House and Holmes

August 20, 2006 9:36 PM

Is Dr. Gregory House, a gleefully misanthropic diagnostician of infectious diseases (played by the endlessly brilliant Hugh Laurie), the modern-day counterpart of Sherlock Holmes? There's plenty of connections* to read into, starting most obviously with the play on words: Holmes is a homonym of "homes", which is a plural synonym of "house".
posted by Lush (45 comments total)

To me, he will always be Prince "thicker than a whale omelette" George.
posted by mrnutty at 9:53 PM on August 20, 2006

mrnutty, my real name is Rob but I guess I could go by the name..."Bob".

Love The Blackadder. And as a trained-as-an-M.D., I love Hugh Laurie as House. He voices what probably many practising MDs would like to say. Also, the show must have a diligent medical advisor: unlike a lot of shows they pronounce all the terms correctly. They sometimes say things in a more verbose manner than would normally be used, but they have to spell things out for the lay audience.

I give the show top marks and thank you Lush for the post!
posted by Turtles all the way down at 10:00 PM on August 20, 2006

Laurie makes the show watchable. I lurve him.

And it's amazing that he's a "hottie" now -- watching Jeeves & Wooster he just screams "dork."

I thought I read an interview with the show's creator where he explicitly stated the Holmes/House connection, but I'll be damned if I remember where I read it.
posted by potsmokinghippieoverlord at 10:11 PM on August 20, 2006

This blog reviews each episode's medical accuracy.

I miss Blackadder too.
posted by painquale at 10:17 PM on August 20, 2006 [1 favorite]

The Wikipedia article makes mention of the similarities, including drug usage.
posted by spaltavian at 10:29 PM on August 20, 2006

Self-linkish, but geez people, if you just listened to wendell, you'd have known over a year ago...

Officially, the name of Dr. Gregory House, on Fox's Tuesday medical drama "House," is an indirect homage to Sherlock Holmes, a diagnostic detective with at least as colorful a personality as the fictional sleuth. At least he's not related to the last semi-successful show about a medical genius: Doogie Howser.

I didn't even need to directly ask show creator David Shore about that. He had declared the House/Holmes connection in a newspaper interview before I wrote the article. The House/Howser connection was just me making another one of my bad jokes.
posted by wendell at 10:47 PM on August 20, 2006

I just starting watching the show 3 days ago (I'll be current in 2 hours, thanks to the miracle of being a slacker) and House's drug use was what really got me thinking of the similarities with Holmes. But some looks at Wikipedia and IMDb quickly revealed it was no hidden secret I'd picked up on, particularly after 2 full seasons.
posted by chudmonkey at 10:51 PM on August 20, 2006

i just spent a good amount of time arguing with my friend about this show. i'll just say that i loathe it.

hugh laurie really deserves better.
posted by jimmy at 11:36 PM on August 20, 2006

House lives in apartment no. 221B. Do we need more of a sledgehammer than that?
posted by goo at 12:02 AM on August 21, 2006

You mean House is actually DangerMouse.

Well, that makes sense. House rhymes with mouse, and where House has a cane, DangerMouse has an eye patch.

Genius.
posted by seanyboy at 12:06 AM on August 21, 2006

I know where Hugh Laurie got the American accent, but where did he get the full head of hair?
posted by A189Nut at 1:20 AM on August 21, 2006

""We're looking for Wilson to step up in that regard, as House's everyman, leaning over his shoulder and going, 'How'd you do that?' And more important, 'Why'd you do that?'...." "

Man, I hope they don't make Wilson into an idiot yes-man as this quote seems to imply.

Also, House needs to lose a couple of patients. I really enjoy the show, but it's going to get awfully repetitive if everyone lives at the end of every episode.
posted by madajb at 2:17 AM on August 21, 2006

Soupy twist, my dear Watson.
posted by patricio at 2:47 AM on August 21, 2006

Rather meanly, I love the way this thread runs out of dorky energy once the Holmes sub-text of House has been established.

This is exactly as it should be.

It's a fine show with some tight writing and acting, but not much more than that. It can't bear the weight of too much analysis. The Sopranos it definitely ain't.
posted by Jody Tresidder at 4:12 AM on August 21, 2006

Crumbs, seanyboy, you are so on to something there!

Dr. Wilson always reminded me of Penfold, and Edward Vogler, House's money-obsessed nemesis from the first season, is a thinly-veiled Baron Silas Von Greenback.
posted by infinitewindow at 4:20 AM on August 21, 2006

House is a fun show, and as far as I'm concerned, has pretty much perfected the detective-TV-show-reborn-as-medical-show genre. It's interesting to note that a ridiculous number of the medical mysteries are lifted from the writings of Berton Roueche, a journalist who wrote true-life detective stories about epidemiologists and public-health officers for the New Yorker in the 40s and 50s.

If you like the show, I'd highly recommend finding a copy of some of Roueche's stuff, as it's really good, even if it will regularly spoil the medical mystery of the week on House.
posted by Eldritch at 4:25 AM on August 21, 2006 [3 favorites]

Good links, but, yeah, wasn't the homage obvious?
posted by GuyZero at 5:13 AM on August 21, 2006

Also, the show must have a diligent medical advisor: unlike a lot of shows they pronounce all the terms correctly. They sometimes say things in a more verbose manner than would normally be used, but they have to spell things out for the lay audience.

NPR had an interesting interview with the show's creator David Shore and its chief medical consultant Dr. David Foster on 'Fresh Air'.
posted by tomboko at 5:42 AM on August 21, 2006

I don't know about the New Yorker, but Discover Magazine runs a medical detective story every month that follows a very similar format to an average episode of house.
posted by empath at 5:54 AM on August 21, 2006

NYTimes magazine does a similar thing as Discover. That said, to the medicos out there- are his cases and solutions credible or no? That is to say, absurdly simplistic and an insult to any halfway good practioner or wildly convoluted and highly unlikely to ever arise in real life?
posted by IndigoJones at 6:01 AM on August 21, 2006

The link in post #4 will give you an episode by episode look at how good the medical stuff is.

The only thing that really bugs me is that they pronouce guillian-barre completely differently to how we do on the neurology ward I work on. I've asked around and apparantly there's no set pronounciation so while they're not wrong per se it still bugs me.
posted by Silentgoldfish at 6:10 AM on August 21, 2006

Well, that and the complete lack of nurses on the show. But House has Hugh Laurie so I can overlook that.
posted by Silentgoldfish at 6:11 AM on August 21, 2006

"Also, House needs to lose a couple of patients. I really enjoy the show, but it's going to get awfully repetitive if everyone lives at the end of every episode."

He's lost 3 I'm aware of... a Baby in Maternity, the mother in Babies & Bathwater and the cop in the first part of Euphoria.
posted by Auz at 6:42 AM on August 21, 2006

I initially watched the show just because it had Hugh Laurie in it and I relished the surreal juxtaposition of one of the most quintessential English comedians and a big budget US TV show. Now I watch it because it's a rather good show, and Hugh Laurie is disarmingly convincing...
posted by ob at 6:50 AM on August 21, 2006

Isn't the season premier for this show in just a few days or something?
posted by crunchland at 7:00 AM on August 21, 2006

Isn't he really just the medical version of Murder She Wrote? Why does he get all the weirdest cases?
posted by agregoli at 7:09 AM on August 21, 2006

I saw the episode where there was some life-threatening medical emergency and the whole staff thought it was this one thing but House thought it was this other thing and since he's the doctor they had to do what he said and it turned out to be House's idea and they were all like, "i don't care for his methods but he gets the job done!" It was very exciting.
posted by sonofsamiam at 7:19 AM on August 21, 2006 [1 favorite]

Why does he get all the weirdest cases?

He's the head of diagnostics or somesuch... anyway, his job is to get the cases no one else can diagnose. Deus Ex Machina and all.
posted by GuyZero at 7:39 AM on August 21, 2006

Thank you Silentgoldfish (assuming you were answering my question).

I guess I was asking a slightly broader question, not the specifics of a given case or show, but in general if this sort of weird case crops up in reality and if so his "detective" work is a fair reflection on how it might be resolved.

Just curious. I'm a sucker for incomprehesible professional jargon in any event.
posted by IndigoJones at 9:56 AM on August 21, 2006

crunchland : "Isn't the season premier for this show in just a few days or something?"

Not for a while yet, but season two comes out on dvd this week.
posted by graventy at 10:11 AM on August 21, 2006

Please Mr Music, will you play?
I've never seen Dr House but I love "Blackadder," "A Bit of Fry and Laruie", and Sherlock Holmes was in part based on Dr Joseph Bell, so basing Dr House on Mr Holmes just brings it full circle. I guess I'll have to watch the show now.
posted by Grod at 10:14 AM on August 21, 2006

House M.D. -
The Answer to your life threatening illness is a mystery that can only be solved by thinking of the most absolute improbable cause. Now take that answer and throw it out the window because the real answer was under your nose the entire time! Also, before you can be cured you will be declared medically dead twice! Also, it's your fault!
posted by clunkyrobot at 10:58 AM on August 21, 2006

Now that we have those pesky literary allusions out of the way, we can have more homoerotic fan-art, right? That's really all I'm interested in.
posted by ruby.aftermath at 12:48 PM on August 21, 2006

He's lost 3 I'm aware of... a Baby in Maternity, the mother in Babies & Bathwater and the cop in the first part of Euphoria.

Sure, he's lost some.
But I'd like to see some folk permantly crippled by their disease, or slip into a coma, etc.

Or an episode where House is completely wrong, and someone else breaks the rules to save the patient (this might have already happened).
Or where Wilson _tells_ him what's wrong (rather than saying something off-hand that just happens to inspire House to the right answer).

Also, I'd like a novelty show where House goes to England for a conference, and puts on a "fake" English accent to annoy his hosts.
posted by madajb at 1:41 PM on August 21, 2006

"Isn't the season premier for this show in just a few days or something?"

September 05. A bit more than two weeks.
Visit http://next-episode.net to keep track of TV episodes.
posted by madman at 1:52 PM on August 21, 2006

madajb: Laurie has put on a fake English accent at least once when mocking that Aussie doc (whom he once called a Brit: "You put the Queen on your money, you're a Brit.")
posted by athenian at 2:53 PM on August 21, 2006

athenian -
Yeah, I saw that one.
That's what made me think it'd be funny if he went over there.
Imagine House making fun of uptight British doctors in a "fake" accent. That's comedy.
posted by madajb at 3:20 PM on August 21, 2006

madajib, there was that one episode where the team amputated the patient's hand...failing to cure him. Also, House himself was permanently crippled by his disease.

Differential diagnosis: television deficiency. Treatment: you need to watch more House.
posted by infinitewindow at 4:53 PM on August 21, 2006

A189nut: where did he get the american accent?

The first I had ever heard about him was "House". I thought I had him pegged as being from the mid-west-U.S. Apparently he's damn good at what he does.
posted by snsranch at 5:25 PM on August 21, 2006

I guess I was asking a slightly broader question, not the specifics of a given case or show, but in general if this sort of weird case crops up in reality and if so his "detective" work is a fair reflection on how it might be resolved.

In a very broad way yes, in that if no-one can figure out what someone's got they tend to treat symptoms and hope something works. Also, there are a number of diseases that can only really be diagnosed by excluding other possibilities first.

At least, that's my experience -- we had a patient in my hospital (who wound up on my ward in the end) who went undiagnosed for 6 months while a team of docs tried to work out what she had. Kind of sad as they finally determined it was scleroderma, which is uncurable, and she died just after xmas.
posted by Silentgoldfish at 5:29 PM on August 21, 2006

What has always struck me about this show is the fact that it hit the ground running. The scripts, dialogue, pacing and interplay between characters was almost unaturally good for a new show.
posted by UseyurBrain at 6:39 PM on August 21, 2006

Sure, he's lost some.
But I'd like to see some folk permantly crippled by their disease, or slip into a coma, etc.

What about the episode with the father and son, where the father had a junkyard and unwittingly gave the college student son a keepsake made of uranium...? I thought the son died in that one -- or else they had to admit that he was going to die. House didn't save that one.
posted by tomboko at 6:56 PM on August 21, 2006

Thank you, Silentgoldfish, it's been floating about my mind for a few months now.
posted by IndigoJones at 7:19 PM on August 21, 2006

For a while during House's run our local PBS affiliate would run episodes of Jeeves and Wooster the same nights that House was on (but earlier, I think). You couldn't ask for a pair of Laurie's roles that were more different from one and other. When I watch House now I frequently forget that this is the same Hugh Laurie that was in so many shows like Blackadder that I watched as a kid. (and still watch!)

I never was able to catch the show during it's regular run, but over the course of this summer I've become addicted to watching the reruns. Every time I stumble across an episode I have to sit down and watch it all the way through. So I think a couple of DVD box sets are going to be on my Xmas wish list this year. :>
posted by kosher_jenny at 11:18 PM on August 21, 2006

Btw, the site discussing the medical accuracies/inaccuracies in the show was already linked in the word "diagnostician" of the post, which sleuthier types would've found easily enough simply by hovering one's mouse over the links. :P


For what it's worth, I made this post primarily as a loving tribute to House and Hugh Laurie. The question is rhetorical (mainly just a way to frame the plethora of related links), but in any case, the connection is not something you notice outright when you first start watching the series: it only becomes clear well into the second season and after so many interviews.

My favorite review of the show comes from The Stranger:

"... every episode is basically exactly the same: There's a cold opening (stolen right from the Six Feet Under playbook) in which someone almost dies. This individual is rushed to the hospital, where one of House's colleagues tricks the curmudgeonly doctor into being intrigued enough to take the case. His team misdiagnoses the condition, the patient almost dies, then they re-misdiagnose it, the patient almost dies again, then House figures out what's really going on—usually thanks to some piece of personal information the patient lied about—and saves a life with only seconds to spare. The disease is almost always preposterously arcane (e.g. African sleeping sickness), and the stakes are always life and death. It's completely ridiculous, and completely wonderful."

Why yes, yes it is!

P.S. I recently saw Hugh Laurie as George in Blackadder and he's so hilarious in a completely different way - silly. absurd, slapstick. Favorite episode: Hugh Laurie in drag as Georgina performs so well in a stage play that Stephen Fry's character becomes enamored enough to want to marry "her".
posted by Lush at 12:25 AM on August 29, 2006