But what if the last episode of ‘House‘ wasn’t the end of it? Before the iconic medical drama took its final bow, the producers were already working on an idea for a series revival that would destroy its conventional narrative structure.
It was quite common for Gregory House to pace through the luxurious halls of Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital, yet, in case of the revival of the show, the creators of the series had other plans for this legendary character. In fact, the protagonist would have faced a dramatic shift in both his surroundings and his approach to practicing medicine. Read on about how House almost came back in a very unusual way.
‘House‘ Was Set For A Radical Change
Throughout eight consecutive seasons, the show’s main plotline always revolved around Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital, but the team behind the series wanted to surprise viewers by moving ‘House‘ away from the clinic.
According to the executive producer of ‘House‘, Katie Jacobs, a potential ninth season of the series would have moved the protagonist from Princeton-Plainsboro to a remote place in Colorado where there weren’t enough doctors to treat the patients.
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Jacobs got the idea after reading a real-life story about a pharmacist who stepped in to help an isolated community when its local medical facilities shut down.
Thus, this scenario would have allowed the show’s creators to showcase another aspect of House’s personality while not abandoning the exceptional diagnostic brilliance that made him such a compelling protagonist.
“Season 9 was going to be based on a piece that I read in The New Yorker about a pharmacist in a small, forgotten town called Nucla,” Jacobs told GQ.
The whole season would definitely require a significant change in the series’ atmosphere. Instead of working alongside specialists and department heads, House would have been dealing with ordinary townspeople whose closely connected lives could have created a very different dynamic from the hospital setting. However, in this way, the writers would have managed to keep the main character as interesting and unpredictable as ever.
The Revival Would Have Reimagined ‘House‘
This particular season was supposed to follow right after the end of the original series, in which House had lost his medical license. In the following series, he would have become a local doctor and helped the citizens not only with their physical ailments, but also with personal problems.
Jacobs described this season as a kind of cowboy version of House, which would have allowed the series to change its style.
In fact, this season would have been much shorter than usual, with only 13 episodes, compared to the regular 22 in other seasons. This version would have given the writers a unique opportunity to reinvent House as a wandering healer and reluctant confidant whose reputation and diagnostic brilliance made him the person the town turned to in times of need.
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“Essentially, he [would have been] the local pharmacist, doctor, psychiatrist, and secret keeper of that town,” the executive producer said, adding, “It was going to be 13 episodes and out—a very cowboy-ish, Western kind of thing.”
However, this idea for the ninth season never became reality, becoming one of the best examples of a “what if” in the whole series. The idea would have completely changed the series’s usual format.
Although fans never got to see the concept on screen, it remains a fascinating glimpse into how the series could have evolved without losing its central character’s defining brilliance.
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