House & Holmes

Similarities between Gregory House and the famous fictional detective Sherlock Holmes, created by Arthur Conan Doyle, appear throughout the series.

Shore explained that he was always a Holmes fan, and found the character's indifference to his clients unique. The resemblance is evident in House's reliance on psychology, even where it might not seem obviously applicable, inductive reasoning, and his reluctance to accept cases he finds uninteresting.His investigatory method is to logically eliminate diagnoses as they are proved impossible; Holmes used a similar method Both characters play instruments (House plays the piano, the guitar, and the harmonica; Holmes, the violin) and take drugs (House is addicted to Vicodin; Holmes uses cocaine recreationally).House's relationship with Dr. James Wilson echoes that between Holmes and his confidant, Dr. John Watson.Robert Sean Leonard, who portrays Wilson, said that House and his character—whose name is very similar to Watson's—were originally intended to work together much as Holmes and Watson do; in his view, House's diagnostic team has assumed that aspect of the Watson role. Shore said that House's name itself is meant as "a subtle homage" to Holmes. The number of House's apartment, 221B, is a reference to Holmes's street address.

Jeremy Brett as Sherlock Holmes (TV)

Individual episodes of the series contain additional references to the Sherlock Holmes tales. The main patient in the pilot episode is named Rebecca Adler, after Irene Adler, a character in the first Holmes short story. In the season 2 finale, House is shot by a crazed gunman credited as "Moriarty", the name of Holmes's nemesis.^[20] In the season 4 episode "It's a Wonderful Lie", House receives a "second edition Conan Doyle" as a Christmas gift. In the season 5 episode "Joy to the World", House, in an attempt to fool his team, uses a book by Joseph Bell, Conan Doyle's inspiration for Sherlock Holmes.The volume had been given to him the previous Christmas by Wilson, who included the message "Greg, made me think of you". Before acknowledging that he gave the book to House, Wilson tells two of the team members that its source was a patient, Irene Adler

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On set of new Sherlock Holmes film directed by Guy Ritchie starring Robert Downey Junior at St. Pauls Cathedral - London

Quotations on Holmes which remind us of House

From The Sign of Four (the second Sherlock Holmes story)

Quotes Holmes says about Himself

• "I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave for mental exaltation."
• "Eliminate all other factors and the one which remains must be the truth."
• "Viewing the matter as an abstract problem, I had forgotten how personal and painful a thing it might be to you."
• "I could only say what was the balance of probability. I didn't at all expect to be so accurate."
• "Was there ever such a dreary, dismal, unprofitable world? ...What could be more hopelessly prosaic and material?"

Quotes Watson says about himself and his leg wound (note that in the first story, the wound was in his shoulder but it is in the leg wound that Watson adds to the creation of House)

• "...sat nursing my wounded leg....and though it did not prevent me from walking, it ached wearily at every change of the weather."
• "...I... limped impatiently about the room with considerable bitterness in my heart."

Quotes Holmes says about detecting (which could apply as well to diagnostics)

• "...three qualities necessary for the ideal detective.... the power of observation and that of deduction... [and] knowledge...."

What Watson says about Holmes

• "You have an extraordinary genius for minutiae."

Source: House MD GUide

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A House, MD and Sherlock Holmes Primer

by Arachne Jericho on May 31st 2008

For Holmesians unfamiliar with House, and House-ians unfamiliar with Holmes, here’s what you need to know:

• Gregory House is the even more bitter, far scruffier, and just as dark analog of Sherlock Holmes.

• James Wilson is the less hero-worshipping, non-biographer, and just as oddly obsessed analog of Dr. John H. Watson.

  House is just as dependent on Wilson for friendship as Holmes was on Watson.

  Wilson has multiple ex-wives, a la some theories on Watson’s very odd marital life.

• The show features strange medical mysteries rather than strange crime mysteries, but it’s mysteries all the same.

• House has a tendency towards self-destruction, popping Vicodin (”poor man’s cocaine”) as much as Holmes self-injected his 7% solution.

  Both typically don’t need their drugs when hot on a case. But towards their respective ends, both end up taking drugs while hot on a case—implied in the case of Holmes (”The Devil’s Foot”), and directly shown in the case of House (season 3)—and to their serious detriment in both cases.

• There are arguments that Lisa Cuddy is the analog of Inspector Lestrade. Just add more brains and a little dash of sexual tension.

For more comparisons, there’s “House/Homes/Holmes” at House MD Guide.

Weighing The Evidence

Jeremy Brett as Sherlock Holmes

The Cracking of the Friendship

“I thought I’d met all your friend.”

“Who could come tonight? Some friend of yours, perhaps?”
“Except yourself I have none. I do not encourage visitors.”

There Are Friends, and Then There Are Friends

Both Holmes and House are highly dependent on their respective Watson or Wilson, and, as Cuddy once mentioned to House, “I thought I’d met all your friend.”

Unfortunately, this did not mean that either of them appreciated the only friend they cared to accumulate over the years; indeed, both take their W-companion for granted.

This is not a good base for a friendship to survive getting as earth-shaken as House’s did—or as Holmes’ did with Watson when he decided to fake his death at Reichenbach, but more on that later. Even for the patient Watson, this always-present rift eventually resulted in a parting that would not be resolved for over a decade.

For something as traumatic as Amber’s death, and House’s incidental involvement in the cause as well as the failed rescue, and the fact that Wilson is not the hero-worshipper that Watson was, this probably means a permanent break may occur much sooner. Say, before season 6.

Reichenbach Falls: 4th May, 1891

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Pushing Things to the Breaking Point

The next point of comparison is the level of commitment that Watson had with Mary, and that Wilson had with Amber. How much does Wilson hate House, or would Watson hate Holmes, when/if their respective loves died?

It’s been noted that Watson may have grown bored of Mary, leaving her alone many times for adventures with Holmes—as was the case for Wilson and all his ex-wives. But let’s think about the moment—when Amber’s and Mary’s cases were active, and when both men were guaranteed to care deeply. Suppose that Mary had died during The Sign of Four?

And let’s suppose that Holmes was also incidentally involved with Mary’s death, as House was with Amber’s.

I think this would have brought the Holmes-Watson relationship to the breaking point, as even before Reichenbach there were signs of arguments (as when Watson took temporary lodgings away from Baker Street) and bitter disappointment (as when Holmes screwed with Watson’s sympathies by pretending to be dying from a horrible disease, just for the sake of a case in “The Dying Detective”).

Actually leading to the death of a client he loved would break Watson’s hero-worship of Holmes as superman of the law; it would be too much.

And if it would break Holmes and Watson, it will surely break House and Wilson.

Doom and Gloom, O Noes?

But also not the breaking of friendships. Well, no, actually that’s a lie. But not in the case of Holmes and Watson, and probably not in the case of House and Wilson.

Oblivion in the Tender Mercy of Drugs

“Why’d you get so drunk at 5 in the afternoon alone?”
“I need a reason?”
“What are you running away from?”
“When I’m drinking without you, what am I running away from? Hmm. One of those imponderables.”

… Holmes, who loathed every form of society with his whole Bohemian soul, remained in our lodgings in Baker Street, buried among his old books, and alternating from week to week between cocaine and ambition, the drowsiness of the drug, and the fierce energy of his own keen nature.

The Downhill Slope

Why did House drink himself into oblivion at five in the afternoon?

Why did Holmes increase his cocaine usage after Watson left?

Did they need any particular reason?

Probably not. It’s more a case of House and Holmes being high maintenance—and once their W-companions no longer have time to maintain them, their inherently self-destructive natures take hold. It’s a matter of gravity, not a matter of what pushes them down the hill.

Their self-destruction may arguably also be attempts to get attention, likely conscious ones since both House and Holmes are master manipulators of other people’s emotions. House tried to dial up Wilson when he wasdrunk for a ride home, and instead got Amber (thus leading to her death), while Holmes could probably draw the connection between extreme self-neglect and Watson showing up (a la “The Reigate Squires” and “The Devil’s Foot”).

It’s Darkest Before the Dawn

For Holmes, eventually obsession with Moriarty came along, and then “The Final Solution”. By the end of the story, he’d dragged Watson into Switzerland while running from an arch enemy, and it ended with Watson believing Holmes had been killed while fighting Moriarty, both of them plunging into the deadly depths of the raging waters of the Reichenbach Falls. That took a lot out of Watson.

Then, three years later, Holmes returns and surprises Watson in his study, causing the doctor to faint dead away for the first and only time in his life. Quite a re-entrance.

It’s never shown in the canon, but that readjustment between friends must have taken a while to work through, and happens to be the subject of many a pastiche and exploratory essay on “The Final Solution” and “The Empty House”.

But despite all that, Holmes did return a changed man. At first this resulted in a certain gentling of his character into someone who Watson could reconcile with, however terrible and cruel was Holmes’s three-year deception.

Will something similar happen to House, or rather, will House do something comparable? He almost certainly has to in order to change himself. Some things you can only do by yourself—and some things must be done utterly alone.

“People Don’t Change.”

The reunion between Holmes and Watson, as good as it was for a few years, did not last. Holmesian scholars will recognize the time when the last “normal” Holmes story was written, when Holmes’ unstable nature re-asserted itself, and when the final bitterness of Watson came to the forefront.

Eventually Holmes and Watson split up, and would not reunite once more until “His Last Bow”, over a decade later.

Which means that whatever change House does manage to effect, it will not last. As is commonly said on the show, “People don’t change.”

Relationships: Other People

“Nothing matters. We’re all just cockroaches. Wildebeasts dying on the river bank. Nothing we do has any lasting meaning…. So you give up on something real, so that you can hold on to hope. The thing is, hope is for sissies.”

“Exactly, Watson. Pathetic and futile. But is not all life pathetic and futile? Is not his story a microcosm of the whole? We reach. We grasp. And what is left in our hands at the end? A shadow. Or worse than a shadow—misery.”

Letting the Center Not Hold

In many ways, House and Holmes share similar outlooks on life—i.e., it’s hopeless.

Then their Wing-men leave them. There might be a reunion. There might even be change. But nothing lasts forever, and friendships are unfortunately things.

Human beings are social animals. Loneliness gets to even those of us who don’t seek companionship. For people like House and Holmes, the dichotomy of needing a close friend, yet a prickliness that denies people getting close in the first place, is not a healthy thing. Something needs to give.

Whatever needs to give, however, it can’t give while they’re supported by their respective Wilson or Watson. For them to truly change—or to decide to seek an ultimate solution—they must not have enablers. It’s cruel, and sometimes results in suicide or something close to it.

But somehow, House and Holmes are both too damn stubborn to die—as Moriarty in either the show or the books would tell you.

Reaching Out

The final breakup with Watson was followed up just a few years later by Holmes’ early retirement and retreat—nay, perhaps even flight—to the countryside. Away from London, where he had always been at home; and away from cases, which he had always devoured rapaciously.

But something even stranger happened, out there on the Sussex Downs, near the coast. Holmes made a friend in Harold Stackhurst—the day he came out there, in fact. It was quite an achievement for the man who had but one friend in University, and that only after he had spent most of a year moping alone; or for the man who made no friends except for Watson for most of his life.

Additionally, this was a friend with whom he was on such terms that not only could he drop by Stackhurst’s in the evenings without announcement, but Stackhurst could do the same. For Holmes, this is practically sheer instant intimacy.

In fact, given his familiarity with multiple people in “The Lion’s Mane”, he may have made multiple friends. Which is just downright weird. (Indeed, the concept weirds Watson out in Bert Coules’ radio play adaptation of the same story.)

Will House do the same—reach out to someone? Perhaps even reach out to Cuddy, or to any of the other doctors on his old staff or his new one? He’s done this before when Wilson wasn’t available, albeit rarely; and despite its rareness, he does it more often than Holmes did at the same points in their lives.

Gregory House and Sherlock Holmes connections

Source: House Wikia

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How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth? - Sherlock Holmes in The Sign of the Four (1890) on the basic concept behind the differential diagnosis.

Series creator David Shore has said in an interview that Gregory House's character is partly inspired by Sherlock Holmes. The name "House" is a play on "Holmes" (with English pronunciation, a homophone for "homes").

Both Holmes and House are experts who are brought into cases that have proven too difficult for other investigators. Both characters exhibit remarkable powers of observation and deduction, a tendency to come to rapid conclusions after the briefest examination of the circumstances, drug use (cocaine for Holmes, Vicodin for House, morphine for both), talent with a musical instrument (violin for Holmes, piano and guitar for House), and only one real friend (Dr. Watson and Dr. Wilson, respectively), who connects the detached hero to human concerns. Also, just like Watson, at one point Wilson is roommates with House. Watson and Wilson are both attributed to be "ladies' men"; Watson has at least two wives over the course of Holmes' run in literature, while Dr. Wilson has three ex-wives. Both House and Holmes rely on the use of a cane. The two characters also share an unconventional personality and, to an extent, a brusqueness of manner, especially when occupied in an interesting case. Actor Hugh Laurie has remarked that House's obsession with television, video games, and popular music is meant to echo Holmes' habit of listening to classical music or reading dull monographs for hours on end in order to relax his mind while pondering a case.

While House uses large quantities of Vicodin for pain management, Holmes used drugs in an experimental, often research-driven modality, and also took cocaine intravenously when bored; some episodes imply that House at one time also used drugs in this experimental fashion before he developed his current dependency on Vicodin, making references to experiences with LSD and cocaine. In the episode "Distractions", House used LSD to treat a self-induced migraine.

One other important detail on House's and Holm's drug use, is the ways Wilson/Watson handles their friends drug use. Medically they have no problem while they abuse narcotics, but morally, is a different story; they both disagree with their friends vices. But While Watson has claimed to have "wheened" Holmes off cocaine, Wilson has several times attempted to rid House of his Vicodin addiction.

Source: Tv Guide 2004

House and Wilson.

House's dependency on Vicodin as a substitute to his cases has recently been touched upon at the onset of Season Three. Without the intellectual stimulation of diagnosing patients, House falls into a stark depression, even when his leg is supposedly "cured" and pain-free (see the episode "No Reason"). He requires either the high of a confirmed diagnosis or Vicodin to function. The similarity between his and Holmes' own addictions (Holmes only required drugs whenever there wasn't a case at hand) is another bridge between them.

The patient in the series' pilot episode is named Rebecca Adler, where as Holmes is outwitted by Irene Adler in his first short story, "A Scandal in Bohemia". The man who shoots House in the episode "No Reason" has the surname Moriarty, echoing Holmes' nemesis Professor Moriarty (the name is never mentioned in the episode; merely derived from the credits). Also, in one episode, House's apartment number is revealed to be 221B, Sherlock Holmes' Baker Street address. In the episode "Whac-A-Mole", House challenges his team to a game, and places what he says is the right answer in an envelope on which was written "The game is a itchy foot," which is a play on "The game is afoot," a quote often attributed to Holmes (who was in turn quoting Shakespeare (Henry IV, part 1)).

Near the end of the episode "Failure to Communicate," in explaining his understanding of what his patient with aphasia is actually saying, House gives a relatively common riddle about a room with an all-southern view and a polar bear to his lackeys. This is the exact same riddle given by Holmes to Dr. Watson in Young Sherlock Holmes, and another nod to the parallels between Holmes and House.

The character of Sherlock Holmes was originally based by his creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, on Joseph Bell, a doctor noted for his love of deductive reasoning and skill with both ordinary diagnostics and forensic medicine (which was quite new at the time); the character of House can thus be seen in a way as taking the idea of Sherlock Holmes full circle.

In "It's a Wonderful Lie", House receives a second-edition Arthur Conan Doyle as one of his Secret Santa gifts.

In chapter 5x11, "Joy to the World", Wilson refers to an "Irene Adler" (calling her House's one true love) when he is talking with Taub and Kutner about why he threw away a valuable gift (that valuable gift being a rare medical text on diagnosis written by a "Dr. Joseph Bell"), . "Irene Adler" is the protagonist of the Sherlock Holmes short story "A Scandal in Bohemia" and actually manages to outwit Holmes. Watson called her the only woman Holmes ever loved

Sherlock HOlmes with Robert Downey Junior and Jude Law (Holmes & Watson) Due out on Christmas Day, 2009

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