The first episode of House M.D. is titled “Pilot.”
The episode introduces Dr. Gregory House and the diagnostic team at Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital. Its central patient is Rebecca Adler, a kindergarten teacher who develops severe symptoms that challenge the doctors' initial assumptions. House eventually identifies the underlying condition after pursuing clues that others overlook.
“Pilot” was written by David Shore and directed by Bryan Singer. It establishes the show's case-of-the-week structure while also presenting House's personality, his limp, his reliance on a cane, and his resistance to ordinary patient interaction. The episode also introduces the professional roles of Lisa Cuddy and James Wilson.
The title is a standard television term for the first episode made to introduce a series. It is not the same as “Everybody Lies,” the second episode, or “Three Stories,” the season-one episode that uses three linked diagnostic narratives. Those titles are often associated with the show's early run but refer to different episodes.