Eric Foreman - Personality

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 (in "Deception", "Failure to Communicate" and "Need to Know"), during which time House referred to him as "Blackpoleon Blackaparte." It has also been implied that Foreman and House share certain characteristics (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, after she falls out with him over his writing up an article on a previous case, knowing she was already writing her own, and getting House to sign off on it while hers lay unread, leading to his article's publication. 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. Despite these instances, later episodes such as "Wilson's Heart" and "Emancipation" demonstrate Cameron and Chase offering Foreman advice and support.

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 in "Fools For Love". 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, in "Needle in a Haystack", Foreman offers a Romani boy an interview for an 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.

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 in "Family". 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.

Foreman takes a job at Mercy Hospital in New York, and he immediately goes out of his way to conduct differential diagnoses with a calm head and professional attitude, almost the exact opposite of House. However, when a patient presents with a condition with similar symptoms to the patient he killed, Foreman goes against regulations (like House) to save the patient's life, which he does. Despite making a life-saving call, Foreman's administrator fires him due to violating regulations. Foreman is then re-hired by Dr. Lisa Cuddy to serve as a partner of sorts with Dr. House and to act as the "eyes and ears" of Dr. Cuddy on House's team. His position is permanent, as he cannot be hired anywhere else. His personality appears to have changed drastically since being re-hired and has become distinctly sarcastic and biting, and although he shows some level of restraint, his sense of humor has become very similar to that of Dr. House. He nevertheless states that he does enjoy being back at PPTH and working with House again.

Significantly, as he did during his temporary stint as House's supervisor in season 2, Foreman has picked up House's habit of practicing medicine in plain clothes, eschewing the white coat he wore during his first hitch as a member of House's team. However, his outfit is still more professional than House's, tending toward well-tailored suits and ties.

In his romantic life, Foreman is shown to have intimacy issues. His relationship with a PPTH nurse named Wendy - between season 3's "Fools For Love" and "Insensitive" - ends with her breaking up with him as he will not truly allow her to get close. Having begun a relationship with teammate Thirteen in season 5, his issues are highlighted in "Simple Explanation", where he admits and demonstrates to her that he works through major emotional stress alone, although he later makes a point not to entirely shut her out. In the following episode, "Saviors", teammate Dr. Chris Taub deduces from a conversation with Thirteen that Foreman does not open up much to her in private.

After comments from House about his general lack of spontaneity in "Lucky Thirteen", Foreman voices concerns to Chase that he is "boring," to which Chase offers that Foreman is too controlled regarding the events in his life, which prevents him from pushing his limits. In a moment between Taub and Thirteen during "The Softer Side", Taub mocks Foreman for having a robotic manner, comparing him to the fictional android character, the T-1000 from "Terminator 2."

Foreman is a fan of jazz music, first shown in the episode "Who's Your Daddy?", when Foreman makes a Miles Davis reference, and later in the episode "Insensitive", where he plans to attend a jazz festival.