House: "Need to Know" and "Distractions," Wilson/Cameron, and RSL in "The Outer Limits"

[bironic]

"Need to Know"

Wilson/Cuddy! Hangin' out together at the front desk and plotting (much more lightheartedly than in "Detox") re: House. I love how quickly they size up the situation and move into action.

Dammit, I missed Wilson with the joints because I'm a pushover and helped my father carry a ceramic saw to his car. I love that scene. :(

Wilson is still conspicuously preoccupied with getting House to talk. Talk talk talk, should we talk, we need to talk, do you want to talk, is this something we should talk about, are you ditching the conversation, I may need to have an actual conversation about [it]... They are so married. I wonder if he's this insistent on communication with his wives or if he's only like that with House.

Stacy/Wilson! A tiny bit more backstory to the post-infarction days. Imaginings of what Wilson means when he says he picked up the pieces afterwards; while I don't doubt that he helped House through the anger and frustration and heartbreak of those days, Stacy immediately undercuts his admittedly over-dramatic recap. There must be a middle ground between Wilson's emphasis of his own importance in House's recovery and Stacy's denial that she caused House any pain. Also, that scene would be even better if the editors had put another half-second pause before Wilson's "Are you being...intentionally thick?" because it throws the rhythm off and turns their heretofore excellent banter into a script reading.

"You're married." "Not to you." Hypocrite freaks out when women cheat. First to Stacy, then to House re: the patient ("to cover her pathetic lie"). Unconsciously anticipating Julie's affair much? Or just sublimated self-loathing? Hm.

Lord, House and Stacy in bed screams that it's the most awkward situation Hugh Laurie has been in on the show. Unflattering angles for both of them, smiles like winces, and his hand on her side looks—well, awkward, not like they're reunited lovers but like HL is thinking of his wife back home or is acutely conscious of the production crew watching or something. But their embrace on the roof and his quiet "Still fits" evens the score. Missed that the first time. In fact, watching the House/Stacy arc now, I'm finding the whole thing more sympathetic, even moving, whereas the first time through I couldn't wait for her to leave the show. Go figure.

Fake sunset = godawful. The parallel of House/Stacy followed by House/Wilson on the roof is nice, though, especially since Stacy takes House's crap and leaves, whereas Wilson proves once again that he knows House better than anyone. Even if his little speech grates on the nerves. Hey, and House says "Don't do this," which prefigures Wilson's "Don't" in "House vs. God" that in turn prefigures House's "Don't" in "No Reason." They are so married.

House and the little girl remains adorable, specifically when he stands up and holds out his hand like he does it every day and she takes it. This was before the "House is good with kids!!!!111!" overkill.

Oh! And I never noticed that House grabs the swab for Cameron's HIV sample before he turns to the whiteboard. He's planning the declaration-of-love bait-and-switch that far in advance. Nice.

"Distractions"

Despite the numerous times I've watched the lecture hall scene, it took until now for several things to register. First, House saying "Shhh" twice to Wilson is sexy. Second, in order for Wilson to know all that stuff about House's education, House must have told him. It's an obvious point, but I never really imagined the scene that had to have taken place much earlier where House fills Wilson in on his misadventures at med school.

Ah ha ha, "Blow a ... ton of money on a plasma TV" is still funny. As is watching Wilson throughout the whole scene instead of watching House.

Wilson with the cutlery, shouting! That will never stop being awesome. Notice how he deconstructs House's actions while hurting him more, yet stops him from drinking caffeine that might make his migraine worse and gives him a glass of water to help. He's angry that House is being stupid and gives him a couple of good jolts that express those feelings, all while actually trying to make him feel better. "It's very you." They are so very married.

House looked a little nauseous after making the anesthesiologist wake up the kid. Why so disturbed at that but not at scaring Katrina girl half to death in the MRI in "Who's Your Daddy"? A difference between pain and fear?

"I'm hallucinating." Oh, ha, ha, post-"No Reason." Bleh. Also, why does Cameron have no problem walking in on him in a towel in the showers but she won't go into the men's room with the rest of the staff in "Clueless"?


* * *


Of all the posts in all the fandoms in all the world at ship_manifesto, there's only one pairing represented for House: House/Wilson, by the inimitable pun. I say it's high time for some Wilson/Cameron lovin'. *significant look at thewlisian_afer* Just throwing that out there.


* * *


Taped the Outer Limits episode RSL was in in 2000, "The Nest," this afternoon and watched it before House came on. He is very, very pretty in it, with loose hair parted near the middle and short in the back like in The I Inside, and a cream-colored sweater with three buttons near the neck—oh, just look at michelleann68's screencaps (some spoilers in there somewhere), which will give you some idea, though RSL doesn't cap well.

The plot was terrible, as were the dialogue and some of the acting and half the graphics, and the end sucked, and bugs + mouths = gross even when the bugs are clearly CGI in those shots, but I got what I wanted and am pleased. He played a range of emotions pretty effectively, which is a bit of a triumph considering the script. And I believed that his character was actually capable of performing his job (head of the research facility featured in the episode), which is more than I can say for the people playing the (mad) doctor, the freaked-out female researcher or the inexplicably creepy and ineffective psychologist-friend. RSL's monologue near the end about his tragic past was just lovely. Heck, even his coughing-up of "polar mites" was convincing. There were some amusing Wilson-y bits in there too, like getting to say "polycythemia" and "erythrocyte," sticking a needle into his own arm (just like House in "Distractions" tonight), and telling his not-really-friend that he was "not in the mood" to play foosball. And some Prey echoes, what with the parasite plot line, his character being pretty much in charge of figuring out how to cure everyone/get out alive, and a trip to a cave full of the little buggers that they close using explosives. I also, um, enjoyed seeing RSL be all lovey-kissy with his character's fiancee.

But the end. Erg. The whole dramatic B-plot to this episode is that RSL's character, Robby, knows the visiting psychologist, Jack, from childhood, when they were best friends until Robby and his brother Matt fell through some pond ice and Jack saved Robby but had to let go of Matt. Robby understandably holds Jack responsible for his brother's death. At the climax of the episode, in which Robby, Jack and Robby's fiancée are the only three survivors of a polar mite infestation, Robby has to choose which of the other two will live. (He can save one of them, you see, because the mites can only survive in anemic patients and he's immune due to the aforementioned polycythemia, and a transfusion of his type-O blood would do the trick.) The whole hour has been building up to this confrontation between Robby and Jack—in which Robby admits after 20 years that he's been traumatized by his brother's death and hates Jack, and Jack explains what it was like in his position, to be 10 years old and have to decide who would live and who would die, and gets Robby to admit that he never considered what Jack must have gone through himself—and at last, Robby takes his fiancee's hand in his and then also Jack's (mm, slashy), and smiles a little. And you think—well, I was thinking—"that's it, after all those years of churning hatred, Robby's going to save the man who once saved him and have to live with the burning guilt of having let someone he cares for die, and the fiancee isn't going to believe it, but ties between men over 20 years supercede a relatively brief engagement"—and then Robby freakin' chooses the fiancee, and what the hell was the point of all that? Apparently the "twist" is that Robby later gets called a hero in a newspaper, which is supposed to echo the hollow praise heaped upon poor Jack after the accident when they were kids. So it was just a story about vengeance and a selfish desire for recognition. Ew. Just, ew.

Comments

[bironic.livejournal.com]

*coughRemus/Tonkscough* Yes, I think we know your opinion re: actually establishing relationships in Harry Potter. :D

To respond to your point in a way that may enhance what I'm about to say about the Outer Limits episode, I'm a firm believer in friendship and in basing romantic relationships on friendship. "Friends, then lovers" and all that. Because otherwise the relationship is empty. Just passion, no basis in who the other person actually is and how (s)he relates to you or knows you. Nothing wrong with it in the short-term, but not sustainable for an engagement or marriage.

Now. The scene where Robby has to choose between Jack and Rachel (I think her name was Rachel) opened with him and her sitting at a table clasping hands and smiling quietly, a little resignedly, I thought. This was after the airing of grievances but before the reconciliation/hand-clasping. That's when the thought ran through my mind that he would choose Jack. Because I thought from the setup that Robby had talked things through with Rachel before the scene opened, explained that he owed Jack his life, and Rachel, being his devoted lover, understood the men's bond and was going to sacrifice herself. BUT NO.

What really irked me about it is that we saw no basis for Robby and Rachel's relationship. We knew that Robby and Jack were friends before they were 10 years old -- you can pretty much imagine that on your own -- and that they were tied together for the next 20 years because of the accident. (Robby said he'd dealt with it and then buried it until Jack showed up in his life again in this episode, but it was clear that that wasn't true, because he never told Rachel the full story and his speech near the end betrayed his still-acute pain. But anyway.) That's an okay portrait of a friendship/enemyship for an hour-long show, and the two of them had a lot of lines together, not to mention how they talked about each other to other people as well. But we hardly knew anything about Rachel -- what she does, how well she knows him, how they met, why they're in love -- and that made Robby's choice feel a little hollow, because his decision wasn't so much about choosing the woman, it was about rejecting the man.

Sigh. Stepping out of fandom is like a slap in the face when it comes to gender & gender relations. But that's another subject entirely.

[catilinarian.livejournal.com]

Hee - actually I wasn't even thinking of Remus and Tonks (although I do stand by my opinion on that :)), but of the point in the sixth book where...

*Spoilers, for anyone who hasn't read it yet, which would probably be no one who actually cares about the spoilers*

... Harry decides he can't see Ginny anymore, after their brief making-out-in-corridors phase of about two weeks, because he CARES for her so DEEPLY that Voldemort could use it against him! And then Ron and Hermione decide to come along with him and Harry's like, fine, whatever.

Because obviously, he'd betray the Order to save Ginny but he doesn't much care if Ron is tortured to death in front of him.

Right.

At any rate, yes, I can see why having no real sense of the fiancee or their relationship would make the whole choice feel rather hollow.

Sigh. Stepping out of fandom is like a slap in the face when it comes to gender & gender relations. But that's another subject entirely.

Too true...

[bironic.livejournal.com]

I think that's an example of how JKR has stuff worked out in her head and has been thinking about it for so long that she thinks it's obvious, when in fact she hasn't actually put all that backstory/lead-up into the books we're all reading, and the editors don't notice, and we end up with seeming-sudden declarations of passion.