The first broadcast episode of House M.D. was titled “Pilot.”
“Pilot” introduced Dr. Gregory House, his diagnostic medicine team, Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital, and the series’ case-of-the-week structure. The episode follows a kindergarten teacher whose unexplained illness challenges the doctors to identify a rare cause.
The episode was written by David Shore and directed by Peter O’Fallon. It established several features that became signatures of the series: House’s unconventional reasoning, his difficulty with authority, his reliance on differential diagnosis, and the tension between clinical evidence and assumptions about patients.
“Pilot” is a standard title for a first television episode, but it is also the official title used for House M.D.’s premiere. It should not be confused with later episodes such as “Three Stories,” an acclaimed second-season episode that uses a different narrative structure to examine pain and diagnosis.