Dr. Lisa Cuddy (played by Lisa Edelsen)
Cuddy is the Dean of Medicine and hospital administrator at Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital. Her field of specialty is endocrinology. She often has to handle House's outlandish requests and is usually left to deal with the consequences of his erratic behavior. Cuddy also has to force House to complete his required weekly duty at the out-patient clinic. Her position often requires her to make extremely difficult moral and ethical decisions regarding patient care (particularly in situations where House insists that highly dangerous and often illegal procedures are a patient's only chance of survival).
There is a degree of sexual tension inherent in Cuddy's relationship with House. House frequently and blatantly ogles her breasts and bottom, commenting on their appearance.
Biography
Nothing is known of Cuddy's family and heritage aside from the fact that she is Jewish. The episode "Three Stories" reveals that she treated House when he suffered the infarction in his leg. Cuddy is presumably Jewish (as is Dr. James Wilson); due to the fact that a menorah can be seen on her desk as well as on the bookshelf in her living room, also House has wisecracked about her using JDate.
Much of what is known about Cuddy was revealed in the episode "Humpty Dumpty". She attended the University of Michigan around the same time as House. Cuddy was an undergraduate there and she described House as "already a legend". During a conversation with Stacy Warner in the same episode, she mentioned wanting to be a doctor since she was twelve, graduating medical school at age twenty five and being second in her class and becoming the first woman and second youngest chief of medicine ever at age thirty two.
During House's court hearing in the episode "Words and Deeds", Cuddy commits perjury by falsifying documents and lying to the court, claiming to have thwarted House's attempt at stealing oxycodone by replacing it with placebos at the hospital pharmacy. After the trial while House is being held in contempt, she tells him the only good thing is now she owns him. Cuddy then implies that in subsequent episodes, viewers will see more House in the clinic, giving seminars, doing paperwork, etc. House does indeed resume his duties in the clinic and begin giving speeches, although he is less than cooperative with Cuddy's desires that he do so, for example, flying to Singapore on Cuddy's orders only to give a three minute speech.
After Cuddy helps to remove the problem created by Tritter, House begins stepping up his playful torture of Cuddy; he begins showing up and interrupting her dates, constantly making comments about her "assets" and displaying an inordinate amount of knowledge (even for House) regarding who she's been with and what she is doing. He also monitors her periods as shown in "Forever" and when she asks him if he can tell because she gets bitchy, House answers: "Once a month, when you leave the kids cancer ward, your eyes glisten. About three days later, you break your ban on sugar and chow down a bucket of frozen yogurt in the cafeteria, sprinkles included."
House also seems genuinely surprised and shocked when Dr. Wilson claims to have slept with Cuddy (although Wilson was in fact joking in order to get House on edge). This series of events seems to culminate when House invites Cuddy to a play, after earlier stating that men only ask women to plays when they want to see the woman naked.
Pregnancy
Towards the end of the second season, in the episode "Forever", Cuddy asked Dr. James Wilson out on a date. Believing that Cuddy might be concerned that she had cancer, but was afraid to be tested, Wilson swiped her spoon to test her saliva for cancer markers, but the result came back clean. The result also revealed that her hormone levels were extremely high, piquing House's curiosity. When House questioned, Cuddy admitted that she wants a child and was deciding if she wanted to ask Wilson "for a donation". House agreed to keep her secret and assisted her with fertility injections, as well as helping her screen potential sperm donors (all of whom House subsequently rejected).
In Season 3, House continuously makes observations ending with wisecrack conclusions that Cuddy is pregnant. As of "Fools for Love", Cuddy is still not pregnant, as evidenced by a negative pregnancy test she is shown throwing away. In the episode "Finding Judas", she is given temporary medical proxy of a young patient, but has a great deal of difficulty treating the young girl and inadvertently makes a medical decision that only causes the girl's condition to worsen. Cuddy acknowledges that her artificial insemination attempts have failed after House tells her: "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, citing that she doesn't have the "mothering handbook encoded in her genes" and was not meant to bear children. Cuddy tearfully confesses to Wilson that she has had a total of three attempts at impregnation, one of which was miscarried (which means that House's remarks about a possible pregnancy may have been accurate) and adds that House's comment to her was "the first time [she'd] seen him be mean just because he can." House's malicious comments coming after confiding her insemination attempts with him is seen as a betrayal, although the viewer is led to believe House did not make the comment purely out of malice, but also due to his withdrawal symptoms as Cuddy had put a "tight leash" on House's Vicodin intake due to Michael Tritter's investigation into House's addiction.
Trivia
- Plays golf.
This article primarily consists of material from the Wikipedia article "Lisa Cuddy" which is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
