house

"I take risks. Sometimes patients die. But not taking risks causes more patients to die — so I guess my biggest problem is I’ve been cursed with the ability to do the math."

— House to Cuddy in Last Resort

This article is about Gregory House. For information about the show, see House, M.D..



Dr. Gregory House, (almost universally referred to as House and rarely as Greg) is the main character and protagonist of the House series. He is portrayed by English actor Hugh Laurie. He is a Board Certified Diagnostician with a double specialty of Infectious Disease and Nephrology. He is also known for his appearance in the Nintendo DS game; "House M.D: The Official Game".

Although never shown or said, he would have done an Internal Medicine Residency, then did fellowships in both Infectious Diseases and Nephrology, then became an Attending Physician and Board-certified in Infectious Diseases and Nephrology but not Internal Medicine.

Biography

Early life

House was born in 1959. One possible birthday is June 11, 1959 (according to his hospital admission bracelet in No Reason) which is also actor Hugh Laurie's actual birth date. Another is May 15, 1959, according to his driver's license in Two Stories and the sheet of information he sticks to his bathroom wall in After Hours in case of his death.[1] To make it even more confusing, he gets birthday wishes in The Socratic Method, set shortly after Christmas. He is the child of Blythe House, a housewife who was married to Marine pilot John House. While John was overseas, Blythe was having an affair with Thomas Bell whom House believed was his biological father due to the physical characteristics they share, but this turned out to be false.

Young House

Young House. Love is Blind

As his father served on active duty through most of House's childhood and adolescence, House has lived in a variety of countries, such as Egypt, the Philippines and Japan. As a result, House is able to speak Spanish and Mandarin Chinese, has conversational Brazilian Portuguese and is able to read at least some Hindi. Furthermore, he was once shown reading a French medical journal and an untranslated Japanese manga. He additionally has some knowledge of several others. For example, he used Yiddish, Russian and Latin phrases several times, but it is unknown how much of these languages he knows.

House was obviously a bright child, a mixed blessing as his harshly demanding father and enabling mother obviously had high hopes for him. He cultivated a variety of interests, such as chemistry, playing the piano and guitar. However, it appears that his isolation from people his age and his poor relationship with his parents led House to become something of a loner. He had few friends growing up which probably contributed to his antisocial behavior. It is implied that he frequently rebelled against his father and was punished as a result with both intense physical discomfort and emotional isolation.

At the age of 12, realizing that his father had been away (stationed in Okinawa) during his conception, House deduced that John was not his biological father. House confronted John with this information, and as a result they stopped speaking to one another for an entire summer, communicating only through hand-written notes. Their relationship, however, returned to normal following this brief spat (although there is sufficient evidence presented throughout the series that points towards John's abuse of a young House). John treated House coldly, likely due to a lack of understanding between the two. It could be said that John did not resent House, but was a believer in tough love. Another theory is that, considering his punishments were so harsh, John more than likely abused House as a way of exercising his frustration at Blythe's infidelity. This fact did not stop Blythe from supporting her husband, which made House all the more resentful towards his father. In One Day, One Room House confides in Eve that his father repeatedly abused him throughout his childhood, making him take ice water baths and sleep outside in the cold as a way of administering discipline. House strongly hints at this being the source of the fragility in his and his father's relationship. House is emotionally damaged by the dysfunction in these primary relationships, citing his mother's dishonesty and his father's hostility as causes of his damaged personality. His colleagues have acknowledged that this is the source of House's deep-seated unhappiness, and cynicism; his fear of intimacy, praise, and the unknown; as well as his lack of acceptance regarding traditional societal values and rituals.

It was during his visit to a Japanese hospital in his early teens that House met a disheveled-looking man appearing to be a janitor but despite his appearance, was actually the greatest medical practitioner in the entire hospital. He later discovered the man was a buraku, an "untouchable" in the Japanese caste system who made no attempt to fit in with the rest of the hospital staff. When one of House's friends is gravely wounded in a rock climbing accident, the doctors turn to the buraku healer for his expertise. House cites this as the primary motivation behind his choice to become a doctor, noting that when all else failed, the doctors heeded the buraku's advice despite their intense distaste for him. The treatment of the buraku healer presumably mirrors the manner in which House was treated as a young man: being ignored by his "betters" despite his atypical, prodigious intellect, profound understanding of human nature, and wisdom beyond his years.

In his late teenage years, House went to a prep school in the United States where, in addition to keeping very good grades, he played varsity lacrosse and demonstrated a keen interest in music, both modern and classical.

Higher Education

Yearbook photo of House as a cheerleader

Yearbook photo of House as a cheerleader. Adverse Events

House went to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland where he was in the pre-med program, maintaining an excellent GPA and eventually getting a perfect score on his MCAT. Before he went to med school, he thought about getting a Ph.D. in physics due to his desire to research dark matter. He obtained admission to Johns Hopkins Medical School under Brightman and Gilmar, and was one of their best students, eventually becoming the favorite to obtain a prestigious internship at the Mayo Clinic despite many run-ins with faculty members who he felt were treating him unfairly. However, he was caught cheating by his fellow student Philip Weber, the man whom he later treated as his arch-nemesis, and proceedings were set in motion to finalize his expulsion. Weber received the internship that House was supposed to receive. He was also a lacrosse cheerleader.

Despite his academic misconduct, House was accepted into the University of Michigan's Medical System on a provisional basis while waiting out the appeal period at Johns Hopkins. During his time at UMich, House spent most of his time hanging around the university bookstore, where he eventually met a young undergraduate named Lisa Cuddy. Following a one night stand, however, House had learned he would not be re-admitted to Johns Hopkins and he would have to repeat his final year of medical school. As a result, he withdrew from his social life and ceased his pursuit of a formal relationship with Cuddy. House ultimately completed his internship and obtained residencies in pathology, nephrology, and infectious disease, in addition to his completion of a double specialty.

House attended a medical convention in New Orleans, Louisiana where he noticed a young medical school graduate carrying around unopened divorce papers all weekend. He followed the doctor, James Wilson, to a bar where a man kept playing Billy Joel's "Leave a Tender Moment Alone" on the jukebox which reminded Wilson of his recent breakup, prompting the two to get into an argument. In a fit of anger, Wilson threw a bottle and broke an antique mirror, getting himself arrested for assault, vandalism, and property destruction. House followed him to the police station and bailed him out. They spent the rest of the convention together (mostly drinking) and became close friends.

The year this happened is uncertain, as Wilson's age, and the years he was married to Sam Carr, and later Bonnie, are contradicted several times in the series. In Lockdown, Wilson says Sam divorced him in 1991, the next episode Knight Fall it was around 2000, which is impossible considering the chronology of other events such as House's infarction happening then and House never having met Sam, not to mention how Wilson managed to get divorced three times between 2000 and 2006. A likely time for House and Wilson meeting is the summer of 1995: Wilson's brother Danny (who House didn't know existed) disappeared 9 years before Season 1, while Wilson was still in medical school; Wilson's first wife Sam sent him divorce papers just after he graduated, which is when the convention happened, and all references to their marriage state they were married for fewer than two years, so the last years of Wilson's med school; Sam was about to move to Baltimore, presumably for her residency after she finished an unpaid internship, and Wilson planned to follow her there, but his degrees say he took his medical school degree up at the University of Pennsylvania, not far from Princeton University and Trenton, Danny's last known location; Cuddy is supposed to have met Wilson at some point during the period between his first divorce and his marriage to Bonnie, so House likely introduced them around the time House was hired at PPTH, when Wilson still would've been a resident. As early as Detox, we know that Wilson was best friends with House before the infarction.

Romance and PPTH

About ten years before the series started, House participated in a paintball game pitting doctors against lawyers. One of the lawyers, Stacy Warner, shot House and put him out of the game. He asked her out and, despite her acceptance, the couple's first date was a disaster. A week later, however, she moved in with him and the two stayed together for the next five years.

House's medical career prior to his employment at Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital is shrouded in mystery, but it appears that although his skills as a diagnostician were unmatched, his disregard for the finer points of medical ethics/protocol, his inability to cooperate with subordinates and administrators alike, and what appears to be a disregard for routine work made him an almost unrivaled liability. It's known, however, that during this time he did indeed live in Princeton.

7 years before the series picked up, House found himself out of work, but he found out that Lisa Cuddy, now 32, had just been appointed as the Chief of Medicine at Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital. Seeking employment, House approached her for a job and was hired despite his poor professional reputation. Cuddy once remarked that she hired him because she knew of his extraordinary skill as a diagnostician, although at a lower wage than would be acceptable for a doctor of House's expertise. To placate House and keep him from having to interact with the rest of the hospital staff on a regular basis, Cuddy created a whole new department just for him; the Department of Diagnostic Medicine, the only one of its kind in the entire country, enabling House to pick and choose any cases he desired, whenever he desired. House spent the next several years as Department Head doing as little as possible to keep his job, although he was assigned a star diagnostic team that he regularly abused and belittled. Nevertheless, he soon proved his worth as the "go to" doctor for complex and problematic cases.

After House joined PPTH an opening in the hospital's budding oncology department appeared. Seizing the opportunity, House recommended his friend James Wilson for the job. Wilson was enthusiastic about moving to Princeton, but House didn't find out why for several years - Wilson's schizophrenic brother Danny Wilson had disappeared from Princeton University.

Disability

The Flame Cane, House's 6th and most famous cane. He acquired it by Wilson buying it for him after his dog chewed the last one. It has been described by House as "bitchin'", and he has also remarked to Dr. Cameron, Dr. Chase, and Dr. Foreman that "it makes it look like I'm going fast

The Flame Cane, House's 6th and most famous cane. He acquired it by Wilson buying it for him after his dog chewed the last one. It has been described by House as "bitchin'", and he has also remarked to Dr. Cameron, Dr. Chase, and Dr. Foreman that "it makes it look like I'm going fast."

5 years before the start of the series, House suffered an infarction in his leg while playing golf. Unfortunately, the only symptom was leg pain, and by the time House himself realized that he was suffering from muscle death, the leg was in such a bad state that amputation was the recommended course of action. However, House rejected the suggestion and instead suggested that he undergo a procedure to bypass circulation around the dead muscle. The result was intense pain during the healing process. With the muscle death leading to cardiac arrest, House was put into a chemically induced coma. However, while House was comatose, Stacy, acting as his medical proxy, consented to Dr. Cuddy's recommendation that the dead muscle be surgically removed. Although this likely saved House's life, it left him with permanent intense pain in his leg. His right leg still bears an obvious scar from where the muscle was removed and there is a divot in his skin where the muscle used to be.

House's anger at Stacy's decision poisoned the relationship and led to Stacy leaving. House started to lean heavily on Wilson for emotional support, eventually leading in part to Wilson's divorce from his second wife, Bonnie Wilson. House's condition is most likely made worse by the fact that prior to the infarction, he was quite an active athlete, engaging in golf and running on a regular basis.

As a result of the pain, House became addicted to the narcotic painkiller, Vicodin. It should be noted, however, that even before his disability, House admitted to recreational drug use. Although House realizes he is dependent, he believes Vicodin is the only treatment that effectively manages his pain and allows him to function. His dependence on the drug has gotten him into trouble on several occasions, and his colleagues are unsure whether House's antisocial personality traits are the result of his addiction, his pain, or are part of his inherent personality.

House is reluctant to talk about the incident which damaged his leg, and responds with irritation when it is brought up. In Three Stories, he tells a group of students about the leg injury (but disguises his identity), and becomes infuriated when they, like his original doctors, cannot figure out what was wrong.

House is self-conscious about the appearance of his right thigh — it is badly scarred from the surgeries. Both Cuddy and Cate Milton have noted his reluctance to show it to anyone, including in intimate situations. However, during his period of psychosomatic pain after Stacy’s departure, he pointedly showed it to Cuddy to emphasize the nature of his disability and the cause of his pain in order to get a shot of morphine.

House has generally defended his decision to try to save his leg, but in the Season 6 finale Help Me, when faced with a patient who was making a similar decision and was reluctant to agree to an amputation, House finally admitted that his decision turned out to be a bad one. He admitted that if he had gone ahead with the amputation, he probably would not be in constant pain and would still be in a positive relationship.

The Series

At the beginning of the series, House has three fellows: a longstanding "yes man" Robert Chase, more understanding and empathetic Allison Cameron and bright new hire Eric Foreman. Cuddy is angry with him for blowing off six years of clinic duty, and as a result, cuts off his hospital privileges until he starts making up the time.

House also "hides" from patients and refuses to meet them; claiming to his staff it helps not to get attached to the patient. However, when he does meet a patient who refuses treatment because of prior misdiagnosis, House is able to empathize with her and reveals the damage to his leg was also caused by misdiagnosis.

During this season, Cameron starts getting romantically interested in House, but House appears uninterested. Matters are complicated when PPTH gets a new chairman, Edward Vogler, a billionaire holding the hospital a virtual hostage with a donation of $100 million. He takes a dislike to the "hardly working" House and after a series of clashes that result in Cameron resigning, seeks to have him fired. Instead, Cuddy backs House and sends Vogler packing.

House asks Cameron back, but she won't unless House goes on a date with her. He agrees, only to tell her that he really isn't all that interested in her and he thinks she's only interested in him because he is so damaged. Cameron isn't convinced, but when Stacy returns into House's life seeking help for her husband, Mark Warner, Cameron realizes that House is capable of love and drops the matter.

House agrees to let Stacy work at PPTH so she can work with Mark during his rehabilitation, and House soon is plotting to steal her away. They share a night together while Stacy considers leaving Mark, but at the last moment House realizes he will eventually make Stacy miserable again and tells her to stay with Mark, who can make her happy. She leaves, but the incident has an immediate negative reaction when House's leg pain continues to increase. Matters come to a head at the end of a season when the disgruntled husband of a former patient, Jack Moriarty shoots House in the abdomen and neck. His motive was that his affair was revealed in the course of the wife's treatment and she later committed suicide because of the revelation. However, when House is lying on a gurney waiting to be rushed to surgery, he regains consciousness long enough to ask for ketamine.

After the ketamine treatment and eight weeks of recovery, House is pain free and ready to work harder. However, his leg pain and Vicodin habit soon return. After treating a clinic patient, Michael Tritter, with disrespect, House finds himself on the wrong side of the law as Tritter, a police detective, starts delving into House's Vicodin habit. However, to keep House from going to jail, Wilson refuses to testify and Cuddy perjures herself in court to have the charges against House dismissed.

Meanwhile, Foreman is worried that he is becoming too much like House and decides to resign. During his notice period, House suddenly decides to fire Chase and after Foreman leaves for good, Cameron decides to follow him, leaving House without a team.

House tries to get along without a team, but after having a rough time with a case, Cuddy insists he hire new fellows. House resists, but eventually puts together a contest to pick new fellows out of forty applicants. He is surprised to find out that Cameron has returned to PPTH to work in the emergency room and that Chase is now on the surgical staff working towards being board certified. Soon, Foreman is back after getting fired from his new job and Cuddy insists that House work with him. House finally settles on Foreman, Chris Taub, Lawrence Kutner, and Remy Hadley. It's at this time that former fellowship candidate Amber Volakis begins a relationship with Wilson. House believes this new relationship threatens his friendship with Wilson. At first untrusting of Amber's motives for involvement with Wilson, he tests and questions her and her responses appear to satisfy him as to her genuine interest in Wilson, if not with the eventual outcome of the relationship itself. Despite this stalemate between them, House still antagonizes her and fights with her to spend more time with Wilson. Later in the season, House awakens from a bus crash with a serious head injury and a nagging feeling that someone is going to die. He believes that he must have witnessed a symptom of some kind in a fellow bus passenger that is triggering this feeling. He eventually remembers that Amber was on the bus with him and that the memory his brain was trying to retrieve was Amber taking flu pills, (amantadine), while on the bus with him. The amantadine binds with the proteins in blood, and when her organs are damaged in the bus crash, the amantadine cannot be filtered out, causing multi-system organ failure from amantadine poisoning. Amber later dies in Wilson's arms when he wakes her up from a coma to say goodbye to her before turning off the life support machines. House's fragmented memories reveal that Amber had gone to lend a ride to a drunken House at a bar on behalf of, but unbeknownst to, Wilson, who was at work at the time. House fatefully chose to ride the bus instead of accept her favor. Amber followed him onto the bus in order to give him his cane, which he had left behind. The House-Wilson relationship looked as though it may break up anyway as the grieving Wilson questions the validity of House's friendship.

Wilson decides to leave PPTH and House has no luck finding new friends. However, when John House dies, Wilson promises House's mother that he will make sure House attends the funeral. After a harrowing journey which ends with House taking a DNA sample to prove his theory that John was not his biological father, House and Wilson make amends and Wilson returns to PPTH. As the season progresses, more tragedy strikes when Kutner unexpectedly commits suicide. House's mental state quickly begins to deteriorate into hallucinations of Amber and delusions of a romantic relationship with Cuddy. House agrees to be voluntarily admitted to Mayfield Psychiatric Hospital.

See also House (Broken)

With his medical license on the line, House is desperate to get Darryl Nolan, his psychiatrist, to approve his return to practice. However, Dr. Nolan is just as desperate to get House to deal with his mental health issues. Eventually, House starts to trust Dr. Nolan and starts to improve enough to be released. After initially thinking of leaving diagnostic medicine to relieve his stress, House finds that medical mysteries are the only good way to deal with his pain and he starts trying to get his job back from Foreman, who has replaced him in the meantime. After getting his position back, he manages to convince Chase to stay on his team full-time and manages to hook back Taub and Hadley (Thirteen) as well. However, once Chase admits to Cameron his complicity in the death of a mass-murdering African dictator, she won't be wooed back and leaves House, her husband Chase, and PPTH.

House also realizes that he wants to be with Cuddy and starts pursuing her. However, to his dismay, a private detective he hired, Lucas Douglas, has taken a liking to Cuddy as well, leading to a relationship. In a bold move, Wilson decides to get back at Cuddy for House, after Cuddy misled House at Thanksgiving, and outbids her on the apartment she was looking at. House moves in with Wilson in the new apartment, but is then threatened by the reappearance of Wilson's first ex-wife Sam Carr. Whether it was the tension between the House and Sam or not, Wilson asks House to move out of the apartment. Amongst the other events that took place, including the return of Alvie, his roommate from the psychiatric hospital, at his old apartment, House returns to Dr. Nolan for another therapy session only to find himself unable to cope with Cuddy's recent decision to move in with Lucas. House accuses Dr. Nolan of "selling snake oil" and leaves. The end of the season forces House to realize that his past decisions, particularly the decision to keep his leg, have made him cold, thoughtless, and lonely. This leads him to convince his patient that is trapped under the rubble of the crane collapse to have an amputation done so that she wouldn't repeat House's mistakes. However, House's patient dies due to an unpreventable fat embolism, and he seeks out the final stash of Vicodin that has not been found in his old apartment. Tired, weak, and feeling helpless, House breathes heavily and stares at his old friend again when suddenly Cuddy appears in his apartment. Cuddy claims she could not stop thinking of House, even though she'd just accepted Lucas's marriage proposal. She admits that she loves him, which House cautiously accepts as he is unsure whether or not he's hallucinating again due to the Vicodin. Cuddy simply asks whether or not he has actually taken the pills. He had not, and thus begins the relationship of House and Cuddy.

As House and Cuddy's relationship progresses, they have clashes at work, including trying to keep the ER and ICU open. Meanwhile, Remy Hadley decides to take a leave of absence for a trip to Thailand. After admitting his relationship with Cuddy to his team, they worry if the couple can keep their work and personal lives separate. In one case, after a newborn stops breathing, the case ends in the baby living but the mother dying because she refused a critical operation for her child. After Hadley leaves, Cuddy pressures House to take on another fellow, Martha M. Masters, a third-year med student and child prodigy who graduated high school at fifteen and is three years younger than any of her peers. When a patient comes in displaying smallpox symptoms, House risks his life to save the patient, but fails to save the patient's father. As Cuddy and House's relationship advances, Cuddy's mother Arlene is in town, and they eat dinner with Wilson, during which House drugs Wilson and Arlene. House also mentions that his relationship with Cuddy was making him a worse doctor, but he would always choose Cuddy over medicine. Later, when Cuddy is admitted to the hospital with life-threatening symptoms, House spends his time elsewhere, which leads to their breakup. House also begins taking Vicodin again. Later, House discovers Thirteen has been in prison for the last six months and pokes into what she was in for, which is revealed to be bogus drug prescriptions. She also euthanized her brother who was dying of Huntington's (the same disease she has), but since she wore gloves, authorities could not prove she was the one who pushed the plunger. House, meanwhile, has taken up an interest in a new drug which has been shown to regrow muscle in mice, and consistently goes to the lab to steal the drug. However, when he learns the drug causes fatal tumors, he excises them himself, but Cuddy finds him and takes him to the hospital. Also, Taub learns that he has two daughters with different women. When an artist comes in as a patient faking symptoms aiming to make the diagnostic department her magnum opus, House discovers an underlying disease, and is convinced by her to change, but is rooted in old habits. He deals with his bitterness by crashing his car into Cuddy's living room and fleeing to spend three months overseas.

In 2012, a year since House crashed his car into Cuddy's home, he serves his time behind bars at the East New Jersey Correctional Facility under the close watch of the prison warden. However, he seems to have been sentenced too harshly for a first offense. We learn that he asked for this severe sentencing. House states he is going to research dark matter, citing galactic rotation and detection, if he leaves medicine. He returns to medicine during the duration of Season 8, but eventually leaves medicine after faking his own death during the series finale. He rides off with James Wilson, so Wilson had someone to share his final few months with, Wilson having been diagnosed with cancer and five months to live.

Experiments

House's willingness to take risks and experiment with his patients extends to his own health. Beyond his use of Vicodin, he has frequently used himself as a Guinea pig for drug trials and medical tests. Some of these tests are aimed at curing his leg pain, while others are to help his patients or satisfy his own curiosity. This disregard for his own well-being horrifies Wilson and Cuddy, who see it as an expression of his self-destructive impulses.

House's self-experiments include:

House suffers a seizure.

House suffers a seizure.

House isn't the only one who does experiments on himself. In the episode No Reason, House hallucinates that Cuddy gives him ketamine to reboot his nerve connections. Near the end of the episode, House comes to, and tells Cameron to tell Cuddy to give him ketamine. Another example is in the episode Resignation when Wilson slips House antidepressants. House responds by putting amphetamines in Wilson's coffee.

Personality

Equipped with a dry and acerbic sense of humor, House is enigmatic and conceals many facets of his personality with a veneer of sarcasm. He appears and sometimes himself claims to be narcissistic, and appears to have a disdain for most people, leading some to label him "a misanthrope". He has contempt for most societal institutions, including feminism and religion. House is an atheist and it is implied that he is nihilistic. These traits make him something of a byronic hero. Despite his cynicism, he does seem to care about his colleagues to a certain extent and while considering them "idiots" is able to sometimes put aside his pride and apologize when he has offended them in a particularly sardonic fashion. House uses his flippancy to conceal his affection toward his colleagues, and denies it to the extent that he himself sometimes forgets it. House is a total maverick and has stated that he frequents prostitutes. In one episode, his best friend Dr. Wilson states that House could have Asperger's Syndrome, but later tells House that he only wishes he had Asperger's so he could get away with more in life. Wilson has also told House that his obsession with solving cases has nothing to do with saving lives but that while "some doctors have a Messianic complex, House has a Rubik's complex", that is to say, he's more concerned with figuring out what is wrong with his patients than he is with saving their lives. The latter he does simply because it's his job. This is shown when he sometimes tries to diagnose patients after they're dead, such as in the episode "97 Seconds". However, there have been more than one occasion in which he put at risk his career, freedom and sometimes even his life to save a patient, leaving open how much he doesn't care about his patients' lives.

Occasionally, House can display the same sort of hypocrisy he decries in others, such as his derision for Cuddy when she had the naming ceremony for her daughter. A particularly egregious example would be his acquisition of a handgun after being shot by Moriarty, while stating to Masters that the Second Amendment is the part of the Constitution which says that people have the right to be stupid. He also apparently has inherited John House's service automatic and Mameluke sword. No Reason, Euphoria (Part 1), Last Temptation, Perils of Paranoia.

House hides most of his emotions behind his ever-present snide and witty comebacks. He receives a lot of flak for coming off as unsympathetic towards his patients and for being relatively unmoved by anything that occurs in the hospital. However, distancing himself from the emotional labor of being a physician in this way allows him to approach problems logically and with a clear-headed perspective, making him one of the best doctors around. Sometimes, when talking one-on-one with dying patients, his harsh demeanor quickly vanishes and he can become very warm and comforting. He also does care for some people, mainly for his best friend, Wilson, and if really pressed, his team.

His existence is like his own punishment in hell; he sees everything that could have been with two of his patients. If his own diagnosis was correct, he could've been the volleyball player who kept his leg. If he had chosen to amputate, he could've been the farmer with the prosthesis who still had a fulfilling, active life. Instead, he got the worst middle ground: a leg that’s essentially useless and causes him constant pain, the worst part being that he could still get rid of it for a prosthetic leg, thus ending the pain and making him able get off his Vicodin addiction. However, his pride will never allow it, thus creating the perfect prison: he could escape at any time, yet he’s the only one keeping himself there, with this self-awareness being the true torture.

Physical Appearance

House is a man in his late forties/early fifties with short, curly brown, greying hair. At the beginning of season 6, House cuts his hair very short but it returns to its previous length by the end of the season. During his time in prison early in season 8, House's hair has grown long and he eventually shaves it off at the beginning of the season 8 episode Charity Case.

After Kutner's death, House begins wearing the expensive watch Kutner had gifted to him for Secret Santa, and he is seen wearing it up until Season 7. During season 8, House wears a bracelet on his right wrist which Hugh Laurie revealed serves as a reminder to House of his time in prison.

House wears a variety of blazers, trousers and sneakers, often wearing either a button-up shirt with a t-shirt visible underneath or a button-up shirt with the top two buttons unbuttoned, exposing his upper chest and collarbone, along with jeans and sneakers.

He has also been seen wearing suits and, on six separate occasions, a white lab coat.

House or Ringmaster House in the "Get Happy" dream sequence. From the Season 7 episode, .

House or Ringmaster House in the "Get Happy" dream sequence. From the Season 7 episode, Bombshells.

In a dream Cuddy has during the Season 7 episode Bombshells, House is dressed as a circus ringmaster, complete with top hat, floppy bow tie and fingerless gloves.

TV Tropes describing House

Relationships

Although House has had a number of co-workers, employers, lovers, and acquaintances during his life, it appears that he has only had seven real relationships during his life. This is primarily because House's personality is most likely a deliberate attempt to alienate those who want to get to know him better. The seven people who have been able to overcome his defensiveness have found a person worth salvaging, or even cherishing.

James Wilson

See also Hilson

Wilson is House's best and only friend. Like just about everyone else, Wilson admires House for his considerable medical skills. However, he probably cares more for House as a human being. Wilson has noted that this has led to a co-dependent relationship, with Wilson acting as an enabler. For example, Wilson has kept House well-supplied with Vicodin and often makes excuses for his behavior to get House out of trouble. For those who know both of them, they realize that Wilson will drop everything when House needs him. When Stacy (House's ex-girlfriend) eventually left House, it was Wilson who kept him going. As a result, Wilson is very protective of House. However, Wilson is no pushover; he often challenges House over his behavior and is not above tricking him to show House that although he might be right about almost everything, that skill doesn't apply to his own behavior. In one episode, House pretends to be gay to get the attention of a neighbor and Wilson even proposes to House.

Stacy Warner

See also - Housy

House's ex-girlfriend and possibly the only woman House has ever shown outward emotion for. Although their relationship broke up over House's anger about his disability, it's clear that they are physically, emotionally, and intellectually attracted to each other. Unlike most people, Stacy can see right through House's defensiveness and can often see through his attempts to manipulate her. Most of House's fear of relationships can probably be tracked back to the pain he felt when Stacy walked out of his life.

John House

House's father was a strict disciplinarian, but although his punishments were severe, they were never arbitrary or fuelled by anger. As a Marine, John probably felt his son would respond well to the same sort of discipline that made him the man he is. Instead, House became the antithesis of his father. Where John is compulsively neat, House dresses like a slob. The father is punctual while the son is constantly late. Where John is straightforward, his son is manipulative. However, although House clearly wants nothing more to do with his father, it's just as clear that his father wants to have a relationship with his son and share the important things in his life.

Blythe House

From the way House treats women, one might expect that his relationship with his mother was troubled. However, House's mother loves him unconditionally, and the reverse is true as well. It was probably this unconditional love that led House to pursue his dreams. However, House realizes that he's a disappointment to his mother because the thing that his mother wants the most is for him to be happy, and he seems incapable of being anything other than miserable. His wish to avoid his father has the unfortunate fallout of taking him away from his mother as well.

Lisa Cuddy

Main article - Huddy

House and Cuddy met twenty five years ago at the University of Michigan. For years at PPTH, they seemed to deny this attraction, and each appeared to take active steps to discourage it - House pressing Cuddy's failure to keep active as a doctor and her strict adherence to medical protocol, and Cuddy emphasizing House's lack of work ethic and reliability. However, in the Season 6 Finale "Help Me", Cuddy tells House that she loves him while standing in his bathroom. Thinking it is another hallucination, House checks to make sure that he did not take the Vicodin. He had not, and it was true that Cuddy had ended her engagement because of her feelings for House. However, House was unable to face the prospect of losing Cuddy to cancer without resorting to Vicodin, and when Cuddy realized his inability to cope without drugs, she ended their relationship. House was fundamentally incapable of dealing with this rejection, culminating in him deliberately destroying the remains of their relationship by driving his car through her front wall.

More insights into House's view of relationships were obtained in the episode Mirror Mirror. When House was with the mirror patient, Thirteen was in the room with them. The patient chose to mirror House. At first, the patient started to make comments about how good-looking Thirteen was, then he started to express regret about how it was impossible for him to do anything about it. It appears from this that House would like to have relationships with some of the women he works with, like Lisa Cuddy and Allison Cameron, but knows that pursuing such a relationship would be inappropriate and near impossible.

Dominika Petrova

House marries Dominika in season 7, following his break-up with Cuddy. However, this is just a sham, so that Dominika could get a green card. In season 8, they start living together to prove to the INS that they are a legitimate couple. In We Need the Eggs, it seems that House has started to develop feelings towards Dominika. House's dysfunctionality is further exhibited when Dominika discovers House has been keeping the news of her citizenship from her, leading to her distrust of him and causing her to angrily move out. However, during House's eulogy in the series finale, Dominika claimed that he "was her husband for real" stating that she couldn't help but love him despite what he did.

Allison Cameron

Main Article- Hameron

When questioned initially, House told Cameron that he hired her for her looks. However, he expanded on that by admitting that he surmised that because she was so good looking, she could have coasted into any sort of life and instead must have chosen to dedicate her life to medicine.

Cameron expressed a romantic interest in House on several occasions, and they dated once (the one date was Cameron's condition for coming back to work). House has been apparently uninterested in pursuing a relationship - he told Cameron she tends to form relationships with people who need "fixing", and that it is his damaged personality that in fact draws her to him. House, however, betrays more than a passing interest in Cameron to Wilson in the episode Role Model when he reacts perceptibly to Wilson's comment about 'hitting on' Cameron. Although Cameron has stated that she is "over" House, neither her colleagues (nor Wilson or Cuddy) believe her. Both characters retain an ambiguous interest in the other. In No Reason, House repeatedly fantasizes about Cameron, first for her abiding concern for his injury and later as he caresses her with a surgical robot. For her part Cameron lets slip to a documentary team in Ugly that she loves House and later we see her trying to convince herself that it was an innocent remark. Cameron and House share a passionate kiss in Half-Wit, but it is soon revealed that she only does so to try and draw his blood.

After Chase is fired and Foreman leaves in Human Error, Cameron hands her resignation to House, ostensibly because she has learned all she can from him.

Since leaving House's team, Cameron has been far more authoritative with House, bringing him cases and pointing out how his quick diagnoses have been wrong. However, it appears she may be getting more authority over House, primarily due to her excellent administrative skills, honed by years of doing House's dictation and keeping up his charts.

"Greg"

House prefers to be addressed as "House" by everyone and is rarely addressed as "Greg". The only people he doesn't object to addressing him as "Greg" are Stacy Warner and his parents. He usually takes being addressed as "Greg" as a sign that the individual is being overly familiar and he often goes out of his way to hint that it takes more than calling him by his first name to strike up a friendship with him. Dr. Marty Hamilton tried to get on House's good side by addressing him as "Greg" in DNR only to have House pause and carefully emphasize "Marty" in return.

Wilson has also referred to House as "Greg". One example of this is in Joy to the World where a gift he gave to House has a note that reads: "Greg, made me think of you." He also signs off as Greg in a book that he presents to Cuddy in the Season 6 finale, Help Me.

Sherlock Holmes references

Main page: Gregory House and Sherlock Holmes connections

Trivia

Tropes

House: We're going to cure her.
Cameron: We're going to cure death?!
House: MUHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! ...Doubt it.
Stacy: What are you hiding?
House: I'm gay. (Stacy glares at him) Oh! That's not what you meant. It does explain a lot though. No girlfriend, always with Wilson, obsession with sneakers...
House (calling Wilson on the phone): Hi, honey. How are the kids?

Courtesy of tvtropes.org.

Evolution

Related links

Mid 30s Man - The case history of the incident that led to House's disability in the episode Three Stories.

House (Broken) - A case history of House's experiences in Mayfield Psychiatric Hospital.

Video

Best_Comebacks_-_House_M.D.

Best Comebacks - House M.D.


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