Analyze Dr. Gregory House and you may be surprised by what you may and may not see.
Hugh Laurie as House - The Character
House has become everyone’s favorite crippled, Vicatin-popping, curmudgeon, genius diagnostician. His quick-witted, off hand remarks, and his last minute, brilliant medical miracles have endeared him in the hearts of millions of primetime viewing faithful. A running theme for his life may be the often-used Rolling Stone’s song “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.” House never seems to get what he really wants, although he does eventually get his way.
House is perhaps the most complex character to grace the small screen in the last twenty-five years. He is often described as the Sherlock Holmes of medicine. Many an episode has been dedicated to figuring out what makes him tick, but if Wilson and Cuddy can’t crack him, how on Earth are the rest of us supposed to?
Everybody Lies
House lives by the logically reasonable assumption that everyone lies, including him. House doesn’t believe in talking to patients, and he finds patient histories to be relatively useless, except when they are actually useful. Many of House’s qualities contradict themselves as attributed to the many contradictions of life.
The Art of Manipulation
House is manipulative, often times for the better of his patient, but sometimes it’s a game he plays. He coerces his team, his friends, and his superiors in order to control his environment, and to keep a steady norm in the world he has created around himself. His is a world primarily without feeling. He has no remorse for his actions, and he typically attempts to justify them with some convoluted logic that is usually just B.S.
House is not perfect, though he’ll rarely fess up to it. A lot of his job revolves around guesswork. Prior experiences and gut feelings influence all of the decisions House makes throughout a case. His trademark dry-erase board covered in scribbled symptoms and that usual light bulb moment just as the patient reaches the brink of death have become a staple of the show.
House and Relationships
House’s weekly medical triumphs are typically overshadowed by complex relationship struggles amongst the other characters to which House applies his same genius analysis and sometimes his undivided attention. House is nothing without Wilson and Cuddy. He needs those relationships to eventually reach the conclusions that he does. They are a part of his process.
House needs to interrupt Wilson in mid-session to bounce ideas off of him just as he needs to convincingly deceive Cuddy into allowing him to perform medically unorthodox tests on patients in order to diagnose. Just as important are his fellows. Their medical specialties give them a near complete understanding of the anatomy. They are essential in sparking House’s thoughts. Their various backgrounds point them toward the clues, and House pieces them together.
House may not concern himself with ethics and he may not worry about consequence, but he is a better doctor because of it.
