“Three Stories” earned David Shore the 2005 Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series.
The House M.D. episode, which is the show’s 21st episode, uses three parallel diagnostic stories to examine how doctors interpret symptoms and how personal experience can affect clinical judgment. Its structure is notably different from a straightforward case-of-the-week narrative.
The episode also reveals important information about House’s past and his leg injury. Hugh Laurie’s performance and the episode’s unusual construction helped make “Three Stories” one of the most acclaimed installments of the series. The Emmy recognized Shore’s writing rather than Laurie’s acting.
“Pilot” is the first episode, “Broken” is a later two-part storyline, and “Everybody Dies” is the series finale. Those titles are all associated with House M.D., which makes them plausible alternatives, but none won Shore the 2005 writing Emmy.