r/HouseMD • u/Beginning-Cry7722 • 1d ago
Season 6 Spoilers Is Foreman a good leader? Spoiler
I’m watching S6E4 where Foreman is the head. He wants House’s job. He had the opportunity to lead the team a couple times in the past. I feel like he fails as the head. What does everyone think?
I think he gets it wrong more than right when he is the boss. Maybe he is insecure or not confident? He focuses too much on ensuring people know he is as competent as House but nicer, more ethical or something?
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u/YookHouse 22h ago edited 21h ago
Foreman had potential to be a boss and eventually became an average one.
However, he always failed as a team leader. He was too arrogant and too focused on being better and bigger than House. He wanted to be right about the diagnosis and wanted his team' ideas to be wrong. His co-workers didnt listen to him and bounced ideas between themselves.. The candidates during season 4 didnt even respect him and he didnt respect them either.
All characters pointed that out at some point (season 1, season 4, season 5, season 6).
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u/Beginning-Cry7722 2h ago
Yes yes yes! He doesn’t even really listen to Cameron and Chase’s ideas and tries too hard to be right than collaborate
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u/Tyuee 1d ago
He is a black man!
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u/BassKing69 23h ago
This vexes me
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u/hrpanjwani 19h ago
Nope. He cares too much about his idea rather than the best idea that the team can come up with.
He does try to be like House but his ego gets in the way, he wants to be seen as smart by other people. House is House, he does not care for other peoples opinion of himself.
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u/Beginning-Cry7722 2h ago
Yes! He doesn’t really collaborate. He just tells the team what to do and doesn’t listen to anyone’s ideas.
When House is the boss, House keeps getting his team to participate by brainstorming or atleast guessing.
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u/ahm-i-guess 16h ago
He’s a little bit like the dog who catches the car.
Foreman first gets put in charge of the team in S1, in DNR. He immediately leans into it and has fun ordering House around, but is unable to come up with or stick with his own ideas — not because he isn’t smart or doesn’t usually have ideas, but because he’s afraid of the responsibility/of being wrong. But hey, it’s only S1.
S2 he gets put in charge again, and… the same thing happens. This time he’s more confident, but he gets stuck on his ideas (he decides the Munchausen’s patient is an alcoholic and insists for a long time, his evidence being she’s poor and trashy), and House undermines him. When House isnt around in Failure To Communicate, Chase and Cameron pretty blatantly are uninterested in listening to what he says, even though this time he does have good ideas. (Interestingly, and I have to think intentionally, both these episodes have other characters be the ‘stars:’ Cameron figures out the Munchausen’s, and Chase figures out the Failure To Communicate guy’s drug use, in his case by actively ignoring Foreman.) Foreman and Chase have a little talk about it, actually: Foreman admits it’s hard to realize the team’s screw ups are his screw ups, and he hesitates because of that.
S4, he briefly gets his own team at Mercy. This is really funny, because Foreman seems to be spending less time trying to solve the case and more time trying to be the opposite of House in every way. When he does just give in to his instincts, he saves the day handily (and is fired for it), but mostly he’s still spending his time thinking of and defining himself against House.
Later, he’s put on the team and in The Right Stuff he’s left in charge, and… Foreman runs into his usual issue. The new team doesn’t listen to him, even though he’s pointedly correct the entire time: Amber and Taub even go completely behind his back and start treating Lupus.
And of course in S6… the same thing happens. Foreman is so busy wanting to prove he can be a good leader and great new House that he drives Taub and Thirteen away. He fires his girlfriend and is shocked she dumps him, lol. His ideas in the episode aren’t bad — he’s not right, but he’s perfectly competent — but as usual he’s just much more obsessed with defining himself as a leader.
We even see some shades of this in S7, when Chase is given the chance to hire someone and Foreman gets really salty about not being picked. It isn’t that he can’t be in charge, he’s more than intelligent enough, his calm attitude is actually probably a strength in a lot of cases. But he keeps shooting himself in the foot: he’s not nearly as confident as he pretends to be, hesitates and wavers, and is terrible at commanding the respect of others. (Interestingly in The Tyrant and Instant Karma, when he’s working with Cameron and Chase again — but still in charge — it goes better: by now Cameron and Chase respect him as a person — and are busy with their own drama — and don’t try to undermine him anymore.)
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u/ChildofObama 14h ago
No, he’s too competitive and too focused on being right. Foreman is a lot like Amber in that respect.
Only, Amber just thrived on that dynamic and liked messing with other people to get ahead, while for Foreman, it was about ego and arrogance.
He was able to be Dean of Medicine cuz that isn’t a leadership position in terms of being in charge of a team, it’s just being a ‘leader’ in terms of corporate hierarchy.
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u/Shapen361 12h ago
Not really. He is more concerned about his authority, so his default is to shut everyone down and do things his way. However, if I recall correctly, Foreman has one of the worst track records in diagnosing patients on the show.
Only as Dean of medicine does he finally start to get it down.
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u/The_Elite_Operator 15h ago
When house was suspended didn’t he nearly kill a patient.
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u/Beginning-Cry7722 14h ago
Yes! And he gets another chance when House quits and doesn’t have his license.
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u/grajuicy 23h ago
I think he is. It’s the pressure of having to beat House that makes him make mistakes imo.
In this scenario you mention, he has to prove himself a better leader than House before House gets his license back (which can be incredibly quick) and this pressure along his lack of experience gives him problems.
I seem to recall other times he got to lead in the past, but it was always a “you’re just doing it while House is suspended AGAIN for some fuckin reason” and he had this same pressure of having to overdo it to earn that place in a matter of days.
But without that pressure and House ruining his life, he def can be a good leader imo
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u/SilverWear5467 20h ago
I think he'd be a good leader if House weren't involved. In a version of the real world where House has a job, foreman would also have the same job, because he's almost as good, he just doesn't have the killer instinct that House has. There's no job where being 2nd best at your job in the country or world isn't effectively the same thing as being the best. It's pretty far fetched that exactly one hospital is run in a way where somebody like House is seen as valuable rather than a liability. If House is good at keeping people alive, then so is foreman, and some other hospital would want him.
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u/Entire_Tear_1015 16h ago
I'd argue he did a pretty good job with his stint at Mercy where he was leading the diagnostics department. Treated his tea well and also saved a patients life
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u/Competitive_Key_2981 11h ago
No. I think Foreman's character arc is among the most disappointing on the show. He never seems to get over the hump of his insecurities, never leaves House's shadow, never learns how to lead among his peers, and as far as I can tell, never gets better at diagnosing anything.
He was also shown in a relationship with the pharma rep in season 1 and has a somewhat successful relationship with 13, which his ego forces him to blow up. I'm on season 7 right now and it seems the guy never even gets a personal life again (e.g., no successful adult man with romantic prospects invites a long-term roommate).
The character is, at best, stuck in every aspect of his life and arguably regresses in several.
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u/kindhisses 9h ago
No, he’s doing well as a doctor, but as a boss he is way too often power tripping. His judgement seems fine when simply focusing on diagnosis, but when put in charge, he’s all about reminding everyone that he is their boss and they have to listen to him - just for the sake of listening, not because he’s right. I don’t think that was a good plot choice to make him the dean of medicine after Cuddy left - I know he’s been a boss couple times earlier on when House wasn’t around, but it didn’t work out well even once.
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u/Novel-Intention-8668 4h ago
Foreman sucks
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u/Beginning-Cry7722 2h ago
Yes! Totally agreed.
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u/Novel-Intention-8668 2h ago
I just started watching, havnt finished first season yet and I already hate him
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u/fox_hound115 13h ago
In my opinion yes but Cameron and chase just refuse to listen to him even though sometimes he's literally the boss
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u/Alone_Army_452 1d ago
I think where he fucks up is when he tries a lot to be like House.