The Show
DR. GREGORY HOUSE (Hugh Laurie) is devoid of bedside manner and wouldn’t even talk to his patients if he could get away with it. Dealing with his own constant physical pain, he uses a cane that seems to punctuate his acerbic, brutally honest demeanor. While his behavior can border on antisocial, House is a brilliant diagnostician whose unconventional thinking and flawless instincts afford him a great deal of respect. An infectious disease specialist, he thrives on the challenge of solving medical puzzles in order to save lives.
For the past three seasons, House has shepherded an elite team of young experts who helped him unravel diagnostic mysteries. In addition, he has a good friend and confidant in oncology specialist DR. JAMES WILSON. There’s some volatile chemistry between House and DR. LISA CUDDY, the Dean of Medicine and hospital administrator; the two are in constant conflict over House’s duties and unconventional behavior, but even she would admit that his brilliance is worth the trouble.
The characters.
Of course, the main man...Gregory House M.D.
Gregory House was born to John and Blythe House. His Social Security Number was issued in Ohio. House is a "Military Brat", as his father served as a Marine Corps pilot and transferred often to other bases during House's childhood.House presumably picked up his affinity for languages during this period, and shows a level of understanding of Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Japanese and Hindi. One place in which his father was stationed was Egypt, where House developed a passing fascination with archeology and treasure-hunting, an interest which led him to keep his treasure-hunting tools well into his adulthood. Another station was Japan where, at age 14, House discovered his vocation after witnessing the respect given a buraku doctor who solved a case no other doctor could handle.
Dr. House loves his mother but hates his father, who he claims has an "insane moral compass." House avoids both parents and spends an entire episode dodging a night out with them. At one point, House tells a story of his parents leaving him with his grandmother whose punishments constituted abuse. He later confesses that it was his father who abused him.
After receiving his undergraduate degree at Johns Hopkins University, House studied medicine at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, researching psychiatry and behavioral sciences until classmate Phillip Weber reported House for copying exam answers from him. Following his expulsion from Johns Hopkins, he applied and was accepted to University of Michigan where he received his M.D. and met Lisa Cuddy, his future boss. There is a degree of Sexual Tension between the two characters due to a suspected one-night stand in the past.
About ten years before the series began, House entered into a relationship with Stacy Warner, a Constitutional Lawyer. They met at a "Doctors vs Lawyers" paint ball event where she shot him. Five years later, during a game of golf, he suffered an infarction in his right leg, which went undiagnosed for three days due to doctors' concerns that he was exhibiting drug seeking behavior (House was also unable to diagnose his own infarction). An aneurysm in his thigh had clotted, leading to an infarction and causing his guadriceps muscles to become necrotic. House had the dead muscle bypassed in order to restore circulation to the remainder of his leg, risking organ failure and cardiac arrest. He was willing to endure excruciating post operative pain to retain the use of his leg. After House was put into a chemically-induced coma to sleep through the worst of the pain, Stacy decided to choose a safer surgical middle-ground procedure between amputation and a bypass by removing just the dead muscle. This resulted in the partial loss of use in his leg, and left House with a lesser, but still serious, level of pain for the rest of his life. House could not forgive Stacy for making the decision, so she left him.
When Stacy makes her first appearance in the series, she is married to a high school guidance counselor named Mark Warner. Although House and Stacy grow closer together and reunite briefly during the second season, House tells Stacy to go back to her husband, which devastates her. Her character has not returned to the show since.
The best friend...James Wilson
James Wilson is Gregory Houses best friend. He is the main oncologist in Princeton Plainsboro Teaching Hospital. He is jewish. Another reference to his background is made when Wilson initially invites House to a Christmas dinner but alters his invitation when House points out that he is Jewish. It is also revealed that Wilson has two brothers. One brother is homeless whom he hasn't seen in nine years.
Wilson is seen dressed in a McGill university sweatshirt in the episode "House Vs. God". Two diplomas on his wall indicate that he attended University of Pennsylvania for fellowship programs. In the promotional photos for the first episode of season 4, his office diplomas are legible. He has a diploma from McGill's undergraduate school of arts and sciences, and a second diploma from Columbia University's "School of Oncology."
Wilson has a history of three failed marriages. The third season introduces his second wife, Bonnie, who is Realtor His third marriage with Julie takes place during the first and the second season. His marriage with Julie ends when he finds out that she has been having an affair. Wilson himself is not innocent of cheating. He confesses to Allison Cameron that he knows "someone" who made him feel "funny, good" and that he "didn't want to let that feeling go," sparking his own series of mental affairs and damaging his relationships.
After the end of his third marriage, Wilson temporarily moves into House's apartment. In the episode "Safe" House tells Wilson why he didn't look for a new apartment: "As long as you're here, it's just a fight. As soon as you get a place, it's a divorce." Despite playing several pranks on Wilson, such as dipping his hand in warm water while he is asleep, House attempts several times to prevent him from leaving. A few episodes later, Wilson moves out, telling House that he found a new apartment.
Wilson has known House since before the infarction, which occurs about five years before the time setting of the show, and looked after him when House's relationship with Stacy ended.
The Boss lady. The She Devil-- Dr. Lisa Cuddy
She is the only character for whom the show has never given any family information. It is unclear whether she has siblings or whether her parents are still alive. However, a reference is made indicating she is Jewish in season 2 when House comments about her not having "luck with jdate", a popular online Jewish dating service. A small menorah is also visible when House visits Cuddy's house in season 3 episode 15.
Cuddy attended University of Michigan where she was an undergraduate During this time, she met Gregory House who was already a legend on campus. Her dream of being a doctor began when she was twelve, and she graduated medical school at age twenty-five as second best in her class, and became the first woman and second youngest Dean of Medicine ever at age thirty-two.
Cuddy knew House before the show takes place. She met him at the University of Michigan after he had transferred from another school, Johns Hopkins University Later on, when House got an infarction in his right leg, he was treated at Princeton Plainsboro where Cuddy was not yet Dean of Medicine (specified in the unaired version of "Honeymoon").His doctors could not figure out what was wrong with his leg, so Cuddy became his attending doctor. Despite the danger the dead muscle posed (generating clots that could block key blood vessels), House refused to amputate, saying he liked his leg and was willing to risk his life to keep it, while his girlfriend, Stacy Warner, told him he should cut it off to survive. It was Cuddy who told Stacy that there was a middle ground between amputating and keeping the leg: to cut out the dead muscle, which would have a 50/50 percent chance of failing (resulting in him limping for the rest of his life and being in pain) or succeeding (resulting in the muscle growing back allowing him being able to walk properly). House requested being put into a chemically-induced coma to sleep through the worst of the pain in his leg. However, once he was unconscious, Stacy, as his medical proxy, consented to the middle-ground surgery for him.
The delinquent... Eric Foreman
Foreman had once became infected with a mysterious illness. Another patient, infected with the same condition, experiences a very painful death before his eyes. In the conclusion of the episode, Cameron, acting as Foreman's medical proxy, performs a white-matter brain biopsy and the condition is revealed to be amoebic meningoencephalitis caused by Naegleria, a water-borne parasite that, upon being inhaled, attacks the brain. After treatment, it appears Foreman is cured of the meningoencephalitis, but something may have gone wrong during the biopsy. Although his brain had some confusion between the left and right side of the brain, he is in recovery. Upon his return from recovery, Foreman's memory seemed to have been impaired, as he struggled to remember key medical concepts (cf. "Forever") and could not remember how to make Coffee. In the next two episodes, however, he seems to be able to once again keep up with his fellow doctors when coming up with medical theories.
When Michael Tritter offers Foreman an opportunity to win early parole for his drug-addicted, incarcerated brother, Foreman turns it down. Tritter sees this as hypocrisy, after citing Foreman's own criminal record, and says that while Foreman tries being compassionate to ward off House's training, he is actually just as cold and methodical as his employer. That is supported when Foreman gives his girlfriend a chance to go to a nurse practitioner school as a way to end the relationship, and she states that both he and House can't stand to let people get close to them. He eventually gave his two weeks' notice to quit, as he was scared that he was turning apathetic towards patients' well being - or as he admitted in the Season 3 finale, he doesn't want to turn into House. House angrily countered that he was like him, and in many ways was more selfish by caring about how good he looked in the eyes of patients and by dragging out his resignation until House admitted he wanted him to stay. Foreman left without a word following this tirade.
In the episode The Right Stuff, Cuddy reveals that Foreman took a job at New York Mercy running the diagnostics department. Despite a desire to change he is unable to break from House-like techniques, ranging from using a whiteboard to directly disobeying his superior's orders so a patient can receive treatment. He is fired for "confusing saving her life with doing the right thing."
Cuddy then offers Foreman his old job at Princeton-Plainsboro, claiming she needs someone to help control House. At first he declines the offer, but ultimately he accepts following an extensive series of failed job interviews. He finds that his insubordination at New York Mercy has led the medical community to conclude that House has trained him to be a loose cannon with no regard for authority or procedure...a "House Lite," as Dr. Cuddy describes him.
He rejoins the department in the episode "Mirror Mirror," serving as Cuddy's eyes and ears on House's new team. Though House tries to make Foreman miserable enough to quit, Foreman soon realizes that the unorthodox and rapidly changing environment of House's diagnostics team is exactly where he wants to be, and the two return to speaking terms. Though House and Foreman are more confrontational than before due to Foreman's role as a buffer for House, House clearly still respects his skills - as is evidenced in "Whatever it Takes" when he chastises his fellows for not listening to him.
The "New Ducklings."
The new diagnostic team consists of Dr. Foreman, Dr. Taub, Dr. Kutner and "Thirteen". During the first half of Season 4, House started a long-running competition which would involve him eliminating "contestants". This story arc ran from episodes 4-02 to 4-09.
Dr. Chris Taub is a plastic surgeon. He was #39 during the games. While initially criticised by the other candidates for his specialty, Taub proved himself to be quite clever, using his specialty to help House's many attempts to work around the "rules" and his refusal to back down from a diagnosis and treatment that went against House's own. When in "The right stuff", House cannot figure out how to do a biopsy without alerting NASA officials or the hospital, Taub proposed the solution of covering the necessary surgery with an elective breast augmentation, which allows Chase, watching from observation, to notice the true cause of the condition. The mirroring patient implied he is attracted to Amber's aggressive personality. In "Ugly" it is revealed that he was forced to resign from his plastic surgery practice due to an ongoing affair that he had with a nurse, and that he loved his wife enough to leave the field altogether so his partners would keep quiet. Out of all the applicants he is the most willing to challenge House's authority, even telling a patient's father that he thinks House is wrong and can have him removed from the case ("Ugly").
Dr. Lawrence Kutner is a Sports Medicine specialist. He was #6 during the games. He first got approval from House for successfully reviving a patient with a defibrillator while in a hyperbaric chamber, (setting her clothing on fire due to the high-oxygen atmosphere) showing he's willing to try risky techniques and isn't squeamish about saving a patient's life despite the risk of putting the patient in harm's way. Similarly, in "Mirror Mirror" he resuscitated a patient using a defibrillator while the patient's skin was wet, nearly shocking himself into a coma at the same time. Defibrillators and Kutner have become a running joke for House now, who, in "Ugly" appoints him the "professional defibrillist," a title which Kutner seems rather proud of. Kutner is not adverse to House's bizarre and often illegal methods, frequently embracing the recklessness House encourages, such as when he and the rest of the team were to dig up a dead body in "Guardian Angels" In the same episode, Kutner shows that he himself is not averse to gutsy maneuvers, as when the team hears somebody approaching while they were digging up the grave, he suggests taking out whoever it was, if it was a security guard. This rashness eventually draws negative attention from Cuddy, who collaborates with Jeffrey Cole in the episode "You don't want to know" to have Kutner to be one of the fellows up for firing. This stuns Kutner, who had maintained a friendship with Cole thus far and didn't expect to be chosen for dismissal. When Cole was fired by House for dealing with Cuddy, all the other fellows shake his hand, except for Kutner, who doesn't even make eye contact with Cole and leaves. Kutner actually failed to survive House's seemingly arbitrary cuts, being fired in his first appearance for reporting Amber Volakis's recording of patient information. He continued to work even after being "fired" by House by turning his #6 into a #9 by turning it upside down and refusing to leave, and then coming up with a clever stress test for a patient's liver, using alcohol to intoxicate the patient. Kutner again survived the "cuts" as he was on the "winning" team in "97 Seconds' and continued to use House's "Cutthroat Bitch" nickname for Dr. Volakis. The mirroring patient said that Kutner enjoys new experiences, up to and including painful ones. Nicknamed "Former Orphan".
"Thirteen" also known as "Remy Hadley" is an internist. As her nickname suggests, she was #13 during the games. Thus far, she has been slow to reveal any information about herself, and is private enough to mystify even Dr. House, calling many of his guesses (such as "daughter of an alcoholic father") "wrong again." In her first appearance, all fellowship applicants were identified by number, and she so far has chosen to stick with her designated number even among her fellow team members. In "97 Seconds" Thirteen diagnoses a collapsing and disabled patient with Strongyloides, a type of worm, and treats him with ivermectin, which was in fact the correct diagnosis and treatment. However, the patient fails to take the pills and his English Shepard Mobility Assistance dog eats them, causing the death of not only the patient but the dog as well. Dr. House confronts her on the mistake in not supervising the patient taking the medicine, but does not fire her because he feels she won't make this mistake again, although she is clearly spooked by the incident in subsequent appearances. House is impressed by her creativity in coming up with diagnoses to treat patients and tests to reveal (and cover-up) patient symptoms (either administering various stress tests, or proposing vitamin treatments). When treating a patient who mirrored the doctor's personalities, he said that he was "scared," meaning that she too was also scared. A ballot (on who will get fired next) can be very briefly be seen in "Mirror Mirror" that lists the six remaining applicants. According to the ballot, Thirteen's real name — being the only one whose name has not been revealed elsewhere — is "Remy Hadley". Other than the ballot, Thirteen's real name has yet to be revealed in the show and all other characters (including House, Cuddy, and Wilson) refer to her only as "Thirteen." In "You don't want to know." "Thirteen" admits (under some particularly close scrutiny and some duress from House) that her mother died from Huntington's Chorea; she does not want to know if she carries the gene for Huntington's, as not knowing allows her to summon the bravery to do things she thinks she can't do, such as work for House. Although House has tested her for the disease and was prepared to reveal the results to her, she furiously insists that she does not want to know the results and argues that she wants to live her life without knowing as it helps her live the life she wants. She leaves the room and House tosses the unopened envelope into the trash. At the end of the episode "Games" she was fired because there was not enough room for another person on his team because Foreman unexpectedly came back. However because Cuddy wanted House to have at least one female on his team, she tells House to hire her, which was House's plan all along to trick Cuddy. This makes "Thirteen" the only female member of House's team, mirroring the original team, although there are now four people on this team instead of three. In "Don't Ever Change" both Foreman and House question her sexuality by stating/implying she is bisexual, however she neither confirms nor denies it.