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[[File:rsz_1greg_house_2520.jpg|frame|Everybody lies.]]
{{quote|''"I'm almost always eventually right."''
|'''Dr. Gregory House'''}}
''House'' (also known as ''House, M.D.'') was a television series which debuted in November 2004 and ended in May 2012 centered around Dr. Gregory House, an expert diagnostician at (the fictional) Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital. House, a [[Deadpan Snarker]] played by [[Hugh Laurie]], suffers from chronic pain in his right leg and is quickly identified by the cane he uses as well as his regular (or not so regular, depending on the season) downing of Vicodin. He is abrasive socially, professionally, and personally; he usually refuses to take on a case unless something about it piques his interest and he is known to engage in bizarre (and not always legal) hobbies and pranks while working. [[Bunny Ears Lawyer|However, he is such a genius in diagnosing patients]] that the Dean of Medicine, Dr. Lisa Cuddy, allows him to continue. His only friend is Dr. James Wilson, head of the Oncology department.
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* [[Adorkable]]: Masters. If you don't feel the urge to hug her every time House brings her down, you should take an X-Ray of your own chest to make sure nothing's missing.
** Kutner had this going on, as does Dr. Chi Park.
* [[Alas, Poor Scrappy]]: [[Invoked]]. When {{spoiler|Amber}} is dying, one of her co-workers admits that no one actually liked her until that point.
* [[All Girls Want Bad Boys]]:
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** [http://www.politedissent.com/house_pd.html This doctor disagrees.] Especially for the earlier episodes.
* [[Artistic License Pharmacology]]: Vicodin is prescribed more than 100 million times each year in the US to treat moderate pain (like arthritis) and to treat coughs. Even in long-term users, Vicodin withdrawal is usually characterized by symptoms no worse than lack of appetite, mild nausea, irritability, anxiety, and restlessness. The withdrawal symptoms House usually displays (vomiting, insomnia, sweats and chills, depression, mood swings) are what would typically characterize frequent diacetylmorphine (heroin) abuse. Vicodin is also not known to cause {{spoiler|disassociative disorder (conditions that involve disruptions or breakdowns of memory, awareness, identity and/or perception)}}.
:: Methadone is an long-acting synthetic opioid agonist that, like any opiate, causes euphoria. It is prescribed to treat pain in opioid-dependent patients as well as addiction in heavy users of high-potency opiates. Because methadone is many, many times more powerful than hydrocodone (it's listed as a greater than 2 to 1 conversion compared to baseline (morphine), whereas hydrocodone has no consensus but is known to be less than 0.33 to 1), methadone is never used to treat even the heaviest
:: Methadone is used to prevent heroin abuse, mainly because there are a limited number of opioid receptors in the brain and methadone fills them up (preventing heroin's effects from being felt), and because it delays the onset of withdrawal symptoms for many hours, thus reducing both the cravings and incentives for abuse in patients who take it correctly. Methadone users continue to experience physical dependence, but after the addiction is under control, the dose can be lowered to reduce dependence.
* [[Ask a Stupid Question]]: House is more than willing to point this out to people.
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* [[Backstory]]: All the characters have complicated past histories which House delights in making crude references to.
* [[Badass]]: House is wrestling [[Scrubs|a certain other doctor]] for the title of most [[Badass]] doctor on television.
* [[Bare Your Midriff]]:
* [[Bat Deduction]]: Most of House's last minute diagnoses.
* [[Batman Gambit]]: House pulls one on Cuddy regarding hiring the final two spots on his new team. {{spoiler|Narrowing it down to three people, he chooses the two guys. Cuddy protests this since having an all-male team would potentially violate hiring rules, so she tells House to hire Thirteen... and then realizes that House had made his choice deliberately to force her to have him hire Thirteen}}.
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** And the season 8 episode "Love is Blind" has the patient mention Friends, a show that Hugh Laurie made a cameo on.
** In "Everybody Dies", House mentions ''[[Dead Poets Society]]'', a movie where a young Robert Sean Leonard starred. I guess giving Wilson a hard time about the porno was more amusing...
* [[Celebrity Resemblance]]: [[House (TV series)|Omar Epps]] (i.e. Dr. Foreman) looks a LOT like [https://web.archive.org/web/20130531172841/http://i.cdn.turner.com/sivault/multimedia/photo_gallery/0812/athlete.lookalikes.fan.submissions/images/mike-tomlin-omar-epps.jpg Pittsburgh Steelers coach Mike Tomlin]. This was referenced in the episode "Ignorance Is Bliss":
{{quote|'''House:''' Got all of my starters back plus a couple of free agents. I feel like Mike Tomlin. ''(looks at Foreman)'' Probably not as much as you do, but you get the idea.}}
* [[Character Development]]/[[Wham! Episode]]: Season 6's "Broken", in which House is rehabilitated, switches from Vicodin to less extreme medication, meets a new lover, and becomes almost kind of nice.
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* [[Chiaroscuro]]: "Bombshells" gets darker and darker throughout the episode. {{spoiler|At the end, it goes back to normal}}, but until then, it is so incredibly dark, you'd think you're in a [[David Fincher]] movie.
* [[Code Silver]]: The Season 2 finale, and the Season 5 episode "Last Resort".
* [[
* [[Comedic Sociopathy]]
* [[Commercial Break Cliffhanger]]: This is a staple of the show.
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** Anne Dudek (Amber/Cutthroat) and Odette Annable (Adams) also qualify.
** The episode "Lockdown" had a fair few, namely:
*** Dava Krause who played Daria (a [[Spear Carrier|minor character]] who rarely, if ever gets credited, let alone, speaks). [https://web.archive.org/web/20120317170305/http://images.starpulse.com/news/bloggers/6/blog_images/dava-krause-.jpg
*** Shelly Cole, aka Nurse Adrienne Maldonado. [http://ia.media-imdb.com/images/M/MV5BMTM1MTYwMjQ4MV5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTYwNjc3MjY1._V1._SX261_SY400_.jpg\]
** Also, Nurse Brenda (played by Stephanie Venditto). On fansites, she is '''more popular''' than Thirteen.
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** House, near the end of Season Seven, performing open leg surgery ''on his own thigh''. Even with painkillers, the operation was too much for him to bear. Jesus.
* [[Greek Chorus]]: The patient in the episode "Locked In" makes some hilariously accurate observations about the main characters as he watches them interact with one another. All these observations are only uttered in his own mind, since he has [[Title Drop|locked in]] syndrome and can't control anything but his eyes.
* [[Grey's Anatomy Emergency Medical Response]]▼
* [[Groin Attack]]: House pushed one recent widower a little too far.
* [[Harmful Healing]]
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* [[Hero Insurance]]: In [[Real Life]], House would be in prison with dozens of malpractice suits pending. This gets [[Lampshaded]] in one episode where Cuddy mentions that the hospital actually has a budget for dealing with suits against House - and that he's under budget. Somehow.
** Because he's [[Crazy Awesome]]. As reckless as he is, most of his stuff works, and most patients aren't inclined to sue the guy who just saved their lives, even if he had to torture them to do it.
* [[Homoerotic Subtext]] : House and Wilson. It seems Wilson is the only person who is willing to ride out all of House's quirks, and thereby his only real friend.
** Later, when Wilson accepted that his relationship with {{spoiler|Amber}} was perfect largely because of her similarities with House:
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** Also the patient of the week in Season 5's "The Greater Good" self-diagnoses her spontaneously collapsed lung.
* [[In Medias Res]]: See [[Once a Season]]. Other examples pop up too (like Season 7's "Two Stories").
* [[Instant Drama, Just Add Tracheotomy]]: Seen once every episode or so, especially in earlier seasons.
* [[Insufferable Genius]]: House, and the patient of [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|The Jerk]].
* [[In That Order]]: Dr. House says to a female patient he dislikes, "If you're gonna kill me and rape me, please do it in that order."
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** Thirteen seems to be a conscious effort to create a [[Lipstick Lesbian]] [[Hospital Hottie]] [[Ms. Fanservice]]. Unlike Cuddy, however, the writers forgot to add anything ''else'' to her character, and as such she is just about [[Creator's Pet|universally loathed]].
** Nurse Brenda (played by Stephanie Venditto), the resident [[Deadpan Snarker]].
** Dr. Martha M. Masters (Amber Tamblyn), whose wardrobe was nothing but miniskirts, even her lab coat was short!
* [[Near-Death Experience]]: House has had plenty of these.
* [[Never Trust a Trailer]]: One episode preview made it look like House had finally lost it by showing a clip of him shouting "I NEED THE DRUGS!" In the actual episode, he was just parodying the [[Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique]].
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* [[Obnoxious In-Laws]]: Although House and Cuddy aren't married, Arlene Cuddy certainly proves to be this. Oy vey.
* [[Old Shame]]: Wilson acted in his roommate's college film, which turned out to be a porno (not the actual sex scenes though). House finds out and has GIANT POSTERS hung up in the hospital lobby, and soon everyone is quoting the film's horrible, horrible lines ad nauseam.
* [[Omnidisciplinary Scientist]]: House and his underlings are pretty much Omnidisciplinary Doctors. Officially, House - nephrology/infectious disease, Cuddy - endocrinology, Wilson - oncology, Cameron - immunology, Chase - surgery, Foreman - neurology, Kutner - sports medicine, Taub - plastic surgery, Thirteen - internal medicine. But they regularly carry out their own blood tests, MRI scans and even surgery, jobs that are usually reserved (sometimes by law) for specialists. Oh and the [[Child Prodigy|25-year old]] omnidoctorate Martha M. Masters (no not [[Eminem]]), whose combined doctorates of erm [[Mix and Match|applied mathematics and art history]], (yet not [[Not That Kind of Doctor|medicine funnily enough]]) ...don't expect any advanced deconstruction of 15th century Impressionism or constrained numerical
** Foreman, Taub and/or Chase, and Wilson are the only doctors that seem to use their specialties, save a few sound bites, such as House talking about infectious disease in "Airborne".
** It's especially weird that Cameron, the immunologist, works in the ER.
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** Thirteen is put on one for a short while in Season 6 alongside Taub, then returns. She's put on another one in Season 7. She's back.
** Amber was literally on a bus, along with House, who [[Fate Worse Than Death|wanted to stay on it because of the pain]] until Amber convinced him to get off.
== Tropes Q-T ==
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* [[Rashomon Style]]: Episode "The Mistake" as told through narratives by House and Chase to the hospital lawyer, Stacy.
* [[Real Life Writes the Plot]]
** {{spoiler|Kutner was hastily removed from the show when Kal Penn took a job with the Obama administration
** Olivia Wilde is curiously absent from the early
* [[Really Gets Around]]: Several regular characters:
** {{spoiler|House's mother
* [[Real Song Theme Tune]]: The opening theme for ''House'' is the opening of [[Massive Attack]]'s "Teardrop", except in countries where the rights to the song aren't available. There, it's replaced by a [[The Jimmy Hart Version|rather similar]] original song called "House".
* [[Recruiting the Criminal]]: Foreman got his job because House researched his past and discovered a criminal background as a teenager. This not only interested him as far as his personality but also because he wanted someone with the skills to break into people's houses (to find environmental health sources and/or evidence of lying). Mirrored in the
* [[Recycled in Space]]:
* [[Relationship Sabotage]]: In the
* [[Reset Button]]: With House's personality. He's gone through several traumas, relationship collapses and explicit moments of revelation, and yet House manages to remain the same as he's always been. This is part of the point being made about House (that his nasty personality isn't a result of any one factor). Still, when watching the show, if it looks like House's personality is about to make a turn for the better, think again.
* [[Retroactive Wish]]: "I am surrounded by naked cheerleaders!"
* [[Riddle for the Ages]]: Why {{spoiler|Kutner committed suicide}}.
* [[Ripped from the Headlines]]: Several episodes' plots, per [[Word of God]]. One in particular, "Lines in the Sand", seems to be inspired by [
** "Here Kitty" was based off [http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/07/25/health/webmd/main3097899.shtml this]
** Many of the early episodes are based on Berton Roueché's "Annals of Medicine". For example, the episode "Damned
* [[Running Gag]]: Bad things happen when Kutner gets hold of defibrillator paddles.
** "Is it lupus?" "It's not lupus." {{spoiler|Except that one time
* [[Sarcasm Failure]]
* [[Screw the Rules, I Have Money]]: Vogler in Season 1.
** Also the dad in the episode "Instant Karma".
* [[Serial Killer]]: In the last minute of {{spoiler|"Fall
* [[Sex for Solace]]: Thirteen slid into a downward spiral of partying and drunken one night stands with random chicks {{spoiler|due to being unable to deal with her Huntington's disease
* [[Sex Is Interesting]]: Thirteen.
* [[Sherlock Scan]]: House ''was'' inspired by ''[[Sherlock Holmes]]'' after all... Though House is more prone to being wrong.
** His wrong assumptions, however, are justified considering that many diseases and/or disorders sometimes have the same symptoms. You can see this especially in episodes where the [[Patient of the Week]] has a disease/disorder that is considered rare.
* [[Shipper on Deck]]: House for Park and Chase.
* [[Ship Tease]]: Most conversations between House and Cuddy, and scenes between House and Wilson too...
* [[Shirtless Scene]]: House, Chase, Foreman.
* [[Shoot the Shaggy Dog]]: Poor Cuddy runs straight into [[The Woobie|Woobie territory]] in "Joy". {{spoiler|Despite having done all the work of a Cesarean on a dying surrogate mother, saving both her life and that of Cuddy's soon-to-be adopted daughter, it seems the mother wants her back now. Is it any wonder that House finally decides not to be a jerk to her, for once
* [[Should Have Thought of That Before X]]: In the episode "Hunting".
{{quote|'''Kalvin:''' This is none of your business!
'''House:''' Well, you should have thought of that before you stalked me. Now I'm interested.
* [[Shout-Out]]: An episode of ''[[Scrubs]]'' [http://youtube.com/watch?v=T75_BEOWLrc spoofed] ''House'', with Dr. Cox taking House's place and even giving him a limp and a cane temporarily, and giving stylistic flashbacks.
{{quote|'''House:''' I don't ''have'' to watch ''[[The OC]]'', but it makes me happy.}}
** In "The Jerk", a patient mocks Australian doctor Robert Chase by repeatedly calling him "[[Skippy the Bush Kangaroo]]" or simply "Skippy".
** To ''[[Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid]]'' in Season 7
*** Not to mention zombie movies, trippy musicals a la ''[[Moulin Rouge]]'' and ''[[Across the Universe (film)|Across the Universe]]'', ''[[Two and A Half Men]]'', and fifties family dom-coms.
** "[[Heroes (TV series)|Save the cheerleader, save your world.]]" (Season 5
** "[[CSI: Miami|Did you deduce that by removing your sunglasses to the strains of a Who song?]]" (Season 5
*** The same episode (and conversation with Cameron) has House mention "If he's gonna do this, he's gonna do this for love", referencing the [[Meat Loaf]] song, what with him being the guest star.
** The Season 6 premiere episode
** Wilson, after thinking he and House have finally interviewed someone to replace Cameron, shouts [[The Producers|"That's our Hitler!"]]
** To Jeremy Piven from "Epic Fail":
{{quote|'''[[Patient of the Week]]:''' I think it's mercury poisoning. I ate a ton of sushi.
'''Thirteen:''' And you're currently getting mixed reviews in ''[[Speed-the-Plow]]'' on Broadway? (blank stares) Google it.
** In the same episode, the
** And we finally get Robert Sean Leonard singing some Broadway in "The Down Low". He does a short rendition of "One", from ''[[A Chorus Line]]''.
** There's a picture of [[The Colbert Report|Stephen Colbert]] behind House's desk in the episode "Open and Shut".
** The show has made plenty of references to ''[[24]]'' over the years:
*** When House had a famous baseball player as his patient he greeted him with: "''I'm Dr. Gregory House, and today is the coolest day of my life''", spoofing ''24''s first season narration "''I'm federal agent Jack Bauer, and today is the longest day of my life.''"
*** When they have a patient with an unknown, contagious disease Cuddy puts the patient's {{spoiler|dead body}} in isolation, telling House he needs level three clearance to see it. House suggests they should call Jack Bauer.
*** When House needs a drug dealer to give him the drugs he had been dealing in "The Down Low", he shouts "I NEED THE DRUGS!" Cue a [[Beat]], followed by "Huh... works for Jack Bauer".
*** When brought in by the CIA for a consultation, he says the building looks better on ''24''.
** When one of the new duckling candidates is revealed to be Mormon, House promptly nicknames him [[Big Love]].
** In the episode
*** Plus, [[Thirteen Is Unlucky|most hospitals don't have a room 13, they go 12, 12A, 14]].
** In the episode "Deception", after House cuts a patient's bruise and confirms his current diagnosis because of the fruity smell of the pus (no, seriously), he looks up, takes a long whiff off the scalpel, and says [[Apocalypse Now|"I love the smell of pus in the morning. Smells like... Victory."]]
*** This allusion was used again in the Season 6 episode "The Tyrant".
** In the episode "Knight Fall", House addresses the apothecary employee as "You embossed carbuncle", in reference to ''[[King Lear]]''.
** In the episode "Massage Therapy", the patient and her boyfriend are named [[Power Rangers Time Force|Jenny]] and [[Mighty Morphin Power Rangers|Billy]] respectively, would be a coincidence if not for the fact that Jen's actor plays Jenny.
** In "You Must Remember This", Taub says that he figured Foreman's apartment would be more "Mod Squad". Omar Epps Starred in the Mod Squad Remake.
** House's driver license lists his address as 221 Baker Street, Apt. B. This is the same address as Sherlock Holmes.
** In "Three Stories", House uses the phrase, "[[Doctor Who|Allons-y!]]" This can be doubted, however, as it's a French phrase. Also, in another episode, House says: "There is only one truth" - a famous [[Sherlock Holmes]] quote.
*** What Doctor could that be referencing? It's too old to be the Tenth, because he doesn't say Allons-y until an
*** [[Timey-Wimey Ball|To be fair, this is ''Doctor Who'' we're talking about.]]
** Looks like another ''[[Doctor Who]]'' reference cropped up, possibly confirming the former mention. In the episode "Bombshells", Taub tells Foreman that he stayed up until 3:00 in the morning watching classic ''Doctor Who''.
** In "Last Temptation", the patient is mentioned to be slowly turning blue, prompting House to say, "At least we can rule out the [[Charlie and the Chocolate Factory|blue gum.]]"
** In "Two Stories", House [[Unreliable Narrator|fills his story]] to the fifth grade class with obvious film references, including ''[[Pulp Fiction]]'', ''[[The Thomas Crown Affair]]'' and ''[[Thunderbolt And Lightfoot]]'', and also quotes from ''[[A Few Good Men]]'' and ''[[Ghostbusters]]''. Each time the same kid calls him on it.
** From "Perils of Paranoia", we have House mentioning [[Pokémon Diamond and Pearl|Arceus]] as having created the world with three types of matter. When Taub asks "Arceus?", House casually says "Look it up," and continues on with the conversation.
** During the pre-credits sequence of
* [[Significant Anagram]]: In the episode "House Training", Gregory House suggests a particularly fitting anagram of his name: "Huge ego, sorry".
** One of Wilson's ex-wives named their problematic dog Hector because "Hector does go rug" is an anagram for "Doctor Greg House" (
* [[Significant Monogram]]
* [[Single-Issue Psychology]]: Both played straight and averted. If the [[Patient of the Week]] has any kind of psychological problem, you can be pretty sure it's because of single underlying cause or traumatic event which will come to light and/or be resolved by the end of the episode. However, it's averted in the case of the main cast (see [[Dysfunction Junction]]), especially with House himself: other characters repeatedly have to remind him that fixing his leg will not automatically make his life better and his problems are much more deep-seated.
* [[Sleepwalking]]
* [[Slipping a Mickey]]: House drugs {{spoiler|Wilson's}} grape-soda and steals his pants in order to save his career from himself.
** In "Birthmarks", Cuddy drugs House so Wilson can take him {{spoiler|to his father's funeral
** In Season 4, 13 slips House narcotics in revenge for switching out her decaf so they can run tests.
* [[The Smurfette Principle]]: "Do you smell that? It's a sausage fest. Hire a female doctor."
** To wit, there is only ever one female on House's team (Cameron for
** As of
* [[Sniff Sniff Nom]]: House [[Squick|licking the homeless woman's vomit]] early in Season 1.
* [[Soap Within a Show]]: House is always watching ''Prescription Passion'', a medical soap opera that forms the base of Season 4 episode "Living
* [[Sociopathic Hero]]: House approaches this sometimes. Notably, he seemed to enjoy yelling at his patient repeatedly and torturing her in "Who's Your Daddy?".
** He also has a history of drugging people, though he usually turns out to be acting in (what he thinks are) the person's best interests, not out of simple malice. He once sedated a patient he had just kidnapped to keep him in the hospital, he sedated Cuddy's mom to keep himself from telling her what he thought of her, he gave Wilson amphetamines in an attempt to prove that he was depressed, and later sedated Wilson to keep him from giving a speech that would have destroyed his career.
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* [[Spy Speak]]: Parodied in the episode "All In" when House calls Wilson during a poker game.
{{quote|'''House:''' Keep your answers short and discreet. Is Cuddy still playing?
'''Wilson:''' The chicken is still in Picadilly Square.
* [[Status Quo Is God]]: House has appeared to be accepting his drug addiction, gone cold turkey on his addiction, be cured of his addiction by special coma treatment... in general tried to move out of misery multiple times per season. Only extremely rarely are they a sincere attempt at change, and either way we always [[We Want Our Jerk Back|get our jerk back]].
** Occasionally lampshaded by Wilson and/or House.
** Season 5 has a notable example. Episode "Dying Changes Everything" initially seemed like an example of [[Nothing Is the Same Anymore]] - {{spoiler|Wilson quit his job at the hospital and cut his ties with House...}} but a few episodes later {{spoiler|he was back
** Season 5 also has House cure his pain with methadone, shave his beard, quit his job and go seek a post at another hospital. Status quo is restored in about 20 minutes.
** Probably the biggest one, {{spoiler|after all House went through with getting new team members, rehab, and leaving the hospital to find a way to avoid Vicodin, he ends up coming back to work with Chase, Cameron, and Foreman all over again. Minus the Vicodin. For now, maybe
*** Subverted to a moderate degree a few episodes later with the cast shuffle.({{spoiler|Cameron leaves, Taub and
**** In Season 5, {{spoiler|House finds a that Methadone cures his pain ''completely'', but he ''quits'' it-- simply because without pain he's not House}}. This is a pure status-quo argument, since the entire series House whines non-stop about how he's a jerk because he's in pain.
* [[Stealth Pun]]: Actually a musical pun: in the episode "Half-Wit" House plays the opening part of a song with a musical savant on a piano. The song is "I Don't Like Mondays" by the Boomtown Rats, on a show that airs on... Mondays.
** In the episode where Wilson consumes amphetamines, he mentions that Dr. Stein is probably away. Yeah.
* [[Stepford Smiler]]: Several patients and their family members. {{spoiler|The patient's wife from the episode "Clueless" was a notable example, pretending that [[Happily Married|her marriage was perfect]] and that she cared about her husband... whom she was constantly poisoning. At the end of the episode, House speculated that she was poisoning him ''because'' she got tired of maintaining the facade of happy wife
** It is sometimes suggested that Wilson may be this kind of character as well, at least to a degree (episodes "Resignation" and "The Social Contract" come to mind here).
** And while House might like to think that he has no emotion and doesn't care about anything, it's clear that he's just as lonely and insecure as the rest of us.
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* [[Story Arc]]: The strongest story-arc involves House organizing a mass job interview to fill in positions for his team, which lasts through half of the fourth season.
* [[Straw Hypocrite]]
* [[Strawman Political]]: "Saviors" features a borderline-Straw Environmentalist as the [[Patient of the Week]]; "House
* [[Strictly Formula]]: The medical aspects are generally background noise for whatever drama is going on in House's life. In "Words
** Subverted in "One Day, One Room" when the [[Patient of the Week]] is introduced about 10 minutes into the episode and then diagnosed 5 minutes later. The remaining half-hour is given over to a series of philosophical debates between her and House.
** There are ''House'' episodes that subvert the formula completely, but they're so few-and-far-between in the midst of the formulaic ones, casual viewers would never know they exist. These include:
*** "Three Stories". This
*** "Broken". The Season 6 two-part opener was House kicking his Vicodin habit, courtesy of a mental hospital. It lampshades AND subverts the mental hospital tropes that have been set by ''[[One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest]]'' decades ago. House spends the episode disrupting the ward's system, but
*** "5 to 9" (also in Season 6). Viewers get to see a day in the hospital through Cuddy's perspective. It was a refreshing change of pace compared to the usual hectic activity of the hospital. It's also pretty amusing when viewers realize how little importance House's antics are to her day-to-day activities. The only irksome detail was the number of disgruntled patients always calling Cuddy a bitch when they didn't agree with her decisions.
** The series' formulaic nature is nicely summed up [http://www.cracked.com/blog/write-your-own-house-episode/ here].
* [[Stylistic Suck]]: ''Prescription Passion'', House's favorite soap opera.
* [[Sure Why Not]]: The [[Portmanteau Couple Name]] {{spoiler|"Fourteen/Foreteen" was invented for the Foreman/Thirteen pairing, natch
* [[Suspiciously Similar Substitute]]: The new ducklings.
** House consciously does this in the episode "Airborne", where he must solve a medical mystery on a plane without his usual team. He promptly instructs a blond boy to fake an Australian accent and agree with him no matter what he says, an [[Ambiguously Brown]] passenger to disagree with him, and a female passenger to be morally outraged, filling (what he perceives are) the roles of Chase, Foreman and Cameron respectively.
** Played with in the episodes following the departure of Martha Masters. When
* [[Swiss Army Weapon]]: Episode 15 in Season 7 introduces us to House's cane-axe-shotgun. In a dream. But it's still [[Impossibly Cool Weapon|very very cool]].
* [[Swiss Cheese Security]]: PPTH's security. Full stop.
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** The other reasons being [[Rule of Cool]], [[Rule of Funny]] and [[Refuge in Audacity]].
** Also [[Jerk with a Heart of Gold]] and [[Bunny Ears Lawyer]].
* [[Take a Third Option]]: At the end of the series, {{spoiler|House is stuck in a burning building. On the one hand, he can easily escape the building, but then he would be arrested for violating parole and would be unable to be with Wilson before he succumbs to his cancer. On the other hand, he can just stay in the building and die, thus escaping the misery of his life. Instead, House fakes his own death so that he can be with Wilson during his last months to live
* [[Take That]]: House's favorite soap opera appears to be mocking ''[[Grey's Anatomy]]''.
** In the episode "Simple Explanation", House delivers the line, [[CSI: Miami|"Did you deduce that by]] [[Glasses Pull|taking off your sunglasses]] to the strains of a [[The Who|Who]] song?" to Cameron.
** House invites Wilson over to watch a ''[[The L Word]]'' marathon. When Wilson's surprised to hear that House watches that show, House adds: "On mute".
** As is {{spoiler|the Season 5 episode "Simple Explanation"
** And parts of "Wilson". {{spoiler|"Because if you die, I'll be alone."}}
** A few parts of the sixth season finale. {{spoiler|Averted with the end of the episode, however
** The Patient's fading Hallucination in "Guardian Angels" {{spoiler|"...Goodbye mama"
** The Patient of
{{quote|'''House:''' Huge Jack Cannon fan, by the way. Love your books.
'''Alice:''' Really
'''House:''' I know. [[Die for Our Ship|All they care about]] is [[Ship-to-Ship Combat|who is hotter, Jack or Deacon]]. [[Take That|Like Sarah can't love both of them]].
* [[Techno Babble]]:
* [[Teeth-Clenched Teamwork]]: Let's just say that House and his underlings don't exactly love one another. Still, they work together to save lives, and they usually succeed.
** ''Cut-throat'' teamwork would be more appropriate; House sums this up succinctly with the observations that "competition works--" and later, he says that "conflict breeds creativity" after he drives a wedge between "Foreteen", causing them to they immediately turn on one another by topping each
*** Ironically
* [[Televisually-Transmitted Disease]]
* [[There Are Two Kinds of People in the World]]: From a
* [[Thirteen Is Unlucky]]: Literally. {{spoiler|She has Huntington's Disease
* [[Thirty Pieces of Silver]]: In the episode "Finding Judas" of ''[[House (TV series)|House]]'', someone sells House out to the cops. He investigates his sworn enemies (i.e., the rest of the cast), but it turns out to be {{spoiler|Wilson, his only friend, desperately trying to save him from prison. Wilson even asked the cop for "thirty pieces of silver" to complete the allusion, because no matter how much it is for House's good, it is still a betrayal of his trust and could ruin his life and career}}.
* [[This Means War]]: The escalating prank war between House and the adjacent Orthopedics department.
* [[Five-Token Band|Three Token Band]]: House's team ''twice'' consists of a foreign [[Butt Monkey]] (Chase/Kutner), a belligerent, super-competent ethnic who challenges House (Foreman/Taub), and a hottie with a tragic past (Cameron/Thirteen).
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* [[Throwing Out the Script]]: House does this in an early season when asked to give a speech about a new drug the chairman of the hospital wants him to puff up. He nearly gets fired for it.
* [[Took a Level in Jerkass]]: Foreman, most definitely, and arguably House himself during the Tritter arc.
* [[The Topic of Cancer]]: Now that
* [[Trademark Favorite Food]]: In earlier seasons, there are repeated mentions as to House's love for Reuben sandwiches. As time goes by, however, House just steals Wilson's lunches.
* [[Trust Me I'm a Doctor|Trust Me, I'm A Doctor]]: House certainly isn't afraid to mention his profession in order to establish his authority or otherwise be a [[Deadpan Snarker|snarker]]. Once, after bluntly telling a female patient that he wants to inspect her vagina, he tells her, "I'm a doctor, so it's okay."
* [[Trying to Catch Me Fighting Dirty]]:
** This was an act of "Tough Love", since House was only acting out of medical necessity to save the [[Idiot Ball]] holder ''and'' his son, due to his refusing treatment for ''both'' of them. Here, House {{spoiler|provoked the man into hitting him, solely so House could hit him back in the liver with his cane, and prove that he had cystic parasites in his liver by ''rupturing'' one of them}}. Like everything else House does, this was justified because it saved the life of an [[Idiot Ball]] jockey, and wouldn't be risky otherwise (usually)-- and here, House was practicing his own brand of medical responsibility by saving the guy's ''son'' as well.
* [[Tsundere]]: Four of the six original main characters.
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* [[Two Girls to a Team]]: Yes, there are only ever two women in the main cast.
* [[Typhoid Mary]]: In "Maternity", an elderly volunteer unwittingly passes around a virus that is lethal to infants.
== Tropes U-Z ==
* [[Ultimate Job Security]]: Dr. House is this trope incarnate, and he knows it. In Season 1, he's so sure of it that he basically dares Vogler, the new chairman of the board, to try to fire him. Vogler takes the dare. {{spoiler|House wins, but it's a near thing
* [[Un Paused]]: In one early episode, a patient is having seizures. He will stop in the middle of a sentence for a few moments before going right back to what he was saying, unaware that he lost any time.
* [[Unreliable Narrator]]: {{spoiler|House is revealed to be one of these in the Season 5 finale}}. Though this is more to the character's point of view as this show has little to narration at all.
** Played less seriously in early episodes "The Mistake" and "Three Stories", and "Nobody's Fault" in the final season where the bulk of the episodes consist of characters reliving past events from various viewpoints with various differences. The trope shows up briefly in the series finale "Everybody Dies" when House skips over a part of a conversation with the patient in his recollection of the case.
* [[Unusual Euphemism]]: In the episode "Euphoria (Part 2)", House whips up a veritable storm (including pop cultural references) of these to explain to a worried mother that her child does in fact not have epilepsia.
{{quote|'''House:''' In actuality, all your little girl is doing is saying yoo-hoo to the hoo-hoo.
'''Mother:''' She's what?
'''House:''' Marching the penguin. [[Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood|Ya-ya-ing the sisterhood]]. ''[[Finding Nemo]]''.
* [[Up to Eleven]]: House uses this to describe himself when he replaces Vicodin with ''cooking''.
{{quote|''"What did you expect? I'm an addict. I turn everything [[Up to Eleven]]."''}}
* [[Very Special Episode]]: The episode with {{spoiler|Kutner's suicide}} strays into this territory.
* [[Vitriolic Best Buds]]: House and Wilson, one of the best examples on TV.
* [[Waking Up At the Morgue]]: {{spoiler|"Brave Heart"
* [["Well Done, Son" Guy]]: House, with his father; also Chase, in regard to House. He had problems with his own father, kept trying to win his approval until he finally realized that his father didn't care and that it was easier for Chase himself not to care whether his father cared.
* [[We Want Our Jerk Back]]: Foreman in "Forever", after his brain biopsy turns him incredibly optimistic and agreeable.
* [[Wham! Episode]]: From "Simple Explanation" and beyond, {{spoiler|Kutner kills himself, Chase proposes to Cameron, House begins to doubt his talent to see everything coming, House hallucinates seeing Amber, Chase and Cameron break up, House detoxes off Vicodin, House and Cuddy have sex...}} So what was next? {{spoiler|House DIDN'T detox off Vicodin, House and Cuddy DIDN'T have sex, House starts seeing Kutner along with Amber, and finally goes into a psychiatric institute
* [[Wham! Line]]: Say it with me, folks: "I punched my attending in the face."
** {{spoiler|"I have cancer."}}
* [[What Do You Mean It's Not Awesome?]]: The go cart racing scene in Season 7.
* [[What Happened to the Mouse?]]: {{spoiler|We don't find out the real story of the guy who shot House (unless what House imagined was from him remembering having seen him before), nor do we see him again
** Also, {{spoiler|there is a cannibal serial killer out there who was saved by the team...}}
* [[What the Hell, Hero?]]: These happen pretty much [[Once an Episode|all the time]].
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'''House:''' ''I'm going to save [his/her] life!''
'''Cuddy:''' ''No, you just want [to solve the puzzle/drugs]!''
Rinse and repeat. Oh, and if Cuddy says no, House will probably try to get Wilson to help him.
** It's gotten to the point where the bar for this trope is so high on the show that House needs to do something ''really'' outrageous for this to really qualify.
** Lampshaded in the episode where House kidnaps an actor from his favorite soap.
{{quote|'''Foreman:''' ''You kidnapped him?''
'''House:''' ''It's cool that I haven't lost the ability to surprise you.''
** Also seen between Foreman and Chase after Chase {{spoiler|alters the tests of an African dictator patient, effectively killing him
* [[Wilhelm Scream]]: In a [[Zombie Apocalypse]] [[Dream Sequence]].
* [[Will They or Won't They?]]: House/Cameron, House/Cuddy, House/Stacy, and to some extent [[Ho Yay|House/Wilson]].
** Answers, in order: {{spoiler|No, yes but not anymore, no, and pretty much
* [[With Friends Like These...]]: House and Wilson. Mostly House but Wilson has had some crappy moments as well.
* [[Wouldn't Hit a Girl]]: Not spoken outright, but in "After Hours", Chase goes to considerable lengths to warn Thirteen that he's going to move her out of the way when she refuses to allow him to take her stab victim, parolee friend to the hospital (even though she'll die if he doesn't). When she still refuses, he moves her out of the way without hurting her, prompting her to attack him. After several very weak looking punches and one that looked like it might have hurt, Chase easily overpowers her (with a distinct look of [[Oh Crap]] on her face as he does) and she ends up on the floor. Later in the episode, she's putting ice on her neck and he apologises for having hurt her - even though she nearly killed her friend and assaulted him in the process.
** She doesn't invoke this trope later, though, and tells him what he did was necessary.
* [[Writer on Board]]: When it happens it's oftentimes painfully obvious.
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** It happened again in Season 5. House switches to a different drug which allows him to be completely pain free, only to find it compromises his intellect (or so he says).
*** House still had his limp while on methadone, but it was not as pronounced. To what degree House's limp is due to his chronic leg pain or his lack of thigh muscle seems to vary.
**** It's interesting: when House's pain was cured by the new treatment after being shot, he was shown running 8 miles to the hospital with no limp whatsoever, a completely new and pain-free man but it was short-lived when the pain returned; but when the pain was completely cured on methadone, he threw away his cane but was still limping
** Also [[Real Life Writes the Plot]]: the reason the leg pain was gone in those episodes was that Hugh Laurie was starting to develop ''actual'' pains from walking around with the cane all the time.
** The Season 5 finale.
* [[Yiddish as a Second Language]]: Cuddy's mother. Made grating by the fact that she had converted.
* [[You Called Me "X" - It Must Be Serious]]: {{spoiler|When Foreman thinks he's dying in "Euphoria
** House calls her "Cutthroat Bitch" most of the time, so when he suddenly calls her Amber, she senses something's not good. {{spoiler|He's firing her
* [[You Can Leave Your Hat On]]: Dr. Cuddy as a [[Sexy Schoolwoman]] in a [[Dream Sequence]] that is, for some strange reason that should be incredibly obvious, very popular on [[YouTube]].
* [[You Need a Breath Mint]]: Cuddy is trying to sober up the team in "House Divided" and gives them breath mints.
* [[You Never Asked]]: Almost always completely averted, since House and his team almost always ask the most relevant questions; often to the point of bullying the patient or breaking into their homes to get useful answers. If a patients doesn't provide the right answers, it's because he or she is either lying to hide a [[Big Secret]], or has picked up the [[Idiot Ball]].
** Played straight in "Private Lives": {{spoiler|the patient, a recent vegetarian, is having all sorts of medical issues and is given many proclamations of death, yet when House finally asks her about the quality of her bowel movements, the answer is obvious (and easily remedied). However, that is one of the FIRST questions doctors will ask when getting a history
*** The team always ''breaks'' into to the patient's home in order to "test for environmental causes
* [[Your Princess Is in Another Castle]]: If a convincing diagnosis is made at all before the end, it's usually made around the halfway mark. Of course, it'll be the wrong one. Alternatively, it's the right diagnosis, but other things get in the way - for example a patient is correctly diagnosed as having Strongyloides, but his helper dog eats the pills the doctor in charge gives him. Result - one dead patient who didn't get his medication, one dead dog who did. or House suspects Erdheim Chester's in both an old woman and a young kid in "All In" within the first fifteen minutes, but the tests were screwed up because of the timing and they went through about fifteen other things.
* [[Zettai Ryouiki]]: Martha Masters pulls off a couple.
** Amber also did on occasion.
* [[Zombie Apocalypse]]: In
{{reflist}}
[[Category:American Series]]
[[Category:Dramedy]]
[[Category:Trope Overdosed]]
[[Category:House (TV series)]]
[[Category:TV Series]]
[[Category:Memetic Works]]
[[Category:Live-Action TV of the 2000s]]
[[Category:Live-Action TV of the 2010s]]
[[Category:Noughties Drama Series]]
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