In the first part of my analysis I explained how every arc led to another and how the seasons followed each other. I tried to explain the mechanics of the writings and, doing so, analyzed the inner construction to discover how the show’s narrative was built as a whole. In this second part I’ll try to do the same and to see how the show evolved.
The first three seasons had really well defined arcs that fitted together well in the medical procedural. However, as the show goes on, on its fourth year, the character study overtakes the medical procedural, the show becoming less formulaic.
The seasons 4 to 6 propose a new chapter in the journey into House’s mind, a more intimate and dramatic one.
Season 4 begins with House alone as he fired Chase and accepted Foreman’s & Cameron’s resignations. In the end of season 3 he seemed okay with this new situation but as time goes by, his unwillingness to hire a new team uncovers his inability to really move on.
Wilson & Cuddy force him to conduct interviews to hire new people but of course, House denies he needs a team and he insists he is fine by himself. He can proclaim all he wants he doesn’t need help to solve a case, we all know better. As Cuddy tells him, he needs people to bounce ideas off of. After dragging everyone around him to enable him so that he can solve the case, he agrees to hire a new one but in his own personal way.
And after being alone in the first episode, he’s going to have 40 people to talk to, eliminating candidates after each case.
This “Survivor” arc is interesting in multiple ways. It allows us to see House in full teacher mode and see exactly what kind of doctors he wants for his team, revealing at the same time, what kind of teacher he is.
Considering this is not the way he hired his old team, it’s also telling about the kind of place he is in emotionally and intellectually after the loss of his three beloved ducklings. House is in denial that Foreman, Cameron & Chase departures didn’t profoundly touch him and that he is not fine with it. According to Wilson he doesn’t want to admit that he bonded with his last team therefore he is reluctant to hire a new one because he wants to avoid suffering. His old ducklings are not easily replaceable because of that bond.
House will even see Chase, Cameron and Foreman at the hospital in The Right Stuff (04x02), which is a sign of repressed guilt or panic for Wilson. Even if Chase and Cameron still work at PPTH, as House is going to find out, he really does have a vision of Foreman who is now practicing at New York Mercy. It’s a sign that he is not so okay with the current situation.
His “Survivor” experiment also offers an interesting paradox. As Wilson explains, House is afraid to bond and really tries to avoid it. However, House justifies his new hiring method by saying that he can’t know who he wants in his team if he doesn’t know the candidates well. He needs time for that. The thing is, the more he wants to know them, the more he had to spend time with them, risking becoming close to them and bond, even if reluctantly so.
So what kind of doctors does House want? House seamlessly tests and teaches his potential fellows on the basis of virtues (or lack thereof) he prizes. He wants to see how passionate, independent, imaginative, creative, insubordinate but respectful and brave they are.
In all the doctors of this arc, some candidates are distinguishing themselves pretty quickly. Taub, Thirteen and Amber are among those. They are among the ones who speak first about the case in The Right Stuff. Thirteen asks an excellent, relevant question, showing her perspicacity, while Amber shows her strong personality that is later her earns her the nickname “Cutthroat Bitch” as her first dialogue demonstrates:
House: “You got to trust someone”
CB: “No, not necessarily”.
Kutner is then introduced as the goofy, young reckless doctor we’re going to love.
They all will be part of the finalists and they will try to form a bond despite adversity. It is interesting to see that some of them are more willing to do so than others, which also reveals something about them. Amber doesn’t like anybody and lives only for the competition, Kutner is a nice fellow who likes everybody, Taub doesn’t care about bonds and is here against his will, Thirteen is a puzzle, constantly hiding everything about herself and Cole is a very nice but he's an introvert and a privately religious person.
House will somewhat form a bond with his finalists having a hard time to decide who to fire, even asking Cuddy for advice. In the end, what he thinks is best for the team is going to prevail for his choice. One of the things he also taught, along with all the ones previously mentioned, is humility. It’s what will cost Amber the job. House sadly fires her despite the fact that she is a great doctor and she played the game better than anybody else, telling her that: “If you're gonna work for me, you have to be willing to be wrong, willing to lose. 'Cause you just did.”
So, in the end, he chooses Kutner and his “out there” ideas, Taub, the rational, screwed up man and Thirteen the mysterious street-smart girl. Each of them brings their particularities and qualities to the team, putting them together to solve cases.
We still also get glimpses of his old team. Chase is now a surgeon and Cameron works in the ER at PPTH. It is interesting to see how the writers made them grow. Katie Jacobs said once that, when Chase comes with the right diagnosis in The Right Stuff, it is a sign that he finally, and fully became a man. I agree with that statement. Chase & Cameron will intervene from time to time, playing the older brother and sister to the new team and helping and challenging House. Chase is now a good straightforward, confident man who minds his own business but likes games. Cameron looks like a more independent, confident and stronger woman. Foreman is fired from New York Mercy and can’t find a job by playing House. Fortunately, Cuddy is here to save him. He will then serve as a link between the old time and the new one.
This arc will also introduce another: the Amber/Wilson one. As fun as this arc was with House’s games, it’s going to bring a tragic ending. Sometime after her dismissal, Amber starts dating Wilson. The relationship seems to work well and is good for both of them. Wilson breaks his old “needs needy” pattern and Amber discovers what it is like to have both love and respect.
It’s a turning point for Wilson’s character and for the show. As House is jealous but also somewhat understanding of this relationship, Amber dies tragically after being in a bus accident with House.
As we learn more about House the teacher, we also learn more about his desires and expectations. In the two-part finale we get to see what is in his mind and what he feels. He fantasizes about Cuddy and questions his own mind. In a wonderful scene in Wilson’s Heart (04x16) with the dead Amber, House speaks honestly about himself:
House: “I lied. I don’t want to be in pain. I don’t want to be miserable. And I don’t want him (Wilson) to hate me.”
Amber: “You can’t always get what you want.”
Here begins the tragic part of the show. This season is like a transitional one leading to this highly dramatic path and journey that House will embark on.
At first everything goes well. House finds a new team, we start to get familiar with them as characters and learn what’s going to come into play in the next seasons for them: Taub cheating on his wife, Thirteen’s Huntington’s disease, Foreman’s desire to be independent and more in charge etc.
Foreman is back and seconds House. Wilson is happy with his new girlfriend and House lets himself to be more and more flirtatious with Cuddy. Until House gets drunk in a bar, calls Wilson to come get him. Wilson being unavailable, Amber comes to get him and they unfortunately are caught in a bus accident together. House has a hard time remembering what happened, remembering only that someone is going to die (Amber). His guilt pushes him to accept Wilson’s request to have a risky procedure carried out on himself. When it turns out he can’t save Amber, everyone is in shock. As they all go tell goodbye and as Thirteen learns she has Huntington’s Chorea disease, House is left alone in misery with just Cuddy vigil by his side.
This season is preparing us for the fifth one during which the new team is going to be well established, Wilson & House friendship will be tested and the relationship between House & Cuddy is going to become even more complex. House’s downfall to Hell has just begun.
Like the first three seasons, it is quite logically written: being alone doesn’t work for House which leads to the “Survivor arc” which leads to the formation of a new team and brings (almost inadvertently) the Wilson/Amber arc that ends tragically, bringing a new turning point in the show.
By the fifth season “House” is not – in its core – a procedural show anymore. It is fully and entirely a character study. Now we know House very well. We know his character traits, his way of thinking, his view of himself and of the world, his expectations, his problems and the people around him. Now it’s time to play with all this and mess the hero up even more.
This season begins with Thirteen’s difficulty to accept her death sentence while House & Wilson’s friendship is really tested and even seems to come to an end. Wanting to move on with his life after Amber’s death, Wilson rejects House and his friendship, accusing the grumpy doctor to spread misery around him (Dying Changes Everything 05x01). It will need the death of House’s father and Cuddy’s interventions to fix this relationship up.
This provides us an example of how deep and caring this friendship is, as needy and uncommon as it is. Their friendship sort of brings balance into their lives as Wilson explains it in The Social Contract (05x17). House asks if it bothers Wilson if they don’t have a social contract but we can see, as we observe their dynamic, that they have one. This friendship is important for the characters and for the show itself. They need each other. They help each other, making the other one think about himself and his own life. Their differences are “feeding” them. It’s probably one of the greatest friendships ever written. It’s subtle, fun and interesting.
Then the other important relationship of this show will be shaken: the House & Cuddy one. The dynamic begins to change when Cuddy announces in Lucky Thirteen (05x05) that she’s adopting a baby. House is deeply unsettled by this news and gets scared. After almost losing Wilson’s friendship he is afraid his dynamic with his boss will change. He doesn’t want that. Their dynamic was always built on trust, attraction, intellectual games, debate and loyalty. They’ve always been there for each other no matter what and House is clearly afraid to lose this.
After being a total jerk with Cuddy during the last step of the adoption process, House does eventually let his vulnerability show. Going to see Cuddy after she lost the opportunity to adopt (the mother having changed her mind), House recognizes her pain and they kiss passionately. Twenty years of a stormy relationship, of denial, of mutual attraction and avoidance rushes back at them right there. It’s a major event in the show and that will complexify the things further for House. Especially as Cuddy will have another real and successful opportunity to adopt a baby in Joy to the World (05x11).
I know some fans believe that complicating House & Cuddy’s relationship this season was a mistake, some people even think it ruined Cuddy’s character but I couldn’t disagree more. House and Cuddy’s dance this season is going to show us how similar they both are. They are both immensely screwed up. They are both really good at their jobs and really pathetically bad at social relationship. They like being challenged. They like games but can also be real jerks when they want. Still avoiding confronting their past and attraction, they play games even more than before and when one of them accepts to be vulnerable and dares to talk about their relationship it ends with more deflection. The games will even escalate in ugliness as Cuddy makes a move to House and then when she succeeds to adopt a child. It really goes far when House grabs Cuddy’s left breast in Let Them Eat Cake (05x10) or when Cuddy seeks revenge on House for being difficult while she’s adapting to motherhood in The Greater Good (05x14). The fact that things go this far shows how much they’re scared by their mutual attraction to each other and emphasizes their similarities. The trip wire thing shows that Cuddy’s patience to House’s crap is not limitless and when she feels her back is put against the wall, she can be as mean as House can be.
House & Cuddy are so alike that they can temporarily reverse their positions. In Joy to the World there is an interesting substitution as Cuddy takes House’s place solving the current case. She’s the one who has a heart-to-heart talk with the patient, telling her how much screwed up she is, especially in her personal life (or lack thereof). She also has the famous epiphany and solves the case.
In this season, House’s personal life and issues really meddles with his job. He clings to his medical brilliance and his genius more than ever but it seems that it’s not enough. His father dies, which provides us new information on the doctor’s family. We already knew he was an abused child (One Day, One Room, 03x12) but now, we learn that John House wasn’t his biological father and that he is apparently the son of an old friend of the family (Birthmarks, 05x04). Moreover, both his relationship with the most important people in his life changes somehow.
In his team, Thirteen’s inability to cope with her Huntington’s disease takes its toll in Last Resort (05x09) when she accepts to be the guinea pig to the patient/hostage taker. She then tries to move on by beginning a relationship with Foreman.
It’s too much for House. He feels like everything is changing around him, like everyone seems to move on except him. These were difficult months for him and now too many personal things happen too fast.
As a consequence, leg pain apparently increased because he even starts to take methadone. It works at first as we get to see a nice, relax House we already got a glimpse of in the beginning of season 3. Only, when the methadone and his pain-free life become a threat to his genius, he stops taking it. His rational mind is all he has and all he values. Cuddy tries to convince him he just needs more time to adjust and that he shouldn’t fear being happy but House, desperately needing his gift right now, dismisses her. “This is the only me you get” he sadly tells her, showing her his cane (The Softer Side, 05x16). Unfortunately, the methadone failure becomes the least of his worries after Kutner commits suicide.
This whole year House has had to deal with personal problems. He doesn’t always handle things well. Not knowing what to do to get Wilson’s friendship back, he hires a private detective. Not knowing what to do with Cuddy, he avoids the issue by being a total jerk to her. He also loses his father, after having lost Amber months before. Kutner’s suicide is the last straw. It’s too much for him. He didn’t see that coming. House, mister “I-see-and-even-foresee-everything” didn’t see that coming. He didn’t notice anything that could have told him Kutner was apparently depressed, suicidal or just inclined to such a gesture. He thinks he’s losing his “mojo” as everyone else at the hospital is in shock. Wilson will reassure him for a while but House is really “losing it”. After finally being able to solve the case in Saviors (05x21), Amber appears to him. It is the beginning of his breakdown.
Kutner’s death reminded everyone of his or her own mortality. Chase doesn’t want to waste time and proposes to Cameron who gets scared at the reason he did it. As a result, her past and her old insecurities regarding relationships come back to her again. Wilson is in shock after already losing Amber and Cuddy tries to hold everybody together. House is the most visibly shaken though.
He tries to remain himself, even using “Amber” to diagnose. He also keeps meddling in other people’s lives, but when he finds out that he apparently forgot Chase was allergic to strawberries at the young doctor bachelor’s party, he realizes that his worst fears have become true: he’s really losing his rational mind.
All the problems and desires he’s avoided start to haunt him as he first hallucinates Amber and then what appears to be his secret wishes: a life with less pain, no drugs and love. The season seems to finish on a happy note as House finally gives in to his feelings for Cuddy after she helped him to detox. The day after, he walks happily in the hospital, hallucination-free and in love. This would be the end of the story if you failed to take into account the craftiness and sadism of the writers regarding our hero. So it turns out it was all a hallucination. He is still on Vicodin and Cuddy never spent the night with him as Amber and Kutner painfully remind him. His breakdown is now complete.
At the end of the season, House is left lost, miserable and scared as he checks himself in a psychiatric hospital while Chase & Cameron gets married.
This is the lowest we’d seen him so far and his recovery will be a long a bumpy ride. It begins immediately after he enters “Mayfield” the psychiatric institution.
This season 5 was very action-packed. It re-settled every relationship, every interaction the characters have with each other. A lot of dramatic events happen with the writers adding a new one eveytime things seem to get better. All these events then converge in the same direction and it all collides in the last 5 episodes.
Season 6 is the season of changes for our hero.
In the episode Broken (06x01) House meets people that are going to change him a bit. Dr Nolan, his psychiatrist, makes him realize that he needs help and, foremost, how much he needs help. House’s troubles go beyond and way deeper that his Vicodin addiction. Nolan will therefore manage to make House let people help him. House also meets Lydia the sister-in-law of a patient. She makes him realize that it is okay to open up to people, connect with them on a deep level, even if it’s for a short period of time. Nolan helps on a psychological and medical level, making House talk about himself and his numerous issues while Lydia helps him on a social level, bringing him the courage to accept being vulnerable, to connect and feel something deep about people around him, especially her.
Lydia brings House’s vulnerability and humanity out in the open and as she comes to like him, their connection goes deeper as they recognize each other’s pain and loneliness. One sad night, they even make love, which will bring tears to House’s eyes. It has been such a long time since House let himself go like this that he is completely overwhelmed by these feelings and the intimacy of the moment. It really makes him acknowledge that contact with human beings can be soft and beautiful and doesn’t bring only suffering. Sometimes you just have to let down your guard and if you let go, then something powerful can come out.
House also connects with his talkative, insufferable but charming roommate Alvie. He even will come to like him despite his annoying character traits.
As House accepts this new knowledge and stays away from the drugs, other people’s lives change too, for better or worse. House tries to find his place in all this, after spending 3 months in a psychiatric hospital. He now lives with Wilson and thinking his work will only provide reasons to go back to the drugs, he quits, wanting a less stressful job. Cuddy accepts his resignation. Then, desperate to calm the increasing pain in his leg, he solves his team’s case through the Internet. The patient in Epic Fail (06x01) indeed posted all his symptoms on a site waiting for answers. House seems to be as addicted to puzzles and to his job as he was to his Vicodin. However, diagnosing brings him something to focus on and helps him get past the pain and avoid relapsing. House is scared to fall into his old footsteps by going back to his job, but Nolan reassures him: “But could be... the only thing worse for you than going back to diagnostic medicine is, not going back.” House then goes back to PPTH, admitting to Cuddy that he needs this. The thing is, he doesn’t have his medical license anymore so he can only be a consultant. Even if his insights are always important and great we can see that House has trouble totally focusing on the cases, something emphasized by the absence of the white board.
He has indeed other things in mind. He has to get his license back, has to stay away from Vicodin and to be better at opening up to people. However, things don’t change in a good way for him or don’t go his way fast enough for his taste. Once again, things around him change but he can’t seem to be able to follow. Living with Wilson goes well, especially after Wilson takes a Condo for both of them but it is also a sign that Wilson made peace with Amber’s death and is ready to move on. House also comes to terms with his feelings for Cuddy and tries to woo her but it turns out that she tries to move on as well, being in a relationship with PI Lucas Douglas. As much as he wants to open up to her and be honest, he doesn’t really know how to do it well and ends up giving her mixed signals. He shows that he’s changed a bit and says he’s more “social”. Only, when she goes to his apartment in Epic Fail to see how he’s doing and to understand where they stand after those chaotic months, House dismisses her with deflections. House gave clues that he liked her in season 5. He then hallucinated that he spent the night with her, humiliated her by announcing it on the balcony of the hospital and broke down in her office before disappearing for three months to a psychiatric hospital. The last time they spoke she was angry and worried sick about him. Cuddy’s wonderings about where they stand are legitimate and she even lets herself be vulnerable, asking to talk to him. But House is not ready yet and he just deflects and rejects her. Then he tries to woo her by admitting that the one-night-stand they shared at University wasn’t supposed to be one as far as he was concerned (Known Unknowns, 06x06) and by trying to break her and Lucas up (Ignorance Is Bliss, 06x08). Talk about mixed signals! House decides then to give up his conniving plans as they just result in more meaningless games. As Cuddy tells him she is tired of it, he accepts this and let her live her story with Lucas.
Wilson himself decides to take a risk and to renew his relationship with Sam, his first ex-wife. They didn’t see each other for years, and it turns out she’s recently divorced. It is an interesting step for Wilson. As Thirteen says to him in Lockdown (06x16) the fact that they were previously married means that even just a date is significant. Sam knows Wilson already, even if he changed since, breaking is old pattern. Wilson dares to ask Sam anyway and things between them are good despite the fact that House tries to separate them. Seeing this as a bad thing, as Wilson was apparently devastated after Sam left him all those years ago (NOT ten!!), House tests the new couple by provoking disputes. Is the fact that he is worried about is friend the only reason why he does this? It really looks like House is afraid but also lost. It seems that he did a lot to try to be better only to watch passively as the people he cared most about move on without him.
All he has left is the ability to meddle into Taub’s life, to try to save the doctor’s marriage. Even Chase seems to slowly overcome his failed marriage with Cameron, forming a beneficial friendship with Thirteen.
As season 5 was about the similarities the characters share, the 6th seems to be the “selfish” season. Every character tries his/her best to do something for himself/herself. Cuddy tries to stay away from the craziness of House’s circle by attempting a normal, uncomplicated relationship with Lucas, Wilson moves out of Amber’s apartment and moves in with Sam, Thirteen accepts her disease and travels, Taub tries to make his marriage work while not giving up his personal needs, Chase finds some closure to his marriage and bonds with Thirteen, Foreman finds closure to his relationship with Thirteen and remains a solid part of the team. Only the cranky doctor seems to stagnate.
Unable to prevent the two closest people to move on without him, he tries to go back to his old boss self by doing whatever he can to retrieve his old team once he has his license back. Indeed, it appears that Foreman was unable to keep Thirteen and Taub. He fired the first to protect their relationship (which he lost anyway) and the second resigned when House wasn’t in charge anymore. It forced Foreman to ask the help of Cameron and Chase. Is House not so confident in himself after that? Or does he just accepts that they’re all are doctors and they can all be great in the same team? Both perhaps? The fact remains that he does whatever he has to to have them all back, even if it costs Chase his marriage with Cameron. Chase did kill a patient, an African dictator who planned to kill a part of his population for arbitrary reasons in The Tyrant (06x03). House is able to understand the gesture and even helps Chase to cover up this murder, saving Chase’s and Foreman’s (who covered Chase) careers, saying to the young Australian doctor: “Better a murder than a misdiagnosis”. Cameron can’t bring herself to accept this gesture though and she (rather incomprehensibly) leaves Chase and the hospital after saying to House that he is toxic and that he poisoned Chase, making him unredeemable.
Anyway, House has now a good team with Foreman, Taub, Chase and Thirteen. He still has his “mojo” but still not everything goes his way.
House gets frustrated when the good results that should follow his change don’t come. He becomes impatient and begins to drink a lot. Somewhat heartbroken and alone, his frustration takes its toll in Baggage (06x20). Recalling the event of the past week to Nolan when Wilson asked him to move out and he had to deal with Alvie living in his old apartment, he admits being in more pain. Everybody moves on except him. He never even had the chance to give Cuddy the book written by her great-grandfather he had for years and wanted to give it to her for a special occasion. He is really alone when Alvie moves on to live with his family. It’s too much for House as he gets bitter and angry with Nolan.
House: “For a year, I've done everything you've asked, and everybody else is happy. I run on my treadmill. You just sit there and watch. You're a faith healer. You take advantage of people who want to believe. But there's nothing in your bag of tricks.”
He then leaves Nolan and therapy saying that Nolan has not the answer to his problems no matter what the answer is.
Things get even worse in the next episode Help Me (06x21). On a site where a crane collapsed, he finds himself connecting with Hannah, a woman who could lose her legs, stuck under a parking garage pile. Her condition brings back painful memories. Nevertheless, he stays by her side, reassuring her and opening up to her about him and his life. He even admits that he is lost lately.
Hannah: “I always thought... If I did the right thing, if I treated people right, then good things would happen to me. You think that's how it works?”
House: “I didn't use to. Then recently I tried... Now I don't know.”
On top of that he learns that, not only is Cuddy moving in with Lucas but also that they are newly engaged. House is stunned. Not taking the news very well, he chooses to concentrate on saving Hannah’s leg even when it becomes dangerous for her. He argues with Cuddy about that and she ends up telling him some plain, unvarnished truth. She gives it to him straight, telling him that she doesn’t love him and that she’s done with trying to pull him out of his misery. House still refuses to let them amputate Hannah’s leg. Cuddy has to provoke him by saying that saving his leg didn’t really work well for him and that he always been unable to move on. This talk is interesting. Cuddy tells him to stay away from Hannah now. She knows House well; she knows he’s not going to stay away. I think it’s her way of saying: “Cut the crap, if you have something to say, just say it. Talk to me, dammit”. As a consequence, House crawls back to Hannah’s side and in a fantastic, emotionally charged scene, he convinces her to let them cut her leg off. In a rare honest confession, House tells Hannah that he regrets saving his leg, that this decision changed him for the worse and left him alone and miserable. He obviously talks as much to Hannah as to Cuddy. This is the discussion they should have had for a long time and could have had in Epic Fail had he not rejected her. His, “I get it” to her, as he takes the medical kit, is his way of telling her that she was right, they had to have this talk. Answering Nolan’s question “What did you screw up?” House forgives Cuddy for what happened to his leg, accepting responsibility. He stops resenting her for that. He then amputates Hannah’s leg. Unfortunately, it was too late and Hannah ends up dying anyway from a fat embolism.
At this moment, House is on the verge of a severe breakdown again. He goes home alone and broken, totally depressed as he smashed his bathroom mirror revealing a secret stash of Vicodin. Contemplating the idea of taking the pills in his hand, Cuddy appears to save him again. This scene is a great parallel to the end of the last season. In his hallucination, Cuddy took the pills and shoved them to the toilets, helping him detox before responding to his move. This time Cuddy is really here and giving him the choice to go back to the drugs. She quietly tells him that she broke up with Lucas and that she loves him. Turns out, House was not the only one who wasn’t able to move on. After witnessing House being brave enough to confess where he was wrong, Cuddy comes to make a confession of her own.
Interestingly in season 5 the writers offered up the prospect of a “happy ending” only to leave House in total breakdown. The season 6 ending seemed assured to be dramatic and dark only for the writers to pull a switch and change to give us instead the first real happy season ending of the show. House, stunned, and after being reassured that it is not a hallucination, kisses Cuddy. It’s a major turning point that resets the show once more.
This season felt like a bit of a transitional one, a long road to another path a bit like the third season left us hanging in the balance, waiting as the writers shook things up to keep us guessing and still going deeper into this journey into this exceptional mind of Gregory House.
Even if I must admit that a balance between drama and humor wasn’t really struck this year and that the writers seemed to struggle more with all the themes they had to address, this season gave us some very intense moments while following logically on from the previous seasons.
The character study that the show fully became let us see the darkest side and worst fears of our hero and let us seeing him more romantic than ever (in the literal sense). The writers didn’t turn their back on what the show used to be or on their characters, contrary to what some fans might think. The characters are still the same, they just evolved and we discovered new sides of them (both good and bad). The show is still the same; it evolved just like its protagonist.
Now that the tragic chapter of this journey is over, House can continue his long road to recovery, less miserable, not alone anymore and in love. Of course it doesn’t mean there won’t be any more drama (it’s House we’re talking about) but it’s going to be perhaps a different kind of drama, as House dares to take a risk and try to make a relationship work.
I think it is really bold and brave from the writers to do such a show and to dare to shake things up even when the said things work well. They fully explore every facet of this character. They’re not afraid to displease some people in order to keep this show true to itself. As a writer of a show, David Shore said that he didn’t want to take the safe road all the time. I think he’s right. The safe road can drive you to be too cautious with your characters and to make a show that revolves only around the road not taken. I admire the fact that they are willing to take all the roads there are, all the interesting and important ones at least. Especially that I consider it to be a very “Housian” thing to do. House is not afraid to shake things up and even when he is afraid of a road, he ends up taking it anyway to not have any regrets. If House were a screenwriter, I’m sure this is the kind of thing he would do. He would write that. There isn’t a better compliment than this one in my book so, my fellow Housians, I leave you with that thought.
What do YOU think?
For this two-parts analysis I'd like to thank coconut_ice22, beckston and everyone of the "clinic duty" community and Barbara Barnett. Thank you all.