Beyond the idiosyncrasies of this particular episode, House’s treatment of character development is uncommon in a number of respects. First, it is most curious that the series waits until nearly the end of its first season to explain the origin of House’s chronic pain. A conventional way to compensate for building the series around such a disagreeable protagonist would be to add layers to the character, to explain the origin of his pain, and/or to give it a cause that would warrant and justify the subsequent suffering and attitude that results.6 Consider how CBS’s The Mentalist explained the steady agitation of its less-than-personable protagonist as a result of the murder of his wife and daughter. This backstory is explained multiple times in the pilot and reemerges constantly throughout the series so that new or occasional viewers thoroughly understand the personality traits of the character and see how the exceptional tragedy he experienced justifies his focused search for the killer.
Instead of following such conventional explication and reiteration, the first season of House offers little explanation for House’s physical or psychic ailments until this episode. The unconventionality of this strategy of under-explanation is furthered by the degree to which future episodes of the series do not recall House’s origin story to audience members who missed this particular episode. Such recapping is easily and unobtrusively performed in other series by recalling crucial background details when new cast members are added. For example, in this case a new doctor could be informed of why House needs a cane by another character. Each episode of House introduces a new patient and in most cases provides a moment where House’s poor bedside manner could be explained as a result of his chronic pain, including some details of its origin. However, the series does not recall this episode, or the information imparted in it again until late in season seven. In the interim, an entirely new group of doctors have become House’s primary team, and the series never depicts them inquiring about House’s pain or another character explaining the limp.
It is also notable that this crucial origin story is told in such a convoluted manner. Viewers do not realize they are being told House’s story until they are deep into it, and even once Foreman makes clear the significance of the story, the preceding deviation from realist narrative and inconsistent blending of three different stories make it difficult to identify what parts of the previous narrative of the golfer/drug seeker were real. Moreover, why confuse the story by suggesting the patient could be a drug seeker? Viewers know House as a drug addict, but he would not have been before the injury. The significance of the episode’s more complicated techniques becomes clear if one considers the narratives and narrative techniques not chosen: House could have directly explained the incident in telling another character why he and Stacy broke up; the classroom technique could have been retained with just one case; all three cases could have been used without the constant variation in situations. These “easier” ways of incorporating the same information suggests the choice of complex techniques was deliberate.
The episode provides an explanation for House’s devotion to his guiding mantra that “everybody lies,” a crucial component of his character’s psychology, in two different ways. First, the audience and lecture hall of medical students see that diagnosticians must face unreliable information from patients through House’s repeated and varied presentations of the patient’s situations and ailments. Patients, even when not trying to confuse a diagnostician, change their stories and omit vital details in ways that require physicians to reconsider everything they thought they knew. The deviation from realist storytelling illustrates to the viewer how diagnosticians might also feel that they don’t “know” anything. With the things thought to be certain and true proven false, the episode appears to allegorize House’s view of the world and justification for his conviction that everybody lies. The episode also depicts House’s betrayal by Stacy, providing insight into his general distrust of people outside of diagnostics. Stacy acts in what she believes is House’s best interest once he is comatose and defies his expressed treatment desire. His insistence upon the medical possibility of maintaining the leg and his life appears irrational—at one point she asks if he’d cut off his leg to save her, which he acknowledges he’d do—but his faith in medicine proves wise. The suspicion with which House regards self-disclosures begins to make more sense in the context of this tale in which his closest confidant betrays his clearly expressed desires.
The writers of House, including, notably, series creator David Shore, who penned this episode, use unconventional techniques to provide more than the morsels of character development commonly offered in each episode, thus helping to compel the audience to take an ongoing interest in the series beyond the short-term gratification of seeing the case of the week solved and whether the doctors are able to save the patient. But despite this structural variation, the episode perpetuates the general beliefs and outlook of the series.
The question for the critical analyst, then, is what is the consequence of this unconventional treatment of character? Throughout most episodes and seasons, the origins of House’s bizarre actions are commonly attributed to “House being House.” This phrase, used most often by those who have a long relationship with House, such as Doctors Wilson and Cuddy, refers to House’s monomaniacal and socially unacceptable behavior, often to suggest that abnormal behavior is consistent with what characters can expect from him. Some characters know his story, which is presented as a defining cause of his behavior. Yet knowing the origin of House’s injury does not change how his team approaches him. Moreover, other characters who join later and never learn the truth do learn how to “treat” House nonetheless. To handle the situation of House—to deal with a friend and coworker who suffers constant pain—it makes no difference whether that pain originated from a rare infection, a stabbing wound, or an aneurism. The series’ handling of House’s truth thus affirms the series’ principle that understanding a history doesn’t help understand an illness—knowing why House has pain doesn’t help in dealing with or helping him. “Three Stories” illustrates the need to look beyond plot structure in assessing the simplicity or complexity of narrative and character. Although the staid features of episodic structure might allow for repetitive act structure and enforced conclusions, this episode illustrates the creative possibilities in character development and series outlook that can still be incorporated.
FURTHER READING
DuBose, Mike S. “Morality, Complexity, Experts, and Systems of Authority in House, M.D., or ‘My Big Brain Is My Superpower.’” Television and New Media 11, no. 1 (2010): 20–36.
Mittell, Jason. Complex TV: The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling. New York: New York University Press, 2015.
O’Sullivan, Sean. “Broken on Purpose: Poetry, Serial Television, and the Season.” Storyworlds: A Journal of Narrative Studies 2 (2010): 59–77.
Pearson, Roberta. “Anatomising Gilbert Grissom: The Structure and Function of the Televisual Character.” In Reading CSI: Crime TV Under the Microscope, edited by Michael Allen. London: Tauris, 2007.
NOTES
1 1. Episodic shows have an industrial advantage because their ability to be viewed out of order and haphazardly yields larger audiences and thus license fees in syndication.
2 2. Jeffrey Sconce, “What If? Charting Television’s New Textual Boundaries,” in Television after TV: Essays on a Medium in Transition, ed. Lynn Spigel and Jan Olsson (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004), 97.
3 3. Roberta Pearson, “Anatomising Gilbert Grissom: The Structure and Function of the Televisual Character,” in Reading CSI: Crime TV Under the Microscope, ed. Michael Allen (London: Tauris, 2007).
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