ERIC FOREMAN

'Dr. Eric Foreman', M.D., is a fictional character on the Fox medical drama ''House''. He is portrayed by Omar Epps.

Contents

Background

Character History

Personality

Relationship with House

Background

A neurologist, Foreman was a member of Dr. Gregory House's handpicked team of specialists at Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital's Diagnostic Medicine Department. He was hired by House three days prior to the series' pilot episode (as revealed in a deleted scene of the pilot).
Foreman attended Columbia University as an undergraduate before matriculating to Johns Hopkins Medical School.
Little is known about Foreman's past, although it has been suggested that his family was not very well-off and his parents are currently living on a pension (cf. "Histories").It is also suggested that his mother has a degenerative brain disease. Foreman was also a former juvenile delinquent who once burglarized houses and stole cars; this is said to have played a major factor in House's decision to hire him in the first place. His father, Rodney (who appears in the episodes "Euphoria, Part 2 and House Training"), is deeply religious while his mother is unfit to travel due to a medical condition which is somehow tied to her memory or perception skills, such as Alzheimer's. In the episode, "Heavy", according to what he told a patient, he used to struggle with childhood obesity until the 9th grade, although this could not be specified whether it was the truth or he simply made it up to comfort the patient.

Character History

In the episode "Euphoria, Part 1," Foreman became infected with a mysterious illness. Another patient, infected with the same condition, experiences a very painful death before his eyes. In the conclusion of the episode, Cameron, acting as Foreman's medical proxy, performs a white-matter brain biopsy and the condition is revealed to be amoebic meningoencephalitis caused by Naegleria, a water-borne parasite that, upon being inhaled, attacks the brain. After treatment, it appears Foreman is cured of the meningoencephalitis, but something may have gone wrong during the biopsy. Although his brain had some confusion between the left and right side of the brain, he is in recovery. Upon his return from recovery, Foreman's memory seemed to have been impaired, as he struggled to remember key medical concepts (cf. "Forever") and could not remember how to make coffee. In the next two episodes, however, he seems to be able to once again keep up with his fellow doctors when coming up with medical theories.
When Michael Tritter offers Foreman an opportunity to win early parole for his drug-addicted, incarcerated brother, Foreman turns it down. Tritter sees this as hypocrisy, citing Foreman's own criminal record, and says that while Foreman tries being compassionate to ward off House's training, he is actually just as cold and methodical as his employer. That is supported when Foreman gives his girlfriend a chance to go to a nurse practitioner school as a way to end the relationship, and she states that both he and House can't stand to let people get close to them. He recently gave his two weeks notice to quit. He was scared that he was turning apathetic towards patients' well being. He finally left the hospital at the end of the season 3 finale. His reason for leaving: he doesn't want to turn into House.

Personality

Despite his youthful offenses, Foreman initially may have been the best-adjusted of House's team. He is shown to possess a level of leadership skills, and was temporarily appointed House's boss by Dr. Lisa Cuddy in the second season, during which time House referred to him as "Blackpoleon Blackaparte." It has also been implied that Foreman and House share certain similarities (cf. "Poison"), both in terms of character and physical habits. Whether this is true is debatable, although in the episode "House Training", he admits that he has problems with his own ego.
Like House, Foreman has also been shown to be extremely honest even at the cost of hurting other people's feelings. This is evident in the episode "Sleeping Dogs Lie," in which he tells Cameron that the two of them were never friends, merely working colleagues. However, during a later bout with a deadly illness (see below), Foreman recants this position. His sincerity, given his dying state, was unclear, and she initially refused his apology, but accepted when he was placed in a chemically induced coma. Similarly, in the episode "Resignation," he tells Chase that he's never liked him and never will. By distancing himself from others, Foreman comes off as objective but cold.
During Season Three, a change in Foreman's character, making him more sensitive to other people's feelings, can be noticed when he resists telling two interracial lovers that they are half-siblings. During the same episode, he is accused of being against interracial relationships. Foreman makes a bet with House saying that Dr. James Wilson is not dating a nurse in the hospital. The white nurse is actually dating Foreman, which explains his sensitivity to this particular case. Later, Foreman offers a Romani boy an interview for the intern job and tries to help him.
The season three episode "House Training" reveals a great deal about Foreman's character. Upon giving orders for a patient to be given immunosuppressing radiation treatment and then learning that it was nothing more than a staph infection (the radiation therapy killed the patient's immune system, essentially dooming her to a painful death), he is visibly agonized and blames himself for killing her. Throughout the episode Foreman displays a passionately emotional side and at one point breaks down, stating that in many ways he is no better than from where he came simply because his ego has gotten in the way. In the following episode, Foreman is seen for the first time praying or meditating in the hospital chapel, despite the fact that he has expressed being fairly nonreligious before (much like Allison Cameron).
Foreman was able to get over the grief and trauma of killing a patient, and the self-doubt that his mistake caused, when he was able to save another patient's life by taking extreme measures. With a young boy dying unless he got a bone marrow transplant immediately, Foreman was forced to get the marrow from the patient's little brother, without anesthetizing the boy first as he was too sick to be sedated. Foreman strapped the boy down to a bed and drew the marrow from him by force in several places on his body to get the samples he needed, ignoring the boy's screams of agony in order to do so. The patient survived as a result, and while Foreman acknowledged this, he was also horrified with what he had done. He tendered his resignation the same day.

Relationship with House

Although House frequently targets Foreman with racist jokes, Foreman does not appear to take them personally. It seems that House does so simply because Foreman's race is an easy target - just as House often targets Chase with his nationality and Cameron with her gender, House uses Foreman's race as a source of humor, and other episodes (c.f. "Humpty Dumpty") establish that House is not racist. In the episode "Family", Foreman discovers that he has begun to disregard his patients' lives much the way House does, and he decides that he'd rather leave his job than continue on that path.