When he wrote up the idea and presented it to producer Russ Friend, Friend pointed out that they had had a hypochondriac as a patient-two episodes prior to the one Blake was writing. “It was Cuddy’s mom,” Blake says. “Then I thought, you know what? This would make a much more powerful episode, if she was the patient”. When he wrote it, the episode became a lot more serious than he had originally thought it was going to be. “Not only because it was Cuddy’s mom as the patient,” he explains, “which obviously has enormous consequences. But also because if doctors are being active in doing things behind a patient’s back, it’s incredibly dangerous and has a lot of moral dilemmas”.
Blake married this story to another of his where one of the doctors is acting as a consultant and finds something that could be a bleed in a brain of a patient he is not really treating. “That became the Taub story”.
He reveals that it was Miguel Sapochnick, the episode’s director along with Tony Gaudioz, the director of photography on the episode, who came up with a “really cool look and color scheme that tracks the emotional state of the characters and where the story is”.
“The way Miguel described it was: ‘Busby Berkley musical to film noir to hand held documentary style, back to Busby Berkley. So keep an eye out for that.”
Blake finishes up by saying that the guest cast in this episode is “my favorite guest cast I’ve ever had for an episode. Not only did we have Candice Bergen, who’s fantastic as Cuddy’s mom, but we’re introducing Paula Marshall as Cuddy’s sister in this episode, and Michael Gladis who played Kinsey on Mad Men plays Taub’s brother-in-law”.
In the Houseisms section we are given six writers picks for the “Family Practice” episode. Our favorite is:
“Not according to the recent Supreme Court case of Bite versus Me”.
And finally, in the Music Room we are given iTunes links to two songs used in the episode: “Mr. Sandman” by Chordettes (song used in the teaser), and “The Light” by Mason Jennings (end song).
Please join us next week for another edition of App’s Eye View when we’ll do a recap of the episode “You Must Remember This”.
The InHouse app is available for your iPod, iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch. You can also access content online here.
.jpg?t=20130517094513)
Article comments