Lisa Cuddy

Dr. Lisa Cuddy
File:Lisa-edelstein-house.jpg
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 the fictional Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital in New Jersey.

Characterization

Cuddy is "tough as nails" and brings style and glamor to the hospital with her pencil skirts and low-cut sweaters. She does not take House's nonsense, and is able to keep him in check to a degree. Like House, she is skilled at interpreting people by reading their voices and body language and is perhaps his equal in intellect, but is less prone to flaunting it. The show has given hints that there is some sort of romantic history between the pair.

In a May 2008 interview, actress Lisa Edelstein summarized Cuddy after having played her for over four seasons:

I think that [Cuddy] very much loves House and also lives vicariously through him, because she's a very smart woman who was very successful as a doctor and has a great job and a wonderful position, but also has had less and less to do with the actual practice of medicine as the years have gone by. So I think she's excited by what he does and how he does it and deeply frustrated by him at the same time.

Reception

Nina Smith of TV Guide said that the "sizzling" chemistry of Edelstein and Hugh Laurie keeps the dialogue fresh enough to "warrant a slap on the cheek."

History

Up until the fifth season, little was known about Cuddy's family and history. It was implied that she is Jewish in season 2 when House comments about her attempts on "JDate not working out", a popular online Jewish dating service. A small menorah is visible on Cuddy's desk in season 2 episode 5, and when House visits her home in season 3 episode 15. In addition, House uses the phrase "Mazal tov" to congratulate Cuddy on the birth of her to-be-adopted child. More information about her family is given in the Season 5 episode "Adverse Events" revealing that both of her parents are alive and she has one sister.

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

Cuddy first met House at the University of Michigan after he had transferred from Johns 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 determine what was wrong with his leg, so Cuddy became his attending doctor. Despite the danger the dead muscle posed (generating clots that could block key blood vessels), House refused to amputate, saying he liked his leg and was willing to risk his life to keep it. Meanwhile his girlfriend, Stacy Warner, told him he should cut it off to survive. It was Cuddy who told Stacy that there was a middle ground between completely amputating the leg or keeping it. They would remove the dead muscle, with only a 50% success rate. If this middle ground failed, House would be crippled for the rest of his life and be in constant pain, but if it were to succeed, his thigh muscle would grow back and he'd be able to walk properly. During the worst of his leg-pains at the hospital, House requested being put into a chemically-induced coma to sleep through it. However, once he was unconscious, Stacy (as his medical proxy) consented to the middle-ground surgery for him.

In one episode, dealing with an airline passenger that experienced decompression sickness, Dr. Cuddy mentioned that she was a scuba diver.

Development

There is a degree of sexual tension between 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 you asked for..."

In Season 1, Cuddy mainly played the part 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 development expanded. 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 to dinner, not vice versa. Becoming suspicious, saying Cuddy would never be interested in Wilson, House stole her garbage from her office to look through it. In it, 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, since she can't do it herself and because he is the only one who knows she wants a baby. House obliges and, despite his usual personality, keeps her injections and desire to have a baby a 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 (Example: 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, extremely irritable from going through Vicodin withdrawal, yells at her in a dangerously stressful situation:

"It's a good thing you failed to become a mom 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." This seems to surprise Wilson, implying that House usually censors his words and level of "mean"-ness around Cuddy (although this could also simply be taken to mean that she views House's characteristic unpleasantness as purposeful).

In the first half of Season 3, House's career is threatened by Detective Michael Tritter, a disgruntled ex-patient who has a grudge against House. At the end, there is a court hearing where there was a chance that House would have to go to jail. Cuddy chooses to protect House, however, by committing perjury (and risking her career as well). By falsifying documents, Cuddy tells the judge that she thwarted House's attempt at stealing oxycodone from a dead patient. She claims to have replaced the pills with placebos at the hospital pharmacy because she knew House was in an extremely vulnerable state. The judge seems skeptical, but decides to let it slide because she doesn't believe that House is a drug trafficker, something Michael Tritter claimed he was. The judge then tells House that he has much better friends than he deserves, namely Cuddy and Wilson, because they were fighting with everything to keep him out of jail.

By Season 5, her relationship with House had stepped into a higher level. Not only do they share a kiss, but she eventually gets a baby from a dying 16-year old. Season 5 seemed to have the classic banter between House and Cuddy; with the only difference that Cuddy is the one after House.

Relationships

After the Tritter story arc concludes, Cuddy's relationship with House improves. House openly flirts with her, and seems to view her in different light after she perjured herself in a courtroom to keep House from losing his medical license and going to jail.

In "Insensitive", House notices that Cuddy had not worn her hat to work even though there was a huge snow storm outside and he quickly figures out she has a blind date that evening. He interrupts Cuddy when she is in the middle of her date in a nearby coffee shop, claiming he needs a consult for his CIPA patient. He purposely embarrasses her in front of her date, telling her loudly that Don (her date) is much better than her previous one. That same evening, House goes to her home, asking for a second consult. He figures out that despite his previous attempts at scaring Don off, Don was currently in Cuddy's house. When House continually questions her and makes remarks about her, she confronts him about his motives, asking him challengingly: "Do you like me, House?" to which he quickly looks away and does not answer.

As Season 3 progresses, there is more focus on the tension between House and Cuddy, especially in "Fetal Position" where House's patient has a fetus that is killing her. The patient, Emma, had finally gotten pregnant through in vitro fertilization after three failed attempts. When House finally comes to the conclusion that it was actually Emma's fetus that is killing her, his recommendation is to abort the fetus, but Emma does not consent (because if she were to abort, this would be her fourth, and maybe final, attempt at pregnancy. Cuddy supports and sympathizes with Emma, and House later confronts her about whether or not her judgments are being clouded. He tells her that she is identifying with the patient too much (because Cuddy is a "woman in her forties" and had also tried to get pregnant through IVF. In the end, Cuddy (although with help from House), manages to save both Emma and her baby.

In "Act Your Age" and "House Training", James Wilson asks Cuddy on two separate dates. In the first one, he takes her to see a play and House immediately questions Wilson's motives. Just before Wilson took Cuddy to a play, House had told him that "the only reason a man takes a woman to a play is if he wants to see her naked." Wilson tells House that sleeping with Cuddy is not what he wants and that it's 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 refuses. It is not until the next episode, "House Training", that it is revealed that Cuddy had said that she would be busy on Thursday and therefore cannot go see a play with him. When House tells Wilson this information, suspecting Cuddy was lying, Wilson responds that she was telling the truth; he [Wilson] had already asked her on another "non-date" on Thursday. Shocked, House contacts Wilson's ex-wife in an attempt to stop Cuddy from becoming the fourth "ex-Mrs.Wilson".

In Season 4, at least as early as the episode "Mirror Mirror", Cuddy is taking birth control pills, of which House is aware. He further suggests that he switched the pills as a prank. During a conversation with Foreman, he quips that if Foreman stays, "no one's going to be happy here... and Cuddy's going to end up pregnant". In "House's Head", House fantasizes about Cuddy in a schoolgirl outfit, performing a pole dance. In the season finale, "Wilson's Heart", Cuddy is shown sleeping at House's bedside, holding his hand, as he recovers from his coma.

In Season 5, "Lucky Thirteen", after House follows Cuddy and Wilson to a store where they were buying baby items, she tells House that she is planning to adopt a baby. House is visibly shocked as the episode ends with a cliffhanger. In "Joy", Becca, the birth mother of Cuddy's adopted baby suffers from a medical condition that forces her to deliver the baby early despite the chance that the baby would die. At first, Cuddy is elated because the baby survives the surgery and now she can finally fulfill her dreams of being a mother. This dream is all but ripped away from her however, when the birth mother realizes that this is her chance to be a better parent than her mother was and that she wants to keep the baby after all. Cuddy is crushed, and as House consoles her in her home, they share a passionate kiss. He then leaves abruptly, ending the episode in a cliffhanger The episode after, "The Itch", Cuddy explains to Wilson how she "never" had feelings for House and, if she dated him, it would go fabulously but end in a blowup. Wilson picks up on this and realizes that she has put a lot of thought into the idea of dating House. At the end of the episode, House leaves his condo in a rush to go see Cuddy, leaving his cane behind. He motorcycles to her house but instead of talking to her, he merely stands on her lawn and looks at her in the window. He stays for a while then leaves without seeing her.

In "Last Resort" House and other doctors and patients are held hostage by a desperate patient. While discussing transaction terms with the S.W.A.T. captain he remarks to Cuddy, "I hope your boyfriend knows what he's doing..." to which she looks away and says nothing, leading watchers to evaluate that she is still thinking about a relationship with House. At the end Cuddy asks House if he wants a relationship with her. House says no.

In "Let Them Eat Cake" romantic tension between the two doctors is apparent when Cuddy moves into House's office after he ruined hers in the previous episode. They openly make sexual remarks to each other though not on large scale. One scene depicts them alone in his office. They discuss their relationship, to which House is reluctant and Cuddy, seemingly, looking forward to. She remarks, "Everyone knows that this is going somewhere" and "I think this is where we kiss," but House replies that they "already did that." He then gropes her breast, explaining that it seemed like the next step; Cuddy says to House, "I have to say I'm an idiot for being surprised." and leaves angrily and dejectedly. At the end of the episode, she moves out of his office. The renovations to Cuddy's office are completed and she shows Wilson, proudly. He remarks on the desk saying it had 'character' and Cuddy realizes that it is her old desk from medical school. Although we are not told, we are led to believe that House contacted her mother and had the desk brought out of storage for her (he earlier convinced the architect that he was her boss and all of the renovations required his consent, leading to a separate prank in which he replaces her toilet with a bidet). Cuddy believes that House has done this, as he is the only person who would know what that desk signifies. However, her joy is short-lived, as she sees House in his office, speaking with an actress/prostitute he had hired earlier in the episode to play a prank on Kutner and Taub.

In "Joy to the World" Cuddy brings in the PotW as Foreman is taking a few days off. She participates in the differentials, to the mild confusion of the team and to House's apparent amusement and annoyance. He comments that her continued presence might lead them to believe that she has a sexual interest in someone in the room. Early in the episode, Taub theatens to go after Cuddy and tell her how House feels, stating that it's obvious that he loves her. House is not pleased, and continually questions Cuddy's presence in the DDxs. At the end of the episode, when the patient's unwanted infant is found, Cuddy tells House that neither set of grandparents want the infant, as it would be too painful a reminder of their loss. She has gotten a lawyer, and plans to become a foster parent, and then adopt. During this last scene, she only glances at House once, though he spends the whole time looking at her and the baby, and smiling slightly. He leaves with a quiet, "Merry Christmas, Cuddy."

External links

• Template:Imdb character
• Lisa Cuddy on TVIV
• Lisa Cuddy at House Wiki