'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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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.