House is one of TV’s most intense medical dramas, and in that same vein, the series features a fair number of episodes where things go wrong and patients pass away. House ran for eight seasons between 2004 and 2012, and in that time, House and his team saved many lives. The team consists of some of the brightest doctors on the planet and is led by the highly eccentric genius, Dr. Gregory House, played by Hugh Laurie.
However, regardless of considerable medical prowess and skill, the team still manages to miss things sometimes and make mistakes. The saddest House episodes are where characters die, and the most common cause is simply the team failing to reach the correct diagnosis in time, though there have been other issues that lead to deaths that feel even more tragic. For a team of doctors, death is a part of the job, but when it comes as it does in the following episodes, it cuts just a little bit deeper and often leaves a scar.
House is a brilliant doctor who often sees things that most others miss. But when House fails to pick up on clear indicators of a rare disorder which was made worse by the patient’s exposure to the cold, he appears almost numb. This wasn’t completely House’s fault, as the patient was lying to everyone, including his wife, about the fact he had left his office job for work in a blue-collar field where he took pills to control the pain. The wife threatens to leave him and does so, but when she returns, he is deaf and in a coma.
The wife says she never had a chance to tell him she was pregnant with their baby, and she does so, but he can no longer hear and then dies in a tragic finale. House reached a good place in his life during season 7, but this death appears to bring him back down to earth, as he could have saved him if he had figured out the condition on time.
While not every doctor can catch everything, this episode highlights fallibilities in the man who is full of flaws, but up to this point, has proven to be correct in most medical scenarios.
By season 2, Dr. Robert Chase (Jesse Spencer) has quickly adopted a nihilistic and arrogant attitude that is not entirely unlike his mentor, House. “The Mistake” deals with the aftermath of a series of ill-informed choices and negligence on Chase’s part, leading to the death of a patient, and a medical hearing to investigate his actions. The episode starts with a woman screaming in pain and collapsing and then jumping to six months later while Chase is facing the hearing. The episode plays out what happened.
The entire mistake was because Chase didn’t ask the important questions when the woman came in (blood in stool) and as a result, she ended up with peritonitis and sepsis, which caused liver and kidney damage. Neither Cameron nor Foreman would stand up for Chase, with Foreman saying Chase didn’t care about patients at all. This marks a turning point for Chase, as he has to reevaluate what he is becoming and how his actions, or in some cases inactions, impact those he is administering care to.
“Help Me” is the final episode of House season 6 and sees House deal with several of his demons while trying to save a patient in a tragic accident. When a crane collapses and injures dozens of people, House and his team are called out to offer support at the disaster site. House finds a woman who is pinned underneath a large pile of concrete that’s crushing her leg. House is desperate to save the woman and her leg and opposes amputation in hopes that he can save her from a future impaired by a less-than-perfect body like his own.
Ultimately, the woman dies as a result of another issue that would have killed her with or without amputation, and House is rendered powerless. The helpless feeling that this episode renders and the constant race against a clock adds to the intensity and drama and create one of the most moving and emotional episodes of the series. House isn’t perfect, and despite his best efforts, he can’t save everyone.
Early in the show’s run, the intensity and high stakes are laid out when a mysterious illness spreads in the delivery unit. When several babies with seemingly no connections between them come down with the same illness, House and the team work fast to diagnose and save the newborns. Several more babies then become chronically ill, but the team manages to narrow the diagnosis down to two possibilities with opposite treatments.
To save as many children as possible, House makes the impossibly hard call to treat two of the kids for opposing illnesses, essentially guaranteeing one death to save the others. While there were many deaths to come in the saddest House episodes, this was the first death of a patient in the series who was part of the main storyline, and the fact that it happened to a baby makes it even more tragic. It turned out that an older woman who volunteered at the hospital unknowingly spread the virus to the newborn babies.
Just a few episodes later in House season 1, the team is presented with an unhoused Jane Doe whose lack of a medical history makes treatment difficult. Foreman is uncharacteristically aggressive to the woman and presents a clear disdain and distrust, believing her to simply want food and shelter at the hospital’s expense. However, when the woman’s history is uncovered and her tragic past revealed, Foreman experiences growth and solidarity with her, but her diagnosis of rabies from sleeping rough means she is terminally ill with no chance of recovery.
The patient also bit Foreman, which infected him with rabies, but that was caught in time to save him. This remains one of the saddest House episodes because Foreman had to learn a harsh lesson that a doctor shouldn’t prejudge a person without knowing their full story. From the tragic history that resulted in the woman being unhoused to the fact that Wilson’s brother is also unhoused, which is why he fought so hard for her, this was a tough episode to watch.
Another case where Foreman acted brashly and without enough caution resulted in the imminent death of his patient. Team House frequently rushes into treatment without testing, but when Foreman decides to issue a radiation therapy that wipes out a woman’s immune system, he inadvertently causes her imminent death. Tragic as that story already is, it is made worse when Foreman confronts his mistake head-on and comes to see how much he has changed and where he is heading.
This is also the House episode where Foreman reveals his past and how he turned his life around to earn his chance to be a doctor. When Foreman punches a wall and breaks his fingers, he shows his true frustration and realization that he needs to make a change or he could lose this second chance. It is also tough when House orders an autopsy to see what really happened when the woman died. Foreman needs to make big changes to ensure he doesn’t wind up with the same problems as House.
When a mother suffers unexplained seizures, she ends up almost causing the death of her child when she has a seizure while bathing him in the bathtub. As House’s team works to diagnose her illness and understand why she has been behaving erratically, the child goes from bad to worse and eventually dies. The team is then able to diagnose her and offer treatment, but distraught by her actions, she refuses. House tries to convince her that she was not mentally right when it happened, but she doesn’t care.
This episode is made even sadder when her husband goes to her to try and convince her to get the treatment but instead asks her to tell their son he is sorry when she goes. This is one of the saddest House episodes because not only did a baby die due to tragic reasons, but the mother chose to die rather than go on living knowing her role in his death. When the father lost his wife and son, it was heartbreaking.
When a mother gives birth and both she and her newborn fall ill, “Unplanned Parenthood” follows the difficult relationship between the mother and her older daughter as House’s team works to save them. The team discovers that both the mother and child have cancer cells present, and the mother pushes to treat her child before taking care of her. Ultimately, the mother dies due to a blood clot, and her blood can be harvested to rescue her child.
The episode is more bitter than sweet with her tragic passing and her older child’s newfound responsibilities to raise their new sibling. This was also a tough part of the story, because the older daughter felt that her mom was treating the baby with more respect than she received growing up. The mother then explained she had another baby so late in life to make up for her failures as a parent in the past. Sadly, she never got that chance, and her daughter now has to shoulder the parenting responsibilities.
Towards the end of House season 5, the team experiences a tragic and sudden loss when Dr. Lawrence Kutner (Kal Penn) dies by suicide. Kutner was one of the more positive doctors on the team, and when his untimely death was revealed, it came as a total surprise. In the same episode, an elderly couple is brought into the hospital when the wife who has been caring for her ill husband suddenly falls ill. However, this episode is all about the fallout from Kutner’s death.