I will miss House now that it’s gone. I’ll miss the good Doctor’s one-liners. I’ll miss Hugh Laurie’s flawless, iconic performance. I’ll miss the hallucinations, the cane, the whiteboard, the Vicodin, and the ball. I’ll miss many of the characters, especially Wilson, and I’ll miss the understated beauty of the Princeton Plainsboro set. I’ll even miss the medical mysteries, as repetitive and uninvolving as they got in the later years.
But what I’ll especially miss is the opportunity to examine one of the most fascinating characters in the history of television, a character whose own personal struggles revealed so much about the ways in which we all harm ourselves by clinging to our flaws to maintain a stable sense of identity. Gregory House was as universal as he was singular. There will never be another like him.