House Vs. Holmes

Unique ideas for movies or plays are hard to come by, so if one is going to emulate something, it might as well be something good. For example, the Sergio Leone movie Fist Full of Dollars starring Clint Eastwood was directly inspired by Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo. The musical West Side Story is an adaptation of Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet. Even the animated movie Lion King was influenced by Shakespeare’s Hamlet. And currently, Dr. Gregory House from the show House seems to be inspired by the literary character Sherlock Holmes. But while these two characters share a lot in common, they are significantly different.

Both Dr. House and Mr. Holmes work on unique cases. They both need the mental stimulation difficult cases provide, or else they'd be restless. House refuses to accept cases unless they appeal to his sense of curiosity, and probably take his mind off of his leg pain. Also, he tries as hard as he can to avoid clinic hours where he’d have to deal with average individuals with average ailments. Holmes prefers unique cases, and is thoroughly excited when somebody approaches him with a singular mystery, but he isn’t above helping the run of the mill person either. Holmes, however, does need interesting cases to keep his mind stimulated, or else he falls into a cocaine addiction. According to his friend Watson, Holmes craves mental stimulation, and while he prefers cases, he’ll go to drugs when there’s nothing else to turn to.

House and Holmes are both above average intelligence, to say the least. House is a doctor, so a certain amount of schooling and practice is expected. Holmes is a detective, which of course takes brain power, but he is also a scholar, and when he isn’t working on a case, he could likely be found in a chemistry lab running experiments. The origins of these characters’ intelligence come from different means, though. Holmes, as mentioned, is a scholar. He practices chemistry, biology, and physics. He studies cigars and where they are made, and just about any other piece of seemingly trivial information. He keeps up in politics and the legal system on a global level. Watson, through his narratives, explains how Holmes is as intelligent as he is. However, House is not given as good of an explanation. Yes, House is a doctor. He’s one of the best in the show's world. In one episode, Cuddy mentions she and House went to the same medical school and he was a huge figure even then. But all this does is explain why House is good at medicine. For unaccounted reasons, House also knows about foreign cultures and languages (as shown in the episode Whatever It Takes in season four). House contains heaps superfluous of information, which might supposed to be a testament to how smart he is, but a brief explanation occasionally wouldn’t be a bad thing.

House and Holmes aren’t what you’d call "people" persons. There is, however, a great difference. House hates people for a myriad of reasons. He thinks they’re dumb, they’re a waste of his time, they’re boring, etc. These are shallow reasons, but House usually sticks to them vehemently, especially when it comes to avoiding clinic duty. Holmes, rather, doesn’t see a point in creating a rapport with a person unless they have some higher role to fulfill. Besides Watson, which Holmes senses something special in, everybody else either doesn’t matter or only has a limited use. Holmes is hardly ever mean, even to the criminals he snares, but that’s only because it is less efficient to have enemies than it is to have a positive relationship with somebody. Honestly, though, general people bore Holmes just as much as they bore House.

Also pertaining to their general outlook on their clients, House is a general misanthrope. He doesn’t discriminate against hating people. Men, women, Jews, blacks, dwarfs, homosexuals, and the list goes on. Holmes is a bit different. To be fair, in most Holmes stories there aren’t blacks or Jews or many different minorities to discriminate against. Holmes does, however, discriminate against women. He sees them as the fairer sex, and generally not as smart as men. This doesn’t arise too often throughout his tales, but he does note when a woman surprises him with their intelligence. In one story, Holmes comments the only woman he ever could have loved was a thief who actually outsmarted him and escaped the country.

There’s nothing wrong with imitating something. Virtually everything is inspired by something else. And sometimes the new creations can out perform the old inspirations. Or, at the very least, the new creation could be a reincarnation of the old for a new generation. And that is House compared to Holmes. Just with a few personality tweaks.