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| “ | Everybody lies. | „ |
| ~ House's Motto. |
| “ | Wilson: You're destroying your entire life... You can't go back from this. You'll go to jail for years. You can never be a doctor again. House: I'm dead, Wilson. How do you want to spend your last 5 months? |
„ |
| ~ House after faking his death and sacrificing everything for Wilson. |
Dr. Gregory House is the titular protagonist of House MD aka House. He is a cynical doctor who suffered a rare infarction in his leg, resulting in chronic pain, Vicodin dependency and his infamous limp. Due to his ailment, House reinvented his profession and became a diagnostician dedicated to diagnosing rare diseases. His risky and illegal treatments for his patients often alienates him from his collogues yet makes him a renowned/infamous doctor.
He is portrayed by Hugh Laurie.
His Good Ranking[]
Debatable Validations[]
- He has a Rubik's complex, where oftentimes he is more interested in solving a patient’s case than saving their lives. House's sole focus is obtaining a diagnosis, an answer to the puzzle; with life-saving being a part of the job. Even post-mortem, House performs autopsies just to get his answer. However, after getting his answer, House will always advocate for the patients to receive the best possible treatment for their conditions.
- His medical practices are often illegal but with good intentions. However, there are some disastrous consequences when they backfire:
- He and his colleagues frequently break-and-enter into patients’ homes to search for environmental causes or background information.
- One time however, nearly killed his employee, Eric Foreman, when he broke into Joe Luria’s biohazardous apartment and was exposed to Naegleria (brain-eating amoebas).
- He often violates or manipulates patient consent, although it is so he can diagnose/save them: Like when he violated a DNR so he could cure the patient's paralysis, or repeatedly saves a suicidal patient and eventually cures him of his chronic pain.
- While less often, there are times where this backfires and exacerbates a patient’s condition, sometimes even lethally.
- He and his colleagues frequently break-and-enter into patients’ homes to search for environmental causes or background information.
- He stalked Philip Weber, a former Med-School classmate's career for 20 years to get revenge on Weber getting House expelled for cheating on an exam. House got his revenge when he exposed Weber's migraine prevention drug to be fake by testing it on himself. While it was for selfish reasons, House did expose Philip's scam and prevented the latter from making millions off a fake drug. Justifying it with "I cheated then, you're cheating now."
What Makes Him Admirable?[]
- Despite his dominant negative and nihilistic personality, House often uses it as defense mechanism to avoid being hurt; and he can be sincere and caring.
- He has a rocky yet genuine friendship with James Wilson. House recognizes him as his best and only friend, with the two supporting each other during their hardships. Despite House’s general abuse and immaturity, he ultimately cares for Wilson and was devastated by Wilson’s cancer diagnosis. By the end of it, he sacrificed his career and identity just so he could be with Wilson.
- Comforts Cameron when she tells him about her husband who died of cancer.
- Despite his estranged relationship with his abusive father, House does openly love his mother and refuses to lie to her.
- He regretted pushing Stacy away and nearly reconnected with her. However, he put his feelings aside and allowed her to move on to be with her new husband.
- After Wilson discovered his wife had an affair, House allowed him to stay in his house.
- He felt remorse over indirectly causing Amber’s death and tried everything he could to save her. When he couldn’t, House was traumatized by her death.
- He was disturbed by Kutner’s suicide to point of obsession, believing he could’ve prevented it.
- When he finds a rat in Stacy’s attic with abnormal behavior, he diagnoses the rat and cures it. He later adopts the rat as his new pet, Steve Mcqueen.
- He consoles Cameron after she euthanizes the terminal Ezra Powell.
- He was the only one able to understand an autistic boy, eventually allowing House to cure him.
- Forces Wilson to leave the room as he kills a patient to protect him from potential legal ramifications.
- He empathizes with a rape victim and opens up about his abusive dad to help her move on from her trauma.
- He develops a friendship with "13" (Remy Hadley) with the two sharing pessimistic viewpoints formed by their tragedies. After she was diagnosed with Huntington’s disease, (in his own way) House helped her move on from her self-destructive behaviors and encouraged her to fight her disease. He protected her during a hostage crisis and helps her once she’s released from prison. He consoles her when She confesses to stealing hospital drugs to secretly euthanize her own brother to save him from a painful death caused by his Huntington’s disease. House then promises to euthanize her once her own disease has progressed to that stage.
- Comforts Wilson over his estrangement from his brother.
- After reuniting with a former med-school classmate, Lorenzo, and learning that House indirectly sabotaged his career by switching their essays, House attempted to make amends by giving Lorenzo a check to help pay his bills. Even after Lorenzo confessed he was scamming House and actually caused his own misery, House still insisted and gave Lorenzo the check.
- After finding out he missed a case from a now terminal patient, Nash, House helps Nash attempt to mend his relationship with his daughter. After helping, House apologizes for skipping his case and increases Nash’s morphine to allow him to die a painless death.
- He emotionally supported Hanna, a girl whose leg was trapped under a collapsed building. While everyone around him wanted to amputate her leg, House was the only one who insisted on attempting to save her leg first. House only folded once all other options were exhausted and he convinced her to amputate by revealing the origin of his limp when he was in a similar situation. After Hanna died from a fat embolism caused by the amputation, House became very distraught due “[Doing] everything right and she still died,” and nearly relapsed on Vicodin.
- He helps one of his favorite authors overcome the grief of losing her son by faking an x-ray to show her son had an aneurysm, and thus his death was not her fault. While he nearly reveals the truth after finding out she would retire from her work, but with some convincing from Cuddy, House ultimately decided not to.
- He genuinely cared for Lisa Cuddy and her adopted daughter, Rachel. Despite the laws he broke, House helped Rachel enroll in a good school, helped Cuddy manage her issues with her mother, and became a surrogate father for Rachel. He was later distraught when she had a tumor and relapsed on Vicodin, leading to their break-up which only devastated him further.
- Despite his marriage to Dominika being superficial, House eventually started developing feelings for her.
- He covers up the fact his former friend’s daughter is not his own, so his friend won’t be hurt with said realization.
- Assists Cuddy with her IVF treatment.
- While hallucinating from the shock of being shot by a vengeful Moriarty, House reconciles in his mind Moriarty shot him because House indirectly caused his wife’s suicide when House exposed Moriarty’s affair. House then accepts partial blame for causing the wife’s death.
- He feels guilty when Bonnie mentions that House strained her marriage with James Wilson, because Wilson would more often than not prioritize House over her. He then helps Bonnie by looking after her dog, Hector. Despite his initial conflicts with the dog, House eventually tolerated Hector and returned him back to Bonnie once her condo’s pet-ban had been lifted.
- Despite his initial escape attempts and normal jerkish behavior, he eventually embraces the rehab community and helps improve his rehab center:
- He advocates for better treatment and more freedoms for the patients.
- He apologizes for unintentionally getting Steve/Freedom Master hurt by fueling Steve’s delusions of superpowers. He later rekindles Steve’s confidence and heals his depression.
- He develops an honest friendship with his therapist Dr. Nolan and consoles him when his father dies.
- He cures Annie from her catatonic state by returning her music box.
- His example later inspires Alvie to start treatment for his bipolar disorder.
- When Wilson attempted to give a speech about the benefits of euthanizing terminal patients, House dosed Wilson and gave the speech instead so Wilson wouldn’t risk his career as a doctor with a controversial and potentially career-ending speech.
- Tried to help Wilson find someone to donate a part of their liver to his friend Tucker and came to Wilson's surgery to support him when he decided to be the doner despite his initial refusal.
- Decided not to take revenge on Lucas Douglas after discovering he had been pranking him and Wilson to play them off against each other.
- He helps an elderly father and son in the clinic. When they bribe House into pretending to give them a medical reason to not keep living together, House finds the real underlying medical issue and returns their money.
- Despite his own curiosity, he respects Taub’s decision to keep his daughters’ paternity ambiguous and allows him to destroy the DNA tests.
- After hearing Wilson’s pleas to not be treated in a hospital, House agrees to secretly treat Wilson’s cancer in his apartment. Even despite his lack of equipment and reluctance (though it was motivated out of concern for Wilson’s life), House still assists Wilson with his chemotherapy privately. After running out of morphine, House sacrifices his own wellbeing to give Wilson some of his Vicodin to help manage the pain.
- Although he doesn’t agree with it and initially tries to convince Wilson otherwise, House eventually respects Wilson’s decision to refuse treatment for his cancer; knowing it’ll shorten Wilson’s quantity of life without necessarily diminishing his quality of life.
- After faking his death, he agrees to spend time with Wilson for the latter’s remaining 5 months.
- He helps Dominka obtain a green card by pretending to be a married-couple. He learned about her and redecorated his apartment to pass an inspection for approval of their marriage. While their relationship was initially formed to spite Cuddy, House did develop feelings for her.
- He comforts Dominika when her aunt dies.
- When Chase becomes obsessed trying to win over a nun, (in his own way) House warns Chase to not become him by making a selfish decision that will leave him alone.
- He is very attentive and detail-oriented, allowing him to pick up small details on what may cause a patient’s illness. He finds the cause, has an epiphany and delivers a diagnosis. Even when the severity may initially seem minimal, House is able to find out what’s really wrong; like a 102 year old having Zinc poisoning because he can't feel tempatures, or Eugene Schwartz’s acid reflux being a symptom of pancreatic cancer.
- In difficult situations, House advocates for the best possible scenario for his patients. When an infection plagued the maternity ward, House suggested different treatments for two babies to better treat the infection. (Choosing to guarantee the survival of one baby with different diagnoses, rather than risk losing them both with the wrong diagnosis.)
- Out of all his colleagues, House has the most Eureka moments and more patients saved than any other doctor, combined.
- He is a selfless doctor who will try every opportunity and will repeatedly take huge risks, even to his own detriment, just to save the lives of his patients:
- Risking his medical license by lying to the transplant committee and acquiring a replacement heart for a bulimic CEO after she pleads for her life.
- He advocates a heart transplant for a senior citizen. When the transplant committee denies the man due to his old age, House searches for recently deceased and rejected organ donors, and finds a replacement heart for the man.
- Assisting a father’s suicide, so he could donate his heart to save his son after the son was denied a heart transplant due to his alcoholism.
- When Foreman is near death, House enters a biohazardous apartment unprotected to search for the environmental cause so Foreman won’t have to undergo an unnecessary brain biopsy.
- Spending a night in jail after leaving his court hearing to go diagnosis a firefighter.
- Straining his body, overdosing on Alzheimer's medication, and overstimulating his already damaged brain just so he could unlock forgotten memories and attempt to save Wilson’s girlfriend, Amber.
- After realizing methadone compromised his judgment, House stops taking it. Even though it was eliminating his chronic pain and made House a nicer person in the process, House did not want to risk his patients’ lives with his compromised judgment.
- Delaying his eligibility for parole and receiving a month of solitary confinement so he could properly diagnose a fellow inmate.
- Violating his parole so he could properly diagnose a dead son. Although it was initially for selfish reasons, House ultimately saved the mother’s second son with said diagnosis and thus prevented another death.
- Treats Rebecca Adler as a favor to Wilson after he lies that she's his cousin.
- He falsely claims to be the one who reported a patient's circumstances to Social Services so she can continue to have a relationship with her son.
- He exposed that Vogler's new drug wasn't any better than the old one, instead of endorsing the product.
- He tried to compromise with Vogler by offering to make the whole team, including himself take a paycut in order to allow all of them to keep their jobs.
- He discovers the source of Gary Wright's illness and cures him.
- Convinced Naomi Randolph's husband to consent to a c-section, saving the life of their baby as a result.
- He uncovers what is making Rachel and Joel Kaplan's baby sick and gets Cuddy to have the charges levied at them by social services dropped.
- He refused to hire a new employee so he could rehire Cameron after she previously quit.
- He puts his rivalry with Mark aside, and becomes dedicated to curing his rival.
- Offers to lie for Andie in order to spare her from having to suffer painful chemotherapy treatment.
- Works out what's wrong with Cuddy's handyman Alfredo and saves him. He then (in his own way) comforts Cuddy about her guilt over the situation.
- After Chase makes a mistake that costs a patient their life, House doesn't fire him due to knowing that it was the result of being distracted after being told of his father's death and convinces him to tell the truth at his hearing, saving his career in the process.
- He (brutally honestly) chastises an alcoholic father for neglecting his wife and son, convincing the father to concede his son’s body for an autopsy, and allowing them to diagnose his wife. He also tried to convince the wife that she wasn't responsible for her son's death as she was insane at the time and didn't deserve to die, but respected her decision to not get treatment.
- Distracted Stevie Lipa's parents so that his team could perform the experimental treatment needed to diagnose him.
- Tells a patient's family about her attempted suicide so they could try to support them even though the rules forbade him from doing so.
- Pretended he had ratted out Greta's secret to stop his colleagues from doing so and keep her dream intact.
- Had Foreman call the police on Brennan after he faked polio symptoms in a patient.
- Guided Seth through the procedure to save Catie Milton's life.
- Convinces a patient who unintentionally caused her brother's death while babysitting to face her fears and contact her parents so she could get a transplant that saved her life.
- He makes a bet with Wilson to see if he could get a gift from a patient by pretending to be nice for Christmas. During which, House helps a newly-wedded wife hide her affair to save her marriage.
- Convinces Chase to fix Nick's frontal lobe disinhibition because he didn't want Nick to end up as miserable and alone as he was.
- After Thirteen’s fatal mistake with Thomas Stark, he doesn’t fire her along with her team because he understands she’ll work hard in preventing another one.
- He manages to hire Thirteen when he tricks Cuddy by only hiring Taub and Kutner, knowing Cuddy will want a female doctor and allows him to hire all three of them.
- Upon realizing his Vicodin addiction had damaged his psyche, he seeks help in a rehab center to detox from Vicodin.
- After House incites Chase by insulting Chase’s divorce, House refuses to press charges or admit to Cuddy that Chase punched him.
- Hired Foreman's brother Marcus to force him to give dirt on Foreman as a part of a plan to manipulate them into mending their relationship due to their mutual dislilke for him.
- When Alvie was wrongfully rendered an illegal alien due to his Puerto Rician records being destroyed in a fire and his mother (his only family member) having died, House helps him reclaim his citizenship by faking a maternity test to confirm his Puerto Rican heritage.
- Faked a test to save the life of campaign manager Joe Dugan.
- After seeing Thirteen move on from her pessimism, he fires Thirteen so she could spend time with her new girlfriend and not be held down by work.
- He hires Adams after she previously lost her job helping House in prison.
- He allows Adams to smash a medical skeleton to comfort her after divorce.
- He was concerned for his mother when he thought she had cancer and was prepared to treat her himself.
- He figures out what was wrong with the patient who attacked Chase and passes the information along to his wife, saving his life as a result.
What Makes Him Inconsistent?[]
- He has a on and off negative personality:
- He is extremely immature, mischievous, selfish, pessimistic and condescending (even despite some of it being portrayed comedically).
- He refuses to see his patients unless necessary or he finds something interesting, and even then, he is often very rude and dismissive to them (especially to religious patients).
- Despite his desire for the patient’s best possible outcome, House often dehumanizes people in the process and views them intrinsically.
- He can be very callous and cruel. When he was detoxing he shouted that Cuddy would make a terrible mother, knowing Cuddy previously failed to get pregnant. Another time, he sarcastically gave bad advice to a young soldier and refused to help the soldier dodge his draft so he could raise his daughter. This resulted in the soldier shooting himself in the foot and allowing the wound to be infected. Despite the soldier’s continued pleas, House still refused to help and the soldier ultimately allowed his whole foot to be amputated to dodge his draft.
- He can be extremely vindictive and petty. He stalked Weber's career for 20 years to get revenge on weber getting House expelled for cheating. When Wilson steals House’s guitar until he hires a new team of employees, House "relocates" Wilson’s patient until he returns the guitar. He drove his car through Cuddy’s dining room after she broke up with him and started dating another guy (fortunately no one was in the dining room at the time).
- Despite his physical condition, he's not opposed to using violence. In an attempt to trick a dad for a diagnosis, House incites the father by insulting the father’s dead wife. After the father punches him, House then hits the father with his cane and causes him to go into anaphylactic shock (While House tried to convince the father at first, he still didn’t hesitate to use “option B”). When detoxing, he decks Chase after Chase refuses to move out of his way. He later incites a bar fight to test out his regrown muscles.
- Despite the legitimacy of them, House often abuses his tragedies; either as justifications to be rude or he exploits the sympathy he gains, typically from Wilson and Cuddy.
- He feigns sadness at John House’s funeral so he could defile his dad’s corpse by snipping part of his ear and DNA testing it to prove that John wasn’t his biological father.
- He breaks into Lucas' apartment and drinks a bottle of his tequila to get back at Cuddy for not inviting him to Thanksgiving dinner.
- He superficially marries Dominica, a hooker, to spite Cuddy for breaking up with him.
- He hid Dominika’s green card acceptance form for weeks in an attempt to keep her with him. Once she found out the truth of her acceptance, she promptly gathered her things and left.
- He instigates and encourages arguments and competition between his team members, under the basis it will motivate them to be better doctors.
- He’ll repeatedly drug people unconscious without their consent just to do something he wants. While most of the time it's for a diagnosis, House sometimes commits kidnapping shortly after doing so.
- He is a Karma Houdini that frequently escapes punishments or receives leniency, either due to sheer dumb luck or more often, a co-worker bailing him out, even if at their own expense.
- After being sentenced to 3 months of rehab, House fakes his recovery by bribing the doctors to bring him Vicodin.
- He threatens to fire Foreman and/or Thirteen unless they break up with each other.
- He tried throughout Season 7 to corrupt Martha Masters and convince her his medical procedures are the best, despite all the laws broken. He repeatedly fired and rehired her, and constantly hid information from her to avoid her snitching to Cuddy or the patients. Even when he succeeded and got her to violate patient consent to save a life, Masters was horrified with her actions and eventually quit working at Princeton-Plainsboro.
- He recklessly makes several selfish and illegal decisions regardless of the consequences or who may get hurt:
- He often plays pranks or makes bets with his colleagues.
- He pretended to have cancer so he could receive an experimental pain-killer, despite the concerns it caused his team.
- He forged prescriptions just to obtain pain-killers and nearly got sent to jail for it.
- When Vogler offered a compromise so House wouldn’t have to fire one of his team members, House used the opportunity to publicly humiliate Vogler (although he arguably deserved it). Vogler rescinded the deal and this eventually led Cameron to quit before House could fire one of them.
- After humiliating Officer Tritter, House upholds his pride and refuses to apologize or compromise with Tritter; even despite the hardships Tritter brings to Wilson, Cuddy and the rest of House’s team (freezing their bank accounts, denying their prescription privileges, and impounding Wilson’s car). When House does finally agree to compromise it’s only after Wilson caught him overdosing on stolen pain meds, the result of which, gave Tritter enough evidence to prosecute House.
- He’ll repeatedly pressure and spy on his co-workers to obtain embarrassing or painful information about them, solely because he finds it interesting. (Chase’s neglectful parents, Foreman’s troubled family, Thirteen’s Huntington’s disease, Taub’s affair, and Adams childhood to name a few)
- He turns the hiring process into a game show with 40 applicants. House coerces them to do frivolous things to win the job position: Wash his car or steal Cuddy’s underwear to name a few; and engage in the same illegal practices his former team did. During which, he was indirectly responsible for the death of Thomas Stark, the overseen patient who died as a result of House pitting the applicants against each other.
- He nearly committed suicide by electrocution to obtain a near-death experience; just to try and prove that there is no afterlife.
- House gets Wilson arrested for speeding so the former won’t have to go to his dad’s funeral.
- He hides the correct diagnosis and risks a patient’s life in order to manipulate his former team members to return to working for him. Which worked, except for Cameron who saw through his plan and quit working for him.
- He prioritizes “improving” Cuddy’s presentation over diagnosing a patient. By the time House figured out the correct diagnosis, it was too late, and the patient died untreated.
- He triggered a gas leak in the hospital waiting room so he could sneak into Cuddy’s office and steal her laptop. The result of which, rendered a dozen clinic patients unconscious.
- After driving while distracted and getting into a car accident, House lies and impersonates Dr. Hourani to avoid legal charges.
- He steals and uses an experimental muscle regeneration drug that was still being tested on rats. When it was revealed to be fatal and cause tumors, House tried to remove them himself and failed, instead of going to the hospital under the belief the surgeons would cut out more muscle than necessary. Ultimately resulting in Cuddly finding him in his bathroom with his leg cut open, and having to take him to the hospital to remove the tumors.
- He went on a hedonistic trip to try to overcome his break-up with Cuddy, trying riskier and riskier things to entertain himself:
- Abusing Vicodin and alcohol, ordering buffets of food, and hiring dozens of prostitutes.
- He attempts to shoot an apple off the head of a hooker with arrows but shoots her in the chest, scaring the hotel worker. However the arrows were fake and they all laughed off the prank.
- Later he approves a risky procedure to “blow up” his patient’s heart as a cure, when it was mostly to entertain himself. This nearly causes the patient to die from blood loss, but thankfully Foreman saved him.
- He blackmails a business man to fund his department in exchange for not revealing his illness to his business partners.
- He makes a bet with Park that she will be fired, and then proceeds to try several methods to get her fired. Only stopping when Wilson pays him $100 to stop.
- He once refused to treat a boy out of concern the boy will turn religious after treatment which does happen when Adams cures the boy.
- Angry that Wilson refused cancer treatment, House vents his frustration on a suicidal patient and strangles the teen to near-death. Only stopping when Park assaults House with his cane.
- When Foreman attempts to cheer-up House by buying him tickets after Wilson refused treatment, the offended House clogs the hospital plumbing with said tickets. This results in a water pipe rupturing, injuring Adams and Park, closing off an entire wing of the hospital, and destroying an MRI machine in the process.
- He arrogantly “overplays his hand” by manipulating his coworkers to help him not be sent to jail. After exhausting his other methods to avoid his imminent prison sentence, he locates a former patient with a heroin addiction, Oliver, and the two get high together. This ends with Oliver dying from an overdose while House lights the building on fire and attempts suicide.
External Links[]
- Dr. Gregory House on the Heroes Wiki
- Dr. Gregory House on the Villains Wiki
- Dr. Gregory House on the House Wiki
- Dr. Gregory House on the Villainous Benchmark Wiki