Fox’s “House” continues to build its audience and last night earned its highest rating ever.

Returning for its first original episode in four weeks, the medical drama scored a whopping 7.2 rating among adults 18 to 49, according to Nielsen Media Research. Paired with a “House” repeat, Fox easily won the night with a 5.5 average.

NBC came in second with “Dateline” (3.0), followed by “Law & Order: Criminal Intent” (3.4), and “Law & Order: SVU” (5.0). Both procedurals were down slightly from their average.

In third place was CBS with a repeat “NCIS” (2.9) and an on-par “People’s Choice Awards” (3.5).

ABC continues its recent run of weak nightly showings with an “America’s Funniest Home Videos” repeat (2.5) followed by back-to-back episodes of “Big Day” (1.5 and 1.4). The ABC sitcoms were the two lowest-rated shows among the major broadcast networks and pulled down the return of “Boston Legal” to a new all-time low (2.4).

The CW averaged a 0.8 with repeats of “Gilmore Girls” and “Veronica Mars.”