8 Best House, M.D. Tropes That I Never Got Tired Of

House had 177 episodes of 45 minutes each, meaning the show had to use several tropes and stick to a certain formula most of the time. While the idea of a formulaic show can seen unappealing at a time when so many shows are pushing the boundaries of the television format, using tropes isn’t necessarily a bad thing. A long-running TV show with more than 16 episodes per season can only do so many original things every week after all.

House knew how to play around the medical drama genre’s tropes, even though it used most of them. Even some of the best House episodes of all time were full of recurring story beats and tropes that we could find in other medical shows, yet they were used in interesting ways. There is a long list of things that happen in every episode of House, but certain tropes I never got tired of.

8 Every Single Differential Diagnosis Is Wrong Until The Final One

If The Episode Isn’t Ending, House Is Most Likely Wrong

One of the most common House tropes can also be found in almost every other medical drama. No matter how smart House and his pupils are, they will never get the diagnosis right the first time. Any other guesses made before the final 10 minutes or so of the episode are also most likely wrong. Even though House was not a fan of try and error – unless he specifically had to see how a patient would react to certain scenarios – that’s how most cases were solved anyway. “It explains everything,” until it doesn’t.

This is also where the biggest flaw with House’s medical accuracy comes from – how fast every condition progresses. No matter the case or the treatment, the patient will show all possible symptoms within a couple of days maximum, allowing House to have a clear picture of what is happening. While there are obviously a lot of conditions that evolve fast, every House case would escalate from relatively simple symptoms to “this patient will die if we don’t do something” in a few hours.

7 A Simple E.R. Patient Evolves Into A Complex Case For House

House Usually Dismisses A Case Until He Catches Something Odd

While not as common as some of the show’s other tropes, House running into an apparently simple case that later evolves into a complex puzzle was one of my favorite parts of the show. The E.R. cases were mostly “filler” and had nothing to do with whatever House’s team was dealing with on the other floor. However, sometimes, House would find a fascinating case while doing his clinic hours. There were also plenty of episodes in which, even though it wasn’t an E.R. patient, House was quick to dismiss a case only to realize there was something else to it.

House comes up with a diagnosis incredibly fast, sometimes just by looking at the patient. Therefore, his usual instincts were to dismiss whatever seemed too ordinary so that he could focus on the big, most challenging cases. This is why it was always fun to see House slowly admit that something he deemed too easy was actually quite complex. Season 3’s “One Day, One Room” was self-aware about this trope, with most of the episode revolving around two E.R. patients whose stories were more complex than House and Cameron were expecting.

6 House Doesn’t Want To Do Clinic Hours But Has To

House Will Do Whatever It Takes To Skip Clinic Duty

I don’t think there is a single House episode where Gregory doesn’t complain about having to do clinic hours. The outcome was always the same too. Regardless of how much House protested, he ended up having to spend a couple of hours at the clinic. House included some meta jokes about Greg House only curing one patient per week, but Cuddy wouldn’t let him be paid just to take care of four patients a month. From asking Foreman to tell his name was House to pay 50 bucks for patients to leave, House really didn’t like doing a clinic.

As overused as this trope was, I never got tired of it. Seeing House complain that his talents were being wasted with something any other doctor could do was always fun, even more so because he usually failed to escape clinic hours. This also allowed House‘s episode to stop to breathe for a few minutes and let us have some fun as House dealt with a bizarre or embarrassing emergency case. Hugh Laurie’s portrayal of Greg House was funny by default, but House’s clinic hours were even more hilarious.

5 Wilson “Diagnoses” House And Tells What’s Wrong With Him

Wilson Always Knew What To Say To House

House was the one in charge of the diagnosis department, but Wilson was the one usually diagnosing House on a more personal level. Almost every conversation between Wilson and House, especially in the earlier House seasons, had Wilson analyzing Greg and giving a full rundown of what was wrong with his friend. Wilson could always see through House’s actions and lies, which is why their friendship was so fascinating. House could sometimes be a puzzle even for his team, but never for James Wilson.

In a lesser show with poor writing or misguided performances, having one person telling the other all their flaws and insecurities every episode could have come off as cheap and melodramatic. In House, however, this trope never got tiresome. There was a noticeable sense of sincerity in everything Wilson would say to House, no matter how harsh it seemed. Even when Wilson almost cut a deal with the police to turn House in, the show could never make me think that Wilson was ever being selfish or positioning himself as morally superior.

4 Cuddy Won’t Let House Do Something (But He Eventually Does)

“Is It Still Illegal To Do An Autopsy On A Living Patient?”

As chief hospital administrator and dean of medicine, Cuddy was responsible for everything House and his team would say or do to a patient. The interactions between Cuddy and House were the perfect example of “what happens when an unstoppable force meets an unmovable option.” Even though this happened in pretty much every episode of House from seasons 1 to 7, it never got repetitive. Cuddy knew what House had to do to accomplish his usual results, but she also had lines she could not cross because of her position.

In season 1, when there is a chance Cuddy will be removed from her position, Greg argues that he cannot let that happen because it would take too long for him to learn how to manipulate the new boss. Despite being a joke, this encapsulates why House and Cuddy arguing about tests and treatments every episode never got boring. They knew each other too well and could always anticipate what the other was going to do next when faced with a problem. It was a dance that usually ended with House finding a way do to what he needed to do.

3 “Everybody Lies” To House And His Team

The Patient Or Their Family Were Usually Lying

House’s original thesis, the one he spends most of the show proving right, is that “everybody lies.” House assumes that every patient and their family will default to lying to doctors, which is one of the reasons why he doesn’t interact with them too often. To House, a well-researched medical history holds way more value than a conversation with a patient. While this cynical approach is criticized by Wilson and House’s team, the show would often prove him right. More often than not, either the patient or their loved ones were lying.

Countless House episodes had the team working on certain assumptions, only to find out that had been told a lie by the patient or whoever was in charge of them. From kids lying to their parents to husbands and wives lying to their partners, figuring what the real medical history of the patient was part of the puzzle in House. I liked this trope because it helped explain why House and his elite team of doctors couldn’t always crack a case right away – sometimes, they simply didn’t have all the right information.

2 A Rare Combination Of Symptoms That No One Has Ever Heard Of

House Was A Magnet For Rare Cases

While some medical shows focus on emergency cases, House was about rare diagnoses that only the titular character could deduce. There were a lot of House cases in which the patient had already gone to other hospitals, only for the other doctors to recommend Gregory House. Even with this explanation, it was odd how often House ran into one-in-a-million conditions. From combinations of rare diseases to symptoms no one would ever associate with a certain condition, House was a magnet to rare cases.

From this was born a different House trope – “It’s never lupus.” A running joke on the show, House ruling out lupus was so common because the “simplest” answer was never the right one. Autoimmune, sarcoidosis, and cancer were some of the usual early diagnoses that were quickly proved wrong as the cases progressed. Naturally, House had medical consultants as part of the production that ensured each case would be as accurate as possible. Liberties were always taken, but the show succeeded in creating engaging cases that were as fun to us as they were to House.

1 House Plays Mind Games With His Team

House Had An Unusual Approach To His “Lackeys”

House knew how to make the most of his team, regardless if this involved coming up with some mind games to play with them. House having a team of three or more rising doctors who were capable enough to work with him but not smart enough to solve most cases on their own was a trope by itself and an essential part of the show’s structure. At the end of season 3, to shake things up and maintain some sense of realism, House’s pupils went to work on their own.

A new team was brought up in House season 4 after Greg’s version of a reality competition show, and while they were very different characters from the previous doctors, their role in the story was the same. House was too big of a protagonist not to have a set of compelling supporting characters orbiting him. I’m glad House never ditched the team dynamic despite all the cast changes, even though some versions of the team worked much better than others.