List of House characters

This page is a comprehensive listing and detailing of the various characters in the television series House, divided sectionally as appropriate.

Contents

Main characters

Senior doctors

Diagnostic team

Seasons 1–3

The original diagnostic team consisted of Dr. Cameron, Dr. Chase and Dr. Foreman. While both of their tenures had brief interruptions, Chase and Cameron still appear semi-regularly on the show. They advise the newer fellows in the Diagnostic Department in seasons 4–5, or participate in cases directly when appropriate.

Seasons 4–5

Following the events of the season three finale, House began a long-running competition to select a new diagnostic team, progressively eliminating "contestants" from an original pool of 40 applicants. This story arc ran through the first half of Season 4, from episodes 4-02 to 4-09. His final team consists of Dr. Foreman and the three successful "contestants": Dr. Taub, Dr. Kutner and "Thirteen".

Season 6

Season 7

Season 8

Recurring characters

Edward Vogler

Edward Vogler (Chi McBride) is the billionaire owner of a pharmaceutical firm and, in a season 1 story arc, became the new chairman of the board of PPTH, a position he gained through a $100 million donation to the hospital. Vogler sought to reshape PPTH into a testing facility for his firm's new drugs and saw House's maverick ways and blatant disregard for rules and authority figures as a substantial legal and financial liability. When House refused to kowtow, so to speak, to Vogler's increasingly capricious demands (including an order for House to fire one of his fellows) and made a mockery of Vogler's company at a press banquet, Vogler gave the board an ultimatum: fire House, or lose Vogler's grant. After an impassioned motion from Cuddy for the board members to put the hospital's independence ahead of Vogler's donation, the board voted to retain House, as well as voting Vogler off the board of directors and therefore losing his $100 million.

Fox demanded a bad guy to be added to the show, a few months before House went on a Christmas hiatus.[1] Shore opposed Fox's request, because he thought adding such a character would be a bad idea.[1] Although Shore thought he managed to convince the producers not to add the character, during his vacation in Israel, he was contacted by Jacobs, who informed him that Jeff Zucker, the head of the Universal studio, threatened to cut the season short by six episodes unless the character was added.[1] To prevent this from happening, Shore created the character.[1] McBride was hired to film five episodes.[2] However the producers decided not to extend the character's story arc.[1] In a video David Shore said: "Chi McBride is so larger than life. He’s literally just a physically imposing person, and we just wanted someone who could really clash with [House], somebody who could be emotionally and physically and psychologically imposing as he is and could go head to head with him."[3]

Stacy Warner

Stacy Warner (Sela Ward) was Dr. House's former live-in girlfriend (for five years), a Constitutional lawyer and Duke University graduate. Two years after their breakup, she married Mark Warner. She appears in 9 episodes during the run of season 2, taking a job at PPTH (after asking Cuddy to make sure it was okay with Gregory House) to be close to her husband during his recovery.

House and Stacy's relationship has been strained due to his relentless attempts to prove she still has feelings for him. Mark aided House's cause by driving a wedge between himself and his wife when he suspects a brewing affair. Mark was eventually proven correct, as Stacy fell for House all over again and they slept together. As Stacy prepared to leave her husband for House, he then rejected her (stating that he could not make her happy, because he could not change). She quit her job at the hospital and went back home to Short Hills with Mark. An enraged Wilson believed House broke her heart not out of guilt for Mark (which is not his modus), but as a last-ditch resort to ensure that House does not allow himself happiness. The aftermath of this botched affair left House in a stark depression. Stacy has not appeared on the show since.

In the episode "Son of Coma Guy", when playing a questions game with a patient to make a diagnosis, House admitted that he had been in love once. He said they met when she shot him in a game of paintball, Doctors vs Lawyers. Presumably, House was talking about Stacy. When the patient asked if that was the only time he'd ever been in love, House avoids answering and changes the subject.

Michael Tritter

Detective Michael Tritter (David Morse) is one of House's clinic patients. After House refuses to run tests at Tritter's request and insults him, Tritter trips House. House agrees to the tests and tells Tritter he has to check his temperature to rule out infection. House proceeds to use a rectal thermometer, and his supposed reason for using the rectal thermometer over a normal mouth thermometer is Tritter's chewing of nicotine gum, since oral readings can be affected by food and drink. House then leaves the room on a pretense with the thermometer still inserted in Tritter's rectum; House intentionally never returns and Tritter endures the rectal thermometer for two hours.

Afterwards, Tritter demands an apology from House for deliberately leaving the thermometer in him. House refuses, apparently spurred on by the patient's attitude, which is as bad as House's. Caught speeding and arrested for possession of allegedly unprescribed medication, House is thrown in jail overnight by Tritter, who searches his house the next week and finds a large amount of Vicodin. He also interviews House's staff looking for inconsistencies in their stories. He proceeds to tighten his vise grip on Wilson by freezing Wilson's bank account, towing his car, and revoking his drug prescription rights because he wants Wilson to testify against House in court.

After Tritter discovers that Wilson refuses to betray House, he turns on to House's assistants, freezing Foreman and Cameron's accounts, before talking to each one of them in turn. Foreman and Cameron refuse to testify in court about House, but when Tritter talks to Chase, he makes it appear to the hospital staff as though they had had a pleasant lunch together. Chase is concerned that this makes Foreman and Cameron think that Chase has told Tritter something, although he had refused to, his only stated reason being that he would lose his job.

Tritter finally succeeds in his goal when Wilson comes to him, requesting "thirty pieces of silver" in a symbolic statement of his decision to betray House, whom he has come to see as spiraling out of control. In the final days leading up to House's trial, House enters rehab. Tritter confronts him in rehab to see if he was really going through with it. When the charges against House were dropped at the trial, because Cuddy fabricated evidence that acquitted House, Tritter wished House good luck and said that he hoped he was wrong about him. Tritter has not appeared on the show since.

Amber Volakis

Dr. Amber Volakis (Anne Dudek) is an interventional radiologist featured in the 4th and 5th seasons as House's main antagonist. In House's competition to hire a new team, she is #24. Volakis is willing to do anything to get the job, including acts of dishonesty. This is first seen when she convinces a group of applicants to quit, rather than be humiliated by House; she returns moments later admitting it was a ruse. She is subsequently referred to as "Cutthroat Bitch" and "Bitch" by House throughout the season, and is even referred to as such on House's caller I.D. After the characters stop using this nickname, she is still almost always called by her first name, unlike the rest of the characters. She sometimes coerces Chase and Cameron, now reassigned to different departments of the hospital, into helping her. Her persistence and unorthodox approaches initially win her praise, but she is ultimately eliminated because House feels she cannot accept being wrong, something he says she would need to be able to accept on a regular basis if she were to work for him.

Dr. Volakis returns in "Frozen" when House discovers that she is Wilson's new girlfriend, a fact Wilson had been trying to conceal from House. House and Amber quickly develop an adversarial relationship, bickering over "shared custody" of Wilson. In the two-part season 4 finale (episodes "House's Head" and "Wilson's Heart"), Amber is involved in a bus crash alongside House, who had seen symptoms of an unknown disease in her immediately before the crash. He later realizes that she is suffering from amantadine poisoning; she had earlier taken some flu pills containing this compound, and damage to her kidneys in the crash left them unable to filter it out of her system. She dies in Wilson's arms as a result of multiple organ failures due to her accidental poisoning. She was only absent in two episodes throughout the fourth season.

Amber re-appeared as a hallucination of House's at the end of the episode "Saviors". This was expanded in the episode "House Divided" where House continued to see Amber and was revealed to be part of his subconscious, brought on by lack of sleep and guilt over failing to foresee Kutner's suicide. His subconscious takes the form of Amber due to his guilt over her death also. House first sought to shut her out with sleeping pills but later engages proactively with his subconscious to figure out the case. However, this proves almost fatal to the patient at the time when House gets the diagnosis wrong and almost kills Chase at his bachelor party (inadvertently causing him anaphylactic shock when he licks a stripper covered in strawberry flavored body butter – Chase suffers from an allergy to strawberries). House hypothesizes that Amber was actually trying to murder Chase (and therefore House was). House uses the sleeping pill at the conclusion of the episode but finds he is still seeing Amber. In the next episode "Under My Skin" it is shown that House's hallucinations of Amber were due to his use of Vicodin, and he was forced to detox. However, in the season finale, after it is exposed that House in fact hallucinated his detox as well, Amber re-appears as his hallucination.

Critic Kelly Woo, from TV Squad, placed her on #3 on her list of "Seven new characters that worked" just below Lost's Benjamin Linus and Desmond Hume.[4]

Lucas Douglas

Lucas Douglas (Michael Weston) is a private investigator. He is hired by House in the fifth season episode "Not Cancer" to spy on House's team and gain information about them. Among other things, he finds out about a secret bank account started up by Taub's wife of which Taub is unaware. Impressed by his thorough efforts, House decides to put Lucas "on retainer."

Next, in "Adverse Events", House uses Lucas to gain information about Cuddy's personal life. Lucas, though, had also begun to take a romantic interest in Cuddy. In "Lucky Thirteen", House uses him to spy on Wilson because he suspects he was lying about where he was one morning. Lucas finds out that he's dating a hooker and that he's doing drugs. House then figures out Wilson was trying to throw him off because he knew Lucas was following him. It is also revealed that Lucas got the keys to all of his fellows' houses. House also used him to dig up info about Foreman, but could not find anything interesting.

Michael Weston reprises the role of Lucas during season six in the episode "Known Unknowns".[5] Lucas had begun dating Cuddy. In the season 6 finale, Cuddy breaks off her engagement with him and ends their relationship so that she can be with House.

Rachael Taub

Rachael Taub (Jennifer Crystal Foley) is Chris Taub's wife and has appeared in 11 episodes so far, mostly dealing with Chris' infidelity. She reveals to Chris that she is pregnant in the seventh season. In season eight, she wants to move across country with her new boyfriend and her & Taub's daughter, but Taub tries to stop them.

Sam Carr

Sam Carr (Cynthia Watros) is Wilson's first wife, whom he starts dating again in season six. They break up in season seven.

Unsuccessful applicants for fellowship

Minor characters

Family members

Hospital workers and patients

References