  |
This article's content is marked as Mature The page Gregory House contains mature content that may include coarse language, sexual references, and/or graphic violent images which may be disturbing to some. Mature articles are recommended for those who are 18 years of age and older. If you are 18 years or older or are comfortable with graphic material, you are free to view this page. Otherwise, you should close this page and view another page. |
| “ | Everybody lies. | „ |
| ~ House's motto. |
| “ | It's NEVER Lupus | „ |
| ~ House, on every case |
| “ | I don't have a drug problem. I have a pain problem. | „ |
Gregory House (born 1959) is the titular main protagonist of the 2004 medical drama series House.
He was portrayed by English actor Hugh Laurie, who also played Dr. Cockroach in Monsters vs. Aliens, Mr. Bunny in Hop, and Steve Claus in Arthur Christmas.
Overview[]
House is a brilliant diagnostician working in Princeton–Plainsboro Teaching Hospital (PPTH) in New Jersey, who is given medical cases that no other doctors can resolve. Through controversial and radical methods, he studies his patients' symptoms until he finally discovers what disease they suffer from. He usually makes at least two wrong diagnostics before making the correct one; putting his patients through hell and near death.
In terms of character, House is irascible, rude, misanthropic, selfish, and an incredible jerk. He limps because of an injured leg and walks with a cane, and takes a painkiller called Vicodin (a combination of hydrocodone and paracetamol) to ease the pain. House has few friends, the best being James Wilson, as well as his boss and occasional FWB Lisa Cuddy. He is very annoying to his medical team because of his constant involvement in their private lives, and he often makes very inventive pranks to get what he wants. His catchphrase is "Everybody lies", showing how misanthropic he is. While overly rude and disrespectful, House isn't actually a bad person. He always tries to save his patients (though it is shown that he cares mostly about identifying the disease) and when going too far, he can show remorse and even try to make amends. Despite being an incorrigible jerk, House saves many lives thanks to his diagnostics.
The character of Gregory House is widely inspired by Sherlock Holmes.
Biography[]
House was born in 1959. One possible birthday is 11th June (according to his hospital admission bracelet in "No Reason"), which is also actor Hugh Laurie's actual birth date. Another is 15th May, according to his Driver License in "Two Stories", as well as the sheet of information he sticks to his bathroom wall in "After Hours" in case of his death. He is the child of Blythe House, a housewife who was married to a marine pilot, John House. At the same time that John was overseas, Blythe was also having an affair with Thomas Bell, whom House believed was his biological father because they share certain physical characteristics and birthmarks.
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, is able to read at least some Hindi and also claims to read Portuguese. Additionally, he has some knowledge of several others. For example, French and Latin phrases several times, but it is unknown how much 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 and 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 no real friends growing up, which more than likely added on to his unsocial and antisocial behavior. It is intimated 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 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 that his punishments were more 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 he 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 dishevelled-looking man appearing to be a janitor who was (despite his appearance) 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. 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 PhD in physics due to his desire to research dark matter. He obtained admission to Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and was one of their best students, eventually becoming the favorite to obtain a prestigious internship at 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.
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 uni, 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.
In 1991, 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, a man named 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.
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 Ruger SP101 after being shot by Jack Moriarty, while stating to Martha Masters that the Second Amendment is the part of the Constitution of the United States which says that people have the right to be stupid. He also apparently has inherited John House's M1911 pistol and Mameluke sword in No Reason, Euphoria (Part 1), Last Temptation, and 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 her 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.
Gallery[]
Trivia[]
- House only wears a lab coat when he's scheming.
- A large majority of his Free Clinic patients are idiots.
- House is 45 in season one, and 53 at the end.
- House doesn't have positive feelings for either of his parents.
- His father committed child abuse that was enabled by his mother. So much so, House was drugged and kidnapped to attend his funeral, where even the "friends" didn't disagree with his scathing eulogy of hate.
- His mother was an unfaithful slut in her youth, up until House was born. Because of this, House suspects he isn't even his father's biological son, and that all the abuse he suffered was just House being scapegoated; as domestic abuse is much easier to prove that child abuse.
- According to Foreman, House hires someone if they can steal Cuddy's thong.
- Successful B&E is part of working in the Diagnostic Department at Princeton-Plasbero (at least since House has been around).
- House has the moral high ground of never lying to his patients and is disgusted by people who try to scam others into buying faux medicine (e.g., Edward Vogler).
- House tends to pick on his staff, both for his amusement and for levity to keep them from over-stressing, namely joking about Foreman's race, Chase's good looks and wealth, Cameron's bleeding heart, Thirteen's lesbianism, Taub's height and previous job, Masters' black-and-white view, and Park's inexperience.
- House likely revealed he faked his death in 2013, since Wilson would be dead by then and he had no more reason to avoid serving his jail time. Additionally, it's possible Foreman is hiding House being alive until enough time had passed to let House not be obligated to serve his remaining time (since it's largely Foreman's fault that House caused the pipe bursting); plus House's psychotic mindset would still come in handy.
External Links[]
- Gregory House on the Villains Wiki
- Gregory House on the House Wiki
- Gregory House on the Villainous Benchmark Wiki
- Gregory House on the Inconsistently Admirable Wiki