Home creator David Shore explained why Dr. House always diagnosed his cases of lupus first, despite the real culprit (almost) never being lupus. HomeJohn’s lupus diagnoses ended up becoming a joke throughout the series, with his titular character, played by Hugh Laurie, often jumping to conclusions about diagnoses when mentioning the autoimmune disease. However, each time he diagnosed the disease in a patient early on, the culprit turned out to be different. That was until Season 4 Episode 8, “You Don’t Want to Know,” when a patient was finally diagnosed with lupus for the first time.
Talking to Weekly entertainmentShore explained the reason behind Home always initially diagnosing patients with lupus, revealing that it was the most common serious illness mentioned in medical articles. The showrunner explained its common points with other serious illnesses, making the diagnosis a joke on the show. He also revealed the importance of it actually happening once to finally make up for the joke. Check out what Shore had to say below:
[Laughs] It’s funny, actually – I downloaded some articles from the beginning of the show to the Writers Guild Foundation Library, and I happened to be there, and someone was reading them, so I said hi to the person. And I looked at the papers and it was an old script, and there’s a reference to lupus in it, and I wrote in the margin, my notes to the writer, “We’re already running out of disease,” or something like that. Because apparently this was the second, third or fourth time we mentioned lupus.
The fact is that we were looking for diseases that could be serious, but that could manifest themselves in many different ways. And unfortunately for many – for us it was lucky, lupus was the perfect disease for us! It was a disease that manifested itself in different ways and therefore could often be misdiagnosed. And so we kind of embraced that and moved on.
[Laughs] It’s never lupus. We had a t-shirt that said, “It’s never lupus.”
That’s when I realized it was 20 years ago and I can’t remember the details. I suspect so, we had an internal discussion about it: “Yeah, I think we have to do this once.” We set up: “it’s never lupus, it’s never lupus”, now we have to transform it into lupus.
What Shore’s Statement Says About House’s Constant Lupus Diagnoses
The disease has similarities to many other diseases
Lupus has many symptoms similar to other diseasessuch as rheumatoid arthritis, fibromyalgia and even celiac disease. However, the severity of the medical drama’s recurring illness comes from the way it attacks the body’s tissues, resulting in permanent damage to the skin and internal organs. An estimated 1.5 million Americans and 5 million people worldwide have the disease. However, just as some HomeSometimes the show’s best episodes tackle the disease in a darkly comedic way, turning it into a joke because of how unusual it really is.
The fact that only one patient in the entire show was diagnosed with lupus allowed the joke to climax while also providing insight into how the disease can actually manifest itself. Even though it was finally shown on screen in Season 4, the autoimmune disorder was still mentioned many times afterwards, although less frequently. But, at the end of Homethe show managed to not only create a joke that became an important element of its identity, but also explored the illness once before it ended.
Our Take on House’s Lupus Running Gag
It became part of the series’ identity
Even if a patient ended up with lupus on the program, Home Embracing the disease as a joke emphasizes the dark humor associated with the series. But it also served to explain how it can manifest itself in so many different ways, becoming a classic part of the show and at the same time informative for the audience. Shore’s explanation sheds a lot of light on why it was used over and over again, highlighting how it managed to become a key part of the series’ story.
Source: electronic warfare