The "House" Drinking Game

It's time for me to pick on House. Let me say upfront, I love Hugh Laurie. Being British, I appreciated him long before he became Gregory House; I particularly love him in his small, surly-but-kind role in Sense and Sensibility.

However, I've been watching House for a number of years now. I had the opportunity to catch a marathon on cable over the holidays. During this marathon, I was watching one episode and I remember glancing at the clock and seeing it was 25 minutes into the episode. Dr. House and his team of useless twits were trying to diagnose a difficult disease and throwing out guesses. I thought, "Well, we know they're wrong. We still have 25 minutes before House has his weekly epiphany". Then, at exactly 50 minutes into the episode, presto! House figures it out.

It led me to realize that while I enjoy Dr. House, the show is horribly predictable. I won't go into detail about how I used to think Dr. House was an arsehole but he had some redeeming qualities but, lately, he's just a miserable man with few redeeming qualities. He's mean, cruel and selfish. Not much is new there, I know but there are fewer and fewer moments where I care about him anyway.

Enough of that. Since my epiphany over the break, I decided to try a House drinking game. So, without further ado, here it is:

Take a sip:

General:

• When House says the patient of the week is lying.
• When House insults Foreman
• When House says something inappropriate about Cuddy's breasts
• When House bursts into Wilson's office to talk about Cuddy
• Take a bonus sip when House uses metaphors to talk about his relationship with Cuddy
• When House calls Dr. Kutner "Kumar"
• When House mocks 13 for having Huntington's Disease
• When House makes a racial slur to anyone
• When House does something illegal
• When any character breaks into a patient’s house

Diagnoses/medical conditions/treatment:

• When any of the doctors suspect the patient of the week is on drugs and a tox screen is ordered
• When the diagnosis is suggested to be any of the following;


• Sarcoidosis
• Lupus
• Legionnaire's disease
• Allergy to _____(fill in the blank)
• Pancreatitis (chronic or otherwise)
• Cushing's/Kawasaki's/Parkinson's disease
• Poisoning (any type)
• Lymphoma
• Cancer of whatever organ just bled/exploded/failed
• Toxoplasmosis
• Tuleremia
• When any patient starts bleeding from an unexpected place
• When they give a patient steroids
• When a patient needs chemotherapy/radiation even though they might not have cancer
• When a patient suddenly loses one of their senses (sight, vision, etc)

Characters:

• When "13" gets the diagnosis wrong
• When Foreman acts self-righteous and then realizes he's just like House
• When Chase appears on the screen for more than 2 minutes
• When Cuddy scolds House for going against her orders
• When House gets his ephiphany re: the diagnosis in the last ten minutes of the episode
• When Cameron gets emotionally involved with a patient
• When Taub says something really mean but is dead-on in his accuracy

Take a big drink:

• When Wilson stands up to House and House actually listens
• When bad things happen during an MRI
• When a patient actually has one of the diseases listed above
• When a patient’s kidneys or liver fails
• When a patient has a cardiac incident and is saved at the last moment
• When House takes a vicodin, someone comments and he offers a smart remark
• When House eats someone else’s food or makes them buy him lunch

Drink the entire thing:

• If someone other than House makes the correct diagnosis
• When the patient isn’t actually lying about anything
• When House plays the piano because he’s sad and alone
• When a prostitute is present in the episode
• When Cuddy wears something that doesn’t show off her breasts
• When House says something genuinely nice to someone and means it
• When Wilson has a patient of his own

So, there it is for now. Feel free to modify it any way you like or make up your own rules. I just really wanted to see how many predictable things there were in an episode. I know this isn't the only game out there either. Happy drinking!