This medical guide is designed to give House, M.D. fans a good walk down memory lane. Here you will find memorable characters, episodes, actors, and best of all--diseases--that make House, M.D. such a great show.
The Main Man
Gregory House is played by Hugh Laurie. He is the main character of House, M.D., and as his love interest, Lisa Cuddy would say, "the best damn doctor we have". He is a specialist in the fields of infectious disease and nephrology. In addition, he also has a dependancy to Vicodin, a problem which follows him throughout the seasons on the show. He has a tendency to engage in complicated and risky medical procedures that put the patient's life at risk, but often have beneficial results in the end. He is known for being rude and playing fast and loose with the rules of the hospital, much to Cuddy's dismay. However, he makes up for his brash and inappropriate behavior by putting in every effort he has to save a patient's life and happiness...even if he has little happiness himself. Read More...
Memorable Characters
While Gregory House is a dynamic character himself, there are many other characters that add spice and drama to the show.
Lisa Cuddy is a hospital administrator, and acts as Gregory House's boss for most of the series. However, she also serves as a love interest for House. She met Dr. House at the University of Michigan, when she was an undergrad and he was finishing his last year of graduate school. Thirty years later, they are at odds with each other, and House's feelings for Cuddy don't change the fact that he's constantly rude to her. They eventually strike up a romantic relationship between Season 6 and Season 7. The relationship ends when House turns to drugs when Cuddy experiences a health scare.
Eric Foreman is one of the only friends Gregory House has. He has a similar personality in the sense that he cares very little about how he is perceived, but he is still more likable and outgoing than house. He was originally hired by the team as the "break in" doctor for environmental health scares--he often went through the victims' houses to find out what the culprit of the illness was. However, as the seasons go on, Foreman becomes more and more like House.
Episodes
Three Stories is a significant episode because it gives the audience a new perspective on Gregory House. It begins when he is asked to give a lecture to a group of medical students, which he is reluctant to do. He begins by telling three almost identical stories about a farmer, a volleyball player, and a person who is said to be Carmen Electra, all of whom have the same symptom of leg and ankle pain.
It becomes clear, throughout the episode, that "Carmen Electra" is House himself. He has a dying muscle in his leg, caused by a clotted aneurysm, which is releasing hemoglobin into the kidneys. The hemoglobin is poisoning his kidneys, so the doctors and his girlfriend at the time, Stacy Warner, all tell him to go for the amputation, as it is the safest route. House refuses and demands to keep his leg, and just remove the dead muscle. This explains House's bad leg, and the fact that he is in chronic pain.
The Jerk is a House, M.D. episode that mixes the usual drama with a lot of humor. In this episodes, an obnoxious teenage boy is the patient, and he is even more obnoxious and rude than Gregory House himself. The patient is taken to the hospital when he beats a chess opponent and then passes out from a severe headache. They treat his rude personality as a symptom, saying that it's possibly caused by an underlying disease. His mother says he has been difficult ever since he became a teenager.
After trying many different tests and diagnosing the boy with jaundice, House discovers that he has too much iron in his blood, otherwise known as hemochromatosis. His obnoxious personality has absolutely nothing to do with his condition.
Broken was the season premiere of Season 6. It aired for two hours. This episode was particularly daring because it showed Gregory House in a mental asylum, which he was taken to at the end of Season 5. In this episode, House clashes with a doctor at the asylum, Dr. Nolan, when he attempts to diagnose other patients and messes with the administration in general. At the end of the episode his medical license is reinstated by Dr. Nolan and he is released.
Props
The Whiteboard is present in almost every episode of House, M.D.. When Gregory House is deliberating with his team about what possible diseases and/or conditions a patient has, he writes symptoms and ideas (and often, insults toward his team) on the white board. The white board serves not only as a way for the doctors to understand illness, but also as a fantastic tool for the viewer to follow a complicated list of medical terms.
House's cane is a significant part of the show. After refusing to have his leg amputated during a health crisis some years before, Gregory House now relies on a cane to walk. The cane has come to represent House's pain, both mental & physical.
Diseases
Scott, a patient at Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital after receiving split brain surgery for his seizures. It had resulted in "alien hand syndrome". One of the sides of his brain had taken on a mind of its own--meaning that his left hand did things that were out of his control. He would throw objects randomly, as well as hit his girlfriend, who he had no intention of harming. Thanks to environmental break-in man Eric Foreman, the team discovered that his deodorant, which was high in propylene glycol, was the culprit of his seizures, and that his surgery was unnecessary.
In the episode Skin Deep, Gregory House treats a young supermodel named Alex, who passes out on the catwalk. He cannot seem to find what her problem is--she had a heroin addiction and post-traumatic stress disorder from sexual activity with her father and almost every man in her life. However, elevated proteins in her system ruled out PTSD as the cause of her neurological symptoms. After exhausting everything in the book, and searching for a cancer that he couldn't find, Gregory House hears from Cameron that Alex has very little pubic hair. In his X-ray he discovers that her "tumor" is actually an undescended testicle. She has male pseudohermaphroditism, XY chromosomes, undescended testicles, and cannot process testosterone. As a result she is full of pure estrogen, which explains her beautiful feminine features, perfect breasts and skin.
A six-year-old girl named Lucy is rushed to the hospital after passing out at school. Her older brother, Jasper has been in numerous fights and is causing stress to their father. A couple unusual things happen: Lucy has a stroke, and a T-shirt is found in the vent above her bedroom, covered in her blood. House suspects her father of abusing her, but he denies it and consents to a pelvic exam for his daughter. When Cameron administers the pelvic exam, she notices that Lucy has cuts on her outer vaginal area but no internal tearing or trauma. She also discovers that Lucy is menstruating at the young age of six--the bloody T-shirt had been covered in menstrual blood. The team has a difficult time figuring out what is happening in her body. House later meets Lucy's teacher, who confesses that she is dating Lucy's father. When House notices a red rash on her upper lip, the offended teacher admits that she got a mustache wax. It all makes sense to House--he discovers that Lucy's father is using a testosterone cream for impotence, but the testosterone has rubbed off on his girlfriend (hence the mustache), Jasper (hence the fighting) and Lucy (hence the early development). House tells him that if he stops using the cream, everything will be back to normal.
Drugs
Gregory House is known for abusing Vicodin openly. He admits he has an addiction, but denies that it gets in the way of his work. While he is normally able to treat his patients and function properly as a doctor, his drug dependancies do cause problems with other people-- he hallucinates a sexual encounter with Lisa Cuddy that never happened, tells everyone in the hospital, and later discovers it was all in his head, causing great friction between Cuddy and himself.
Actors
House, M.D. has dynamic characters, and they wouldn't be as fantastic as they are without great actors.
James Hugh Calum Laurie OBE (born June 11, 1959) is a Golden Globe-winning English actor, comedian, musician and writer. Laurie is best known in the United Kingdom, Australia and parts of Europe for his roles in Blackadder and for his long-running comedy collaboration with Stephen Fry which has included A Bit of Fry and Laurie and Jeeves and Wooster. In the United States, he is best known for playing Dr. Gregory House on House, M.D..
In 2006 and 2007, Laurie won the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Television Drama and won the 2007 SAG Award in the same category, all for his work in House, MD. In 2005 and 2007-2011, he was nominated for an Emmy Award for the role.
Olivia Jane Cockburn, better known by her screen name Olivia Wilde (born March 10, 1984 in New York City, New York), portrays the mysterious fellow, Number 13, whom House manipulated Cuddy into hiring in Season 4.
Despite having fewer credits than the other two actors who were hired in Season 4, she has received considerably more exposure in television and film, starting her career in 2003 with six episodes of Skin. She also managed to win a supporting role in The Girl Next Door after being on set in another capacity for over a month. Just before joining the cast of House, she appeared as Jenny Reilly in The Black Donnellys. In addition, she has become a regular fixture on Maxim's 100 Sexiest Women In The World and in 2009 finished #1. She is also a vegan and was voted PETA's Sexiest Vegetarian Celebrity of 2010.
Jennifer Marie Morrison (born April 12, 1979 in Chicago, Illinois) portrays Dr. Allison Cameron on the series House M.D..
Morrison worked as a model at an early age, landing on the cover of Sports Illustrated with basketball star Michael Jordan at the age of 10. Working primarily as a film actress (starting at the age of 15) until landing a role on the series, Morrison had over twenty film and television credits before joining the series. She is a graduate of Prospect High School in Mount Prospect, IL and Loyola University. Her character left the cast part-way through Season 6.