'House' season finale: Amber and Kutner and Cuddy, oh my!
I have not made it a secret that despite being a devotee of House since season one, I have been disappointed lately. Did tonight's finale make up for it? Not exactly. Yet, nor did it entirely disappoint.
The POTW is a man who has undergone surgery to sever the corpus callosum due to seizure issues. In the time since then, his split brain reality has given his left arm a mind of its own, so to speak. And it's pretty clear about its displeasure with blowhards in restaurants or on the matter of his girlfriend, who apparently tries too hard. Of course, all of this is a metaphor for House himself, who cannot deal with his feelings for Cuddy. But not in the way you think.
Last week, we saw the beginnings of a change in relationship between House and Cuddy. This week, he is trying to test how real it is. He announces to Wilson that he slept with her and then he embarks on a series of experiments to find out if it was of emotional substance or just maternal hormones responding to his plea to help with his detox. He also clues Wilson in on how he's been clean almost 24 hours and has never felt better. Wilson cautions him against screwing his chance at an actual relationship up and recommends that he drop the childish games and just talk to her, but House has his own agenda.
And that agenda is the focus of most of the episode. But Cuddy is not exactly a shrinking violet and she is not interested in having her position usurped by a relationship. She makes it clear that he is an employee and she is the boss. He can either accept that or leave. Instead, he decides to try and make her angry by asking for tests and sending strippers to her office while she retaliates by sending clinic patients to his. And all the while, he toys with the lipstick she left in his bathroom.
The rest of the team is less affected by the drama between House and Cuddy and more caught up in the drama between Cameron and Chase. Taub corners Chase in the lunch room and tries to talk to him while Foreman tells him he's sorry about the wedding glitch. Yet, despite his own relationship ass-backwardsness, it's House who straightens it all out by talking to Cameron. She rationalizes that keeping the sperm is no different than having fire insurance. You don't expect the fire, but you want to be prepared. He counters that if the condo association wouldn't let her get fire insurance, she wouldn't be willing to go homeless.
It's as clear as his metaphors get and it's not long before she's telling Chase she'll destroy the sperm. But he's decided that she is only trying to hold on to the last piece she has of someone she once loved. And despite the fact that we really haven't seen much of these characters the last two seasons for me to really feel really caught up in their story line, the moment is so well acted that it is hard not to respond to their tears and laughter as they decide the wedding is back on.
House's epiphany comes when he realizes he's been focused on the idea of pancreatic cancer for the POTW because his clinic patient has it. And the shunned girlfriend reveals the POTW's left hand only got angry when she brought his deodorant. The team figures out the deodorant had similar effects on a kid in Singapore and he probably just needed to switch brands - not have the nerve bundle connecting his brain hemispheres cut in two. Unfortunately, this comes after House has announced to the hospital that he slept with Cuddy and she fired him for it.
As this sinks in, he goes to talk to his boss, finding her red eyed. He asks if she is over reacting to the other night, which is when his memory starts to kick in. His left brain clears up the last episode and we find out that it wasn't a lipstick tube he's been playing with all episode. It's a pill bottle. He never asked her for help, she never nursed him through detox, they never slept together. It's all been him and his vicodin. Amber tells him this is the story he made up about his life and Kutner mournfully adds "Too bad it isn't true". The episode closes with Chase and Cameron getting married as Wilson drives House to a psychiatric hospital.
It was a decent turn at the end and made me feel better about last week. But it wasn't a perfect episode. Why would Wilson swallow the tale of House detoxing in less than 24 hours? And in retrospect the comment House made regarding Cuddy's clothing ("Isn't that like locking the barn door after the horse put his face between your breasts for an hour and a half?") hardly makes sense. Nor does one half of a brain knowing that deodorant is making the whole body sick sit well with me. Yet the idea of one part of a persona being obsessed with logical answers while the other part is capable of recognizing the more ephemeral, emotional connections is a very clear scope through which to observe House and it worked well for the most part.
What did you think of the finale? Did it satisfy you after a rocky season or did it just seem like another hallucinatory cliff hanger? Can House handle being in a psychiatric ward given his stated disbelief in the profession? Are you glad that he and Cuddy did not actually sleep together? Will Cameron and Chase be able to make it work?
I liked this episode though I think a lot of House/Cuddy fans are going to feel cheated. I thought Hugh Laurie's performance made the episode - moving from euphoria to uncertainty to fear and despair. I think that Wilson was skeptical all along about House's instant cure for Vicodin addiction, but, in his right brain way, he let his emotions overrule his logic and hoped it might be true.
I agree with the recapper that Chase and Cameron's wedding would have had more resonance if the makers of House M.D. hadn't been ignoring the existence of these characters for the last two seasons.
I'm still a bit confused about what did or did not happen. Did House ever really make that really nasty remark about baby Rachel or was that part of his delusion? However, I guess my confusion mirrors House's.
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Foreman said the right part of the brain keeps you in the moment. That's the way to take House. Specifically, why bother wondering if House will be able to handle a psyche ward? That's not the issue with TV. The issue is going on the journey and while traveling see HOW House handles it.
In the same way, we all know that House has a very grim view of life: it is full of sickness, agony, injustice ... and then you die. He uses diagnosis and reason to insulate himself from this reality. But what's the thing that makes the break for him? It's from last episode, near the end: "I always want to kiss you", he says to Cuddy. He went to Cuddy for help because he wanted a connection with her, he just couldn't bring himself to say it. He's wanted off vicodin for years, but just couldn't bring himself to face the pain. It is the train wreck of his three great loves - love being a right brain function - that brings him to say "No, I'm not ok"; these loves being 1)his love for Cuddy, 2)his love of health and wanting to be off vicodin and 3)his love of Wilson and wanting to share good things with him rather than endless neurosis. And the last scene, Cuddy DOES actually bring House to Wilson for him to help House. Beautifully done. And when does the crisis/break through occur? Not, as you might think, with Cuddy, but rather with Wilson. House submits to trying to embrace goodness when Wilson challenges House to look at his left brain self and ask "do you want to be the man that is with Cuddy?" And House falters, sits down, and says "What do I do?" He honestly asks directly for help. Bing! Total breakthrough, and subtly played, letting the visual dramatic breakthrough come later. Don't be distracted by the detail, look at what they gave you.
What they gave you may not be Shakespeare, but it sure blows away 30 Rock and whatever dreck is being tossed at us this week at the cinema. It's good solid storytelling. Anesthetize your left brain and go along for the ride.
Hey! Don't you be dissing
"30 Rock", ya hear!! There is room in primetime for two excellent shows.
That show is so dead to me it's not even funny. I'm actually relieved the Huddy sex was an hallucition,but the Chase/Cameron wedding is just another proof (as if the childish Huddy love dance wasn't) that House stoppoed being about the medicine a long time ago and now would like it to be considered a rival for Grey's Anatomy.
News Flash: at what they do, GA do it better. House has been just one major disppointment this year, and I won't watch that crap anymore next year.
I LOVED IT!!
What got me wondering is when Cuddy insist House do clinic duty. WHY, if Cuddy knew that House was having a rough time of it, would she make him do clinic duty????
LOVED Wilson bringing House to the hospital and watching him until the door closed and House looking out at him too. I wanted Wilson to hug House, but that just wouldn't be in character for either of them.
How many figured it out when House wondered why there was no lipstick on Cuddy's coffee cup???
GREAT show!! HUGH LAURIE is an AMAZING talent!! I'm SO GLAD I get to enjoy it. :)
I LOVED IT!!
What got me wondering is when Cuddy insist House do clinic duty. WHY, if Cuddy knew that House was having a rough time of it, would she make him do clinic duty????
LOVED Wilson bringing House to the hospital and watching him until the door closed and House looking out at him too. I wanted Wilson to hug House, but that just wouldn't be in character for either of them.
How many figured it out when House wondered why there was no lipstick on Cuddy's coffee cup???
GREAT show!! HUGH LAURIE is an AMAZING talent!! I'm SO GLAD I get to enjoy it. :)
Just one word to describe the season and the finale: CRAP! If I want a soap opera I'll watch Grey's Anatomy!Last night House lost a loyal viewer they had from day one! Puah...
I just hope that next season they can move beyond Cuddy and House being a couple and House's addiction. I just didn't enjoy this finale. Next year maybe they will give House a funny, sexy hot girlfriend and lighten the show up a bit.
Last season's two part finale was similar in being about House knowing something without really knowing it, and slowly realizing what his mind had been hiding from him all along (in that case, that Amber was the mystery patient). When the big reveal finally came, it happened in a moment and it made perfect sense.
Here, on the other hand, the big reveal was so lame that it took nearly 10 minutes of flashbacks to make sense. It didn't have the same gravity and it didn't feel earned. Let's hope some time in the hospital cures House's addiction, because I've had enough of these stupid detox storylines.