McDade's Gratitude List
he’s constructing a Gratitude List at Calvin T.’s tough-love suggestion and he says he’s decided one of the things he’s grateful for is his nose don’t look like this here
Context
The Program's practices seep into the residents' clowning: McDade, mugging with his nose pushed up, announces he's building a Gratitude List at his counselor's tough-love suggestion, having decided one gratitude is that his nose doesn't look like that. The gratitude-inventory is real AA discipline, prescribed by the alumni counselor, and here it survives being turned into a joke — the doctrine so embedded in House life it becomes the material of the horseplay, still doing its quiet work underneath the gag.