How House should end

[bironic]

So, House will be finishing its run in April/May. That's several years past due (ugh, this show since season four), but it's sad nonetheless. End of a fannish era.

In any case, it's a good opportunity to share with you this thing that I've been meaning to post for a couple of years: a wish for how the series finale will go. I'm a few episodes behind right now, but I suspect that doesn't matter.

House wakes up, and he's still in the hospital bed with Stacy and Cuddy arguing about what to do with his leg. After taking the requisite moments to process this, he looks "back" at what his life descended into when he made the choice to keep it—the chronic pain, the medication side effects, the lost and destroyed friendships, Amber, Cuddy, rehab, prison, disappointment, bitterness, desperation, flippancy, the escalating risk-taking, everything spiraling out of control. He flashes through the low points of the whole series, basically, and takes a hard look; admits that he doesn't like what he sees; and decides to amputate the leg. Because he wants to be a better person, and maybe this is the way he can do it.

Is that not the kind of character growth the producers keep talking about? Is that not a way for House to change without having to change him long-term on screen and 'risk losing viewers'? Is that not a way for this entire show to have meant something? (Does that not also provide an opportunity for more of the metaphysical mumbo-jumbo the producers used to like to stick into their season finales?) Is that not in line with the sort of stunt they pulled in "No Reason"?

I don't mean it would result in a happy fluffy Greggy who kisses his peds patients and suffers fools gladly and compliments his fellows and tells Wilson every day that he appreciates his friendship. Stacy told us years ago that he was just as much a bastard before the leg as he was in the early seasons. But he has had much darker moments since the show started, and I don't think it's unreasonable to argue that the chronic pain fed into that.

For this to work, though, the latter half of this season would need to depict the sort of clear declines we've seen in seasons past.

Too bad that won't happen. OR WILL IT.

Comments

[obsessive24.livejournal.com]

Wow, that'd be brilliant! And if it doesn't end that way, you should make a vid to rectify that. :D

[bironic.livejournal.com]

Y'know, I've been toying with the idea of doing a House vid to Bolero, illustrating how the show revisits and revisits and revisits the same themes and even the same character profiles, and attempting to piece it together to discover/demonstrate that it all builds to something... But then someone at Festivids did the Sense & Sensibility vid to Bolero, so if I do ever attempt the project I will have to work harder at examining alternative music.

[obsessive24.livejournal.com]

I'd always thought the revisitng and revisiting of themes just points to a horrible failing on the show's part in having to keep the protagonist at the status quo after multiple years and character relationships (same complaint I have about Dexter), but it is so interesting to think of this repetition in terms of actually making a point of itself and building to something. I haven't enough faith in the show to think that's what will happen in canon, but I do have faith that you could make something really amazing out of the idea. :D

[topaz-eyes.livejournal.com]

You could do a vid to All the Strange Strange Creatures. :-D

[bironic.livejournal.com]

That would certainly allow for a highly dramatic vid!