House (TV series)/Headscratchers

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


House

  • Why does the hospital keep House on staff? I'm not talking about his behavior; I mean, from a financial perspective. It's been mentioned a few times the hospital had to set aside legal fees for him. He's tying up three other doctors to deal with one patient at a time. Most of his patients seem like average types, or even poor people who would have no hope of paying for the rather extravagant level of care they're receiving. I'm sure the hospital is getting a lot of fame (notoriety?) for having such a skilled person on staff; but ultimately, a hospital is a business. The way House works his cases must eat up huge amounts of funding.
    • Cuddy claims it's because, since he could never get hired anywhere else, she got the greatest doctor in the world dirt cheap.
      • Well, even if House is working for free, all the other stuff he does still costs money; and there's still the question as to how he generates the income to offset that.
      • Usual explanation for off-screen dark matter; they have a lot of cheap and easier-to-diagnose patients that we seldom see during the shows for reasons of interest. House and team's training with these hard cases give them the necessary skill to diagnose normal patients almost instantly and with preternatural skill. If the hospital needs EMTALA compliance, even with legal fees he'd also still be cheaper than trying to deal with a lot of diagnostic issues.
      • And remember, Princeton-Plainsboro is a teaching hospital, and the cottages are technically House's "students." Having one of the best if not the best diagnostician available on staff looks good, even if House is losing the hospital money. If I recall correctly, the hospital is also implied on occasion to be a non-profit.
    • This troper assumed it was for PR. On the one hand, they have to set X amount of money aside for House's legal bills. On the other hand, they get to put "Oh and did we mention we have 'the best diagnostician in the whole Goddamn world' on our staff?" in their press releases.
      • That's what this troper figured. Plus, there's the fact that Princeton-Plainsboro is a teaching hospital. Even though House rarely teaches, his fellows (Foreman, Chase, Cameron, et al) would. Plus, the fact that there's just this wealth of knowledge in the form of Dr. House pays off more than a few times: in the first season specifically, there's a number of cases for what House assumes to be wealthy donors, who in theory would be more generous with their wealthy donations after House saves their lives.
      • And some people have made big donations to PPTH specifically so that they can call on Cuddy to try to get House to take their cases ("Cursed," "Top Secret," "Instant Karma").
      • In the season 6 episode that focussed on Cuddy ("5 to 9"), she says something like "we have the most innovative diagnostics department in the world" to the insurance guys.
    • This troper thinks that Cuddy views House as a long-term investment for the hospital. Sure, the setting aside legal fees and otherwise dealing with patient complaints are a hassle, but measured against the prestige of attaching the hospital's name to the team's constant treatment breakthroughs and the resulting publicity/grants/donations, etc. reduce it to simply a business expense. Hell, given that House never publishes anything, Cuddy probably slaps her name on their cases and makes a fortune.
    • It's pretty evident after the Vogler arc that Cuddy just plain likes House, and what he does. She is not concerned that he is unprofitable. She doesn't view him as an investment of any sort, she doesn't even try to argue with Vogler that Diagnostic Medicine is a financial "black hole". She instead points out at least once that he is, statistically, a force of good in the universe. Regardless of his inefficiency, sarcasm, rudeness, etc, he consistently saves lives, which is ultimately what Cuddy seems to think a hospital is for.
      • This. And to link it with a previous argument : yes, as Cuddy says herself, he could never get hired anywhere else - meaning she has to keep him on staff if she doesn't want him to, I dunno, sink further into depression and let himself die rather than find another job to pay rent and food. It's part caring, part pity - and a third, tiny part business. Because as stated earlier, you can bet your weird malfunctioning organ system of the week that the case files of all those wealthy benefactors, their friends, their families and their pets all land on House's desk.
    • I have a problem with the fandom here -- Why is House never being fired such a problem for everyone? In my eyes, he hasn't done anything to deserve it, when compared to his diagnostic ability. All those bad things he does are far outshadowed by his saving of lives and his genius mind.
      • So several people say he's the best diagnostician in the world up there. The best diagnostician in the world treats one patient a week and is wrong about their condition three or four times every time, sometimes leading directly to their death?
        • The best diagnostician in the Eastern United States treats one interesting patient a week that has (usually) completely stumped even the specialists, and is wrong about their condition one to four times (almost) every time, sometimes leading directly to their death, most of that "sometimes" proving that it was untreatable with current medical knowledge anyway. His clinic hours still get done (sometimes by him!), and for all of the cases that weren't brought straight to him, the people who should know what it is don't and he eventually does, hence the appending of the term "best".
        • You expect a condition that has probably stumped several other world-class diagnosticians to get it right on the first try and save every single patient? They make wrong guesses because they have to test for or treat -something- in order to gather more information. If they didn't do anything until absolutely sure, they'd never actually save anyone at all.
        • Oh, come on. When they literally say on the show "House, you treat one patient a week", it probably means House treats an average of one patient a week. And he's still wrong far more often than he's right.
          • Good work ignoring the above comment. Let's ignore the fact that at least 66-70% of the time, the patient/patient's relatives are hiding something that makes it almost IMPOSSIBLE for them to solve the case immediately, I'm not sure why you believe that even as a genius, House can suddenly turn medicine into some kind of Super Science. Various symptoms can be caused by several illnesses, and even if you can almost completely remove some of them from the table (as they typically do), they always need to be sure. When you have medical mysteries that have your typical doctor stumped, yeah- you're going to run into some problems. Also, keep in mind that House often doesn't get TOO involved in the case until things get extremely interesting. He mostly runs on autopilot at first.
    • It's mentioned in Season 6 irrc, that House is actually significantly under budget for his legal fees.
    • House has saved the life of at least one patient,who would otherwise have died with a different doctor, every episode for the last six seasons. Since when did money come into it? Oh right yeah, its set in America.
      • Right. Because only in America does medicine cost any amount of our limited money to perform.
  • In most (developed) countries outside of the USA, it's legally required to have a health insurance so almost everything is covered by insurance companies. Of course it has nothing to do with House constantly braking the law, but he's not caught all that often
  • Someone might be able to answer this because I have no idea on the matter. In "Mob Rules", the gangster's brother reacts very badly to the team suggesting the gangster has hepatitis C because his reputation would get shot if anyone ever found out. Question - WHY? People might think that it was the result of the gangster having unprotected gay sex...but they're a hell of a lot more likely to assume he wasn't gay and it was the result of unprotected STRAIGHT sex. What's the big deal?
    • The gangster's brother is a moron?
    • Either way, it implies gangsters are too stupid to use safe sex.
      • Er, no, it implies that one character is, and yes, some are that stupid. There's no I.Q. test to become a gangster.
    • The brother knows the gangster is gay, so he's projecting.
    • I remember that it was because he didn't have Hep C before he went to prison.
    • House also once assumed a patient was gay and in denial because he might have had AIDS. Apparently, they still think AIDS is only a homosexual disease on this show.
    • Er, House lampshades this in the episode with the presidential candidate. There's actually a lot of politics on both sides of this issue, but yes, outside of Africa your chances of getting HIV are many, many, many times higher through anal sex than vaginal sex. (They're not sure why heterosexual intercourse passes HIV so much more easily in Africa; one ongoing theory is that many more women in Africa are infected with a common parasite that, among other things, makes the vaginal membranes more delicate and prone to tearing.) House, being the un-PC jerk that he is, scoffs at the useful cover story that the presidential candidate could've possibly gotten HIV from heterosexual intercourse, especially protected heterosexual intercourse -- and had the guy had HIV, he'd've probably been right.
      • On the subject of the high rates of HIV infection in Sub-Saharan Africa: There are several cultural reasons for the spread of the virus in this part of the world. First, women's rights are limited or non-existent compared to much of the Western world. Women who want to protect themselves through abstinece, monogamy, condom use, and so forth are going to be limited in their abilities to do so. Second, there is a common practice in parts of Sub-Saharan Africa to have dry sex; i.e., women are asked (or forced) to dry themselves before intercourse. Third, there's a common misconception that having sex with a virgin will cure HIV and AIDS. Add to these factors widespread problems with rape. It is highly unfortunate, but the problems that many African countries are having with the spread of AIDS and HIV are not going to end any time soon.
    • Actually all of this is kinda irrelevant as Hepatitis C is mostly transmitted via infected blood (and NOT sexually transmitted) (this is true in 95% cases, the other 5% via vertical transmission) (the pathogenesis mechanism is restricted because the virion particle is specific to the CD 81 surface receptors on lymphocytes and hepatocytes with NON-cytotoxic development). And although HEP B is primarily spread by STD, there is only a limited higher risk for transmission due to guy-on-guy sex. And in any case, I thought the reason why the conclusion was "he's gay" is because the gum he was chewing could only be ordered from a site that mostly catered to gay men. I could be wrong though...
    • Sorry to get off the subject of HIV for a moment, but what ever happened to the Corvette that the gangster's brother gave to House? I've never heard it referenced again after that episode.
  • Thirteen? This is a medical dramedy, not Star Trek! What doctor would go for a number-for-a-nickname in the real world?
    • This Troper remembers where it came from. At the start of that season, he gives all the potential hires pin-on numbers like marathon runners. She got the "lucky number 13" and since House used that nickname the entire season, it stuck.
    • The actress herself said she liked the idea of keeping her name a mystery, and said that she "likes the inside joke of how House could look at the folder and find out her real name, but doesn't – it keeps it informal." Her real name has been revealed outside the show as Remy Hadley. If you look closely, it was even in the show, too.
      • Not to mention the fact that after Thirteen locks other doctors out of a room, Cuddy comes in and shouts at her, specifically saying "Dr. Hadley!"
      • Thirteen also knocks on Foreman's door after an argument introducing herself as (paraphrased) "Hi, I'm Dr. Remy Hadley, I work with you and sometimes sleep with you, would you please let me in?"
  • This is what's bugging people about House? Not the fact that House still has a friggin' license!?
    • He makes his diagnoses, he saves lives. It's every loner's and freak's fantasy -- a world where your skill is what matters, not your propensity to socialize or conform to societal norms.
    • I'm not talking about Societal Norms, I'm talking about Gross Misconduct, negligence, and generally being a rubbish doctor.
    • He bends the rules but never for benefits for himself like money or reputation. Violations like lying to the transplant committee are always done for his patients. You don't neglect patients if you cure them.
    • Never lies to benefit himself? WTF are you talking about? Bribing a rehab supervisor to sneak him drugs? Forging a prescription to illegally obtain narcotics? Ring any bells? And that's without even counting the unethical and illegal things he does that don't even benefit him at all. Telling his employees to steal his boss' underwear? Breaking into people's houses? Forcing other people to break into people's houses? Forcing his employer to falsify evidence and perjure herself on the stand? He's a great character and a great diagnostician, but there is no way his supposed skill warrants Cuddy protecting him the way she does.
      • Alternatively, it actually does warrant Cuddy's protection, especially when one considers that in addition to the above, one might call them friends. A bizarre variation on friendship to put it mildly, but it's clear at the end of the day they both have some concern for the well being of the other. This troper submits that the unrealistic aspect of House not losing his licsence isn't Cuddy's protection, but rather, the fact that Cuddy can get away with protecting him without consequences of her own, especially for so long.
    • The perjury was part of an Idiot Plot and made no sense; how did telling them one prescription he stole was a placebo cancel out all the other possession charges? The judge said she dismissed the case because he wasn't peddling dope on the street. His illegal acquisitions of pain meds aren't hurting anybody, except himself. But, yes, that probably would lose him his license in the real world. Like Wilson would have lost it for sleeping with a patient.
      • As House even points out, the rest of the possession charges were bogus because he had legal prescriptions. Well, one wasn't legal, but Wilson lied and said it was anyway. It was a really obvious lie, but it was still his official statement.
      • The other possession charges relied on Wilson's testimony. Wilson's testimony was given as part of a deal, and Tritter reneged on the deal.
    • The MST3K Mantra certainly applies here. The show has a very blatant level of fantasy despite its presentation as something that takes place in recognizable reality. The production is clearly more concerned with being an effective television show than being completely realistic, and I would wager the writers simply don't consider people who can't handle the unreality of things like House's ability to maintain employment to be part of their demographic. As the first counterpoint notes, House lives in a world where his competence, not his willingness to act like all the other sheeple, is the only thing that matters. Those of us who have had or can at least sympathize with this fantasy usually don't care about the opinions of sheeple people who can't.
  • So what was Tritter's motivation in that arc? I can kind of understand the writers' reasons for doing it (make every character even more miserable, showing that House is probably the lesser of two evils here and so on and so forth) and I can forgive it for making no sense because House usually doesn't but was it really just to bitchslap him? The drugs and House's awful-even-for-him moments (the whole of Finding Judas and his way of getting the pills in Merry Little Christmas) hadn't come up yet but why bother? Why bother to go all that trouble to ruin House's life/Wilson's life/all the Cottage's lives just because he had a personal vendetta?
    • Tritter is one vindictive, obsessive sonuvabitch. He went through the trouble because House made a fool of him, and just does not care about the collateral damage as long as he achieves his goal (not unlike House himself!). Tritter would probably be kicked off the police force in real life for this sort of agressive and ultimately pointless behaviour, but hey, he lives in a world where a guy like House still gets to keep his medical license... so, yeah.
      • This and then some. Tritter and House are very similar, it's just that Tritter's goal is justice as opposed to House's goal of health. It's just that Tritter loses in a rather out of character way.
    • Two Words. Anal Thermometer.
      • Nobody ever seems to remember that Tritter assaulted House before House assaulted Tritter. The man kicked House's cane right out from under him. And really, how dumb do you have to be to allow someone you just pissed off access to your rectum--especially in the age of tympanic thermometry?
    • Who now?
    • I just thought he was a Jerkass who enjoyed bullying people because it gave him a sense of power and superiority. I mean, that was the point, right? To show how House would react when another bully showed up in his playground? In any case, I just felt he fit into the Lawful Stupid category and swept him under the rug.
      • This. Tritter liked having power over people and being able to push them around. Then he met House, someone who he COULDN'T intimidate. He didn't take it well. He was motivated purely by spite, by trying to bully House.
  • There is a nearly criminal lack of props given to the other three members of the diagnostic team. Technically House is always the one to come up with the final, miraculously correct diagnosis, but in EVERY episode, it's shown that Foreman is at least as good as House and he's a pretty nice guy. Chase and Cameron have also proven to be excellent doctors. Cuddy never acknowledges any of them except House. All of House's successes are only possible because of the work of the other three, and he makes just as many mistakes as they do right until the end. In light of this, it would seem that cutting him off the team and giving his job to Foreman (or his later season replacement) would have a negligible effect on their success rate and the hospital's financial guys would have a party with all the money they save on legal stuff. Plus, everybody would get a break from dealing with him, which has got to be worth something.
    • This is why Cuddy forces House to hire a new team in Season 4 after Cameron and Foreman quit and he fires Chase -- he needs a team. And his old team got their break from dealing with him.
  • In the episode Safe, after Wilson saws halfway through House's cane, House used it repeatedly to stop people, block the elevator, shove Foreman, and, not surprisingly, walk around all day, but it only breaks when he's talking with Wilson in the hallway. Also, it bugs me that he sawed it at an angle, as House could easily have fallen on the sharpened tip of where it broke.
    • Rule of Funny. It wouldn't be as funny if it was the wrong place and the wrong time (like outside, for example) and House had really hurt himself.
  • So, the humility lesson in the beginning of Season Three. I get that it was a very "The road to hell is paved with good intentions" kind of thing for Cuddy and Wilson to do but what bugs me is the timing. Never mind the fact that House was depressed and in massive amounts of leg pain again but, honestly, couldn't they have found a better time to teach him a lesson than when the guy had just got shot two months ago?
    • Wilson's not the nice, heroic guy Hugh Laurie seems to think he is. House may be a jerk, but he's never slept with a patient. Wilson lies to House all the time when he doesn't need to just to teach him a supposed lesson, like making him believe he hallucinated Chase after he fired him.
      • This. Wilson has repeatedly demonstrated that he and House are Not So Different, able to scheme, deceive and manipulate with the best of them and is just as unconcerned with the consequences when working towards a goal. Cuddy was constantly questioning what they were doing, but Wilson could easily convince her what they were doing was correct, just as House does on a regular basis.
  • How did Robert Sean Leonard grow up to become an oncologist after killing himself 20 years ago when Red Foreman wouldn't let him play Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream?
    • Because Robin Williams has magic powers. Duh.
    • At least Red learned his lesson, and let his younger autistic son Dave Matthews pursue a career in performing classical piano.
    • Maybe he's in Hell. It would explain a lot.
  • In "Last Resort," why did Thirteen mention the distended jugular? Like the pregnant woman's husband said, why not just let the guy have a heart attack... without warning him so he could threaten to start shooting unless they did something about it?
    • Add no harm?
    • Heart attacks aren't always immediate and there's a chance the shooter might have recognized the symptoms before they incapacitated him (seriously; this troper's father memorized the symptoms of a heart attack because of the history of heart problems in his family). If he suddenly figured what was happening to him and realized the doctors were deliberately not helping him he might have opened fire.
  • In almost every episode, House sends the young guns to break into the Patient of the Week's house to look for clues. How is it that they haven't been arrested or sued for this? Also, how do they keep getting in without setting off any alarms?
    • Well, you're assuming a couple of things. The first is that the doctors always obey House without question, which they don't. The second is that the doctors lack the foresight to leave House's office, walk into the patient's room and say "We need to look for possible environmental causes of your condition. May we look around your house?" Sure, there's a few episodes where they specifically state they're breaking in, but that can't possibly always be the case.
  • Do the Sherlock Holmes stories exist in House's universe? Wilson's use of the name Irene Adler could have been a Shout-Out, or he could have used a name he recalled from a certain detective story.
    • (Rebecca) Adler actually was the name of the patient in the first ever episode (Holmes was part of the inspiration for House) the entire story happened as Wilson told it, only without House falling for her (obviously).
    • The stories exist. In one of the Season 5 episodes we get a nice close-up of "The Collective Works of Sherlock Holmes" when House pick up his keys.
      • That would make him deciding to live at 221 B another example of his massive ego. And that is awesome.
  • So, apart from the default reason of Status Quo Is God, why doesn't House just amputate his bad leg? Amputation would increase mobility and decrease his misery and pain levels so why not? And can someone explain why he would have rather died than be a cripple when his infarction happened? I just... I can't get my head around that.
    • I'm sure there are plenty of people in the real world who feel the same way about chopping off their limbs. I'm not saying I agree, but I can accept that someone just doesn't want their leg amputated if at all possible.
    • This troper has chronic leg pain and as a result, walks with a cane and takes painkillers frequently. (Suggested jokes: I take so many painkillers, I get House's mail. I shave 3 days before Halloween and my costume's good to go.) The thought of amputation crosses my mind at least once a week. The answer to the question "Why not?" is that there are a number of other things the leg's still good for besides hurting.
    • Also remember we're talking about House, who's notorious for his OCD tendencies. Remember when he threw a fit because Cuddy had the temerity to replace his blood-stained rug with a brand new one.
    • I always thought it was because, since the problem is not life-threatening, no hospital would consent to such a procedure. That doesn't explain why House couldn't find an "off-the-books" doctor though.
      • This Troper also has a bad leg, which aside from being ineffective does not actually cause much pain, and is definitely not life threatening, and has still had to tell more than one doctor to fuck off when they suggested amputation. Needing a cane to walk decently is preferable to needing a prosthesis to walk at all.
    • The question's actually raised in one episode, in a flashback. House's given reason is that he likes his leg.
    • Besides, amputation does not always stop the pain.
      • House himself cured this in some war-vet who lived near him.
    • House regularly finds cures even when it's deemed impossible - but no-one can cure a pain-wracked leg after it's been amputated - he'd keep it and experiment with increasingly risky cures.
    • There's been some genuinely promising research (and, as far as I remember, some people actually have been cured this way) done in cloning tissue. So, given a couple (or several) years or a medical breakthrough, it's actually fairly likely that we'll live to see muscle regrowth to be possible. Regrowing an entire leg, on the other hand? Not bloody likely without The Singularity.
    • The reason why he can't amputate the leg? Because 1) he wants to keep the leg, and 2) Neuropathic pain doesn't work that way. It's the same reason why people who have amputated limbs can still have "painful limbs." It's because specific nerve fibres are continuously being triggered with a specific coding modality for the brain to register in the limbic system and somatosensory cortex as a specific sensation event. There are operations which can be undergone to try to improve this by operating on the nerve, but it is difficult and a lot of trial and error. Muscle infarction causes the localised dissemination of necrotic tissue that can cause enough alteration in the ECM to trigger the receptor end of the polymodal nociceptors or any point along the axon fibre (yeah, unmyelinated C fibres suck.)
  • Why does Foreman and Thirteen just hook up all of a sudden? This Troper gets that it all started during the hostage crisis, but it seemed as though there was no Unresolved Sexual Tension in the recent episode arc at all? In contrast, Cameron and Chase had a ton of it and it made perfect sense when they got together, but now with these two it's practically non-existent.
    • Well, besides the fact that in Real Life, people get together that you never saw coming; it was touched on that Foreman was demonstrating extra concern for Thirteen since she had Huntingon's. And after all the ruckus in "Last Resort", she decided she actually wanted to try to live. His concern for her, and her newfound want to live combined to form a newfound romance. Which this troper was rooting for all the way.
      • YMMV. I thought it was yet another case of Thirteen storyline hogging. She and Foreman have zero chemistry. Foreteen? More like boreteen...
      • Definitely YMMV, because I recall suspecting this was coming a few episodes before it actually did (it's been long enough that I don't remember what set me off, but I wasn't too surprised). Especially since I appear to be in a minority that actually likes both Foreman and Thirteen. Oh well, it's hardly the first time... Glad to see someone else was rooting for them, though.
  • The episode with Dave Matthews ended on the biggest Broken Aesop that this troper has ever seen. What bugs me is that through the whole episode, they show how music affects people. House himself is completely dumbfounded when the patient finishes the song that House had started writing in high school. Then, at the end, they decide to surgically alter change him from a gifted savant to an ordinary schmuck so that he can button his own shirt. Do you think that Beethoven would have EVER agreed to give up his ability to write, play and appreciate music in exchange for getting his hearing back? Ray Charles for his eyesight?
    • This is why informed consent exists. House explained the benefits and drawbacks to the father. The benefits: his son would finally be able to live a normal life. The drawback: he would never play the piano again. The father weighed the pros and cons and said that losing the ability to play the piano was not a big enough detriment to outweigh the gain in functionality he would get. And to be fair to House, he didn't like the decision, because the kid was so good at playing the piano.
    • Worst. Analogy. Ever. Beethoven and Ray Charles were only deaf and blind, respectively. Dave Matthews' character was severely brain damaged to the point where he was completely unable to function on his own. He would have been forced to live like an infant for the rest of his life, being cared for by his father as if he were a small child. And after his father eventually died or became unable to take care of him anymore he would have had to go live in some kind of institution, again, for the rest of his life. So in exchange for losing his ability to play the piano he gets to live like a normal human being and become a productive member of society. Was this an equitable trade? ABSOLUTELY.
      • This troper agrees that it wasn't the best analogy to pick. Terry Pratchett once said, "Making composers go deaf is a classic practical joke of the gods that falls flat. Being deaf doesn't prevent them from hearing the MUSIC. It just prevents them from hearing the DISTRACTIONS."
  • It is pretty much acknowledged in universe that Tritter's first search of House was conducted as payback, and that the investigations of House that lasted the entire arc resulted from it. I am no legal expert, but how does that stand up in court?
    • Word of a police officer against... House.
    • And the fact that nobody mentioned that Tritter started it off first probably helped him out a lot. House wouldn't tell anyone about being tripped (as payback) because that would be humiliating and Tritter obviously wouldn't tell because that would fuck up his vendetta so it all works out.
    • He does have a warrant for the first search, when House comes in as they're finishing, Tritter tells him that since House got bailed before Tritter got a warrant, he almost didn't bother getting one thinking House would immediately clean out his stash, but on the off chance he didn't, Tritter went and got one anyway. As to how he got one approved, just the night before he busted House for DUI and possession.
    • I'm not quite at lawyer status yet, but, yes, it'd stand up in court. Think of it this way: you invite a cop into your house socially, and he sees your basement meth lab while looking for the bathroom. The cop doesn't go "NA NA NA I DON'T SEE ANYTHING BECAUSE I DON'T HAVE A WARRANT." If Tritter truly had no basis, that's one thing, but it's about as easy to find a basis to pull someone over as it is to spit. There's an important counterpoint to this. If I was a prosecutor, and I found that out, I'd make any deal I could. If I was, say, a lawyer representing House in the trial, I'd adore the fact that Tritter had a grudge. A fact like that? You can do a lot of damage with it.
  • This is going to sound horribly nitpicky but the patients' patience gets on my nerves. Even in fictionland, most patients wouldn't want their doctor staring through the window at them when they're trying to celebrate, they probably don't want to hear about their doctor's issues while they're being tested and they certainly wouldn't have the energy to (and I'm sure this isn't just done to House) pinpoint how exactly fucked up and woobie-ish they all are.
    • When you're sick and desperate for a diagnosis, you will put up with anything. When House doesn't search for a case he finds interesting, it's always made clear either that: the patient was only sent to House after exhausting all other options, the patient or a loved one or a doctor requested House specifically.
  • Am I the only one who is bugged by their presentation of House's atheism? The particular episode that I am referring to being the episode where the priest hallucinates seeing Jesus. Not only do they try and play it off that House actually wants to believe, but doesn't because he's such a cynic and cannot find the happiness that is Jesus, but in the end when House finally works out that the hallucination he suffered was just a big ol' coincidence. He treats it with incredible reverence and as though it was really just an incredibly hard to believe coincidence. Never mind the fact that the priest wanted to believe again and is constantly surrounded by his own failings to keep his belief in god. Also, the fact that Cameron being an atheist was only brought up once or twice offhandedly.
    • Nope. You're not the only one. House is a clear cut Hollywood Atheist, through and through. I read in a TV Guide (I think) once which described House as "TV's most recognisable atheist!" Which is probably true, and a shame. There's the episode where the guy tried to kill himself through electric shock and saw "something" (despite the fact the guy had messed up his cranium with prolific drug use - not remembering it 100% so feel free to correct) and House decided to do the same to prove him wrong. That's just stupid. No atheist (or Christian, Muslim etc) would willingly try for a near-death experience to prove some idiot wrong. It wouldn't convince them and you'd almost kill yourself for your troubles.
      • "No atheist (or Christian, Muslim etc) would willingly try for a near-death experience to prove some idiot wrong." Dude, House once sentenced an infant to death simply to solve a medical puzzle. He's THAT obsessive about finding the truth. Plus he's not exactly averse to self-destructive behavior. I'd have been more surprised if he didn't try it out.
      • That bit of the show really annoyed me, because it was House acting completely irrationally. If he doesn't see anything, his beliefs are confirmed. If he sees something, he can write it off as "Oh well there was electricity in my visual cortex blah blah". It's a win-win situation, so the only rational reason House would do it is because he wants to kill himself.
    • That's only if you treat House's Atheism as his only aspect. The series has made it obvious time and time again that House can NOT let go of a puzzle until he's solved it, and anything that piques his interest will dominate his interest until resolution. The fact that he's an Atheist doesn't make him cynical; the fact that he's cynical makes him an Atheist.
      • That's...actually a really good way of putting it, and a great summary of the character. Ta!
  • Why doesn't House just go and talk to Wilson directly after getting a new case? Lately he seems to solve ALL his cases during a witty repartie with him.
    • House is an arrogant son-of-a-bitch. Sure, a large proportion of his Eureka Moments are had with Wilson, but not all of them, and he could easily dismiss it as a coincidence than admit he needs other people to help him solve his puzzles. Also, almost all of them are only achieved after a large amount of information is collected about the patient, so it would be less effective if he talked to Wilson before that.
  • Does anybody on the show realise that there is more than one type of rape? Two people get drunk/high and decide to have sex, both consenting = not rape. Sober person + drunk/high person, even in cases where the intoxicated person comes onto but doesn't force sex on the sober person = rape on the sober person's fault. Chase raped Cameron. She was high on a mind-altering drug, calling her ability to consent into very serious question. Question of consent = non-consent. And yet, no one ever called him on it. She didn't; he gave indication that he regretted it, but in a oh-great-I-slept-with-a-coworker way rather than I'm-a-rapist-now way; the coworkers who found out about what happened, who happen to also be doctors, never did. I sincerely hope that should any of my female family members get raped in such a way and go to a hospital/clinic they get a doctor(s) who understand the severity of what happened to them. Hell, I hope that they, unlike Cameron, realise the grave wrong inflicted upon them.
    • Edited to add: I have the same hopes for my male relatives, too.
    • Except that any reasonable person realizes that it is complete and utter bullshit to call that "rape".
    • Umm... this Troper have done some quite stupid things and slept with the wrong persons while under the influence. Does that mean that he is off the hook?
    • This Troper knows from his job (Sexual Assault Prevention on a college campus) that technically, if either person is drunk or high, they cannot give consent...so 'both people drunk/high and consenting = not rape' isn't true...
      • This one is amused that the above troper's logic leads to two charges; both partners raping each other at the same time.
    • Cameron hasn't complained because she doesn't feel it's an issue; the other doctors don't realise the implications of what happened; and Chase gets off scott free because it's not what the law says that counts, it's what you get caught doing/called out on that counts.
    • Chase had no way of knowing that she was drugged, she just came to his house and threw herself at him. In fact, does he ever find out that she was on drugs? And then, of course, there's the old Double Standard -- if Chase was on drugs and a sober Cameron had sex with him, no-one would call her a rapist.
      • I would. I don't believe one's gender gives them the right to have sex with someone who can't/doesn't consent. And Chase deserves to have his medical license revoked if he can't tell that a person is under the influence of something mind-altering. I also think that he actually did say something about her being high, but I could be misremembering that part. Still, if he honestly didn't realise she was high and thought she truly was consenting of her own free will, I'll agree he's not a conventional rapist and shouldn't be judged as such, but he should immediately be banned from practising medicine forever.
        • So you believe that everyone the party and play boy slept with was raping him? that in fact everyone in that group of druggies were rape-seekers?
        • What? Just because one is a rapist doesn't mean one should be banned from practicing medicine. Especially if charges are not pressed, if state of mind and ability to give consent were not compromised (and believe it or not, meth doesn't cause intoxication in the same manner as alcohol, and has been ruled in several courts as allowing one to give consent), and especially not if both partners agree to consent afterwards! Ruining a man's life because of failing to identify someone is under the influence of drugs and not simply distressed or really horny is NOT an acceptable outcome.
          • Actually if someone is a rapist then that is a perfectly GOOD reason to be banned from practicing medicine. Particularly considering that persons enacting crimes of sexual assault tend towards very specific and deliberate drives to cause traumatic harm to other people... all of which IS NOT CONDUCIVE TO THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE. Which is exactly why SEX OFFENDERS ARE NOT ALLOWED TO PRACTICE MEDICINE. Even if the victim doesn't press charges, the ability to enact something such as rape is directly in contradiction of not only the hippocratic oath but the state of mind to act in someone's best interests (called DUTY OF CARE). A couple of things here though: 1) it is really easy to tell if someone is unconscious or drugged (in which case they can't give consent), and 2) I'm pretty sure the words "no, stop!" are pretty fucking clear.
    • I would say that it is because they don't have several sticks up their asses? Cameron was not forced, she was not coerced, most importantly, she did not feel violated in any way, because she did something she wanted to do, she was not raped period, the whole point of being under influence negating consent is for cases where a person is taken advantage of, which does equate to rape, simply willingly having sex while you are drunk or high does not equate to being raped, and its ridiculous that if you do not feel raped you should just because someone else says you were. The spirit of the laws is more important than the letter of the laws, if there was no coercion, no force, no violence, no abuse of trust, no advantage taken. Equating something like this is to rape is an insult for all the people who have really been raped, because being stupid and drunk cannot compare to the pain and anguish of being raped, whether it is by physically being forced to have sex or finding out that while you were vulnerable and unable to take decision someone took advantage of you, those instances are rape, this isn't. So it's not that people on the show don't realize that there is more than one type of rape, it's just they realize the difference rape and an adult putting herself under the influence of drugs to go crazy and shag her co-worker, who as far as I recall did protest to the fact that she was high and was called on the fact that he slept with her anyways.
    • Um, hello? She didn't call him on it because obviously she wasn't that bothered by it. Clearly, your personal definition of rape aside, Cameron does not consider what Chase did to be rape. And I object to your argument that sex between a sober person and a drunk person is automatically rape. It can sometimes be very difficult to tell whether someone is too drunk to consent to sex. A mildly drunk person who says yes to sex can be indistinguishable from a stone cold sober person doing the same. Furthermore, wouldn't your argument imply that if a drunk man sexually assaulted a sober woman, that man could not be charged with rape because he wasn't in control of his faculties?
      • This a thousand times. If Chase had to persuade Cameron while she was high, then there would be a case for rape. As it stands, he had no way of knowing that she didn't want to do it.
    • I don't agree that a drunk/high person assaulting a sober person shouldn't be considered rape. If a person forces another person to have sex against their will, that's rape by my personal definition. That includes if the person doesn't have the will to decide yes or no. As for how much of a altered state of mind a person has to be in before they reach the point of not being able to make an informed decision, I agree that can be hard to tell. Frankly, if Chase had been high as well and she had acted the same way she did, I wouldn't consider it rape. However, he had clear mental facilities, he could weigh the pros and cons, he could decide yes, he wanted sex or he wasn't sure but he was going to go for it anyway or no, he didn't want sex. Cameron didn't have clear mental facilities. She, at the time, didn't have all her facilities to decide yes, she wanted it, she wasn't sure but was going to try it, she might regret it but she was willing to take the risk, etc. And Chase, knowing that her brain was so altered that she could do numerous things she might not do/wouldn't do/wouldn't want to do if she had the ability to truly think about them, didn't put a stop to things, didn't call an ambulance, didn't call one of his colleagues for help, didn't decide that he was off-duty and simply walk out of the apartment. He raped her. He took advantage of the fact she didn't have the ability to give true consent to have sex with her.
    • Also, take into account that Cameron took the drugs in large part so that she'd lose her inhibitions and actually come on to Chase, she wanted to have sex with him, at least somewhat, but was to scared/inhibited/whatever to make a move, so she intentionally did something to remove those inhibitions so she could.
      • The fact that Cameron actively seeks Chase out when she's sober shows me she wanted to sleep with him in the first place.
    • "It's Not Rape If You Enjoyed It": while there are Unfortunate Implications to this, legally speaking, if the victim can speak for herself, no one else can speak for her, so if Cameron doesn't consider it to be rape, then legally, it isn't rape.
    • I personally was under the impression that Cameron made the decision to sleep with Chase before she took the drugs, given that she must have called him to invite him over and he obviously didn't notice that her speech was slurred because he was surprised when she pounced on him. And he did try to stop her. Twice. He gave her enough opportunity to change her mind. Remember, she goaded him into it too. "C'mon Chase, don't turn into a good guy on me now." Clearly she still possessed enough of her faculties to choose the correct taunt to make him change his mind. And, as the person above said, if Cameron did not consider it rape then it was not rape. There is no indication that she regretted it.
  • This drove me crazy when they did it in previous episodes, and they did it again last week. A major Did Not Do the Research for a freaking medical show - treating "chemotherapy" as though it is the name of a particular drug that you give to all cancer patients. In reality, it's just a generic term for a whole class of drugs, and you have to give the right ones for the type of cancer you're dealing with or else nothing will happen except the patient getting even sicker. The chemo cocktail for breast cancer is not the same as for lung cancer is not the same as for lymphoma, etc. You cannot just "start a patient on chemo" if you don't even know what kind of cancer they have. And you certainly can't mistake a chemo bag for saline as they did in one episode - most chemo "drugs" aren't medications at all, they're actually toxic chemicals (mustard gas, for example) and are labelled as such out the wazoo because, for example, if a nurse were to spill one on herself she might wind up with a hole burnt through her arm.
    • I know what you're saying. I've seen several Did Not Do the Research moments in the show. But I think that since it is a show, they're going to ignore certain laws of complete medical logic and facts and insert their own amount of TV magic in order to make it fit the story/more dramatic/whatever.
    • I assume when House says "start Chemo" one of his lackeys runs off and sorts out what actual drugs are needed. All they do is diagnosis, when it gets to doing something that isn't one of their specialties, they call in the pros.
      • These would both be valid points if it weren't for the fact that they have repeatedly "started chemo" before they're even sure of what kind of cancer it is. You can't just choose a chemo regimen at random because you think it's 'some kind of cancer or other'. It won't work, and it will just make the patient incredibly sick(er) and probably fuck with the rest of your diagnosis.
  • Agh. The thing currently bugging me is House's detox. Why was it so short? It was just one night, then poof, no more pain. Sure he still seemed to be feeling like crap, but it seemed like the process was way too short. Hasn't he tried detoxing before anyway? It always seemed like when he did, he was in major pain for longer periods of time. (Granted, it's been awhile since I've seen those episodes so I could be missing something.) Also, Amber just disappearing like she did. Maybe it was just me, but her vanishing like that after one night without Vicodin just seemed to quick.
    • Coincidently the season finale is next week. Almost as if the whole detox thing was the setup for a plot twist in the finale...
      • Ah yes, I guess that is true.
      • You were right. It was.
      • I'm almost always eventually right.
  • I am almost positive that methadone DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY.
    • House has demonstrated that his pain, while real, is largely psychological. If he convinced himself that methadone would help him it probably would for a while then horribly fall to pieces after his mind is overwhelmed, but he wasn't using it for long enough for that to happen. Still, it could simply be another instance of the writers failing Chemistry, but that is less fun to speculate about.
  • In "97 Seconds", the helper dog eats the tablets the doctor gives the patient. Why the hell didn't he mention it to one of the doctors? Even if he didn't know the dog ate them, wouldn't he have mentioned that he hadn't taken them?
    • I think I remember them saying the patient intentionally fed the pills to his dog because he wanted to die. That's why he wouldn't have said anything to them. The doctors should have watched him take the pills in the first place.
    • I thought it was because he threw the pills on the floor and the dog ate them by accident (the cup was chewed up, which probably wouldn't have happened if he was feeding the pills to the dog directly).
    • Thirteen put the pills on his tray, turned to get him some water, the other interviewee team took him away for a stool sample before he could get the water and take the pills. In all the activity, the pills were forgotten, and the dog ate them accidentally. The problem? No doctor is that stupid! (I hope.)
    • Personally, this bugs the hell out of me. It really isn't Thirteen's fault at all. The guy was either suicidal or retarded to the point that he deserved to die. It bugs me that they're so critical of her for the remainder of the season for something that, by no stretch of the imagination is her fault.
  • Three things: first, in the episode with the mortician that has ergotism, why didn't they start off by checking/mentioning a vitamin B12 deficiency? It explains all the symptoms she came in with and some of the ones that surface later on. Since she sticks to a strict vegan diet, vitamin B12 would be just about nonexistent in her diet as well. Second, in the same episode, why didn't the patient experience any kind of synaesthesia? One of the main aspects of an LSD trip is seeing sounds, hearing tastes, etc. why didn't she have any of those symptoms? Finally, in the episode where it's actually Lupus (the magician), when House is giving blood and starts to experience sweating, increased temperature, etc. Why didn't he at least mention the possibility that it was a reaction to giving blood? I could check off his entire list of symptoms every time I give blood and yet Huntington's still skips straight to something else without so much as a mention of the fact that House lost a full pint of blood.
    • House wasn't giving blood, he was receiving it. He was testing for tainted blood by getting blood from the same donors as the magician had. And he called it as a benign reaction, his team was just so focused on the blood as the problem that they wouldn't let it go without a few biopsies.
  • Often doctors are around patients without masks on. The one where they thought the kid had anthrax had none of them wearing masks around the kid. I know there are cutaneous and aerosol versions but still (plus I think the kid did have respiratory symptoms on that one).
    • It's so the actor's faces aren't obscured (a silly rule but a common one I'm afraid). Scrubs does the same thing.
  • Vicodin with alcohol? Does he have that big of a death wish?
    • Uh, yes, haven't you been watching the show?
    • Interestingly, he tells a patient's mother that he doesn't drink (season 2, episode 17). I know "everybody lies", but when I first saw this episode I assumed that he was being truthful because of the Vicodin. I wasn't really paying attention to this before that episode.
    • To clarify, Vicodin is a cocktail of hydrocodene and acetaminophen- both of which have catostorophic interactions with alcohol, and House is already shown to be a heavy user of Vicodin. While it's reasonable that he's built up a certain tolerance to the hydrocodene so he doesn't wind up in respratory arrest by mixing it with alcohol, it should at least knock him out. Acetaminophen with alcohol, on the other hand, should utterly destroy his liver. Do not try this at home.
  • In one episode House says only blacks get sickle-cell, but in another one, he thinks a black girl has hemochromatosis, a white disease that women don't have to worry about until menopause.
    • While blacks make up the bulks of sickle cell cases, other races can contract the disease in rare instances. Likewise, hemochromatosis can affect anyone, even though it's more common amongst whites of European heritage.
  • If Taub is Jewish, why did his parents name him Christopher? It's a perfectly nice name, but it does sort of... have Christ in it.
    • It's not just that it has "Christ" in it. The name "Christopher" is derived from the Greek "Khristphoros", meaning Christ-bearer, and originates from the legend of St. Christopher. Which only makes it all the more odd that a Jewish boy would have such a name.
    • Maybe his father or one of his grandfathers was born Christian, and Taub is named after him. People do convert or intermarry, y'know.
      • True, but they never give any indication that Taub is anything but a non-practicing Jew born to Jewish parents. I mean, you'd think House of all people would crack a joke or two about Taub having a decidedly un-Jewish name, forcing him to explain the issue.
    • Christopher Michael Taub. They have got to be messing with us.
      • Huh? Michael is a Jewish name. It's Hebrew.
        • And Michael, David, and Joseph have always been popular names for a Jewish male baby.
    • I have seen this mentioned elsewhere and has made me curious for a while. Do people in the US or other English speaking countries really put that much emphasis on first names as a sort of ethnic tag? If so, then it must be a cultural thing that I don't get; for instance I have a French first name and a Russian middle name, and I am a Latin-American with absolutely no French or Russian ancestry, my mother simply liked the French name, and my grandmother liked the Russian one. Heck, my best friend has a ussian first name and a Carthaginian middle name for similar reasons. Couldn't it be that Taub parents simply liked the name Christopher? Or, in reality, that the writers liked it?
      • No, not really. But then again, people on this page have pointed out plot holes with House's Vicodin. It's a Just Bugs Me page. People are going to bitch and moan about minor things.
        • Although, it is fair to note that Jews are/were (especially historically) very much unlikely to give names like Christopher and Jesus. It's not unheard of (and a lot of Jews in the past were named after non-Jewish benefactors, hence the popularity of Alexander and Cyrus in the past) but extremely rare as to be almost completely unknown. It's worth noting that Paul and Peter have always been quite popular names for Jewish males, and Mary is considered unusual.
          • Actually, as a practicing Jew, this troper has a cousin whose name is Mary, and at the naming ceremony the rabbi explained that "Mary" comes from "Miriam."
  • In the season 6 opener, how the hell does House know where Lydia lives? I'm assuming that she wasn't stupid enough to give her mentally unstable lover her home address, and Mayfield surely isn't supposed to give that information out.
    • Would YOU let a psych ward patient borrow your car and bring a guy who thinks he's Superman to an amusement park?
    • Would YOU sleep with a psych ward patient you've only known for a while?
    • Why is there an non-supervised room where one is given enough time to have sex in or maybe, hang yourself?
      • Extraordinary circumstances--Dr. Nolan had gotten House out of the hospital in hopes that he could do something to save Nolan's father, which led to House returning to Mayfield after curfew. I'm more surprised that Lydia was there so late.
    • Actually, I've worked in a mental institution (a much more secure one, where patients had been legally sectioned) and different patients have different levels of observation. House was a model patient at that point, and would have been largely unsupervised. Especially as he was voluntary, you can't place severe penalties on someone who can walk away at any time (even without his medical license).
  • Robotripper, you're not the only smart person in the world. If a smart person needs a smart partner, waiting to find one seems smarter (oh, the irony) than risking your health to dumb yourself down so you'll be satisfied with an un-smart partner. Also, doesn't a ton of DXM just get you high, so his method of dumbing-down was being high all the time?
    • Speaking as someone who's had similar problems, and who knows that people aren't as interchangeable as you seem to think, the idiocy was in his strategy rather than his choice. If you find someone you like (personally, physically, and all the other axes of the graph of love), who likes you, and the only problem is that you can't really connect as well with him or her as you can a select few people that you care nothing for, especially if you love them enough to poison your liver and brain to finally connect on an intellectual level as well as you do the others... Think of a bag with one and a half billion marbles. Four hundred of them are marked "smart enough for the two of you to be happy" (and sixty percent of those are marked "married to their job" or "involved in the long term with another person"). Ninety million are marked "you will like this person" and a hundred and fifteen million are marked "this person will, at least seemingly, like you". These labels are not exclusive. Take out half of the "smart enough to be happy" at random and 85 to ninety percent of the rest (because you will never have a chance to meet them, let alone become acquainted with them, friends, or significant others to each other). You currently have a marble marked "you like this person" and "this person, at least seemingly, likes you". If you want, you have two days to go through the marbles and try to find one with all three markings (but it takes between two and ten minutes, five minutes on average, to tell which if any markings it has), or you can just write "dumb enough for the two of you to be happy" on your own forehead. Either way, you win "the rest of your lifetime in happiness" but don't if you settle for keeping the marble without affecting yourself or try the search but never find a marble with all three markings.
      Anyway, it's logical to go with the "see if you can find someone else" option over drugging yourself, but happiness, love, all the things he used for his reasons? They're not logical. That was the whole point, since House was The Spock and DXM Guy was The McCoy for this episode. Just because he's smart doesn't mean he can't make an idiot of himself because he is (or at least thinks he is) in love. ...And no, I did not mean that in the least bit literally.
      And yes, he was high all the time. Re-watch the episode with that in mind and you'll confirm at least that part of the answer.
  • House's office bugs me. Yes, this is big-budget television, but do four doctors need an outer office, kitchen with a stocked pantry and shiny whitegoods, a dining table, a big televison, an inner office with another television, two telephones, and glass walling?
    • I always just assumed that House just took over a staff room and knocked down a wall, also, House is technically a department head, probably the big office is a perk. Then again, the office set can't really be smaller, otherwise you won't be able to fit in the cameraman.
    • Remember as well these four doctors aren't just four random people working in the hospital, but they are an entire department, so that office is also the entire work area for the Diagnostics Department, while the smaller one is House's personal office as a department head.
  • In the episode "Locked In" where throughout the episode it's told from the POV of a man locked inside his own brain. His vision in that ep was all blurry and otherworldly, why it's like that? I don't know, but I'll accept artistic license for the sake of brevity. My question is the very ending of the show, when Wilson and House are walking to an elevator and House gets in. One of the final shots is a POV from House. He has the same type of Blurry vision as the patient. WHY? I didn't quite get it. Cool though.
    • Speaking of which, in another episode "Lines in the Sand" the Autistic child has blurry vision as well, even when he's healthy. This troper happens to have Aspergers's Syndrome and I don't look at the world in blurry vision. It may be one of my favourite episodes, but I found that to be a little offensive.
      • Sure you do. It just isn't physically blurry.
    • For the first reply: he had worms in his eyes. I think a bit of blurry vision would be perfectly acceptable even after he'd been cured. For the original JBM, I figured it was just because his eyes were either dry or just had eyedrops put in through the entire sequence, but if it happened with House's point of view, it has to be Painting the Fourth Wall, showing viewers that it's first-person view.
    • Think about it: A man trapped inside his own brain. Like the patient from "Locked In", House is trapped inside himself unable to communicate properly with those around him. Having House have the same blurry vision as the patient was a way to drive the point home.
  • In the episode with the opossum in the bath, did House really wait to switch the soldier's antibiotics until the infection spread too much? I thought he was just being sarcastic, but I had taped the episode and could check back between that scene and the end and there was (as far as I could tell) nothing, so was there something I missed earlier? Or a detail in the final scene? Since I would think House would have been notified if one of his patients was losing a foot, even if the patient was hiding the antibiotics or something, instead of House leaving him on the old ones to which the patient was unresponsive.
    • Doctors can't do anything to you without your O.K. first, House was giving the soldier his options, if the soldier refused to be swapped to the new meds, there's nothing anyone could do to force him to take them.
  • Season 2, the entire point of House being in... Baltimore, or wherever it was, "Lost in Communication": How is treating a heart-and-circulatory problem off-label for Viagra!?
    • Because that's what Viagra DOES. It just so happens that it is usually used to improve circulation to allow a certain thing to happen. This troper worked in a pharmacy for some time, and had more than one patient who used Viagra to treat circulatory problems not related to intimacy.
      • I know that's what Viagra does. I'm asking how the medical tribunal didn't, since that's the purpose for which it was made in the first place.
    • I would imagine that it's the result of the FDA being incredibly slow to approve it for treatment of heart problems, and possibly a patent issue.
  • The opening. Not the cold open, the opening credits. It should have been changed at the beginning of season four, although with the original ducklings hanging around I can see why it wasn't (and it would have ruined the surprise of the game to have Olivia Wilde or Kal Penn's names in there). It should certainly have been changed at the beginning of season five, with the new team now entrenched and clearly not going anywhere - this being before they knew Kal Penn was going to be offered a job at the White House. The fact it hasn't been changed by now, with Kutner and Cameron both gone and Taub and Thirteen sticking around, bugs me every time I see it.
    • This. It's probably just laziness and adversity to change, or probably attempting not to include names that might not be there soon (the cast changed rather drastically for a procedural series between seasons 4 and 6). These fall apart quickly though considering how often Law and Order has changed its openings.
    • It's also a bit of meta Fridge Logic though, since House is so adverse to change, they didn't change the opening creds of the show, either.
  • House switching to Ibuprofin bugs me. Executive Meddling aside, the ingredient in vicodin that is harmful to the liver is also in Ibuprofin, and since its weaker, House would need to take more of it, and thus do more damage to his body than Vicodin ever did.
    • I'm looking forward to the "Your liver's dying. Take a year off painkillers to detox and give your liver some time to recover, then I want to see you back on the opioids before you come back to work. And no combination painkillers, I'll have Lucas watching you to make sure of it" episode. And a timeskip between that season and the next, of course, since a few episodes without House would be refreshing and give a less lenticular look at the ducklings, but a whole season without him would kill the show.
      • Alas, acetaminophen is not alcohol. Liver failure from acetaminophen poisoning is acute liver failure: it sets on within hours and without warning. If House's liver was dying from an overdose or just plain over use (which by all rights it should have already), they wouldn't be telling him to give his liver a chance to recover; they'd be giving him a large dose of the antidote and waiting to see if he responds before giving him a transplant if he gets worse.
    • There is a theory that House's Season 5 hallucinations were actually due to something related to liver dysfunction, which could have been caused not by the opiates but the acetominophen in Vicodin.
      • He's also been binge drinking. Perhaps the way we'll see House as we've never been seen before is completely missing a vital organ (mid-transplant)?
    • Actually, Vicodin contains acetaminophen, not ibuprofen. The latter is worse on the kidneys, although large doses aren't exactly great for your liver either; still, ibuprofen is significantly less harmful for your liver than acetaminophen.
  • Taub and Foreman taking unidentified pills (in "Lockdown") just because they look like Vicodin, and were in a bottle that probably said "Vicodin" on the side? That won't help at all to give a look inside House's head, because House explicitly has the pain to focus him, and the Vicodin only makes it mild enough that he can focus on other things. All it would do for someone who isn;t in pain is get them stoned.
    • Arguably, that kind of was the point. They were off-hours, locked down and bored. I doubt the whole 'getting into House's head' was anything rather than a thinly veiled excuse to get stoned and have some fun. If you want to be more cynical about it, Foreman was drugging Taub and then going along for the ride so that Taub wouldn't be clear enough to question what Foreman was doing in there or check Foreman's file.
    • All prescription medications get imprinted individually a series of numbers and letters that are unique to the drug mixture found in the pill. For example, if a pill has the letter v on one side and 35|92 on the other, that means that the pill contains 5mg Hydrocodone (that's the stuff that gets you high) and 500mg acetaminophen (tylenol). This is the same mixture Vicodin is made out of. If the pills were regular Vicodin, though, the doctors wouldn't have to know that off of the top of their heads - brand name Vicodin just has VICODIN imprinted on one side, caps and all. Anyway, the point is that they weren't taking some kind of mystery pill. Plus, you learned something for the next time you want to buy some off-market opiates. Just punch the pill's number into Google, and presto. Don't get ripped off again!
  • Season 6, "Knight Fall": Thirteen, is it so hard to comprehend that a man has enough morals as to not steal his best friend's fiance? I found her pressuring and telling him he's an idiot to be kind of sociopathic really. Yes, he was portrayed as a naive wanna-be knight, but that's something you shouldn't do as a decent human being in general.
    • I'm a guy, but can totally understand her reasoning. What they really need to do is have one long conversation. Basically he's doing a I Want My Beloved to Be Happy, when he hasn't figured out IF she really is going to be happy after all with the guy. He's being a stubborn jerk by not admitting to himself and the world that he's in love with her, and she's letting herself get married to someone she might not love, or at the very least, not exploring for herself the feelings she has the other guy.
      • Except we're never given any clear indication that she's not in love with the guy she's marrying.
    • This Troper had a different problem with that episode. He was just WAITING for one of the guys at the fair to have some Satanic alter or whatever, and what do they do? They make an alter to Satan in the guy's apartment.
  • In "Let Them Eat Cake" Taub forces a woman with a broken ankle to walk? Even if she was being self pitying about the whole, paralysis nearing, she wasn't just being whiney not wanting to walk, you do NOT walk on a freshly broken ankle, even if you can't feel the pain, it would still do all sorts of damage.
  • So exactly how did we see House as he's never been seen before in the Season 6 finale? Sincerely approving of Lucas and Cuddy's relationship? Praying in a way that wasn't completely sarcastic or mocking? Advocating amputation? Is there Word of God on what the teaser line meant?
    • I think they were referring to him connecting to the patient on a human level, and behaving selflessly. He saw her as a human being and was desperate to save her because he genuinely cared about her well-being, rather than treating her like a puzzle that needed to be solved. House has shown these traits before, but he's never been this blatant about it.
    • The same way pretty much every single teaser says it's "House's most difficult case yet" or some variation thereof. Also, he prayed, or at least indulged a patients belief, that alone qualifies.
      • Oh, I'm not complaining about getting set up or anything, I just wanted to know if the writers had said what they meant, or if the commercial had been written by Fox, taken out of context, was a retrospectively Blatant Lie, that sort of thing.
  • Why is Thirteen dying from Huntington's in her late 20s? If the mutation comes from the mother's side, symptoms are usually delayed until early middle age. (Although if she had it from her father's side, she probably would never have made it through medical school...)
    • They handwaved this as her having an extremely rapid and aggressive form of the disease.
  • This is from about a million episodes ago, but remember that one where the kids were going through puberty prematurely because of something stupid their dad did? In that episode when they were examining the little girl, they 'discovered' tiny, ambiguously described cuts/tears/injuries on her lady parts. To the audience, it seems believable at the time that they could be caused by sexual abuse. However, later in the episode it's revealed that it was caused by her shaving herself. My problem is, what kind of idiot, let alone a doctor, can't tell the difference between shaving nicks and tears from abuse? They wouldn't even be in the same area.
    • Sexual abuse doesn't necessarily mean sticking it in.
  • Lucas circa season five: bumbling PI guy whose mild social awkwardness occasionally has him accidentally doing things that some might find creepy or off-putting. Lucas circa season six: sleazy romantic foil who does things like cause thousands of dollars worth of property damage because he couldn't buy the condo he wanted, and deliberately keep a mother from contacting the babysitter of her sick child for no discernible reason. The fact that he was clearly only brought back on so the House/Cuddy fans would have someone to hate and rally against ruined the show for me more than I'd like to admit.
    • First: He did all that stuff to House and Wilson as revenge for knowingly cheating Cuddy out of the condo she wanted. It's not like they fairly outbid her for the condo, they basically stole it out from under her nose. Second: The baby just had a mild diaper rash, not the plague.
      • First: being a jerkass is House's mojo (and sometimes Wilson's, and sometimes Cuddy's). Lucas was perfectly sweet (if a bit awkward) for the entire first season of his appearance and it seemed to me to be completely out of character for him to sink to their level. Second: It doesn't matter what the baby has. Keeping a mother from contacting her child, especially if she's worried about it, is a Jerkass thing to do.
      • Secondly, "basically stole it out from under her nose" isn't nearly as bad as they make it out to be. He outbid her for it. He had inside information, but they got the apartment by offering more money. Doesn't really justify nearly killing House (his bathtub prank? Yes, making sure a crippled man WILL fall. In the bathroom. When alone. With a tub full of water. Given the number of perfectly healthy people who slip and fall and hurt themselves in the bathroom, it's a miracle House isn't hurt worse).
  • Why can someone (who is a drug abuser, unstable and in general a mess) be so incredibly brilliant? It bugs me so much that this show makes it a virtue to be a dick. In anything resembling the real world nobody would be able to constantly pull diagnoses out of their ass like that. Much less someone who obviously has a substance abuse problem, a behaviour problem and some sort of mental illness. The people around him are no less annoying with Cuddy getting the ultimate prize for irresponsible behaviour. All these people are basically 15 year-olds.
    • Because an unstable drug abuser who's a general mess yet remains so brilliant that people put up with all his jerkassery is the entire premise of the show. And if I recall correctly, House has always been a brilliant doctor and while not a saint, it's the loss of his leg and the ensuing pain (the painkillers aren't too effective hence the drug abuse) that made him so bitter and essentially turn up his jerkass level all the way up to eleven. Besides, it's OBVIOUSLY not realistic.
      • Well no it isn't. But trying to create drama with such loopy characters seems to negate the dramatic effect.
      • Uhm, it's not impossible. This troper's stepfather is real (unfortunately), has been an alcoholic for at least 10 years now, hospitalized several times because of it, disappears from his job for about two weeks in two month to lie around at home and drink... Well, appearantly, everyone at his company have already figured out what's going on, and they're keeping him around because when he does come to work, he's awesome at it. We literally became rich by now, but considering that he's so much of a jerk that House could use him as a role model, this troper would much rather see him finally poison himself to death than bring those 'worker of the month' tablets from work.
    • Because none of those things actually have any bearing on how brilliant someone is? It might impact whether you are able to do the job at all, but if you are, there's no reason that being an asshole/a painkiller addict/a lunatic has to make any difference to your quality. And House isn't just medically gifted; he has been shown to be devastatingly competent at everything he attempts. In-universe he's probably one of the most intelligent people on Earth, and when you are that far above everyone else, it's hard to NOT be an asshole because the rest of the world seem like a pack of drooling incompetents. I'd wager that a fair chunk of House's misanthropy actually stems from his brilliance.
    • House actually states this himself as the reason he wanted to become a doctor (though this is House, so whether this is anything resembling the truth is unknown): when in Japan he saw a member of an "Untouchable" caste working as a Janitor, but he was so good that when the other doctors were confounded they turned to him; it didn't matter that they hated him, he was right, and during that time they were pretty much forced to listen to him.


  • Now, I found the scene to be really sweet, but I can't help but wonder... how does House pick Cuddy up and carry her several steps to the bed without being in hell-bound pain or falling? I guess you could argue that he was on a bit of a "love high", but really...
    • Again, while real, a lot of House's pain is psychological, and he has also demonstrated a high pain tolerance when required. It would be far from easy, but far from impossible.
    • He was probably on an adrenaline high, and the pain from his neck wound might have been enough to distract him from the pain in his leg (in past episodes, he's self-injured to release endorphins for that very reason).
  • What is with his name, exactly? I keep thinking he belongs in a sci-fi movie/show with that name.
    • It's a pun on Holmes, the character he was based on. They even have the same apartment number.
  • Hey, remember when this show was a medical drama and not a soap opera? Yeah, me neither... That was eons ago.
    • Any reason it can't be both? Currently it seems that the medical aspects and the personal lives of the doctors get about 50/50 attention each episode.


  • It Just Bugs Me that Princeton Plainsboro Teaching Hospital seems to exist in an alternate reality in which every aspect of the medical profession of this reality doesn't exist. Yes, it is fiction and is allowed to take some liberties for the purpose of the story, but after a certain point it becomes plain stupid. House and his team getting to do pretty much anything they want is the biggest one, but it is occasionally addressed in the series (and on this page) as well as being fairly central to the premise, so it can be overlooked. What is more difficult to ignore is the little things. Like how PPTH, despite Cuddy's repeated concerns about money, apparently has enough funds for its constantly spotless wood highlights and huge glass doors and water decorations. Or how even in the ICU (where the entire point is the ability to get to patients immediately) or in private rooms (which are supposed to be private) patients' rooms always have automatic sliding glass doors. Or how three/four doctors are qualified and experienced enough to run every test and administer every narcotic in existence, and are able to rattle off the names and symptoms of even the most obscure conditions from memory (House especially has apparently memorised facts about everything despite almost never reading). That a comedy (Scrubs) is able to depict a hospital more believably is incredibly telling.
    • Well, I've been to a teaching hospital in a pretty wealthy area that has pretty much everything you listed (a glass entrance that has huge windows all over the wall, wooden floors, elaborate decorations, etc.) except a few (and I'd like to point out that the glass doors aren't automatic, at least in the patient's rooms). Don't quote me on this, but I think teaching hospitals get more money than others because they are sponsored by a college. Plus, dude, House's incredible genius is one the main points of his entire character.
      • Still, it doesn't quite mesh with the fact that the hospital bankrolls all of its clinic patients and is in occasional financial peril.
    • I'm confused, how is any of that indicative of the Hospitals financial success? All that stuff would have been installed when the hospital was built, not something they are constantly paying for. How is it a stretch to think a university teaching hospital, in a high wealth area, wouldn't have a rather large construction budget to make it look as good as possible? It's not like we see them constantly renovating and putting in all new stuff. And as to house being seemingly all knowing, 1) That's the whole point of the show, how good House is at what he does, 2) "Never reads"? where'd you get that idea, first off we've seen he has walls of his house covered in bookcases full of medical texts and even seen him double checking stuff on occasion. Just because we don't see him sit down and read them doesn't mean he doesn't, it just means watching someone sitting there reading tends to be boring.
  • During two cold opens, people start screaming for an ambulance for no good reason. There's one where a porn star doesn't like getting hit by bright camera lights, and immediately it's "WE NEED AN AMBULANCE." And then there's one where a senator's aide has a rash, says he'll get a doctor to check it out, but that's not enough for the senator, no, and he calls an ambulance. For a rash. And there's been at least a few more where a patient is in no desperate trouble, other than the fact that they've started acting extremely strangely, but there's no question of them getting to a hospital except BY AN AMBULANCE. This is not what ambulances do, and they have better places to be than driving some guy with a rash to a hospital.
    • Truth in television. Some people look at ambulances as glorified taxi cabs.
  • Tritter bugs me for a few reasons. First of all, he's impatient when House arrives in the room. House responds with sarcasm. House takes a look at Tritter's rash and gives a valid reason for dismissing him. Tritter then tells House to take a swab, because he thinks he knows far more about medicine than a doctor. He then tries (and fails) to intimidate House verbally, and when that doesn't work, he actually assaults him and informs him "Treat people like jerks, you get treated like a jerk." He later threatens to sue, calling House a bully (remember that assault when verbal intimidation didn't work?), saying he wants House to learn a lesson about treating people nicer... That whole thing Tritter just went through with the anal thermometer after assaulting the cripple. Now, I get that he's supposed to be House for Policework (whereas House is House for Medicine), but the fundamental problem with the way Tritter works is that at the end of the day, Tritter's methods would get most of his cases thrown out in court, whereas House's methods leave him with live, grateful patients (or dead ones) and Tritter's methods leave him with disgruntled suspects facing jailtime. One of these methods leaves people (and their lawyers) willing to overlook the letter of the law and the other does not. Any lawyer worth their law degree would use the fact that Tritter was hounding House for an apology (and the fact he arrested him and then was willing to release him for it later) as some pretty serious abuse of authority, which means Tritter even arresting House would qualify as misconduct.
  • Cuddy's daughter looks as though she is played by a 3-year-old, but the dialogue and characterization have her coming across as maybe 12 or 18 months. Cuddy uses a baby night-time monitor in her room!
    • Kinda bugs me as well. Dawson Casting doesn't really work for babies.
    • No explanation for the weird casting choice, but Cuddy does seem like the kind of mom who'd be neurotic enough to keep using a baby monitor even for a 3-year old.
  • In "Broken", after the staged fight between House and his annoying roommate, the orderlies drop the apparently-unconscious House on a gurney in an unlocked room. They don't even close the door, and the roommate slips in easily to confer with House on their next move. So whose bright idea was it to leave a patient who's completely defenseless where another patient, whom he just (apparently) beat the crap out of, can walk up to him and exact any payback he likes? If those two hadn't been in cahoots, House could've been strangled to death before anyone noticed.
    • That's a good point.
  • Is House Chaotic Neutral or Chaotic Good?
    • Chaotic Evil
    • I say Chaotic Good. He does good things for people, sometimes even without a reason. But he stradles the line. He is not Chaotic Evil...
    • Chaotic Neutral. Usually his main priority is solving the puzzle; doing good or evil is secondary to that.
  • It may be a bit late, but this has been bugging me for a while now. When Cuddy spends the night with House during the beginning of Now What, who the heck is taking care of Rachel!? Did Cuddy call up her nanny and say, "Hey thanks, can you come over for the night? I have to go proclaim my love for my employee." or did Lucas have to stay over and watch his ex-fiance-after-a-day's kid? Either way, seems pretty awkward...
    • I would assume she got a babysitter without having to give her whole life story. She probably just called someone to watch the kid and said "Hey, I have to deal with some boyfriend troubles" or just "I have something I have to do, can you watch my kid?"
  • What happened to the antidepressants House was taking at Mayfield? Whilst he continues to see Nolan for therapy throughout S6, the meds are never mentioned again, despite House explicitly stating that he was taking them because he'd "decided to get sane". I can't buy the idea that Nolan et al let him stop taking the antidepressants when he was discharged, given that he'd only been on them for a few weeks (and SSRIs can take up to six weeks just to start working). Of course, House himself might have decided not to take them any more, but if he did it must have happened off-camera.
    • He still took them up until the penultimate episode in which House decides therapy doesn't work, you just don't see him taking them. Anti-depressants are very different from opiates, he wouldn't have to pop them every couple of hours. Depending on the dosage, it might just be a couple in the morning. But combine this with the fact he was self-medicating with alcohol, he might have stopped taking them. You don't know the dosages or the times. And from a non-diagetic perspective, if you were to portray house popping pills then viewers might get confused about whether he was taking Vicodin or not.
      • It makes sense that he would have kept taking them for a while, but I'm surprised it was never a plot point; House deciding to stop taking antidepressants could have partly explained his decline and near-relapse at the end of S6. (Or illustrated it - I can imagine House angrily giving up on his medication the way he gave up on therapy, which IMO was a choice made out of frustration and despair, not a rational understanding that therapy wasn't working for him.)
      • It could have been written in a way that it worked, yes, but with a show as complex as House you want to keep things as simple as possible. From a writer's perspective, the major point is that House has stopped "popping his pills" and is "clean". Having House not downing pills every few seconds was the change that the writers needed to keep the show fresh and accessible. But I guess that's why this is the "just bugs me" page, not everyone can suspend their disbelief for every single aspect of the shows they watch.
  • In "Larger Than Life" a musician jumps onto the subway tracks to save the life of a woman having a seizure. Later, his wife shows up in the hospital and bitches him out for doing it because now their daughter is scared after seeing her dad almost die. I'm sorry, what? How exactly does her daughter feeling scared overrule the fact that he saved a woman's life? Would his wife prefer he stood there and let a fellow human being be splattered by a subway car?
    • Because she's a bitch who only cares about herself?
      • That's what I thought at first, but the rest of the episode portrays her as nothing but nice. And the end makes her husband out to be the selfish one for wanting to go back on tour again.
    • This bugged me too, until I realized how traumatic it was for her. Her husband could have died! She was scared, if she was in the right mindset she might have agreed with what her husband did, but she was too "HOLY CRAP YOU ALMOST DIED HOW DARE YOU!"
  • In "Changes" Foreman straps a blood pressure monitor over the sleeve of his shirt. Can you actually get a blood pressure reading that way?
    • Yes.
  • This troper doesn't watch House as much as he'd like to. So can someone explain the context of this please?
    • House was there to question the teacher about an illness one of her students contracted. I guess in his twisted, drug-addled mind, that seemed like the fastest way to get her full attention. In his defense, it worked.
      • The illness was associated with really precoce puberty. They wanted to know if it could come from the school environment. He is geniously interested by the answer, because multiple children developping the same growth abnormalities wouldn't be a coincidence.
  • In a recent episode Named ( i think) " A Pox on our houses" a teen aged girl and her father come down with what is beleived to be Small pox. the man eventually dies from it. this disease is eventually revealed to be Rickettsialpox. The Thing is, through a curory glance at wikipedia it would seem its more similar to chicken pox than small pox, and there have never been any confirmed deaths. The hell? Rickettsialpox doesn't work that way!
    • You're taking the word of Wikipedia - known for producing inaccurate sources of knowledge - over expert Doctors'?
      • House is fiction and they can make up whatever they want. Also, Wikipedia is usually pretty accurate.
      • Also also, these people are actors, not expert doctors. Their "expert" medical opinions are written for them by the show's writers, who are probably not expert doctors either.
    • He died from smallpox. They give him a vaccine without knowing this illness and his cancer were ruining his immunitary defense. As a vaccine is nothing else than the actual virus in small quantity, it was enough for him to catch the illness and die from it.
      • Except that, looking for the "small patches of dark, dead tissue" was what confirmed the Rickettsialpox diagnostic. Of course, he could have contracted both, but then, House was taking an leap of faith to taking off his gloves and search the body.
  • How is there only one instance of a team member catching the disease that the patient has? They routinely barge into their homes without knowing what they are looking for, and they frequently treat patients with highly infectious diseases. Taking into consideration the fact that they rarely wear surgical masks, it's a wonder they all haven't caught something yet.
    • As mentioned above, the lack of surgical masks is a casualty of the tv format. The networks don't want the actors' faces obscured too much. ER and Scrubs does the same thing all the time. If the show were a little more realistic the doctors would have masks and gloves on every time they break into a patient's house. And to be fair, they don't always treat highly infectious diseases. Most times the patient is afflicted with something that can't be easily passed from person to person like mold or some weird cancer. And when they are dealing with something highly infectious like smallpox (or something that looks like smallpox) they keep the patient quarantined and don't go in there without the proper safety equipment.

      Alternatively, maybe constant exposure to so many weird diseases has given them all superhuman immune systems.
  • Aren't House and the ducklings the only dedicated members of the diagnostics department? If not, why is the only member of the diagnostic department (until House returns from prison) a Neurology intern who was suspended and hiding in his office to pretend to be working? A decent-sized hospital (especially one like Princeton Plainsborough, which is famous for its diagnostic department from the last few years) can't get along with its entire diagnostic system consisting of specialists and doctors on free-clinic duty.
  • From the very first episode, "Gorgeous women don't go to medical school....unless they are as damaged as they are beautiful." Are we supposed to agree with this? This show proves over and over again that everybody is damaged, pretty much without exception, so how much someone has should be irrelevant. The show also casts exclusively beautiful women as doctors. Cuddy, Thirteen, Amber, etc. Yet House never wonders why they all decided to become doctors since, according to him, they could have just walked into a room and been given stuff. I am very surprised Cameron was not more offended by his statement.
    • Does House even believe this, or did he just say it to gauge Cameron's reaction?
    • I think the latter. House rarely says anything without an agenda.
  • Season 3: (in the finale of the Tritter arc) How does Cuddy claiming that she swapped out the Oxycodone that House stole for a placebo change anything? Even if she did do it, and had proof that she did it, that doesn't change the fact that House didn't know about it. He STILL stole pills that were in the name of a patient who had already died with the intent of using them himself. Shouldn't the case still stand?
    • I think those courtroom scenes were the judge trying to determine whether the case would go to trial or not. (Remember part of Tritter's case against House was that he might be using some of those prescriptions to sell drugs.) Cuddy's testimony that the pills were placebos did prove that House wasn't stealing the pills to sell them. He did steal the drugs, but that was pretty much the only thing they could get him on, since it's not illegal to be an addict if you actually have a valid prescription. He probably wouldn't have done any jail time since it was his first offense (that we know of) so the judge essentially told both of them to get over it.
      • What about the forged prescriptions? Wilson turned on Tritter and said that he wouldn't testify, but the signatures were quite clearly different. Couldn't they use handwriting analysis to determine if Wilson wrote the prescriptions or if House did?
      • They could, but if Wilson sticks to his story that he just changes his signature sometimes and that he wrote all the prescriptions, there's not much the police can do. It's the same as if they had a woman who was clearly raped, but won't admit she was. If there's no complaining witness, there's no case.
  • Since amputation has been passed over multiple times, why doesn't House just...transplant the muscle itself? Just get a new one?
    • House seems to have an emotional connection to the injury, plus transplants are often unrealiable. Plus I think that muscle transplants are pretty rare, most people opt to have the leg amputated and get prosthetic legs.
  • A doctor prescribing cigarettes? REALLY?!
    • If your talking about the episode i think your talking about, The man had recently quit smoking and switched to a nicotine gum, which was causing him severe diarrhea. Diarrhea can cause some pretty destructive health problems over short periods time (in the realm of two or three weeks, though depending on diet and environment may not even take that long). So, yeah, the guy going back to cigarettes for a while until he finds a better way to quit WOULD be the ideal solution (if the man couldn't stop both. Given the intake of nicotine gum, the man was really addicted. going back to cigarettes was simply a solution to an immediate problem) I may be wrong, but i think house said something along the lines of "Try the patch" as he walked out, too. That all being said, this is house, who really doesn't care unless the patient is interesting. i wouldn't be surprised if House told a kid to go play in traffic as a cure for chronic boredom.
    • House is an occasional smoker himself; a lot of doctors are, in fact. High stress job + keen awareness of mortality. And House wasn't really prescribing cigarettes, he was telling the guy to go back to cigarettes in the most snarky, condescending way he could; with a prescription pad.
  • In Season 7 episode "Unplanned Parenthood", a woman is found to have two cancers, the antibodies for one managing to hold back the other. Her blood, containing the antibodies, was being used to treat her newborn, who had the second cancer from the womb. They wanted to treat the cancers in the mother immediately, even though this would put the baby's life at risk. One argument for treating the cancers was the risk of a blood clot in the mother, but one argument for not treating the cancers was that it was keeping the baby alive. The headscratcher here is... if there's a risk of a blood clot in the mother, and the blood is being transfused to the baby, isn't there equal (if not higher, due to smaller vessels) risk that a blood clot will affect the baby? How was this not a factor in the decision, given that they accepted the mother remaining untreated, which resulted in a blood clot and death for her?
  • In Season 8 episode "Everybody Dies", House snaps at Taub about being in pain, because he is upset at Wilson giving up. In the case of pain, House had 8 years with the option of amputating his leg, to relieve him of his chronic pain as well as weaning himself off pain killers. So while the snap is emotional and understandable, I don't find it balanced.
    • Amputating his leg wouldn't fix his pain(the brain still receives the signals, phantom pain and all that), it would only reduce his mobility.


  • Also in the finale episode "Everybody Dies" which part of the episode was real? I mean, he spent the first part considering committing suicide and not doing anything rational that could eventually lead to his escape of the building. But then in the last part, we learn he planned to fake his death by switching his dental records with his previous patient. So if all of this was premeditated, why did he act like that? Those two facts don't add up at all.
    • We learned that he faked his death. We didn't learn that faking his death was what he was planning to do all along. In fact, the flashback that he has while the building is burning (of letting the heroin addict take the rap) seems to have been the inspiration for it.
    • Also, exactly what is House going to do once Wilson dies? He has effectively ceased to exist and any attempts to get a job or support himself will cause him to be exposed and thrown in the slammer, presumably for years. And even if he gets out, he'll never be able to work as a doctor again, meaning he basically will have no reason to live.
      • He can get a new life with a fake identity someplace far away. It's not really that hard, and people often manage to keep those for years. Presumably, many of them are never found out. If he named Wilson as his beneficiary in his will, he even has access to his own money. Maybe he can write mystery novels, medical or not, under the pseudonym Sherlock Holmes or something..
  • Re: "Everybody Dies", so House manages to fake his own death just by switching his dental records with that of the actually dead man. Since, given the circumstances, an autposy would've been performed, wouldn't House have had to switch all of his records, not just the dental ones? After all, the coroner, after checking House's medical history, would probably see that the corpse didn't have evidence of liver damage due to drug & alcohol abuse, the leg injury, the skull fracture from the bus crash, etc. And that's not to mention that the DNA results wouldn't match. Or did House just follow his usual routine and blackmail and/or bribe the coroner?
    • It depends on how badly the corpse was burned. If it was really bad, the liver damage wouldn't show, and the damage was in the leg muscle, so the actual bones of his leg might not be affected. The skull fracture is a good point, though. The reason that dental records are even used is as a last-resort means of identification.
  • One other question re: "Everybody Dies". House hated his (supposed) father, but he loved his mother. Would he really let her think her only son died a horrible death in a warehouse fire after spending years in misery? Could he really be that cruel to her, or did he let her in on the secret?

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