“House M.D.” episodes are often told from the viewpoint of Dr. Greg House (Hugh Laurie), extraordinary diagnostician and obnoxious department head. After all, House himself is, well, very much about House.

I enjoy watching jerky Dr. House each week, but current episode “5 to 9,” aired February 8, 2010, is not about House but about Princeton Plainsboro’s Dean of Medicine, Dr. Lisa Cuddy (Lisa Edelstein). It turns out they’re really not so different.

Cuddy can be just as acerbic as House, as when, in this episode, she takes a calculated risk and emerges victorious in insisting a major insurer increase its reimbursement rate from the offered 4% to the 12% the hospital requires. She also has the same degree of hedonism and self-involvement as House as when, in this episode, she arrives late at an important meeting because she can't resist a bit of afternoon delight with boyfriend-du-jour Lucas Douglas (Michael Weston). And like House, Cuddy shows no fear – except for her daughter’s wellbeing. Her steely nerves serve Princeton Plainsboro well.

Cuddy mirrors House. Twenty plates (or bedpans) spinning at any given moment, she can be at once brokenhearted, stubborn, and a winner in the face of impossible odds. Cuddy is a frantic single mother and a hospital administrator tough enough to see through employees' lies and settle territorial disputes. She kicks gluteus maximus and takes names, then fast-walks to the next crisis.

While she usually caves to House's subterfuges and whiny insistence – and is generally right in letting the dazzling diagnostician have his immature way – in this episode, she flatly turns down her prize doctor's wheedling request to infect a cancer patient with malaria, an experimental treatment on which a $50 bet rides. She also fires her best pharmacy technician when it turns out the woman has been ordering (and stealing) exponentially large quantities of ephedrine – the stuff of meth labs – standing fast in the face of the employee's threat to expose Cuddy's sexual exploits.

Like House, Cuddy finds fulfillment in her job but has unspoken, perhaps unknown, yearnings that cannot quite be fulfilled. Like House, she soldiers on. For a full recap of "5 to 9" and other "House M.D." episodes, visit the program's official website at http://www.fox.com/house/.