James Wilson
House Wikia contains spoilers (and zebras)
| |||||||||||||||||
| [Source] | |||||||||||||||||
- "He paid for your lunch, liked monster trucks, and was your conscience"
- ―-Kutner reminding House what Wilson did for him in Not Cancer
James Evan Wilson is a doctor, specifically an oncologist (cancer specialist), that sometimes works with Gregory House. He is Princeton-Plainsboro's Head of Oncology. Dr. Wilson is also Dr. House's sole good friend. In Season 4, he started dating Amber Volakis, and it was revealed in Don't Ever Change that they had been dating for four weeks, since she was fired at the end of Games. Amber's subsequent death essentially ended Wilson's willingness to enable House's manipulative behavior, and he left his post as head of oncology at the beginning of Season 5. However, after escorting House to his father's funeral, the two reconciled and Wilson came back to his old position.
As befits a doctor whose practice consists primarily of patients who are terminally ill, Dr. Wilson is sympathetic, thoughtful and compassionate. However, there are clues his personality is far more complicated, and that he essentially buries his darker side within himself. He has been married and divorced three times (first wife's name is unknown, the second wife was Bonnie, the third Julie). He cheated on all of his wives, although he did tell them all afterwards. He has had an affair with one of his terminally ill patients. He is currently being treated for clinical depression. Although he cares deeply for House, he often goes behind his back in attempts to help him. For example, although Cuddy proposed the bet to House that he give up Vicodin for a week in order to reduce his clinic duty, it was Wilson's idea.
Wilson and House met at a medical convention, sometime around 1998. House was bored and noticed Wilson carrying around an express package all weekend without opening it. He got a chance to look at the package and realized it was from a divorce attorney (from Wilson's first wife). Finding that to be a very interesting behavior (indicating Wilson had difficulty ending relationships) he followed him out drinking. Wilson got into a fight with a man who kept playing the same song over and over and was arrested. House bailed Wilson out of jail and they went out drinking together and remained friends afterwords. Since then, Wilson has gone out of his way to protect and support House, both because of his awe of House's medical talents, and as he has recently realized, the only time he seems to be able to have fun is when he is with House. He also seems to be a bit scared of House.
House started working at Princeton-Plainsboro before Wilson did. When House learned of an opening for an oncologist at the hospital, he let Wilson know about the opening. Surprisingly, Wilson was very eager to come to work in Princeton, which pleased House, but also surprised him. It was revealed in The Social Contract that Wilson was eager to come to work in Princeton because his brother Danny Wilson, who suffered from schizophrenia, had left Princeton University several years before and had disappeared.
Wilson has gone to extreme lengths to protect and support House, as well as enable House's abusive and manipulative behavior:
- He was the only board member to vote against firing House in order to satisfy Edward Vogler, which cost him his spot on the board and almost cost him his job.
- He lied to Michael Tritter when House forged Wilson's signature on Wilson's prescription pad. After Wilson admitted the forgery to Tritter, he once again refused to cooperate with Tritter after House saved yet another patient no-one else could.
- He was always by House's side when Stacy Warner left him, which eventually cost Wilson his second wife.
Although House is often abusive to Wilson, Wilson is perfectly capable of giving as good as he gets. In one instance, he learned that House was deliberately borrowing money from him just to find out how far Wilson would take it. Wilson retaliated by lying to House, to see how far he could go before House realized the truth. On another occasion, to retaliate for House eating Wilson's bag lunch every day, Wilson sawed partway through House's cane so that it broke when House put his full weight on it. When House hired a private eye to spy on him, Wilson deliberately hired a prostitute for a short visit and planted drug paraphernalia in his own garbage.
Wilson's heritage is at least partly Jewish. Since Wilson is not a common Jewish name, he may be of mixed background.
[edit] Amber
Wilson's relationship with Amber Volakis came as a surprise to everyone, including Wilson and Amber themselves. Wilson realized that because Amber shared many characteristic with his best friend that they might be able to have the same type of lasting relationship. He recently admitted to House that one of the reasons he liked Amber so much was because, like House, she was so much fun to be with. He also enjoyed the fact that she was much more assertive than he was. On Amber's part, she had deep seated feelings of inadequacy that drove her to demand respect and to excel to get that respect. In Wilson, she found someone who could both respect her and find her attractive and desirable at the same time.
Nobody at this hospital even liked her. - Wilson, rejecting Cuddy's attempt to sympathize with his loss in Dying Changes Everything.
Amber's death devastated Wilson more than his three previous divorces had. Although he did not blame anyone for Amber's death, not even House, he came away from the relationship with the one lesson Amber taught him - she could take care of herself and he had to take care of himself, particularly in a relationship with someone like her. He soon came to the conclusion that he didn't want to enable House any more, but tried to hide his feelings from House in order not to hurt him by claiming he just wanted a change of scenery. However, he soon realized after a wild trip to the funeral of House's father that he hadn't had any fun since Amber died either. They soon reconciled.
[edit] House
Gay references have been made to the relationship between the two characters of the show and House has made a joke about the relationship between them ("I'm gay!...Oh that's not what you meant. It would explain a lot, though: no girlfriend, always with Wilson, the obsession with sneakers...").Barbara Barnett said that "House is the needy one in the relationship, and Wilson the doormat".Verne Gay of Newsday described House's love for Wilson as "touching and genuine".Hugh Laurie said that the relationship between the characters is "not just buddydom".The two characters appeared on the cover of the October 13, 2008 issue of TV Guide.In an interview with E!, executive producer Katie Jacobs stated that there are equal chances of either Allison Cameron, Lisa Cuddy or Wilson "ending up" with House.
