After eight years of popping Vicodin and solving medical mysteries, House went off the air with one last dramatic episode. The finale in the ground-breaking medical drama found Dr. House (Hugh Laurie) faking his death and riding off into the sunset with his cancer-stricken best friend Dr. Wilson (Robert Sean Leonard).
We chatted with creator David Shore about what the past eight years has been like and all of the decisions that led to this final hour of his show.
Paste: Congratulations on wrapping up the series; it’s been an amazing eight years.
David Shore: Thank you very much.
Paste: It first came out when I was in high school and I sort of grew up with the series. It’s really the only medical drama I’ve watched consistently.
Shore: Wow, wow, wow. My kids have grown up with it a little bit as well.
Paste: It’s been a crazy eight years for sure. I mean, looking back did you ever think a show about a drug-addicted doctor would be on for almost a decade?
Shore: No. No. I mean, I say that without reservation. It’s weird because you go on the air, you’re on American TV and you might be around. Why not? I just thought other people had things like this. I was there creating a show and I was one of the people doing this, but this sort of success never occurred to me. Huge success would have been that we had good enough ratings to stay on the air. That would have thrilled me. And by stay on the air I mean three or four years.
Paste: Was there ever a thought that you thought the series would end around that time? Did you ever think about wrapping up the series around that time?
Shore: No, no. By the third year in I was fairly confident that it was going to go on for a few more years. Once we started following Idol towards the end of season one and then the ratings started going up through season two and I believe through season three, I knew we were going to hang around for a while. And I was happy, too. It was a character that I liked working with and writing stories for.
Paste: That was around the time when the original team left and I’ve always been curious about what the series would have been like if that core cast stayed on.
Shore: I don’t know if it would have made that much of a difference. It’s tough to say. We made thousands decisions every week, really, and we certainly made many, many decisions throughout the show. It’s impossible to know. It all worked out and each one of them you could debate whether it would have worked out better or worse. I think obviously on the whole it worked out well. I think that’s a decisions that is indicative of something we did well which is we weren’t just reactive. We didn’t wait for people to tell us we should do something.
That felt like the natural story to tell. We’re not clamoring in any way to get rid of any one. People were happy with that team and I was happy with that team, but it felt like the right thing to do and the right story to do. They were on a three year fellowship; they’re working for a curmudgeon and who’s going to put up with that forever? So I think that is one of the things we did right: being driven by the stories.
Paste: So you’ve always been on the ball with making decisions, but was there ever one where you definitely wish went the other way?
Shore: Many. But I’m not going to tell you them. (laughs)
Paste: Of course! Have to keep them secrets, right?
Shore: There are many people who think many things we did we did wrong. I don’t want to tell those people I agree with them.
Paste: Of course not. And shifting to last night’s finale: it looks like it’s gone over well with fans. Have you been keeping up with the response?
Shore: A little bit. Not that much. I’ve done it more in the last twelve hours than I ever have done during the show. Still not that much. I’ve read just enough to know that it looks like enough people are happy with the way things ended. The problem with looking at that is even though if people are really happy about it, there are plenty of people who are unhappy about it. It’s always been that way and it’s just the way it is. It’s never fun to go online to find someone calling you an idiot.