a procedural program can exhibit narrative complexity and innovative techniques of character development. Lotz examines how a single episode draws upon a variety of atypical storytelling strategies to convey meaning and dramatize a central theme of the series: “everybody lies.”
In the 2000s, some U.S. dramatic television entertained its audiences with increasingly complicated characters. Series such as FX’s The Shield, Rescue Me, and Sons of Anarchy and AMC’s Mad Men and Breaking Bad explored the complicated personal and professional lives of male characters and maximized the possibilities of television’s storytelling attributes for character development. While several of these series can be properly described as character studies, other narrative forms also provided compelling examples for thinking about characterization, narrative strategies, and television storytelling. Series such as CSI, Law & Order, and the subject of this essay, House, M.D., are organized episodically, so that they can be understood in individual installments, in stark contrast to the serialized character dramas on cable.1 Yet even series that use limited serial components and instead structure their stories around solving some sort of legal or medical case within each episode can provide lead characters with the texture of depth and sophistication.
Episodically structured storytelling dominates the history of television, and this format has typically offered little narrative or character complexity; instead, characters are stuck in what Jeffrey Sconce describes as “a world of static exposition, repetitive second-act ‘complications,’ and artificial closure.”2 Such an assessment in some ways aptly characterizes the FOX medical drama House, M.D. (hereafter House). The basic features of an episode of House vary little: an opening scene involving characters and settings outside those common to the show begins each episode. These scenes introduce viewers to the case of the week and often feature some sort of misdirection—for instance, it is not the overweight, middle-aged man complaining of chest pains who will become this week’s case, but his apparently healthy wife who will inexplicably collapse. The series’ opening credit sequence rolls, and we return from commercials to find Dr. Gregory House’s diagnostic team beginning their evaluation of the opening’s patient. The remaining minutes of the episode focus on the team’s efforts to identify the patient’s ailment in time to save him or her, embarking upon a series of misdiagnoses along the way. Various interpersonal complications are introduced and addressed throughout the case; typically, they are related to evolving romantic entanglements among the primary cast, although few of these complications are likely to be resolved in one episode. At some point near the end of the episode, House has a conversation—typically with his friend Wilson—about some other matter and becomes suddenly quiet, having just stumbled upon the possible diagnosis evading the team. The condition is caught in time and alleviated (although in some rare cases the team fails to find the diagnosis in time), and the “artificial closure” Sconce notes is achieved.
As a series that chronicles the efforts of a master team of diagnostic doctors to identify and treat the rarest of illnesses, House emphasizes the plot goal of diagnosis in each weekly episode. Where many other series attempt to balance serial and episodic plotlines through a serialized, overarching mystery (Murder One, Burn Notice, Monk), House solves its mystery each week; the exploits of its misanthropic, drug-addicted lead character are what propel serial action instead. The implicit central enigma of its cumulative narrative—or the eight-season total story of House—is whether the series’ eponymous lead can ever be properly civilized. Can House exist without painkillers? Can he cultivate meaningful relationships? Can he be brilliant and happy?
Most series that are dominated by this logic of episodic storytelling emphasize plot action and consequently leave characters fairly static over time. Yet in recent decades, even some episodically structured series have indicated the possibility for complex character development, and as Roberta Pearson outlines, mundane plot action can serve this end. In her case study of CSI’s Gil Grissom, Pearson presents a six-part taxonomy of elements that construct the character: psychological traits/habitual behaviors; physical traits/appearance; speech patterns; interactions with other characters; environment (the places the character inhabits); and biography (character’s backstory).3 She uses this taxonomy to create a language for exploring the particularities of television characters, which, along with techniques of characterization—beyond the case study—have been a significantly under-explored area in the field. She notes that the rudimentary taxonomy works for characters in all moving image forms, but that specific media or narrative strategies may vary techniques. For example, the ongoing storytelling process in television series allows for much more character growth and change than in the limited storytelling period available to realist cinema.4 Pearson’s case is valuable for illustrating that even though many episodic series place little emphasis on character depth, this is a creative choice rather than an inherent feature of episodically structured shows.
To better understand attributes of episodic television storytelling and techniques of characterization, this essay analyzes a single episode of House, focusing on how narrative strategies convey meaning on multiple levels. The episode “Three Stories” conveys crucial character information in its basic plot, although the episode uses confounding techniques such as dream sequences, flashbacks, and imagined alternate realities—rarely clearly marked as such—to do so. The misdirection of these storytelling techniques reaffirms a central theme of the series: namely, that “everybody lies,” which is House’s personal outlook and dictates his particular approach to diagnostic medicine. Thus, this episode of House illustrates the complexity available to a series with a narrative structure that is generally rebuked for its reliance on formula and lack of nuance.
“Three Stories” is arguably the least routine episode of a series that normally maintains exceptional consistency. Although the selection of an aberrant case rarely offers sound footing for broader arguments, the unusualness of this episode underscores its significance and indicates the novelty of the series’ approach to character development. Hence, it serves as the focus of this essay. The episode, the penultimate of the first season, finally explains the injury to House’s leg, which has led to his chronic pain and perhaps his unhappiness—arguably his primary character traits. While this pain and unhappiness centrally define House, they are also what enable future serial storylines, such as his spirals through drug addiction, his efforts to get and remain clean, and his attempts to deal with human interaction and emotions without pharmaceutically induced numbness. House’s struggles to alleviate his pain and his unhappiness—neither he nor the audience is ever fully aware whether these are separate conditions—are traced loosely in the cumulative narrative.
By the time “Three Stories” aired (twenty episodes into the first season) in May of 2005 and finally explained the origin of the lead character’s primary character trait, House had established itself as a bona fide hit. The series benefited from airing during a post-American Idol timeslot, when the reality competition returned in January of 2005, but even this most enviable of lead-ins might not have been adequate to make such a contrary leading character so popular. Greg House remains the least conventionally heroic lead character to motivate a successful broadcast drama, although such flawed characters have been prevalent in recent years in the more niche-targeted storytelling space of original cable dramas. House’s personal misanthropy functions as a guiding ideology of the series, which stems from his requirement that his team of diagnosticians work from the assumption that “everybody lies.” House encourages his team to dismiss medical histories reported by patients and instead sleuth through their homes to uncover the truth or think of things patients may be unwilling to tell doctors.
“Three Stories” begins exceptionally, but not in a way that informs viewers just how significant the exception will become. It opens in the middle of a conversation between House and chief of medicine, Dr. Lisa Cuddy, in a way that violates the well-established pattern of opening episodes with a non-regular character experiencing a medical emergency. The conversation in Cuddy’s office establishes that a fellow doctor is ill and that Cuddy needs House to replace him and lecture on diagnostic medicine to a class of medical students. House
