Andre Braugher’s House Character Explained & Why He Was Important

A major component of House was Dr. Gregory House’s (Hugh Laurie) addiction to Vicodin, which he finally addresses in season 6 with the help of Andre Braugher’s character, psychiatrist Dr. Darryl Nolan. House is a brilliant diagnostician who always makes miraculous medical connections no one else can make, so the characters in House enabled his addiction for five seasons. House masks his pain with his sardonic sense of humor, but his ability to cope with his misery reaches a breaking point in season 5 where drugs alone are no longer masking his emotional pain.

House is dealing with the death of his father and losing two colleagues, including Lawrence Kutner’s shocking suicide in House and Amber Volakis’s bus accident while helping House. House starts experiencing hallucinations that blend seamlessly with reality, a side effect of Vicodin abuse that scares him into admitting he has a problem. In the season 5 finale, House checks into the Mayfield Psychiatric Hospital, where he will meet Dr. Nolan, the perfect doctor to challenge House.

Braugher’s Dr. Darryl Nolan Is Introduced As House’s Psychiatrist

House’s Work Is Just Beginning After His Detox

House checks into Mayfield voluntarily to detox from Vicodin, but in some ways, the detox was the easy part. When House is over his physical withdrawals, he expects to check out of the hospital immediately, but he is directed to meet with Braugher’s Dr. Nolan, who will be House’s primary physician. Nolan astutely recognizes that House’s problems are not solved. Nolan meets House’s petulance with calm professionalism, wanting House to be transferred to the long-term ward.

Legally, House can check out of Mayfield, but without a recommendation from Nolan, House will never regain his medical license. Cynically, House calls this blackmail. Nolan is doing what is best for House, even if the methodology is irregular. This is the only way to get House to Ward 6 for supervised medication and talk therapy. As demonstrated in many of House‘s best episodes, House likes to play games, but he does not realize he has met his match in Nolan.

As always, House has a plan to show he is above Nolan’s rules. After a few weeks, House reveals to Nolan that he has been tonguing the pills instead of swallowing them. House sees this as an empiric victory, but Nolan points out the irony of House using manipulation as proof of wellness. Nolan then shows House he had been giving him a placebo all along. House is frustrated, thinking that he had been pulling the wool over Nolan’s eyes only for Nolan to be two steps ahead of him, but House is not ready to comply yet.

Nolan wants House to start antidepressants, but House fears losing his edge, a commonplace myth about SSRIs. Nolan encourages House to help the other people in the Ward, but House instead uses his ability to read people to diagnose their mental illness and exploit their vulnerabilities. As always, Gregory House considers himself a genius and thinks he can manipulate the system without consequence, so he’s not open to Nolan’s path until he nearly gets a fellow Ward patient killed.

How Dr. Nolan Earned House’s Trust (And Vice Versa)

Nolan Brings House In On A Very Important Medical Consult

When a new patient, Steve Alcartine (Derek Richardson), enters the Ward, House seems unusually protective of him. Steve lost his wife and now is under a delusion that he is a superhero, Freedom Master. House is furious when Steve is given medication that makes him nearly catatonic, convinced that he knows better than the staff. Taking matters into his own hands, in part to prove that his way is better than Nolan’s, House borrows a car from Lydia (Frank Ponte), a married woman with whom House has been developing a romantic connection.

House sneaks Steve to an amusement park where they go on a ride that simulates a parachute free fall, and Steve comes alive with the sensation of flight. Unfortunately, House accidentally encourages Steve’s delusion, and Steve leaps from the top of the parking structure believing he can fly, badly injuring himself but alive. House’s guilt is the breaking point where House is ready to fully cooperate with Nolan at just the moment when Nolan was ready to give up on House. Despite House being a complete jerk, he wanted to help Steve, not realizing how misguided his plan was.

House is not a typical patient, so Nolan does not limit himself to typical talk therapy. Nolan wants House to learn to trust people and form meaningful relationships, so Nolan takes House to a hospital cocktail fundraiser and challenges him to open up to a complete stranger. House runs into Lydia, and they spend all night sharing increasingly outrageous backstories with other attendees.

Nolan counts this as a success, pointing out that none of these strangers ratted out the philandering husband or porn producer, so even if it was not with his truth, it proved House can trust people. Nolan’s ability to turn House’s victories on their head is what helps break through to House.

House impacts Nolan as well. When Nolan’s father is given a fatal diagnosis, Nolan gives House a day pass to come to the hospital, ostensibly for a second opinion, but House deduces that because no one else is there, House is the closest thing Nolan has to a friend. They must have respect for each other’s medical abilities. House is characteristically cruel, even as Nolan cries over his dying father, but he does stay, which is meaningful to Nolan.

When Lydia moves away, House comes to Nolan to work through the pain instead of turning to Vicodin to numb it, a major moment of growth. In a reversal of the normal therapeutic relationship, House checks in on how Nolan is coping after his father’s death. Braugher brings a tenderness to Nolan as he thanks House for staying with him when his father was dying.

Because of the connections House has made with Lydia and other Ward patients, Nolan knows House is recovered enough for Nolan to release him from the Ward with the letter of recommendation to get his medical license back. House could not have reached his healthiest state over House‘s eight seasons without Nolan’s supervision.

How Nolan Helped House Return To Medicine

House Worried The Pressure Of Diagnostics Would Lead To A Relapse

Even after getting his license back, House does not return to medicine, quitting his diagnostic position. House constantly evolved over eight seasons, but House not being a doctor would change the entire series. House’s confidence is shattered, and House worries that the high pressure of his job will trigger him into a Vicodin relapse, a sign of how deeply committed he is to recovery. However, House shares with Nolan that his leg is hurting, so Nolan suggests House find a hobby to keep his mind occupied.

House accompanies Dr. James Wilson (Robert Sean Leonard) to a cooking class, but House’s addictive personality means that he goes overboard. He does not make cooking a hobby, but an obsession, staying up all night tinkering until the recipe is perfected. However, his leg continues to hurt, which House interprets as a failure, but Nolan encourages him to continue trying different hobbies until he finds one that clicks.

Nolan ultimately helps House realize that his diagnostic job at Princeton-Plainsboro is not a hindrance to his mental health, but an important component for it. House’s leg stopped hurting when he covertly helped his team solve a case by posting anonymously online. Although House fears he has “relapsed” into diagnostics, Nolan wisely advises him to go back to medicine even though he is scared. House’s trust in Nolan is absolute to take such a massive step at Nolan’s suggestion.

Why House Stopped Seeing Dr. Nolan

House Loses Faith In Dr. Nolan

Medicine, especially psychiatric medicine, is not always linear. House has been seeing Nolan for a year, and over the course of what would become their last session, House wants to talk about an interesting case with an amnesiac patient, but Nolan keeps redirecting the conversation to House. House clearly has a wall up, insisting it was a “normal week,” despite Wilson asking him to move out. As a doorknob confession, House mentions that Dr. Lisa Cuddy (Lisa Edelstein) is moving in with her boyfriend, the significant event Nolan had been trying to uncover.

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House reaches his breaking point, lashing out at Nolan out of bitterness. House rants that his only goal with Nolan was to find happiness, but everyone gets to be happy but him. House accuses Nolan of being a “faith healer,” someone taking advantage of people who want to believe. House misdirects his anger at Wilson and Cuddy toward Nolan, terminating their sessions claiming he no longer believes Nolan has the answers, but House is avoiding the hard work of analyzing his feelings.

Nolan’s Role In The House Finale Explained

Nolan Attends House’s Funeral

In House‘s divisive series finale, Wilson and Dr. Eric Foreman (Omar Epps) are trying find House, who has been missing for several days. House is facing six months of jail time while Wilson has a terminal cancer diagnosis, and they are worried House has relapsed or worse. House has never been one to face the consequences of his actions. In House’s abandoned apartment, they find House’s phone has an outgoing call to Nolan.

Wilson and Foreman burst into a group therapy session Nolan is leading, asking if Nolan can prove any leads on where House might be. Nolan is torn between patient confidentiality and his desire to help. Nolan does not disclose what he talked about with House, even though House is no longer his patient, but he lets Foreman know he is in the right direction when Foreman recalls House’s last patient was a heroin addict. Nolan has proven he will bend the rules in the interest of his patients, tempering his rule-abiding nature with compassion.

A body identified as House’s is found in the rubble of a building that caught fire and collapsed. Many House characters return for the finale funeral, including Braugher’s Dr. Nolan. Nolan does not speak, appropriate for a therapist attending a former client’s funeral, but Nolan’s presence alone underscores the profound and lasting impact House had on him.