House: Is Three Stories the Best Hour of Television Ever?

Of course, though, House isn’t just a narrator – he’s an unreliable narrator. It’s slowly revealed that these patients weren’t just chosen randomly; one of them is, in fact, House himself. Three Stories isn’t just any other patient of the week – we’re watching the origin story for our eponymous Doctor. This twist is what elevates the episode, making it more than just a very clever episode; after twenty episodes of getting to know House, we’re finally coming to understand the source of his pain. The fact that we’ve spent so long with this character means we’re far more invested with his story than we would be with any other patient of the week; Three Stories has a much greater and more immediate emotional impact than a lot of other House episodes.

An article I wrote on one of my favourite episodes of House, Three Stories. I’m really pleased with this one. It’s a little too hyperbolic in the title; I know it’s not the best episode of television ever, and I hedge against that in the conclusion of the piece anyway. But it was one of the first pieces I wrote about, I suppose, “proper telly” – and that’s a very loosely defined thing, of course – and it got a nice reaction online, with David Shore sharing it in a friendly way himself. Which meant a lot to me at the time, and indeed still does now.

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