath. By falsifying documents, Cuddy claimed to have thwarted House's attempts at stealing oxycodone from a dead patient. She claimed to have replaced the pills with placebos at the hospital pharmacy because she knew House was in a vulnerable state. The judge seemed skeptical, but decided to let it slide because she didn't believe that House was a drug abuser as Michael Tritter claimed he was. The judge told House that he had much better friends than he deserved, namedly Cuddy and Wilson since they were fighting with everything to keep him out of jail.

Relationships

After the Tritter Arc, Cuddy's relationship with House began to develop more. House openly flirts with her more often, and seems to view her in different light, mainly thanks to her risking her entire career to save him.

In "Insensitive", House noticed that Cuddy hadn't worn her hat to work and he quickly figured out she had a blind date that evening. He interrupted Cuddy and her date, Don, when they were in a coffee shop, saying he needed a consult for his CIPA patient. He purposely embarrasses her in front of her date, loudly saying how Don was better than her previous date. That same evening, House goes to her home, asking for a second consult. He figures out that despite his previous attempt at shooing him off, Cuddy had invited Don into her home. When he kept questioning her and making remarks, she confronts him about his motives, asking him challengingly: "Do you like me, House?" to which he looked away and didn't answer.

As Season 3 progressed, there was more focus on the tension between House and Cuddy, especially in "Fetal Position" where House's patient had a fetus that was killing her. The patient, Emma, had gotten pregnant through in vitro fertilization, but only after 3 failed attempts. When House figured out it was her fetus that was killing her, his recommendation was to abort the fetus, but Emma did not consent. Cuddy supported Emma, and House confronted her about whether or not her judgement was being clouded, telling her that she was identifying with the patient too much (because Cuddy also tried to get pregnant through in-vitro).

In "Act Your Age" and "House Training", James Wilson asked Cuddy on two separate dates. In the first one, he took her to see a play and House immediately questioned Wilson's motives, because he'd told his friend before that: "The only reason a man takes a woman to a play is if he wants to see her naked." Wilson tells him that that wasn't what he wanted and that it was just a casual outing between friends. At the end of "Act Your Age", House asks Cuddy to see a play with him on Thursday, but she refused because she said she was busy. When House tells Wilson this information, Wilson tells him that he'd already asked her on another "non-date" on Thursday, so it was true that she was already busy. Shocked, House contacts Wilson's ex-wife in an attempt to stop Cuddy from becoming the fourth "ex-Mrs.Wilson".