SPOILERS FOR HOUSE M.D ALL SEASONS
If you’re familiar with House M.D, you know how polarizing the character of Dr. House is. I’ll be honest, I am an open and adamant House apologist (in case that wasn’t obvious from the title). Of course, this wretched man has done plenty wrong, but he is not nearly as evil as people want to believe.
As I made clear in an article published two weeks ago, House does not operate on self-interest alone. He operates based on his own strict morals and warped view of the world. In his mind (and mine), many of his more abhorrent actions are excusable, as they are what ultimately lead to saved lives. It can’t be denied that his methods are effective, even though they often result in an impressive number of HR complaints and costly legal battles. These issues, however, are a small price to pay for cured patients.
House’s logic, as I understand it, is that he is destined to be in a perpetual state of misery, so he made the decision to place himself in a constant state of despair, one that he can grow to accept and adjust to. This way he can expect the misery and have it be on his own terms. Rather than things just happening to him against his will, he controls his world using his own created chaos to prevent genuine chaos from hurting him. When you approach his character using this framework, it’s easier to understand why he’s cruel to those around him. House is protecting himself from his unfortunate reality; he can’t be happy, at least not long enough for that happiness to negate the pain he’s experienced in his life.
It’s unfortunately true that the two most important relationships in House’s life prove his ideology. His relationship with Cuddy led to an immeasurable amount of pain for House. His relationship with Wilson led to the destruction of his life completely. It’s hard to argue that it was better for House to be vulnerable because every time he was, it ended in pain for him.
However, one truly can’t go through life isolated. Even if House believed that’s what he wanted and needed, deep down he knew it wasn’t true. He consciously chose to be a doctor, a job that is heavily involved with other people. He could’ve just as easily pursued his interest in quantum physics, a job more suitable to solitude. He wanted to force himself to be around people and be of service to them. This alone emphasizes his humanity and can easily fly under the radar as it’s stated extensively that House is a doctor for the puzzles exclusively, despite that clearly not being the case.
House creates walls between him and those around him, both to protect himself and to ensure the patient’s health, as he figures his misery and distance from those around him allows him to be the brilliant doctor that he is. We’re also able to deduce that House places all his value on his brilliance and it’s hinted that he believes himself unworthy or incapable of love. He uses his harsh exterior to protect himself from proving that he truly has no value outside of his ability to solve cases.
The series finale, wherein House fakes his death to avoid going to jail during Wilson’s final few months as he’s dying of cancer, proves my point, showing what was woven under the surface of his character throughout the series. House sacrifices everything we were made to believe was valuable to him: his puzzles, his job, his drugs, everything he had, for Wilson. All the things that House values, added together, didn’t compare to the value Wilson holds in his life. He effectively ended his life in exchange for five months with his best friend. The entire series we’re told how selfish House is, how uncaring he is for everyone but himself, and yet he does what he did. He just as easily could’ve ended his life in the burning building, ending his suffering and finalizing his self-destruction, but he knew Wilson needed him. This is a level of care and selflessness that we don’t see from anyone else on the series, and only solidifies what us House apologists knew all along: that he is only blunt and cold to create distance from him and others because he loves and cares too deeply, and by opening himself up he’s risking a pain incomparable to anything else.