'Moving On' from House
May. 26th, 2011 11:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
readingratThe other day I bought a book for a bit of light reading. The cover promised that the book was 'noisy, hilarious, tragic', 'outrageously enjoyable' and written by 'a brilliant comic writer'. I'm through three-quarters of the book now, and am a bit puzzled. I know that I have major deficiencies in the 'humour' department, but what on earth is funny about a fourteen-year-old boy who commits suicide because his mother is dying of cancer, his swimming coach abused him and his girlfriend gives blow jobs to the school psychopath in return for drugs?
That's roughly how I feel about House MD after watching the season finale. Hang on,folks, this isn't what you promised on the cover! You promised me House, the guy I've been watching for seven seasons; this episode was about some weird sociopath who, after spending a few months terrorizing his ex-girlfriend, now resorts to overt violence against her and her family. If, a few weeks ago anyone had recommended a fanfic in which an insanely jealous House drives his car through Cuddy's living room in the knowledge that there are five people in that house, I'd have laughed and said that I don't read fanfics with wildly out-of-character House in them. (Cuddy crashing her car into House's place? Yes. But this? No.)
I know that hallucination theories are spreading like wildfire, but I'm not going to speculate on what may or may not be revealed in mid-September (or whenever the hiatus is over). We're stuck for the next months with what we saw this week; that's our reality, our present perception of House, and it isn't good. Besides, there may be people who think it's cool to let the audience believe something for a few months and then say, 'Ha ha, fooled you all, that never happened!', but personally I think that's a pretty pathetic move. (But while we're at it, did you guys notice Thirteen's get-up and Chase's clothes? Very surreal. And one month's worth of vicodin in three days - shouldn't House be clinically dead?) The only part that I'm fairly sure is a hallucination is what we see of House after the crash. I think he's probably in a coma in some hospital, and the bar keeper telling him to go home is his subconscious suggesting that he should wake up.
The irritating thing is that the episode definitely had potential. The POTW and her choices, for instance, would in happier circumstances have made a topic worthy of discussion , but her character is now a victim of Shore's final(e) stunt. Marginalised, sidelined, banned into oblivion. Furthermore, she (and Taub) were merely vehicles for all those anvils that needed to be transported to the set: 'Amazing parallel to House!' I don't mind subtle hints and metaphors, but these past three or four episodes there's been too much of a good thing.
Furthermore, in ist basic structure and plot development, the episode didn't necessarily carry the seeds of disaster in it. The story line bore in it manifold possibilities for resolution; the ending was not one towards which the episode needed to drift with the inevitability with which 'Both Sides Now' or 'Wilson's Heart' reached their resolution. No, at the end of 'After Hours' House is poised on the edge of a personal epiphany, and at the beginning of 'Moving On' he is sincerely engaged in carrying out whatever resolution he has come to. Similarly, Wilson and Cuddy had come to their senses, realizing after House's risky DIY operation that he is not always right and that he might just manage to land himself in the morgue if he isn't reined in. Better late than never, Wilson decides, and stops House's prescription felonies, while Cuddy, jamming her foot into the narrow opening that House initial mellow mood offers, forces a clarifying conversation on House. In both cases the rate of success isn't high, but then, Wilson isn't exactly practised in stopping House's abuse, while Cuddy is only slightly less dysfunctional than House when it comes to personal communication. Yet there are changes in everyone's behavioural patterns, changes that could have been used to show some sort of positive progress for House after the seven-episode slump that he's been in.
Utterly believable, if not always reassuring, were the scenes between House and Cuddy. This episode was one of very few this season where I felt I was watching the 'real' House and Cuddy, especially in the cafeteria scene: House evasive, uncooperative and invariably sharp; Cuddy blunt, worried and tenacious. Change the text a bit and their exchanges could have been from earlier seasons.
The slamming against the wall in the corridor and the subsequent text had me wincing ...
This could have been the last House/Cuddy scene of the season and of the series, with House deciding in the wake of that encounter that he needed to leave PPTH for a time. That would have made sense to me and have given the writers enough of an opportunity to leave Cuddy in the series or write her out, depending on how the contract negotiations went. The episode certainly didn't need that violent allusion to the final scene of 'Both Sides Now', only this time with Wilson leaving the car instead of House ...
But no. Drama took precedence over common sense.
In the absence of other viable theories I'll go with a brain tumour, because we're talking about domestic violence here, and that isn't something that can be swept under the carpet later, saying that penance has been done in some form. The rats didn't live long enough to develop other symptoms - House, whose leg tumours were removed in time, might well be otherwise impaired by his mad experiment. But even if a brain tumour was causing bouts of uncharacteristic aggression in House, it is no endorsement of his character that he chooses to vent that aggression on his ex-girlfriend rather than on his friend (who has cut him off from his drugs), his team, or any other person who crosses his path. Since House seems functional in all other respects and not otherwise impaired in his thinking, the tumour that I posit can merely disable the veneer of civilisation and culture that stops him from giving in to his baser instincts. It can't change his basic thinking patterns, and those seem to say that while it's okay for him to do every hooker on the East Coast and get married under his ex-girlfriend's nose, she may not have dinner with another guy. And that's misogynist to the highest degree. A brain tumour can remove his inhibitions and increase his aggressions, but it can't turn him into a Neanderthaler. So, if he suddenly acts like one, he always was one.
Yes, this male jealousy is a double standard that is rampant in our society, yes, most other men are victim to it too, yes, House has always done iffy things such as using the services of hookers and strippers or making sexually inappropriate comments, so am I surpised? Yes I am. House has always been very aware of double standards and hypocrisy; his sexism was verbal and applied for its shock effect, while in his practical dealings with employees and patients he was neutral; his dealings with sex workers appeared business-like - okay, one can disagree on that one, but I very much doubt that House saw women as prey waiting to be exploited; he got through the entire Stacy episode without raising as much as a finger against Stacy or Mark. So, yes, I am very surprised. I refuse to believe that the end of his very tentatively begun relationship with Cuddy would affect him so much more strongly than the combustion of his five-year love-at-first-sight relationship with Stacy that included a chopped-up leg. If House were a manically jealous male chauvinist we would have got a hint or two of that during 'Honeymoon' or during the 'Mark in the stairwell' scene at the latest.
But David Shore says: 'This was always part of him.' (http://www.tvline.com/2011/05/house-finale-post-mortem-season-7-spoilers/) Problem is, not only did most fans fail to spot that part of him in the seven seasons that we've been watching House, but so did Wilson and Cuddy, who have both known him for oodles of years. Which forces me to come to the conclusion that we're being jerked around for the sake of a cheap effect. And no matter what David Shore says about House's intentions in crashing the car into Cuddy's House, it's ruddy dangerous regardless of whether anyone is in that room or not - there are reasons why this is not the standard method for creating a garage for your second car, one of them being that the whole house could collapse. (If walls were that expendable architects would use them less.) Let's also remember that although no one in the Cuddy household seemed injured, Wilson definitely was. Remind me please, what did he do to deserve almost getting run over? Oh, right, I forgot: he got on House's nerves.
What I really, really don't understand is how anyone on the House production team thought they could get away with this as just another 'outrage' in the long list that House has committed already. Misogyny is one thing - one can shrug and turn away or one can choose to ignore it. Domestic violence, like child abuse, is quite another. There's no way the largely female audience will forgive that. Did the producers think that negative publicity is better than none at all or did they not realize that a medical drama cannot afford to turn a serious issue like that into a comedy act, no matter how ridiculous the scene is from the moment House gets out of the car?
In a standard season ending for House MD one wishes to take this poor boy into one's arms and give him a good cuddle. That's what one wants to do at the end of 'Honeymoon', 'Wilson's Heart', 'Both Sides Now' or even 'Help Me' before Cuddy turns up. (Season 3, not so much, I admit.) This episode breaks with that pattern - although Cuddy's behaviour was pretty crappy for two-thirds of the season, one feels like rising to her defence and doing unmentionable things to House. I now see what induced the writers to write Cuddy the way they did most of the season. Their reasoning probably was that if Cuddy behaved decently towards House while they were in a relationship, then, given his post-relationship treatment of her, she'd go down as the martyr of the season. If, however, they wrote her as a total B**** during the relationship while House did everything to make the relationship work, then at the end of the season, all wrongs would be evened out and those two big screw-ups would be quits. House's behaviour would also be justified on some level.
Unfortunately that line of reasoning doesn't work, and that not only for me. Cuddy was a crappy girlfriend, period. And she didn't dump House because she sensed his 'innate violence'; she dumped him for a completely different reason. As for House, nothing can exonerate him, for no one deserves what he did there. Not even if Cuddy had been doing Taub and Chase on the side while she was dating House would House's reaction be justified. I've seem comments by rabid Hilsons: even those who were bashing Cuddy all season for all they were worth can't condone House's behaviour and feel sorry for Cuddy for having to go through the horror of such violence.
So what do we have now? Roughly half a season of Cuddy behaving in a manner that served to dismantle whatever integrity the character possessed, and roughly another half season during which House was subjected to the same fate, while Cuddy suddenly and inexplicably went back to normal. Now both characters are face down in the dirt, no one is redeemed, no one is quits. And no one is happy. Least of all the fans.
That's roughly how I feel about House MD after watching the season finale. Hang on,folks, this isn't what you promised on the cover! You promised me House, the guy I've been watching for seven seasons; this episode was about some weird sociopath who, after spending a few months terrorizing his ex-girlfriend, now resorts to overt violence against her and her family. If, a few weeks ago anyone had recommended a fanfic in which an insanely jealous House drives his car through Cuddy's living room in the knowledge that there are five people in that house, I'd have laughed and said that I don't read fanfics with wildly out-of-character House in them. (Cuddy crashing her car into House's place? Yes. But this? No.)
I know that hallucination theories are spreading like wildfire, but I'm not going to speculate on what may or may not be revealed in mid-September (or whenever the hiatus is over). We're stuck for the next months with what we saw this week; that's our reality, our present perception of House, and it isn't good. Besides, there may be people who think it's cool to let the audience believe something for a few months and then say, 'Ha ha, fooled you all, that never happened!', but personally I think that's a pretty pathetic move. (But while we're at it, did you guys notice Thirteen's get-up and Chase's clothes? Very surreal. And one month's worth of vicodin in three days - shouldn't House be clinically dead?) The only part that I'm fairly sure is a hallucination is what we see of House after the crash. I think he's probably in a coma in some hospital, and the bar keeper telling him to go home is his subconscious suggesting that he should wake up.
The irritating thing is that the episode definitely had potential. The POTW and her choices, for instance, would in happier circumstances have made a topic worthy of discussion , but her character is now a victim of Shore's final(e) stunt. Marginalised, sidelined, banned into oblivion. Furthermore, she (and Taub) were merely vehicles for all those anvils that needed to be transported to the set: 'Amazing parallel to House!' I don't mind subtle hints and metaphors, but these past three or four episodes there's been too much of a good thing.
Furthermore, in ist basic structure and plot development, the episode didn't necessarily carry the seeds of disaster in it. The story line bore in it manifold possibilities for resolution; the ending was not one towards which the episode needed to drift with the inevitability with which 'Both Sides Now' or 'Wilson's Heart' reached their resolution. No, at the end of 'After Hours' House is poised on the edge of a personal epiphany, and at the beginning of 'Moving On' he is sincerely engaged in carrying out whatever resolution he has come to. Similarly, Wilson and Cuddy had come to their senses, realizing after House's risky DIY operation that he is not always right and that he might just manage to land himself in the morgue if he isn't reined in. Better late than never, Wilson decides, and stops House's prescription felonies, while Cuddy, jamming her foot into the narrow opening that House initial mellow mood offers, forces a clarifying conversation on House. In both cases the rate of success isn't high, but then, Wilson isn't exactly practised in stopping House's abuse, while Cuddy is only slightly less dysfunctional than House when it comes to personal communication. Yet there are changes in everyone's behavioural patterns, changes that could have been used to show some sort of positive progress for House after the seven-episode slump that he's been in.
Utterly believable, if not always reassuring, were the scenes between House and Cuddy. This episode was one of very few this season where I felt I was watching the 'real' House and Cuddy, especially in the cafeteria scene: House evasive, uncooperative and invariably sharp; Cuddy blunt, worried and tenacious. Change the text a bit and their exchanges could have been from earlier seasons.
The slamming against the wall in the corridor and the subsequent text had me wincing ...
C: I'm sorry. (Me: Lady, saying sorry only means something if you are prepared to do whatever it takes to make up for the wrong that you're apologizing for!)
H: It isn't your fault. (Me: Actually ... it is.)
… but gestures (the hand holding), facial expressions and body language expressed that Cuddy was acknowledging her guilt and that House was absolving her. At that moment I must admit that I was proud of House: it was possibly his openest and most vulnerable moment of the season, and the one where he showed the most kindness. Here again, an opportunity for House to find closure and move on. The scene felt to me as though it was a pivotal point, rather like the scene in 'Both Sides Now' where Cuddy brings House to Wilson's office and Wilson reaches wordlessly for the telephone - a turning point has been reached, a difficult decision has been taken. Here I assumed that House has finally managed to let go of Cuddy and all the hopes he'd placed in this relationship. H: It isn't your fault. (Me: Actually ... it is.)
This could have been the last House/Cuddy scene of the season and of the series, with House deciding in the wake of that encounter that he needed to leave PPTH for a time. That would have made sense to me and have given the writers enough of an opportunity to leave Cuddy in the series or write her out, depending on how the contract negotiations went. The episode certainly didn't need that violent allusion to the final scene of 'Both Sides Now', only this time with Wilson leaving the car instead of House ...
But no. Drama took precedence over common sense.
In the absence of other viable theories I'll go with a brain tumour, because we're talking about domestic violence here, and that isn't something that can be swept under the carpet later, saying that penance has been done in some form. The rats didn't live long enough to develop other symptoms - House, whose leg tumours were removed in time, might well be otherwise impaired by his mad experiment. But even if a brain tumour was causing bouts of uncharacteristic aggression in House, it is no endorsement of his character that he chooses to vent that aggression on his ex-girlfriend rather than on his friend (who has cut him off from his drugs), his team, or any other person who crosses his path. Since House seems functional in all other respects and not otherwise impaired in his thinking, the tumour that I posit can merely disable the veneer of civilisation and culture that stops him from giving in to his baser instincts. It can't change his basic thinking patterns, and those seem to say that while it's okay for him to do every hooker on the East Coast and get married under his ex-girlfriend's nose, she may not have dinner with another guy. And that's misogynist to the highest degree. A brain tumour can remove his inhibitions and increase his aggressions, but it can't turn him into a Neanderthaler. So, if he suddenly acts like one, he always was one.
Yes, this male jealousy is a double standard that is rampant in our society, yes, most other men are victim to it too, yes, House has always done iffy things such as using the services of hookers and strippers or making sexually inappropriate comments, so am I surpised? Yes I am. House has always been very aware of double standards and hypocrisy; his sexism was verbal and applied for its shock effect, while in his practical dealings with employees and patients he was neutral; his dealings with sex workers appeared business-like - okay, one can disagree on that one, but I very much doubt that House saw women as prey waiting to be exploited; he got through the entire Stacy episode without raising as much as a finger against Stacy or Mark. So, yes, I am very surprised. I refuse to believe that the end of his very tentatively begun relationship with Cuddy would affect him so much more strongly than the combustion of his five-year love-at-first-sight relationship with Stacy that included a chopped-up leg. If House were a manically jealous male chauvinist we would have got a hint or two of that during 'Honeymoon' or during the 'Mark in the stairwell' scene at the latest.
But David Shore says: 'This was always part of him.' (http://www.tvline.com/2011/05/house-finale-post-mortem-season-7-spoilers/) Problem is, not only did most fans fail to spot that part of him in the seven seasons that we've been watching House, but so did Wilson and Cuddy, who have both known him for oodles of years. Which forces me to come to the conclusion that we're being jerked around for the sake of a cheap effect. And no matter what David Shore says about House's intentions in crashing the car into Cuddy's House, it's ruddy dangerous regardless of whether anyone is in that room or not - there are reasons why this is not the standard method for creating a garage for your second car, one of them being that the whole house could collapse. (If walls were that expendable architects would use them less.) Let's also remember that although no one in the Cuddy household seemed injured, Wilson definitely was. Remind me please, what did he do to deserve almost getting run over? Oh, right, I forgot: he got on House's nerves.
What I really, really don't understand is how anyone on the House production team thought they could get away with this as just another 'outrage' in the long list that House has committed already. Misogyny is one thing - one can shrug and turn away or one can choose to ignore it. Domestic violence, like child abuse, is quite another. There's no way the largely female audience will forgive that. Did the producers think that negative publicity is better than none at all or did they not realize that a medical drama cannot afford to turn a serious issue like that into a comedy act, no matter how ridiculous the scene is from the moment House gets out of the car?
In a standard season ending for House MD one wishes to take this poor boy into one's arms and give him a good cuddle. That's what one wants to do at the end of 'Honeymoon', 'Wilson's Heart', 'Both Sides Now' or even 'Help Me' before Cuddy turns up. (Season 3, not so much, I admit.) This episode breaks with that pattern - although Cuddy's behaviour was pretty crappy for two-thirds of the season, one feels like rising to her defence and doing unmentionable things to House. I now see what induced the writers to write Cuddy the way they did most of the season. Their reasoning probably was that if Cuddy behaved decently towards House while they were in a relationship, then, given his post-relationship treatment of her, she'd go down as the martyr of the season. If, however, they wrote her as a total B**** during the relationship while House did everything to make the relationship work, then at the end of the season, all wrongs would be evened out and those two big screw-ups would be quits. House's behaviour would also be justified on some level.
Unfortunately that line of reasoning doesn't work, and that not only for me. Cuddy was a crappy girlfriend, period. And she didn't dump House because she sensed his 'innate violence'; she dumped him for a completely different reason. As for House, nothing can exonerate him, for no one deserves what he did there. Not even if Cuddy had been doing Taub and Chase on the side while she was dating House would House's reaction be justified. I've seem comments by rabid Hilsons: even those who were bashing Cuddy all season for all they were worth can't condone House's behaviour and feel sorry for Cuddy for having to go through the horror of such violence.
So what do we have now? Roughly half a season of Cuddy behaving in a manner that served to dismantle whatever integrity the character possessed, and roughly another half season during which House was subjected to the same fate, while Cuddy suddenly and inexplicably went back to normal. Now both characters are face down in the dirt, no one is redeemed, no one is quits. And no one is happy. Least of all the fans.
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Cutting Cuddy
Date: 2011-05-26 11:42 pm (UTC)Re: Cutting Cuddy
Date: 2011-05-27 02:20 am (UTC)I think DS hadn't realized how invested in the Huddy storyline some fans and people in the production company had become. I also think (and again, this is just a surmise) that Lisa Edelstein was given to understand her character was equal to House's in importance, and it caused problems. I think that's why she probably tried to hardball her negotiations and ended up walking away rather than take the pay/episode cuts; she thought her importance would get her what she wanted.
Because of this situation, it's possible the storyline was rewritten to destroy any semblance of relationship between House and Cuddy. We were told the writers were directed to conduct a massive rewrite over the holiday hiatus, and I suspect that's when Huddy, which was doomed anyway, was turned into the ludicrous mess we've endured over the last couple of months.
I have nothing against LE, from what I've read she's a thoroughly nice person. I also have nothing against Cuddy; she's been sinned against as thoroughly as House and Wilson have when it comes to OOC writing. The Cuddy of the early seasons was not a humorless, uber-controlling perfectionist; she was warm, witty, shrewd, compassionate and very hard to fool. But *IMO*, Cuddy is not equal to House in status on the series, and never was. Her part was pumped up and expanded to fit a storyline some people wanted to push for various reasons, and I don't think that was the original plan at all, or at least Huddy wasn't meant to consume such a large chunk of the storyline. I think originally it might have been the way ReadingRat has suggested: a plotline running quietly in the background, coming to the fore now and then, but always there until it was ready to derail.
So I suspect DS decided to kill two birds with one stone. He made sure Huddy was destroyed so thoroughly that it would be very difficult for LE to come back, and he also sent a message to Huddies everywhere: it's done.
I'm sure there's a lot more to it than this, and again, it's entirely possible I'm completely wrong and stupid with it. But this is what I've pieced together from various remarks made by pertinent entities.
Re: Cutting Cuddy
Date: 2011-05-27 03:00 am (UTC)Re: Cutting Cuddy
Date: 2011-05-27 11:38 am (UTC)As for the timing, Brighid meant the Christmas hiatus, I think, and there was already a massive re-write of the season opener. The original, 'Thunder Roadtrip' had identical text for the team/Richardson plot, but a completely different House/Cuddy plot.
Re: Cutting Cuddy
Date: 2011-05-27 12:43 pm (UTC)So let me just say this: yes, I meant the Christmas hiatus, thank you for clarifying that for me ma'am. :) RR is right, there was a complete rewrite of the opener. 'Thunder Roadtrip', the original script, would have set up a somewhat more mature (and more believable) version of the House/Cuddy relationship. That version was ditched for the nonsense we saw in 'Now What?' The explanation we were given--the original script had been leaked to the fans--is as flat as a fallen souffle, considering shots of the beach scenes from the original opener were apparently deliberately leaked to the fans by someone within the production company. That suggests filming had already begun on the original script--very intriguing, that little tidbit. (I'd heard they had about half the episode in the can already.) It leads me to believe someone objected to the relationship as it stood in 'Thunder Roadtrip', put the kibosh on the script and demanded a rewrite to set up the parody of an affair we got through season 7. Three guesses as to who that someone might have been.
Okay, I'm done. Thanks for being gracious, RR.
/hijack :)
Re: Cutting Cuddy
Date: 2011-05-27 04:13 pm (UTC)Re: Cutting Cuddy
Date: 2011-05-27 02:18 pm (UTC)I'm confused. If anything, the uncertainty over the series length would have made the need for a breakup more imperative, and they'd have busted up in "Small Sacrifices." Can't have House content for long; we only have 6 more episodes to crush him utterly and make him dejected and alone for the series finale! Quick! Manufacture a crisis! Oh, I know: House lies to his boss!
Re: Cutting Cuddy
Date: 2011-05-27 09:36 pm (UTC)Re: Cutting Cuddy
Date: 2011-05-27 10:12 pm (UTC)Re: Cutting Cuddy
Date: 2011-05-31 01:51 pm (UTC)You should have seen my bitching about that episode. It took me three ranty posts to calm down enough to even try to see the good stuff, the Cuddy-character-assassination set me off so badly. And believe me, it wasn't fun to be feeling so negative, when everyone else is all 'woo-hoo, SEX.'
Re: Cutting Cuddy
Date: 2011-05-31 07:37 pm (UTC)Re: Cutting Cuddy
Date: 2011-05-31 08:52 pm (UTC)Wouldn't that have been nice. That certainly would have made her behavior easier to swallow.
She was just so....cranky. And all I could think was - you're going to be cranky now?? He hasn't even done anything! (Yet. There's always a 'yet' with House, I get that.) And she should have been riding some pretty nice endorphins at the time.
I just could not make the leap from 'I don't know if you can fix yourself, but I love you in spite of that' to him having to practically beg her to stay (which broke my heart for him), she gripes at his analyzing (which is simply who he is - if you don't love that, baby, you don't love him), and practically demands an immediate 'I love you' out him.
But what bothered me the most over the arc was that she was generally portrayed as always right - that there was no issue with what she was demanding of him. Her methods were not going to achieve the results she wanted. Having her do those things, then discover that - that would have been a nice learning arc. (Especially if they'd somehow found a way to have her remember that she does know how to get what she wants from him in their working relationship - usually cleverly, and sweetly, though with a spine of steel.)
Cuddy was a crappy girlfriend, period. And she didn't dump House because she sensed his 'innate violence'; she dumped him for a completely different reason. As for House, nothing can exonerate him, for no one deserves what he did there.
I agree SO HARD with EVERY LETTER of that. I appreciate that you've managed to divide the season, and the character assassinations so clearly.
Just because House went off the rails at the end doesn't justify Cuddy's behavior at the beginning - because they're really separate issues. And although you'll generally find me being a fierce defender of House - you're exactly right that there's no defense for that. None. I can't believe that's who they're trying to tell me House is, because there is ZERO defense for that. I can't even see a way back from that. Not just for H/C, but for House himself.
And I'm devastated, because I *loved* this character, but this - this I can't love, can't forgive. He would have to break down into a literally sobbing, remorseful, soggy heap for me to even consider it. And I just don't see how DS takes the character from 'it's no biggie, LOL' to what I described.
Re: Cutting Cuddy
Date: 2011-05-27 04:07 pm (UTC)Re: Cutting Cuddy
Date: 2011-05-27 10:03 am (UTC)This is what lots of people were hoping would come. It would have been way bolder and smarter that what we were given, unfortunately.
Re: Cutting Cuddy
Date: 2011-05-27 09:02 pm (UTC)1. I think she was subjected to tougher and later negotiations than RSL because there's a simple law in the world of series: fewer women are needed than men (just look at the male:female ratio on House), hence it is more difficult for women (especially women over forty) to find alternative offers. The production company hence assumed that they'd be able to get her a lot cheaper than a male actor who is of similar importance to the series.
2. LE probably figured that it will be easier for her to land a new contract after her successful Season 7, where she had a LOT of screen time and a very good salary, than after Season 8, where she is bound to be marginalized, on a much lower salary, and a year older than she is now. Public awareness of her is very high now - in a year's time, with only short appearances per episode (if at all), she'll be as good as forgotten.
As such, it is probably sensible of her to refuse an offer that will not increase her market value, but to move on now while the going is still good.
Re: Cutting Cuddy
Date: 2011-05-28 06:47 pm (UTC)Who would tell her that (other than her most rabid fans)? The show is called House MD, surely none of the writers, producers or directors would think she was or should be equal in importance to House? I'm a huge LE/Cuddy fan but I've never once thought she was as important as House himself -- the show revolves around him and she is obviously just a side character. One of the two most important side characters, but just a side character all the same.
Also, what kind of problems do you think this may have caused?
So I suspect DS decided to kill two birds with one stone. He made sure Huddy was destroyed so thoroughly that it would be very difficult for LE to come back, and he also sent a message to Huddies everywhere: it's done.
Why would he want to do this? I already have a hard time wrapping my mind around his determination to utterly destroy any last morsel of a relationship between House and Cuddy. I mean, even if you yourself don't really like the storyline, just the fact that so many fans DO is a good reason to keep the coals glowing just a teeny bit, to keep those fans hopeful and have them stick with the show. Which is why I found it so utterly baffling when after Bombshells he kept insisting they were totally completely done forever (although obviously they were). I mean, even if you never want to go back to that storyline, why completely destroy all hope the many Huddy fans might have, take away all their fun in watching, and basically encourage them to stop watching? Do they not understand that hope keeps people going (in real life, and in watching a TV show)? That was just a really stupid move IMO. Terrible, terrible PR.
But I have an even harder time to try and think of a reason why he would want to make it difficult for Lisa to come back -- do you have any theories on that? Why would he want to do that?