In the pilot episode, we meet Gregory House (Hugh Laurie), a diagnostician who is arguably the best in the world, yet refuses to speak to patients. He is misanthropic, caustic, addicted to Vicodin, and physically disabled. He creates chaos in the Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital, mocking the Hippocratic Oath while simultaneously upholding it in his own twisted way—by solving the unsolvable and saving lives that would otherwise be lost.