crack_van | House Overview - Updated (Reply)

The original House fandom overview by

butterbuns can be found here. This one is current through the time of posting (mid-Season 8).

Why you should watch this show, in a nutshell:
House M.D. is utterly addictive and often brilliant, with whip-smart banter, quirky characters, compelling medical mysteries, and excellent acting, particularly from its three main leads. Although the quality and consistency of the writing has dropped off considerably in the past few years, the first three seasons could be considered television drama at its best.

Character Profiles

Gregory House (Hugh Laurie)
Dr. House is a brilliant but antisocial physician with acute powers of observation, a gift for metaphor, and a penchant for brutal honesty. He is the head of the Department of Diagnostic Medicine at Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital (henceforward PPTH) in New Jersey and supervises a small team of junior doctors (sometimes referred to as "the Cottages" or "the ducklings" in fanfiction) who assist him with medical procedures and differential diagnoses. Taking on cases that no one else has been able to solve, House's team often resort to dangerous tests or treatments in order to make sense of their patients' symptoms. House's willingness to take risks and lack of respect for authority have often created professional problems, as when a wealthy new Chairman of the Board, Edward Vogler (Chi McBride), attempted to get his tenure revoked towards the end of Season 1.

House was raised by a stern and probably abusive Marine pilot, John House (R. Lee Ermey), who was not his biological father, and his affectionate but manipulative mother, Blythe (Diane Baker). They moved around a lot when House was growing up, and he is familiar with medical practices from many parts of the world and also speaks several languages fluently. Though highly intelligent, House was expelled from at least one medical school but eventually graduated and became board-certified in both Infectious Diseases and Nephrology.

While in a long-term relationship with lawyer Stacy (Sela Ward) prior to the start of the series, House suffered an infarction in his right leg that went undiagnosed for several days. Against his wishes, Stacy authorized the removal of the damaged muscle while he was unconscious. Following the surgery, House failed to regain full use of his leg and became addicted to Vicodin. Stacy left him and eventually married a high school counselor, Mark Warner (Currie Graham), but returned at the end of Season 1 to ask for House's help when her husband began suffering from mysterious symptoms. Stacy and House began an affair while Mark was recovering from his illness, but House broke it off when she offered to leave her husband for him.

House's leg pain and ongoing struggles with his addiction to Vicodin have driven a lot of the drama of the series. At the end of Season 2, he asked to be treated with ketamine during surgery for a gunshot wound in order to "reset" his brain, but although the pain disappeared temporarily, he resumed taking Vicodin when it returned. In Season 3 he was caught forging prescriptions with his friend Dr. James Wilson's pad by Detective Michael Tritter (David Morse) and was hounded for several episodes but eventually exonerated via false testimony by his boss, Dr. Lisa Cuddy. In 5X16 "The Softer Side," House attempted to wean himself off Vicodin by using methadone, but he decided that he could no longer do his job effectively. By the end of Season 5, House's overuse of Vicodin in combination with emotional stress had resulted in frightening hallucinations and an apparent psychotic break, prompting Cuddy and Wilson to get him admitted to Mayfield Psychiatric Hospital. After his release, House remained free of narcotic painkillers until 7X15 "Bombshells," when he resorted to Vicodin to cope with the health scare of then-girlfriend Cuddy, and has continued to exhibit dependence on it since.

James Evan Wilson (Robert Sean Leonard)
Dr. Wilson is the Head of Oncology at PPTH and is House’s best, and possibly only, friend. He and House met at a medical conference in New Orleans shortly after he was given his first set of divorce papers and instigated an incident in a bar for which House bailed him out of jail. Unlike House, Wilson is known for his excellent bedside manner, and his patients have been known to thank him for delivering a terminal prognosis. Wilson and House have an unconventional friendship that features witty banter, juvenile prank wars, and a lot of jokes about their suspected homosexuality, including a fake marriage proposal by Wilson in 6X11 "The Down Low." Along with House/Cuddy, House/Wilson is one of the most popular romantic pairings in the fandom.

Wilson has been married and divorced three times. He separated from his third wife, Julie, near the beginning of Season 2, and temporarily moved in with House before getting involved with one of his own patients. He began a relationship with Dr. Amber “Cut-throat Bitch” Volakis (Anne Dudek), an unsuccessful candidate for House’s diagnostics team, during Season 4. House’s involvement in her tragic death strained his friendship with Wilson, who left PPTH temporarily but ultimately agreed to return to his old position. After House was released from Mayfield at the beginning of Season 6, he moved in with Wilson, who was still living in Amber’s old apartment. With the help of real estate agent Bonnie (Jane Adams), his second ex-wife, Wilson purchased the condo coveted by their boss, Lisa Cuddy. He and House lived there together until Wilson rekindled a relationship with his first wife, Sam Carr (Cynthia Watros), and asked House to move out near the end of Season 6. However, Sam left Wilson in 7X08 “Small Sacrifices” after he proposed marriage, and he has been living alone in the condo with only a diabetic cat named Sarah for company ever since.

Lisa Cuddy (Lisa Edelstein)
Dr. Cuddy is the former Dean of Medicine at PPTH who took the risk of hiring House to run his own department because she knew he was a brilliant doctor despite his difficult personality. She is an endocrinologist by training, although her role has been primarily administrative for many years. The free clinic where House and his fellows are forced to do clinic hours was her pet project.

House and Cuddy met and had a one-night stand while she was an undergraduate at the University of Michigan, but they did not become romantically involved again until the end of Season 6. At the time, Cuddy was engaged to a private investigator named Lucas Douglas (Michael Weston) whom House had hired to keep tabs on Wilson during their period of estrangement post-Amber, but she decided to break it off and give a relationship with House a try. However, they were unable to separate their professional and personal lives sufficiently, and in particular, Cuddy could no longer tolerate some of House's longstanding behaviors despite her claims that she didn't want him to change. They finally broke up mid-season 7 when Cuddy had a health scare and discovered that House had resorted to Vicodin to manage his fear. House exhibited increasingly erratic behavior in response, including a green card marriage to Ukrainian massage therapist Dominika Petrova (Karolina Wydra), culminating in the season finale, when he drove his car through the front of Cuddy’s home while she and several guests were inside. Cuddy subsequently left PPTH and was replaced by House’s fellow Dr. Foreman while House was serving a prison sentence for his crime.

Cuddy was unsuccessful in her attempts to have a child through in vitro fertilization, but adopted Rachel, the infant daughter of a patient, in 5X11 "Joy to the World." Her own father is deceased, and she has a difficult relationship with her bossy and critical mother, Arlene (Candice Bergen), and sister, Julia (Paula Marshall).

Robert Chase (Jesse Spencer)
Dr. Chase was an intensive care specialist when he became House's fellow in Diagnostics about a year before the beginning of the series but was fired at the end of Season 3 and has since become an expert surgeon. He is the son of a world-famous rheumatologist who abandoned his children and alcoholic wife when Robert was a teenager. Raised Catholic, he attended seminary against his father's wishes but later left and enrolled in medical school.

Chase began dating another of House's fellows, Dr. Cameron, in Season 3, and they were married at the end of Season 5. Both doctors rejoined House's team when he returned from Mayfield at the beginning of Season 6. However, after Chase admitted to having deliberately altered medical evidence, resulting in the death of a genocidal African dictator under their care, Cameron left him and the team. Since discovering after their divorce that many women (and no doubt quite a few men) find his boyish looks and Australian accent attractive, Chase has become a bit of a manslut.

Eric Foreman (Omar Epps)
Dr. Foreman is a Hopkins-trained neurologist who had just signed on as one of House’s diagnostic fellows at the beginning of the series. He has always been overtly ambitious but was blackballed when he attempted to find another position outside of PPTH at the beginning of Season 4 because he was perceived as being too much like House. He therefore remained House’s fellow until he replaced Dr. Cuddy as Dean of Medicine of PPTH between Seasons 7 and 8.

Foreman’s brother is an ex-con, and his mother was diagnosed with Alzheimers and has since passed away. In Season 5 he developed a romantic relationship with another of House’s fellows, Dr. Remy "Thirteen" Hadley, the most interesting aspect of which was the moniker House coined for them ("Foreteen"). However, when he took over House’s position temporarily, Foreman fired her to avoid a conflict of interest, and she broke up with him. Since then, he has enjoyed a bit of bromance with roommate Dr. Taub and also briefly dated a married woman in Season 8.

Allison Cameron (Jennifer Morrison)
Dr. Cameron is an immunologist who joined House's team after Chase but before Foreman. She is known for having a strong sense of ethics and somewhat idealistic view of human nature. Before enrolling in medical school, Cameron married a man who had been diagnosed with terminal cancer, and when she later developed a crush on House, he scorned her apparent attraction to needy men.

Cameron became involved (rather reluctantly) with Chase in Season 3 and resigned her position when House fired him. During Seasons 4 and 5, she worked in the emergency room at PPTH, eventually becoming the senior attending physician, and even took an unrealistic turn as acting Dean of Medicine while Cuddy was busy being a new mother to Rachel. She agreed to marry Chase at the end of Season 5 and to rejoin House's team in Season 6, but later left both after Chase confessed to deliberately causing a patient's death. Cameron returned to PPTH to serve Chase with the divorce papers and find closure with a nostalgic quickie in one of the exam rooms in 6X17 "Lockdown" and has not been heard from since.

Remy “Thirteen” Hadley (Olivia Wilde)
Dr. Hadley was trained in internal medicine before Cuddy forced House to hire a woman as one of his new diagnostic medicine fellows at the end of the grueling Survivor-like competition of Season 4. Intensely secretive, she did not object to House referring to her by her contestant number, "13," and her first name was not even revealed until Season 5. Her mother died of Huntington's Disease, Hadley herself has inherited it, and she assisted her older brother's suicide in the late stages of his illness, which resulted in a jail term through most of Season 7 for "overprescribing."

Hadley is bisexual and embarked on a series of one-night stands and other self-destructive behavior after being diagnosed with an especially early-onset form of Huntington's. She eventually began dating Foreman, who had gotten her enrolled in an experimental drug trial and even ensured that she would receive the treatment and not the placebo. However, after Foreman took over for House temporarily, he fired Hadley to avoid a conflict of interest, and she broke up with him. Hadley is no longer working for House, having left his team to ~~pursue a successful film career~~ enjoy the remainder of her short life with her current girlfriend, but he has promised that he will help her to die when the time comes.

Lawrence Kutner (Kal Penn)
Dr. Kutner was a specialist in sports medicine who was hired by House at the same time as Drs. Hadley and Taub. He was a novelty-seeker and a risk-taker who impressed House with his creativity and willingness to try anything. Kutner was adopted after witnessing his parents' murders by an armed robber when he was a boy. Although he generally seemed happy, he was found dead in his apartment by his co-workers, apparently having shot himself, during 5X20 "Simple Explanation." House's obsession with Kutner's unexpected death may have been the trigger for his psychotic break and consequent admission to Mayfield at the end of Season 5.

Chris Taub (Peter Jacobson)
Dr. Taub was a well-heeled plastic surgeon before taking a huge pay cut to join House's team in Season 4, a decision which put a certain degree of strain on his childless marriage. Taub literally became the poster child for PPTH in 7X09 "Larger than Life" because he had an "honest face." Actually, despite being a short, balding, middle-aged man with a big nose, Taub has had no end of opportunities to cheat on his wife Rachel (Jennifer Crystal Foley). In fact, he is now the father of two somewhat boring baby girls named Sophie and Sophia - one born to his now ex-wife and the other to a PPTH CNA named Ruby (Zena Grey).

Martha M. Masters (Amber Tamblyn)
Masters briefly joined House's team in season seven after Thirteen (Remy Hadley) took a mysterious leave of absence, aka went to prison. After House initially dragged his feet looking for a female replacement for Thirteen, his then-lover and boss, Lisa Cuddy, ordered him to take on Master to show how much control she had over House. Masters was a final year medical student, but was a prodigy with medical knowledge and abilities far beyond her young age (think Doogie Howser crossed with Mary Sue). Masters constantly clashed with House as she was honest at all costs and refused to lie and cheat. Although she was offered a permanent position on House's team, Masters decided that working for House was not for her and left... and there was much rejoicing in all of fandom.
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Jessica Adams (Odette Annable)
Dr. Adams was introduced in the eighth season opener. She was working in the clinic of the prison where House was incarcerated after crashing his car into Cuddy's home. She comes from a wealthy family and wanted to do 'good works' but found prison medicine boring until she met House. She helped House diagnose an inmate and stole drugs for him, which led to her being fired. When House was released early from prison, he hired Adams as a fellow ~~to fulfill the 'lobby art' quota for the show~~. She revealed that the reason she wanted to work for House was that she liked to be around 'screwed up people.' (Boy did she come to the right hospital!) Adams used to be married but divorced him after he cheated on her.
(credit: menolly_au)

Chi Park (Charlyne Yi)
Dr. Park was assigned temporarily to House's team in the Season 8 opener while awaiting a hearing after she punched her previous supervisor for groping her. Park still lives with her parents, who have been known to deliver her home-cooked meals to the hospital. She's spunky and game for a good bet, and she has developed a bit of a crush on Chase.