House's Last Original Episodes Start After The Super Bowl

[Brian Damage]

February 3, 2008 -- Sunday's post-Super Bowl episode of "House" on Fox features an Oscar-winning guest-star in a far-flung story inspired by real-life events.

While that scenario might sound special, it's not the special episode the producers of "House" originally planned for the coveted high-profile timeslot.

"We did have one in the works, but we didn't have a chance to make that one," said David Shore, executive producer and creator of "House" who is also one of the hundreds of Hollywood writers now on strike.

Shore and his production team were unable to produce their first idea for a post-Super Bowl episode because of the strike, which started Nov. 5.

Still, the episode slated for Sunday following the big game - guest-starring Mira Sorvino (Best Supporting Actress for "Mighty Aphrodite") - will more than do in a pinch, Shore said.

"The [episode] we did make, we happen to have an Oscar-winning actress. It worked out well, all things considered," said Shore, who declined to reveal any details about the episode he had planned to make.

In the episode airing Sunday, Sorvino plays Dr. Cate Milton, a physician trapped at the South Pole - the only doctor at a remote encampment unreachable by outside transportation - who contracts an illness she cannot diagnose.

So she contacts Dr. Gregory House (Hugh Laurie), master diagnostician and renowned grouch, with whom she once worked at fictional Princeton-Plainsboro Hospital.

Conversing via the Internet, House and his team have to diagnose Dr. Milton's malady and also instruct her on performing surgery on herself.

The story is inspired by the experience of Dr. Jerri Nielsen, a doctor who made headlines in 2000 when she became trapped at the South Pole with breast cancer, which she herself diagnosed, forcing her to conduct her own biopsy. (Nielsen's medical drama was made into the 2003 CBS movie "Ice Bound" with Susan Sarandon.)

Shore wouldn't say if Sorvino's character has cancer, preferring to keep the diagnosis a secret since the diagnoses are always a mystery on "House" - until Dr. House figures them out, of course.

If the writers' strike doesn't end soon, the post-Super Bowl episode of "House" could be its second-to-last of the season. It's one of only two original episodes of series that have not aired yet. The second one airs Tuesday.

In that episode, which might have to serve as a season finale, a young woman (played by guest-star Laura Silverman, seen in the Lisa Kudrow series "The Comeback" and the sister of comedian Sarah Silverman) who recently converted to Hasidic Judaism comes to the hospital dangerously ill with an ailment that proves difficult to identify.

And in another storyline, "House is preoccupied by Dr. James Wilson's (Robert Sean Leonard) newly outed relationship with a woman whose personality is remarkably similar to House's," according to a description provided by Fox.

As for the post-Super Bowl time slot, the shows assigned there have almost always reaped super benefits.

Last year, an episode of "Criminal Minds" on CBS drew more than 26 million viewers. A year earlier, an episode of "Grey's Anatomy" on ABC attracted nearly 38 million, a huge number for that show.

"It's pretty exciting," admitted Shore, who insists he's not one to gloat over such an honor.

"I don't remember calling up the guys from '24' and yelling, 'In your face!' or anything like that," he said.

http://www.nypost.com/seven/02032008...786.htm?page=0