Write Your Own Episode of TV’s "House M.D."

(using this handy guide!)

SCENE 1:
We open at a (sporting event/rock concert/charity work in Africa). A young, healthy, supple (eerily self-aware cheerleader/care-free musician with a death wish/humanitarian who ignores her own health for the sake of all the poor sick children) is seen. Suddenly, (he/she) appears disoriented. (His/her) co-workers are suddenly superficially concerned, as they are bit parts played by people who do not know how to feign human emotion. In a calamitous fit of spinning circles, we are treated to a CGI representation of the inside of subject’s body, wherein something mysterious happens, and said subject collapses into a heap on the floor.

Cue HOUSE M.D. opening sequence, featuring faux-CAT scan-esque diagrams and inexplicable and out of place shots of the ocean taken from a helicopter. It is entirely possible this opening was bought from the pilot of another show that was never aired. Features trippy theme song by Massive Attack!

SCENE 2:
DR. HOUSE is in his office, downing literally handfuls of Vicodin in his easy chair with no water. This is to show how in pain Dr. House is, yet also to illustrate his level of “hardcore/bad-assness.” This appeals to the young, reckless male (YRM) demographic.

Suddenly, fair-skinned brunette ALISON CAMERON bursts into his office. She is smart but painfully afflicted with the incurable disease, naïveté, and it is apparently in its most advanced stage. She has the file for the (cheerleader/musician/humanitarian) in her hand. House will explain that he does not want to treat this case because he hates (cheerleaders/musicians/humanitarians). Something in the file, however, will inexplicably draw him in, and he will reluctantly agree to treat the patient.

SCENE 3:
DR. CUDDY and DR. WILSON are walking along in the hallway and accost House as he is walking. They will form some sort of bet or ongoing competition regarding (Dr. Cuddy’s breasts/Dr. Wilson’s current affair with some lower level employee/House’s addiction to drugs or hatred of people).

Meanwhile, House’s team, the only people in the hospital that apparently do any work at all, are talking with the patient and creating a chart from information given.

SCENE 4:
House and his team, which includes the aforementioned hot but smart chick (HSC), one hot but spoiled Australian with impossibly well-groomed hair (HSA), and one person of color (POC). They will engage in a short volley of witticism in which House belittles all their ideas about the patient’s condition and ultimately tells them what to treat the patient for.

One member of the team (rotated week by week, probably decided by coin toss), will object that this can’t be right based on the information the patient has given them. House will re-object and posit that all people, especially those dying of an extremely rare and hard-to-diagnose disease, will always lie about their medical history because, well, lying is fucking fun. A member of the team will then be dispatched to break into the patient’s house (usually POC, due to his having a criminal record) to uncover evidence that might lead them to the real cause of the disease.

House will be shown participating in “clinic hours,” wherein he scolds sick people for being unusually retarded. Most of them usually are. This C plot traditionally involves a woman who doesn’t know she’s pregnant because she’s been fucking people in her sleep, a fat woman who wants to stay fat at the cost of keeping a tumor because her husband likes his women thick, and/or a guy who has diarrhea from chewing too much sugarless gum.

SCENE 5: (patient goes batshit)
Whilst POC searches for clues, the other team members will have no choice but to start treating the patient for the initial diagnosis. At first, it will appear to be working, and the patient will tell someone on staff (usually HSC, but sometimes HAS, who is able to show sentimentality when the script calls for it) their sob story and this person will be deeply affected by it. This will usually tie in somehow near the end of the episode. It is important to note here that the character will ALWAYS be able to DIRECTLY relate to this person’s story. If the problem involves alcohol, then said character’s father was an alcoholic. If it involves a dying spouse, said character will have married a dying person in college. If it involves fucking, someone in the cast will probably get laid (or at least pine over doing so).

Suddenly, often mid-convo, the patient will go completely batshit and break into what is almost always a seizure. Everyone will freak the fuck out and the family of the patient outside the window will yell something to the effect of, “what’s happening to my baby!” or “what have you done to him/her!” Despite how messy this scene may appear, all members of the cast will still look extremely attractive throughout its duration.

SCENE 6:
Elsewhere in the hospital, Dr. House and Dr. Wilson spar over existential conundrums created by the patient’s (embrace of religion/overt belief in the goodness of people/refusal of treatment). We know that Dr. House believes in none of these things, because he is, you know, a negative guy. It will appear as if House is going to lose the bet he made in scene 3.

Meanwhile, POC will return with a shred of evidence that suggests that the seizure happened because they were treating the patient for the wrong disease. House will posit that it is not in fact DISEASE A, but is in fact an all-new, almost hysterically uncommon DISEASE B. Uproar! The staff refuses to believe him. The victim’s family will protest and say (and rightfully so) that these doctors really have no idea what they’re treating the patient for. Dr. House will scold them for their lack of unerring faith in letting doctors just do what they do.

SCENE 7:
The treatment will not be working. Patient will begin to grow weary and give up. A deeply moving and personal conversation between patient and the member of the staff from earlier (henceforth referred to as HSC, because it’s usually her) will ensue. One or both of them will cry. HSC will make an unrealistic promise to patient that she will never let them die of this apparently incurable disease, because her heart is just so big.

House and Wilson are standing out on the hospital’s balcony, lamenting the inevitable loss of this patient. Wilson will console House with some off-beat bit of wisdom, which will, for some reason unbeknownst to the audience, strangely inspire House. House will light up like a Christmas tree and bolt back inside.

SCENE 8:
House will kick down the door to the patient’s room and barge in like a superhero. The patient will usually not recognize House, because he hates people and never meets the patient face to face until the end of the episode when he has found the cure. This is so that House will always look like the man and make the rest of his hardworking staff look like fucking idiots. He will launch into a self-righteous diatribe about how the patient has (of course) lied and that only he, the direct descendant of Sherlock Holmes, could have figured it out. He will then reveal that the disease was neither Disease A or Disease B, but rather the wildly off the charts and probably mostly fictional DISEASE C, a disease only THREE people in the fucking WORLD have ever been diagnosed with.

Everyone will be skeptical, as there is no preapproved treatment for this disease, only something in “clinical trials” which are apparently being funded via private donations from the other two people who have been diagnosed, because drug companies don’t spend millions of dollars trying to cure a disease three people have.

Anyway, after much protest from the family and the patient, HRC will use the bond she has forged with the patient to convince him/her to believe in her because she believes in House and take the treatment. He/she will. This will lead to a montage over sad music where the patient sleeps and all the other doctors sit alone, looking their absolute worriedest, wondering whether this treatment might really work.

EPILOGUE:
In the end, it will, the patient will be eternally grateful, House will win the bet, the fat woman will get her tumor removed because it will turn out that she is having multiple affairs with other men who dig fat chicks, HSC will cry, HAS will continue to be spoiled and Australian, and POC will continue to be black. We will be treated to a final montage where House plays “Baba O’Reilly” on his piano and drinks scotch, as all devil-may-care TV physicians are wont to do.

CUE credits