Tonight's Episode

[nightdog_barks]

Well. I think that was one of the most well-rounded episodes in a while, but I'm not sure how I feel about the ending. House chooses happiness? House tries to choose happiness? House thinks he's choosing happiness yet mislabels the particular ladybit he's resting his head on?*

Great banter all around. Interesting sidestory with Foreman and Taub as roommates.

WONDERFUL scene with House analyzing the single Vicodin tablet.

Finally more than three seconds of Wilson, and YAY for taking away House's keys. I'm fanwanking that he drove House to Cuddy's place, because I simply can't imagine House walking X number of miles in the rain.

I'm sure there's more but we're making dinner.


*Vaginas are inside the body. House would've been resting his head on the ... outer bits. Labia majora? *g*

Comments

[taiga13]

"Last week we saw House struggle with how to be a good boyfriend to the woman he loves and a good father to an adorable orphan. On this week's don't-miss episode, House struggle with how to be a good boyfriend to the woman he loves and a good father to an adorable orphan. Next week, in the MOST SHOCKING EPISODE EVER, House struggle with how to be a good boyfriend to the woman he loves and a good father to an adorable orphan!"
Heh, that's something that always bugged me when my brothers and friends taught anatomy to their daughters. Everything in that area is "vagina". I'd tell them that they should say "vulva", but surprisingly they weren't interested in taking childrearing advice from a childless person ;)
I just checked out house_wilson to see what happened and was horrified by the ending. No way would Cuddy accept that. Either she has to change their relationship (because he won't) or end it (which would destroy him and therefore kill patients). See, that's why you don't date employees.
Vicodin? I smell foreshadowing of a relapse.

[blackmare]

You'll need to see it, Taiga. The way it played out, it works better than I imagine it could possibly have looked in print. We can absolutely see the seeds of the relationship's impending demise, there, I think -- but I think that's a good thing.

And Wilson in this episode is just so classically, comfortingly Wilson. And the medical story is actually kind of interesting, and Taub and Foreman are fun, and overall? Very nicely done.

I'll enjoy it while the feeling lasts, because next week looks not so much fun.

[taiga13]

An interesting medical story!

[blackmare]

I thought it was interesting, yes.

Unlike last week, this week felt very much like watching House.

[nightdog_barks]

"Last week we saw House struggle with how to be a good boyfriend to the woman he loves and a good father to an adorable orphan. On this week's don't-miss episode, House struggle with how to be a good boyfriend to the woman he loves and a good father to an adorable orphan. Next week, in the MOST SHOCKING EPISODE EVER, House struggle with how to be a good boyfriend to the woman he loves and a good father to an adorable orphan!"

DUDE YOU LEFT OUT THE PART WHERE HE ADOPTS A POUND PUPPY!!!!!!

Heh. Srsly, though, what Mare said. I think this is an episode where you have to see the ending for yourself. Everybody's gonna have their own view, and that includes the comms. I would say that after this ending, Cuddy's asking herself some pretty serious questions.

[m-supercomputer.livejournal.com]

Hee, that...pretty much sums up why I've stopped watching at this point. My interest in romantic drama is less than non-existent, and that seems to be the only type of story they've been interested in telling this season.

[blackmare]

This week was worth watching, and I'm sticking with it because it's often still a good show, and there's still House and Wilson. On another level, though, I just want someone to wake me up when the romance is over. I really do not care about House/Cuddy.

[taiga13]

Heh, like you and Blackmare I don't care about romance in general and House/Cuddy in particular. However, I am disturbed how he seems addicted to the idea of being in love.

[nightdog_barks]

This.

Someone on HHoW mentioned how House always throws himself into whatever he's interested in 100%, like when he took that cooking class with Wilson and ended up as some kind of Super Chef, until he got bored with it because he felt he'd mastered it. I think he might do the same thing with Cuddy -- buy a ring, ask her to marry him, the whole nine hundred yards. The difficulty's going to come when he sits down, looks at what he has, and ... it's not enough for him.

[taiga13]

And of course it's not just about him this time, it's about Cuddy and about little Rachel (kids get harder to take care of as they get older, not easier!) and now his patients.
Love isn't always enough.
(I'm watching now and his wife is pregnant. ANOTHER BABY WITH A DEAD PARENT.)

[nightdog_barks]

Heh, when the wife said she had something to tell him, I said she'd gotten a job and Mr. N said she was pregnant.

[blackmare]

I totally called the "SHE'S PREGNANT" when the whole "I have a secret" thing came up.

Which made it extra sad that the guy died. But I'm glad it isn't always the last-minute miracle cure, that sometimes it really is too late once they figure it out.

[blackmare]

it's not enough for him.

And it won't be. He wants what he has, and wants to keep what he has, and yet and yet and yet. It's not in him to be content, and I think Cuddy needs someone who can be content. Rachel will need someone who can be content. And House is never going to be, and perhaps when he realizes that, he'll get all Noble!House like he did with Stacy and he'll end it. Not because he doesn't love Cuddy, but ironically because he does.

[nightdog_barks]

Yes. He can't ... rest. He's like Pascal's man, who can't sit quietly in a chair in an empty room, and both good and bad will come of it.

[blackmare]

Well, House would always go for the word with the most shock value.

Gotta say, Hugh Laurie plays "blitzed halfway to Jupiter" amazingly well. I've got a mixed reaction to that ending as well. I mean ... on the one hand we see House trying really hard to choose happiness for himself, but on the other, he's drunk off his ass when he's trying, and we've seen that his tendency to self-destruct and see his own happiness as detrimental to other people and to his skills. And those beliefs are going to screw him up, I think.

[nightdog_barks]

Hugh Laurie does Drunk just incredibly well.

SO MUCH LOVE for Wilson finding him in the bar. It does make me wonder how many he had to search before he found him in that one -- from the name on the window (door?) it was a new one, not Sharry's.

[blackmare]

I doubt House will ever go back to Sharry's.

This place, I think was closer to home, a place Wilson would have known to look. I find something tremendously comforting about Wilson being so very Wilson. It's silly, but it substantially improved my evening.

[nightdog_barks]

It did mine, too, and it was most welcome since I was having an oddly blue day.

:-)

[blackmare]

Must be going around. I had a very weirdly down day, too, and now I am happily working on my doggie portrait, which is going well.

It was also wonderful to see House talking to Wilson the way he did. Drunk or not, that was a huge deal for House. Nice to see the two of them still close enough to have those kinds of conversations, but still the same guys they always were, too; such conversations probably only happen when alcohol is involved.

[taiga13]

Just finished watching and you were right, it was terrific.

[pwcorgigirl]

The name of the bar was Berta's -- the third reference to a Bert in the episode: Bert & Ernie, Burt the patient, and then the bar.

As well as Hugh Laurie plays knee-walking drunk, it was kind of sad (at least to me) that he could only talk about the weight of each patient's death to Wilson when he was plastered. And the same for telling Cuddy she's worth it. It's as if he can only let his guard down chemically, and then most people won't take him seriously because he's drunk.

There was a nice timeline tidbit dropped in this episode: Cuddy's been running the hospital for 15 years, which would mean she was there two years before House, if her long-ago line about five years being long enough for House to sulk means that he was employed at PPTH during those five years.

[nightdog_barks]

I thought it was Berta's, or Barta's, or something short and beginning with a B like that. I kept having thoughts after that of Wilson driving to all the bars he knew of, circling around the parking lot looking for House's car, and driving on to the next one. Some of them were probably awful dives where he would've gotten the fisheye for walking in wearing a tux.

Heh, I heard that 15-year bit, but I figured it would just get dropped out of the continuity stream sometime anyway. *g*

[warmdarkwoman]

*Vaginas are inside the body. House would've been resting his head on the ... outer bits. Labia majora? *g*

I was thinking, "That's not her vagina, you idiot, it's her mons veneris. Some doctor you are."

Cuddy's got House right where she wanted him: tamed and in her lap so she can pet him on the head. After next week's mindfuck, I predict that she's going to wonder to herself: "I got everything that I wanted; why am I not ecstatic about it?"

[blackmare]

Yeah, she really isn't, and she isn't ecstatic, I think, because what she really, truly wants? Is someone who is not House. And House can only continue being not-House for so long, and even while he's managing more or less to toe the line, there's that constant unease, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

[nightdog_barks]

"I got everything that I wanted; why am I not ecstatic about it?"

And see, I can see House saying that exact same thing, because when he wants something/is interested in something, he goes into it 100% and conquers it (like his cooking class with Wilson). I can see him doing everything he thinks a guy in love is supposed to do, up to and including asking Cuddy to marry him. And once he's there and he's climbed that peak, so to speak, what then?

Mons veneris, yes! :-D

[topaz_eyes]

Who else thought of "The Softer Side" when House started talking about how being happy makes him a crap doctor?

This felt like a classic House episode. I was ambivalent about House declaring he's choosing happiness with Cuddy over saving patients' lives. Then I decided, the ending was actually manipulative on House's part. And Cuddy's not stupid, she knows she's being played. The expression on her face at the very end said it all.

[nightdog_barks]

YES! I couldn't remember the name of the episode, but I KNEW we've been down this road before! Don't give me anti-depressants, they make me hazy. Or slow. Or something -- I can't remember the exact word he used.

This felt like a classic House episode to me too. I'm ... not sure House was playing her there at the end, but I do think Cuddy must be really starting to wonder if this is all worth it.

[blackmare]

You remember just fine. It was hazy, the word House used. When arguing with Wilson over whether the antidepressants made him happy or hazy. So no, this is hardly the first time we've seen House wrestle with this idea that happiness = losing his edge as a doctor.

There was another time, too. When the patient originally, as it turned out, was only suffering dehydration, but House (because he was happy about something else at the time) conceded to the parents' wishes and didn't insist upon ... it was a CAT scan or something, that would have revealed that the problem they subsequently treated for (and which treatment caused all kinds of Bad Side Effects that sent the team chasing ghosts) never existed in the first place. And House said that if he hadn't been happy that day, he'd have shot the parents down, done the damn test, and everything would have been better.

[nightdog_barks]

I thought there was another episode. Needless to say, House this idea stuck like a ROCK in his head that he can't be happy and a good doctor at the same time.

[blackmare]

I am now hearing Wilson use that metaphor. Simile, whatever it is, telling House that, asking if he's talked to Nolan about it because it is ... it's absurd, House. Seriously.

[nightdog_barks]

He has to have gotten it from somewhere, and I can easily see his dad pressing the view that if you're having fun doing something, YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG. The whole everything has to be a battle, a struggle, for it to be worth doing.

[blackmare]

Yeah, the military dead-seriousness about everything. I can absolutely see that as a legacy of John House. Perfection! White-glove inspections! No excuses are acceptable ever!

You know ... it occurs to me that it isn't just Wilson who needs House to help him get past the curse of feeling like he's got to be perfect. House needs that from Wilson, too, just in a different way.

[taiga13]

It's weird because he was happy with Stacy, before the infarction. (Or so we've been told.) He was a genius doctor then.
One thing I noticed was another House/Wilson role reversal: Wilson was the one to make the crude comment that shocked the musicians.

[nightdog_barks]

Did he make a crude comment? I have no idea what it was -- my memory is FLEETING these days. *g*

[topaz_eyes]

"The Softer Side" was the kid with dehydration, and House was taking methadone for his pain. The anti-depressant episode was "Resignation," in S3, when House gives Wilson speed in retaliation for Wilson dosing House with anti-depressants.

[nightdog_barks]

Sigh.

Thank you, Topaz. Can't remember anything these days ...