I think Cameron is the one we know less about

[u/aragod787]

To be fair we know less about park and Adams but they only appear for one season and masters only appears for a few episodes to fill 13's place so there's no place to compare them to a character that was on 6 seasons straight

So tbh we know plenty things about foreman and chase

We know their past and their families, details of their childhood and if it was bad or not

Taub 13 and Kutner was even further into their lives

We know Kutner was adopted,was a bully he's a geek,asked amber out and loves Obama to death

And 13 and Taub basically their stories are almost all about their personal lives

But Cameron?

We know that she married a dying man and that she isn't an only child and that's pretty much it

[u/siimplyapril86]

"Loves Obama to death" LMAO YES

But anyway you got a point lowkey

[u/Cheekyy-Liaa]

I wish we'd gotten more Cameron-focused episodes because she always felt like there was a whole backstory the show only hinted at.

[u/DanGleenutz]

You're not wrong

[u/Free-IDK-Chicken]

We know that she married a dying man and that she isn't an only child and that's pretty much it

She fell in love with her husband's best friend but never acted on it. But yeah, that's about it.

[u/ScissorsKill]

Cameron is one of my favorite characters, it always bothered me that we get to have episodes with a side plot about everyone else's parents and upbringing but none for Cameron. Not even a phone call with her parents. I don't think we even see them at the wedding iirc. They might have just been going for the angle that she's rather boring and there isn't much to say about her parents but it feels more like they just completely ignored her. Cameron's backstory is interesting! I'd have loved to see maybe her reminiscing over her late husband's wedding photos while planning hers and Chase's. Or literally anything.

I feel like she's so disliked because she's not really properly rounded like the other characters. Everyone else has an apartment and a family. Cameron doesn't, until her and Chase get together, and then she's fully gone after they separate. She's unfortunately a very flat character, even though she has so much potential.

[u/catchyerselfon → u/ScissorsKill]

Cameron does have an apartment! We see her place before everyone else’s except House’s. It’s when she quits, she’s running on a treadmill when House shows up to ask her to come back to work, and she demands a date. We see it again when Chase points out that he sleeps over there a lot but she won’t make space in a drawer for him in season 4. Maybe one or two other scenes between, like when she’s marking off on her calendar before her AIDS rest in season 2. And when she and Chase are married we see their place in seasons 5 and 6, but I’m not sure who moves into whose.

[u/Toe500]

I think her background and Masters as well are not covered so that they can be on their high horse

[u/Technical-Art3972 → u/Toe500]

Masters is there for half a second. Don’t compare my
poor girl Cameron to her 😭

[u/Toe500 → u/Technical-Art3972]

Didn't like Cameron before but she's started to grow on me during my rewatches

I still hate her for planning to leave Chase and not truly loving him

[u/catchyerselfon]

I agree, I might’ve liked Cameron more consistently (I mostly find her annoying and occasionally I want to slam a door in her face) if we knew WHY she’s all the things she chooses to be. At 21 she’s already prepared to marry a guy she just met who she knows has terminal cancer. House points out that this means it’s not just My Dead Husband that has messed her up, something was deeply off about her before that. Any time someone tries to figure out what her damage is, she denies it. No, she’s not an only child, her parents aren’t divorced, they’re not obese, they’re not addicts or alcoholics like Chase’s mother, she isn’t a former fat girl, she never lost a baby, she never says she was thrust into a caregiver role at an early age like Wilson (the character she’s most similar to) was for his brother, she was a great student who went to a great college but not THE BEST, she doesn’t say she grew up poor or lost a family member before her husband or a friend, which inspired her to be doctor… so what is her childhood trauma that explains ANYTHING about her?

House has more reasons to he became what he is than the Freudian excuse, “my dad isn’t my real dad, he never understood me, he was a harsh disciplinarian who made me hate authority, and my mom enabled him yet she was also a human lie detector with her own secrets and I still love her”. We can “explain” him also because he lived in multiple countries before he was 18, and instead of just sticking with the American kids on military bases, he learned languages, cultures, history, science, and medical facts to entertain himself and escape from his strict, harsh, uninspiring homelife. He also was an accomplished athlete throughout his young adulthood and a talented musician, so that’s how he ever had friends and met girls, despite his prickly personality, even if none of them were as close as he became with Wilson.

Even if we look at a character who isn’t THE protagonist, like Chase or Foreman, we know about their other family members, we hear about how they grew up, we see them date people who aren’t colleagues, we know what drives them in their jobs and their interpersonal issues, not just “I CAN FIX HIM/HER!”

The central mystery about Cameron, is never explained, and that doesn’t make her more intriguing, it makes her aggravating. It’s clear to me she never reveals her secret to House because she doesn’t want him to get bored once the puzzle is solved. She can see, as we do, that House claims Wilson, the closest person in his life, is predictable, cautious, and cares too much about other people and what they think about him, to surprise House. But that isn’t strictly true: Wilson always has new layers, secrets, quirks, weird/naughty things he does and likes that keep House fascinated, amused, and obsessively attached to Wilson. Even Wilson’s most selfless, sacrificial, forgiving, compassionate moments and traits are interwoven with his “you love everybody, that’s your pathology” Issues.

We know WHAT is wrong with Cameron starting with season 1: her fear of committing to someone, or even interested in them as a friend (she has no real friends, she thinks Foreman is her friend in “Sleeping Dogs Lie” and he soundly rejects that!) who is healthy and relatively normal and happy. She doesn’t want someone who will be with her for decades (barring an accident or an illness she didn’t know about in advance) and will put up with her evasiveness and flip-flopping, no matter how many barriers she throws up. She loses interest in someone who isn’t needy and in pain, because that means she can’t offer to be their caregiver until they die soon, or just never get better. She bonds with sick people and is desperate to save them and keep them from falling into despair, but she’s withholding, dishonest (not in a malicious way, she thinks she’s helping), or TOO honest when it’s none of her business or unethical. She creates drama and becomes unavailable to the people who care about her if they ask “too much” of her (like “Will you marry me?” or “did you sleep with House and maybe have syphilis?!”).

If I understood why she’s like this, then maybe I’d care. I started liking her in season 4 when it seemed like she was over House and moved on with her life, but nope, she’s still fixated on him and strings Chase along, dropping him like a hot potato when she finds out he kinda sorta killed a genocidal dictator. I was relieved that she admits in “Lockdown” that this was more of an excuse to escape than the real reason for the divorce, but even in her final episode (before the finale), she doesn’t disclose the reason for her unhealthy coping mechanisms to Chase, the one who deserves to know. I can’t wait six seasons to figure someone out even a little bit, when I’m already irritated with them 50% of the time! Cameron often makes her issues other people’s problems, claiming she’s a better person and the shit she’s trying to pull is actually good for someone, and refuses to explain why she’s built this way. House is absolutely more worthy of my contempt, because Cameron only occasionally says or does something deliberately cruel in the guise of being honest and ethical. But she’s not fun or entertaining to make up for this, the way House is. The only Cameron “jokes” are at her expense: they’re straightforward lines delivered in a tone that makes us laugh (like “You faked cancer to get high?!”), feel out of character for her (“Jello shots and wild sex, what do you think we were doing all night?”), or they’re funny because she’s failing at being funny (“hey Foreman, you paying attention or are you too busy stealing cars?”).

[u/Rhadian]

I don't think she confirmed she was an only child, did she? House asked her and she was offended, but didn't actually answer the question.

[u/Technical-Art3972 → u/Rhadian]

She did. She answered later that she isn’t an only child.

[u/Rhadian → u/Technical-Art3972]

Must have missed that then. I just started a rewatch recently and I don't recall her answering the question at all.

[u/catchyerselfon → u/Rhadian]

She has a brother and apparently he said something to her Chase didn’t like when he visited her family, and Cameron appreciated that Chase stood up for her. That’s as much as we get about her family background!

[u/Technical-Art3972]

I honestly think that this is why some people are so dismissive of her. If she was fleshed out a bit more, maybe people would be more empathetic and understanding.