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Dr. Gregory House was never the nicest person in the room. In fact, he was usually the rudest by a lot, but for eight thoroughly enjoyable seasons between 2004 and 2012, Princeton-Plainsboro’s medical Sherlock-in-residence had us in a chokehold.
And guess what? House is also enormously fun to rewatch! We understand that now might not be the right occasion to revisit the entire series (it would take a significant amount of time to do so), but if you’re looking to go back and cherry-pick some absolutely incredible episodes of House, here are some humble suggestions on where to start…
“Three Stories”
Season 1 Episode 21
“Three Stories” is an Emmy Award-winning early episode of the series that really cements how good Hugh Laurie’s performance is going to be in the central role of House going forward.
When House fills in for a sick professor and has to lecture a class of medical students on diagnostics, he decides to tell them about three patients who all had leg pain and how his team treated them. After he tells the final tale, it becomes clear that he’s describing what happened to his own leg, and how he went against his ex’s advice to endure a risky surgery that left him in a coma. While under, his ex made a medical choice that left him with his limp and chronic pain.
The episode has shades of The Usual Suspects, throwing you off the trail of House’s trauma until its staggering twist, and Laurie helps it all play out perfectly, like the conductor of the episode’s emotional orchestra.
“Autopsy”
Season 2 Episode 2
This series is jam-packed with emotional episodes, but the ones where kids are suffering always seem to hit harder. Here, House and the team have to perform a living autopsy on a young girl with terminal cancer when she starts hallucinating, and the cause is traced to a blood clot. If they cool her body temperature down and stop her heart, they may be able to remove the clot and give her one more year.
“Autopsy” is one of those special episodes where House is not only forced to admit he’s wrong, but also really think about how he approaches life.
“Deception”
Season 2 Episode 9
House is at the racetrack when a fellow gambler (Cynthia Nixon) collapses with a seizure. House sends her off to Princeton-Plainsboro and has the team begin working on a diagnosis. After establishing that she previously may have had Cushing’s syndrome, it becomes clear that the patient definitely has Münchausen’s syndrome and has been taking every advantage to become sick.
“Deception” is a cracking episode of House that keeps you guessing until the end. Although it sets up a classic conundrum, there are also a whole bunch of clever diagnostic misdirections that make the patient and her symptoms consistently unreliable, which is why it works so well on rewatch. This is also the episode where Foreman first takes charge of House, and House makes him absolutely miserable as a result. Good stuff all around.
“Euphoria, Part 1 & 2”
Season 2 Episodes 20–21
A superb two-parter begging for a rewatch, “Euphoria” puts Foreman in a life-or-death situation where he seems to have contracted something deadly from one of House’s patients, but the team can’t work out what it is and is also hampered in their efforts to find the cause. After the patient dies, it’s a race against time to cure Foreman before the clock runs out.
The episodes explore Foreman’s relationships with both House and his estranged father, adding significant emotional weight to the unfolding drama.
“No Reason”
Season 2 Episode 24
Season 2 closes out with a humdinger that’s super fun to rewatch, especially if you’ve forgotten how it plays out. It starts with House being shot by a former patient and having to share a room with the shooter after the incident. He’s also asked to diagnose a new patient while he remains in intensive care, but as his investigations continue, he realizes that everything he’s experiencing might be a hallucination.
One of the show’s darker, more psychological installments, “No Reason” blurs the line between fact and fiction in House’s world. It may be the first time he ends up reckoning with himself through a real-life avatar, but it certainly won’t be the last.
“Lines in the Sand”
Season 3 Episode 4
House is thrilled to be treating a patient who can’t talk in this early episode from season 3 that explores the case of an autistic boy who has eaten feces out of his sandbox. House is determined to get the boy back to health, but his work is littered with rude, thoughtless remarks that hurt the boy’s parents and undermine their attempts to care for him unconditionally.
“Lines in the Sand” is a darkly funny episode, but it’s also the only one in which the show goes out on a limb to suggest that House himself is autistic. It’s a suggestion that never really finds its footing – Wilson says he’s just a jerk – but House is clearly experiencing some complex feelings when treating the patient, and upon rewatch, this one is both fascinating and thought-provoking.
“One Day, One Room”
Season 3 Episode 12
A raw, compelling episode that shows us House at his most human, “One Day, One Room” follows House around the hospital while he’s stuck doing clinic duty for Cuddy. He meets one hapless patient after another until he finally meets a rape victim who won’t talk to anyone but him. After she attempts suicide, House stops resisting her wishes to speak to him, and she finally opens up about the rape. In turn, House recalls the terrible abuse he suffered as a child at the hands of his father.
There’s a lot here to unpack – the switch of focus to House’s abuse overshadows his “patient of the week’s” devastating story – but the two have met under exceptional circumstances and eventually both move forwards by understanding each other’s pain.
“House’s Head / Wilson’s Heart”
Season 4 Episodes 15–16
Yep, it’s the bus accident episodes, and we would only recommend you rewatch them if you have a lot of tissues handy! In the first part, you may recall that House is injured while travelling home and has to try to get back his memory of what happened. In the second, well, he’s remembered who was on the bus with him, and Wilson gets his heart smashed into a million pieces.
It’s an incredible arc with a huge emotional payoff that’s hard to recover from. Although we’re saying these are some of the best episodes to rewatch, please, please remember how you felt the first time before revisiting them!
“Simple Explanation”
Season 5 Episode 20
When House star Kal Penn got a job working for the Obama administration, he had to leave the show very quickly. Rather than say that his character, Dr Lawrence Kutner, went to another hospital or to live on a farm or something, the series had him suddenly and shockingly end his life, leaving House and the medical team to process his death under terribly traumatic circumstances. While House becomes convinced that Kutner’s death might be murder, the others are left to wonder what was going through his mind when he made his devastating choice.
It’s an upsetting but highly rewatchable episode that gets to the heart of why House can never be “fixed.” He cannot stop trying to work out the puzzle of Kutner’s suicide. Five seasons in, House is making no progress. This one really drives it home.
“Everybody Dies”
Season 8 Episode 22
The series finale of House is very reflective, but it definitely sticks the landing on a story that was never too concerned with happy endings.
Having found out that his best friend Wilson only has months to live, House makes the extremely normal and cool decision to fake his own death to avoid felony vandalism charges, opting to go on a cross-country motorcycle ride into the sunset with Wilson in his final months instead of doing time. Meanwhile, Chase gets House’s job, Taub patches things up with the many women in his life, and Cameron returns to medicine.
It’s a heartbreaking but satisfying ending to the show for fans, and still hits on rewatch. The later seasons of House had some episodes that weren’t quite up there with the best of them, but this finale is good stuff, even if Cuddy’s absence from it still feels wrong all these years later.
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