“Three Stories” won the 2005 Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series.
Written by series creator David Shore, “Three Stories” is the season-one episode in which House teaches medical students by presenting three parallel diagnostic cases. The structure gradually reveals that one of the cases is House’s own medical history, explaining the infarction that caused the leg damage behind his chronic pain.
The episode was widely praised for combining medical puzzles with character backstory. Its nonlinear construction also helped establish House’s distinctive storytelling style, in which a diagnosis can be solved through comparison, contradiction, and reconsideration rather than a straightforward chronology.
The award is sometimes confused with the acting honors associated with Hugh Laurie or with later House M.D. episodes. “Three Stories” specifically received the writing Emmy at the 57th Primetime Emmy Awards in 2005. It was also the show’s first episode to win a major Primetime Emmy.