I don’t watch the show regularly, by “House” seems to be a much more complex character than TV doctors of the past.
nlike kindly, all-knowing medics like Marcus Welby, House is kinda uncertain abot himself.
He’s not really attractive (like Dr. Kildare, or Dr. Ben Casey)…and I’m not sure I’d want my daughter dating him.
Anyway-what does “House” say about how we look at medical doctors, these days?
The character of House isn’t really a doctor; he’s a detective working in the medical field, and as such, he’s like an asshole Columbo.
Technology. On House, there’s all kinds of technological miracle machines. Cat scans, MRI’s, the DaVinci machine, all that stuff in the lab, and as I recall a couple of machines that may or may not be ‘real’ that can read your brain (one beeped when you thought ‘yes’ or ‘no’, the other was some kind of brain reader that actually showed what a young woman who was unable to talk was was picturing in her head)… Marcus Welby and that kind of Kindly Family Doctor wore a white coat, came to your house if need be, had the time to sit and talk to you about all your problems, and dispensed good advice with a positive attitude. Though he wrote out prescriptions, I don’t remember him doing any actual dramatic bloody exciting medical procedures. Did he? Long time ago!
House is a work of fiction, the opposite of Dr. Welby, whose ass would be so fired if he pulled any of his stunts or nastiness IRL. So both types are make-believe. Though I myself have run into many tired, unpleasant, harried doctors, both brilliant like House (in a big city hospital), or folksy like Marcus Welby (on a Friday evening clinic in the burbs).
And yeah, House does very little actual doctoring!
All TV characters (in dramas, at least) are far more complex than they were in the 60s and 70s. Marcus Wellby had no real personality (other than being kindly and soothing) and Ben Casey’s impulsiveness is a pale version of what House’s crew does routinely without comment from anyone.
Nowadays, characters are expected to have some sort of depth – a bad marriage is almost a requirement (or a bad relationship, and you can bet the other person will show up before the end of the second season) and some sort of horrific element in their past (usually mentioned in the first five episodes) is common.
House is attractive because he’s damaged and a lot of people feel for him. He’s also extremely funny and smart.
I think the only doctor you can really compare him to is Dr. Mark Sloan, who was also a doctor who was a detective. Obviously, the personalities differ, but I don’t think we know more about Dr. House than we do Dr. Sloan. It’s just that House is a lot more screwed up, making his character more interesting.
So maybe Dr. Sloan doesn’t work either. Do we have an asshole detective doctor out there?
I ***seriously ***disagree with you.
Me too, are you freaking kidding? If I had eyes like that, all would love me and despair.
Dr. Quincy, maybe. 
I think the OP is making a huge leap from Marcus Welby, James Kildare, and Ben Casey to Gregory House. Sure, there’s major differences between these characters. But that’s ignoring the thirty years of TV doctors that occurred between them.
Kildare, at least on the radio, was a medical mystery with clashing personalities and differing levels of experience with the clue coming from unexpected places or a lesser character.
Northern Exposure, Season Five, Dr. Joel Fleischman: “There is no mystery, at least not the kind you want…it would be nice if there were, there would be solutions to things in life…In life, our mysteries aren’t interesting, they are just intractible and depressing and enervating…In detective stories, the beauty of it is - there, it’s him. He did it. The natural order is upturned and then restored.” (words to that effect)
Well he dosn’t have a TARDIS for a start…
I think he’s a lot like Quincy, except far more of an asshole. He always saw a puzzle and had to convince his boss of more study/tests/money/time necessary to solve the puzzle, and the boss fought him every time until Quincy was proven right. House is the flip side of Quincy’s decent personality, and Quincy’s patients were already dead. House doesn’t much care if his patients die; he just wants to solve the puzzle.