Standard grade outlets may be used in treatment rooms of clinics, medical and dental offices, or outpatient facilities, because these locations don’t have a “patient bed location” as defined in NEC 517.2.

Therefore, no green dot outlet is required in House’s office.

Otherwise, I agree with your other objections. 120VAC is enough to cause muscle contraction, but not severe burns.

Does he intentionally give the medicine to the dog? No. But he does intentionally NOT ask for more. They make it quite clear that he decided he didn’t want to keep getting worse, and was looking for a way out.

As has already been alluded to, the current has to have a way to get back “home” (complete the circuit). The “hot” portion is just that — the ungrounded side of the circuit. The other prong is the “neutral” which is so named because it is at ground potential and therefore not capable of zapping someone.

Since one side of the circuit is connected to earth ground, anything also connected to ground is an alternate path for the juice to get “home”. As a kid I once stuck something in a wall socket and got flung into the middle of the room. Looking back on that I remember there being a floor grill I was in contact with that was part of the heating system, so that was my “ground”.

As was also mentioned, there is some resistance when the body completes the circuit, so some flash burning isn’t possible at that voltage. By the way, current is the flow of electrons, voltage is the amount of “push” they have to get there. So, the only way for there to be that amount of arcing would be to go straight from the hot to the neutral with a straight piece of metal. Even then the breaker would trip before such heavy burning would take place. But I don’t mind this break from reality for dramatic effect. I mean, this IS about drama rather than a course in Electrician 101.

But what does rankle me is the sloppiness or incompetence by the on-set electrician who either didn’t care, or didn’t have enough basic knowhow to install a hospital-grade device (green dot) for the shock scene. I have to wonder was he merely incompetent, or was this an unconscious gesture on his part or on the part of the higher-ups that reflects underlying contempt for the viewers (as in “Screw ‘em; they won’t know the difference”)?

A US standard 120V outlet is wired with one “hot” wire, one “neutral” wire, and (possibly) one “ground” wire. The hot wire swings from about +170V to about -170V and back 60 times per second with respect to ground, the neutral wire is supposed to be at about the same as ground (there are reasons why it occasionally wouldn’t be), and the ground wire, if it’s present, is supposed to be wired as directly as possible to a ground electrode.

What you described is slightly closer to a 240V outlet, where there are two “hot” wires of opposite phase (when one of them is -170V, the other one is +170V, and vice versa) and no neutral.

Nevermind. Totally reminded me.

Dramatically, I think that the reason he didn’t take the pills is hidden so that the audience has a better hint of the agony she faced at the end.