From children to senior citizens, from the homeless to successful TV stars, Dr. Gregory House has treated plenty of patients over the course of eight seasons. We’ve combed through all of them and handpicked our 20 favorite patients of the week who we’ll always remember.
#20 Oliver
Played by: James LeGros
Episode 8.22: “Everybody Dies”
Oliver will certainly hold a special place in House history as the final patient of the week, and the fact that he’s a drug addict like House himself makes him a perfect way to end the series.
#19 George
Played by: Pruitt Taylor Vance
Episode 3.6: “Que Srea Sera”
It’s impossible not to remember this dangerously obese patient who demanded that House look for something other than his massive weight to explain his problems.
#18 Clarence
Played by: LL Cool J
Episode 2.1: “Acceptance”
Of course House would become obsessed with the case of a death row inmate, because the fact that he was sentenced to die anyway made saving him that much more interesting.
#17 Alice Tanner
Played by: Amy Irving
Episode 7.3: “Unwritten”
This author of a popular children’s book series revealed House’s secret love of her books and his obsession with getting closure. It also started the interesting and eventually destructive pattern of House’s relationship with Cuddy changing him.
#16 Evan Greer
Played by: Jason Lewis
Episode 4.14: “Living the Dream”
Who can forget House drugging and kidnapping his favorite soap opera star because he diagnosed him through the TV?
#15 Dibala
Played by: James Earl Jones
Episode 6.3: “The Tyrant”
Any TV role played by iconic actor James Earl Jones is sure to be memorable, but House gave him a great role as an African dictator who caused the doctors to wonder a fascinating ethical dilemma: Do you save an evil man? The answer for one doc was “No,” and that led to the inevitable end of Chase and Cameron’s marriage.
#14 Spencer
Played by: Angela Gots
Episode 5.5: “Lucky Thirteen”
Despite what the title says, viewers were the lucky ones with this patient of the week, Thirteen’s sexy one-night stand.
#13 Lee
Played by: Mos Def
Episode 5.19: “Locked In”
One of the most creatively-inspired episodes, Mos Def was fantastic as a patient locked in his own mind, unable to talk or communicate with his doctors in any way. That fascinated House, but it was Lee’s inner monologue that made him so compelling.
#12 Peter Treiber
Played by: Jamie Elman
Episode 8.20: “Post Mortem”
One of the final patients, this know-it-all doctor was smart enough to know that House is the only person he wanted to diagnose him. He also helped Chase see the light and finally move on.
#11 Benjamin Byrd
Played by: Wentworth Miller
Episode 8.3: “Charity Case”
Miller has done very little acting since Prison Break ended, so we were excited to see him pop up as a, overly charitable man in the final season.
#10 Afsoun Hamidi
Played by: Shohreh Aghdashloo
Episode 7.23: “Moving On”
Perhaps the craziest patient in House’s history, this performance artist had no problem letting others hurt her for the sake of the art and refused to break character even as she was dying.
#9 Jason
Played by: Zeljko Ivanek
Episode 5.9: “Last Resort”
It’s kind of hard to forget a patient who took everyone hostage and demanded a diagnosis from House.
#8 Boyd
Played by: Thomas Dekker
Episode 2.19: “House vs. God”
The title of the episode says it all as House went toe-to-toe with an alleged teenage faith healer. It also highlights the show’s ability to find talented actors as Dekker went on to have a prominent role in NBC’s Heroes and starred in two shows of his own, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles and The Secret Circle.
#7 Fran
Played by: Jenny O’Hara
Episode 3.18: “Airborne”
While House and Cuddy were stuck on an airplane, his team was diagnosing one of the strangest patients ever: a woman in her 60s who decided to live life to the fullest by hiring prostitutes, doing drugs in South America and living a wildly hedonistic lifestyle that was the total opposite of what she looked like.
#6 Sister Mary Augustine
Played by: Elizabeth Mitchell
Episode 1.5: “Damned If You Do”
House has always been fascinated by religion and faith, mostly because he doesn’t understand it, and the first time he faced off with it came in the form of treating a nun.
#5 Patrick Obyedikov
Played by: Dave Matthews
Episode 3.15: “Half-Wit”
In his first and only TV series acting credit, singer Dave Matthews was captivating as the mentally-challenged pianist who amazed House with his piano playing skills. His perfect sense of music impressed House, which is no easy feat, and the episode remains one of my all-time favorites.
#4 Nate
Played by: Nick Lane
Episode 3.23: “The Jerk”
It’s always fun when the patients reflect Dr. House’s own behaviors, and no one did it better that this snotty kid in the appropriately titled episode “The Jerk.” Naturally House was drawn to the case of his teenage malcontent doppelganger.
#3 Gregory House
Played by: Carmen Electra
Episode 1.21: “Three Stories”
This season 1 episode remains the single greatest episode the show ever produced as the show wove three separate cases together seamlessly with various storytelling techniques. It also marked the first time we learned about how House came to walk with a cane, though to disguise his own identity, he asked the class to imagine the patient who was actually him was Carmen Electra.
#2 Amber Volakis
Played by: Anne Dudek
Episode 4.16: “Wilson’s Heart”
The two-part season finale was House at its best as the drug-addicted doctor tried to figure out what he saw on the bus that crashed. The reveal that it was Amber, House’s old potential team member and Wilson’s serious girlfriend, changed everything and the tragedy of her final moments as Dr. House realized it was something as simple as a flu medicine made it even sadder.
#1 Danny Jennings
Played by: Christopher Marquette
Episode 7.17: “Fall From Grace”
The fact that House staged a mini Joan of Arcadia reunion between Marquette and Amber Tamblyn as Martha Masters was cool enough. But then it turned out this homeless patient was actually a cannibal in the most shocking twist ending ever, even more shocking because he escaped, never to be heard from again. I like to think he’s still nibbling on humans somewhere in New Jersey.
Senior Writer, BuddyTV
John watches nearly every show on TV, but he specializes in sci-fi/fantasy like The Vampire Diaries, Supernatural and True Blood. However, he can also be found writing about everything from Survivor and Glee to One Tree Hill and Smallville.
