![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bironicMy favorite quote from the newspapers this weekend came from an article in USA Today about the flu season. CDC director Thomas Frieden said: "What will happen in the coming weeks and months will only become clear in the weeks and months ahead."
I'm pretty sure I get what he meant -- we can't predict how the season will go -- but wow.
*
So, House. The first thing I want to say, for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
usomitai and others wary of emotional spoilers, is that I don't think you can judge an episode by whether I'm posting about it. Whether I write up a commentary is going to depend more on how much time I have and how tired I feel than on the nature or intensity of my emotional reaction to the episode.
Not sure what to make of the premiere. It wasn't awesome, but it wasn't as awful as I'd braced myself for. I'm still not convinced the show isn't going to go all "No Reason" (or end-of-season-five) again, flicker and fade and whoops that episode/arc/season was a hallucination, and it'll turn out in the last episode that the whole series was a fever dream as House lay in the hospital bed pulling through from the infarction with Stacy beside him, and now he knows how his life could have gone and won't.
So. There's that. I'm also nervous that there'll be yet another push of the magical reset button (see also: Vogler, ketamine, Tritter), and House will be back to normal in a few weeks. The "therapy" last night went so fast and was tested so insufficiently that it's not at all clear whether House truly has a new, effective coping strategy or whether he'll turn right back to Vicodin the minute he has problems -- and of course he'll have problems -- in the real world. You can't teach a misanthrope to trust people in a few days by sending him to a cocktail party (see alsodeelaundry's post on the problems with using a cocktail party for therapy in the first place) and speechifying on a couch and in a parking lot. I suppose that uncertainty is intentional on the writers' part, though: waiting to see whether House will improve.
The first few minutes were kind of frightening. Not because they were artsy blue filtered and montage-y, but because it's terrifying to think about being at other people's mercy when you're sick, and to not be trusted, and to become effectively a prisoner, especially when, as House pointed out, you were voluntarily committed. To go from normal to lost without escape in days. An LJ acquaintance just went through something eerily similar, and just... *shiver*
On the other hand, I am throwing up my hands on understanding House's medical issues. Is he or isn't he in chronic pain? Does the leg function normally except for the pain? The show seems to consistently say yes on the second, despite suggestions in earlier seasons that he couldn't even stand on it (e.g. trying to walk at the end of "Honeymoon" or whichever episode it was). And now it seems to be saying no on the first, which boggles the mind since the show has argued from day one that he's a chronic pain sufferer. If he's in pain, detoxing from the Vicodin shouldn't solve everything. The Tritter arc told us that he can't be off painkillers and nothing works as well as Vicodin. But he's off all meds now and says the pain is manageable. ??
I'm also not sure what to make of the Lessons of the night. Point: House acknowledges that he's miserable. Point: House decides he wants to get better. Point: House decides one way to do that is to take anti-depressants. (Which start working within days? What?) All of which had been said and done on the show before, so again, time will tell if this is different. But for five seasons, there's been this running theme of normal versus extraordinary-with-handicap, whether the handicap is physical, mental, social or a problem of societal perception. Alvie got to personify the dilemma. I really don't know what to do with the fact that he decided to take medication at the end.
Especially when the question was never resolved of whether drugs hinder the creativity that makes the person want to be alive. Not that it has an easy answer, but: House diagnoses. Alvie raps. They're at the top of their game. (Well, House is, and clearly they're meant to be compared, from the time they're put in the room together through the performance duet [which was, *squirm*, embarrassing to watch!] to the end of their parallel journeys from unmedicated to tentatively medicated.) Without their "one thing" (see also: "DNR"), they're not themselves. Point: House now wants to be normal? Or is willing to risk being normal for the sake of being happy? Hasn't he been driven his entire life by a fear of being normal or average? Or at least of not always being right, which is comparable.
Well, the episode has me thinking about all these things, so that's in its favor.
It also had me idly parsing what each patient in the ward stood for as facets of House. His paranoid side, his superhuman delusions, his depression, his cheerfulness, his manic bouts and creativity and wordplay, his traumatized silence, his love of music, his self-hatred and drug-seeking/self-medicating behavior, even his occasional suicidal tendencies. (Another reason to suspect the episode was a hallucination.) Would need to see it again to do it properly. Was the order in which they graduated related to House's own personal journey? Etc. The writers must have had a great time sketching out so many new people to play with. Was too bad several of the characters lacked a lot of dimension or had to partake in such a super-sentimental and questionably realistic ending.
The outing with Wonder Boy or whatever his name was was excellent: House's desire to do something nice for someone all mixed up with his need to be right and help himself and stick it to The Man, and his satisfaction on all those levels when the kid started to feel better, and House's grin when they "flew," and his horror holding that bloody shirt in the hospital hallway. So well done. As was House's anger over the doctor's approach to snapping the kid out of his delusions, and the kid's subsequent maybe-drugged catatonia. (See also: terror of being stuck in an institution.) Am pretending the magical music box awakening maybe didn't happen.
Interactions with the psych felt more scattered, emotionally and therapeutically.
Liked seeing Wilson (duh) and particularly seeing Wilson stand up for himself. Interesting tension between not wanting House to be trapped somewhere where he's feeling tortured, and wanting him to get better. Good thing the psych didn't turn out to be evil, because then Wilson hanging up on House could have precipitated a nightmare.
I liked Lydia (Kiss Lola Kiss!), and bought that she and House were attracted to each other. In an episode where absolutely everyone was specifically like or unlike House, it didn't matter that she played the piano and psychoanalyzed him almost as much as the psychologist (who parroted so many lines from earlier in the series, I didn't know what to do with him). She was also very much like Wilson in some of her phrasing and attitudes. I'd go back and cite lines or conversations but I don't have a recording.
Okay, leftover overall thoughts: Pacing was good. Ending was awkward. Not at all confident that House will change. Not sure why this time would do it when other times hadn't, unless it was that after so many years of increasing speed and pressure and pain, and a trigger in the form of Kutner (and again I ask, why did that trigger him? still not explained/shown/set up enough for me), following Amber (which I did understand, so why wait a season for the fallout?), he needed to break down and have this enforced quiet reflection to try to stabilize himself again. Though more time in the institution might have helped, rather than sending him out where he can so easily fall back into old patterns. Also, too many gay jokes. Each gay joke this show makes actually defuses the sexual tension between characters.
And would have liked to have seen Wilson or Cuddy come to pick him up. Yes, he's Mary Tyler Moore making it on his own. But I thought the point the psych was trying to make was that House has to trust people and can trust people. Reaching out to them for this first step, this tiny bit of help, would have been poignant. He's been relying on himself -- insisting on only relying on himself -- all this time, and look where that's brought him.
(The bus did say McCay, though. Next to the *facepalm*y self-help ad, that is. Nice follow-up to the cocktail party, which looked like the setup to Dee's first SGA/House OT4 fic. If the guy House approached at the hors d'oeurves table had been Sheppard, it would have been perfect.)
I'm pretty sure I get what he meant -- we can't predict how the season will go -- but wow.
*
So, House. The first thing I want to say, for
usomitai and others wary of emotional spoilers, is that I don't think you can judge an episode by whether I'm posting about it. Whether I write up a commentary is going to depend more on how much time I have and how tired I feel than on the nature or intensity of my emotional reaction to the episode.Not sure what to make of the premiere. It wasn't awesome, but it wasn't as awful as I'd braced myself for. I'm still not convinced the show isn't going to go all "No Reason" (or end-of-season-five) again, flicker and fade and whoops that episode/arc/season was a hallucination, and it'll turn out in the last episode that the whole series was a fever dream as House lay in the hospital bed pulling through from the infarction with Stacy beside him, and now he knows how his life could have gone and won't.
So. There's that. I'm also nervous that there'll be yet another push of the magical reset button (see also: Vogler, ketamine, Tritter), and House will be back to normal in a few weeks. The "therapy" last night went so fast and was tested so insufficiently that it's not at all clear whether House truly has a new, effective coping strategy or whether he'll turn right back to Vicodin the minute he has problems -- and of course he'll have problems -- in the real world. You can't teach a misanthrope to trust people in a few days by sending him to a cocktail party (see also
deelaundry's post on the problems with using a cocktail party for therapy in the first place) and speechifying on a couch and in a parking lot. I suppose that uncertainty is intentional on the writers' part, though: waiting to see whether House will improve.The first few minutes were kind of frightening. Not because they were artsy blue filtered and montage-y, but because it's terrifying to think about being at other people's mercy when you're sick, and to not be trusted, and to become effectively a prisoner, especially when, as House pointed out, you were voluntarily committed. To go from normal to lost without escape in days. An LJ acquaintance just went through something eerily similar, and just... *shiver*
On the other hand, I am throwing up my hands on understanding House's medical issues. Is he or isn't he in chronic pain? Does the leg function normally except for the pain? The show seems to consistently say yes on the second, despite suggestions in earlier seasons that he couldn't even stand on it (e.g. trying to walk at the end of "Honeymoon" or whichever episode it was). And now it seems to be saying no on the first, which boggles the mind since the show has argued from day one that he's a chronic pain sufferer. If he's in pain, detoxing from the Vicodin shouldn't solve everything. The Tritter arc told us that he can't be off painkillers and nothing works as well as Vicodin. But he's off all meds now and says the pain is manageable. ??
I'm also not sure what to make of the Lessons of the night. Point: House acknowledges that he's miserable. Point: House decides he wants to get better. Point: House decides one way to do that is to take anti-depressants. (Which start working within days? What?) All of which had been said and done on the show before, so again, time will tell if this is different. But for five seasons, there's been this running theme of normal versus extraordinary-with-handicap, whether the handicap is physical, mental, social or a problem of societal perception. Alvie got to personify the dilemma. I really don't know what to do with the fact that he decided to take medication at the end.
Especially when the question was never resolved of whether drugs hinder the creativity that makes the person want to be alive. Not that it has an easy answer, but: House diagnoses. Alvie raps. They're at the top of their game. (Well, House is, and clearly they're meant to be compared, from the time they're put in the room together through the performance duet [which was, *squirm*, embarrassing to watch!] to the end of their parallel journeys from unmedicated to tentatively medicated.) Without their "one thing" (see also: "DNR"), they're not themselves. Point: House now wants to be normal? Or is willing to risk being normal for the sake of being happy? Hasn't he been driven his entire life by a fear of being normal or average? Or at least of not always being right, which is comparable.
Well, the episode has me thinking about all these things, so that's in its favor.
It also had me idly parsing what each patient in the ward stood for as facets of House. His paranoid side, his superhuman delusions, his depression, his cheerfulness, his manic bouts and creativity and wordplay, his traumatized silence, his love of music, his self-hatred and drug-seeking/self-medicating behavior, even his occasional suicidal tendencies. (Another reason to suspect the episode was a hallucination.) Would need to see it again to do it properly. Was the order in which they graduated related to House's own personal journey? Etc. The writers must have had a great time sketching out so many new people to play with. Was too bad several of the characters lacked a lot of dimension or had to partake in such a super-sentimental and questionably realistic ending.
The outing with Wonder Boy or whatever his name was was excellent: House's desire to do something nice for someone all mixed up with his need to be right and help himself and stick it to The Man, and his satisfaction on all those levels when the kid started to feel better, and House's grin when they "flew," and his horror holding that bloody shirt in the hospital hallway. So well done. As was House's anger over the doctor's approach to snapping the kid out of his delusions, and the kid's subsequent maybe-drugged catatonia. (See also: terror of being stuck in an institution.) Am pretending the magical music box awakening maybe didn't happen.
Interactions with the psych felt more scattered, emotionally and therapeutically.
Liked seeing Wilson (duh) and particularly seeing Wilson stand up for himself. Interesting tension between not wanting House to be trapped somewhere where he's feeling tortured, and wanting him to get better. Good thing the psych didn't turn out to be evil, because then Wilson hanging up on House could have precipitated a nightmare.
I liked Lydia (Kiss Lola Kiss!), and bought that she and House were attracted to each other. In an episode where absolutely everyone was specifically like or unlike House, it didn't matter that she played the piano and psychoanalyzed him almost as much as the psychologist (who parroted so many lines from earlier in the series, I didn't know what to do with him). She was also very much like Wilson in some of her phrasing and attitudes. I'd go back and cite lines or conversations but I don't have a recording.
Okay, leftover overall thoughts: Pacing was good. Ending was awkward. Not at all confident that House will change. Not sure why this time would do it when other times hadn't, unless it was that after so many years of increasing speed and pressure and pain, and a trigger in the form of Kutner (and again I ask, why did that trigger him? still not explained/shown/set up enough for me), following Amber (which I did understand, so why wait a season for the fallout?), he needed to break down and have this enforced quiet reflection to try to stabilize himself again. Though more time in the institution might have helped, rather than sending him out where he can so easily fall back into old patterns. Also, too many gay jokes. Each gay joke this show makes actually defuses the sexual tension between characters.
And would have liked to have seen Wilson or Cuddy come to pick him up. Yes, he's Mary Tyler Moore making it on his own. But I thought the point the psych was trying to make was that House has to trust people and can trust people. Reaching out to them for this first step, this tiny bit of help, would have been poignant. He's been relying on himself -- insisting on only relying on himself -- all this time, and look where that's brought him.
(The bus did say McCay, though. Next to the *facepalm*y self-help ad, that is. Nice follow-up to the cocktail party, which looked like the setup to Dee's first SGA/House OT4 fic. If the guy House approached at the hors d'oeurves table had been Sheppard, it would have been perfect.)
