I'm back, baby! (also House "Detox")
Feb. 16th, 2005 09:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thebratqueenI'm back! Thanks so much to those who sent text messages to help with the boredom of waiting in LAX. I have all sorts of stuff to talk about and share. I also have a bitchload of work to catch up on, but I think it comes as a surprise to nobody that checking email and touching base on LJ came first ;)
Trip report to come later. But first - House!! Please tell me I am not the only one who saw last night's episode because dude, DUDE! Before I just liked the show. Now I may actually be a whore for it. I'm not too proud to admit it.
Oh and,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
basingstoke? Wouldn't mind your thoughts on this.
I don't know where this ep fell in terms of when they filmed it and when they meant for it to air, but I hope it came on the tail end because it really feels like it's addressing all the issues that people, self included, had with the show. Yes, the "person is sick and nearly dies from various treatments until the cure is discovered" thing is still in full force, but around that we had a lot of character development, and fleshing out of relationships and dynamics that were previously very flat.
Cuddy, IMO, is the one who has benefitted the most as time has gone on. When the show started she was a very stereotypical, ye olde "You're off the case, McBaine!" type character. Now, however (and in the eps that aired before this), we're seeing that she's not there for the sole purpose of annoying House, nor does she even see herself as being there for that purpose. We're seeing how the hospital really is her baby, and that she actually brings some skills and savvy to the party. Sometimes that means helping House, sometimes it means getting in his way, but at least now when she does things it's not because she's essentially a plot device to create obstacles to the story.
Now obviously the star of last night's ep was Hugh, and his OMG so good job of going through the withdrawals. But I have to give some major props to RSL and what he did with Wilson. The interesting thing I find there is that Wilson didn't really have a lot of lines (not that he was silent, but he wasn't in the foreground as much as Cameron was, or even Foreman) but RSL still managed to make Wilson a strong presence, particularly as House's friend.
The moment that especially gets me is when Wilson and House have the talk about House being an addict. Watch Wilson's face when House makes it clear that he is not giving up the Vicodin. You can feel the chill that just shot through Wilson's spine. RSL doesn't have a single word to say in that moment, but you know just by looking at him that Wilson just realized that his friend is in trouble, and there isn't a damned thing he can do about it. Beautiful stuff.
Now here's where I get into the realm of pure speculation. And let me say that that's all this is. I have no House spoilers or anything like that.
basingstoke posited that if House gets a season 2, House will have a Moriarty in the form of a virus. I'm going to take that one step further: I think there already is a Moriarty, and House has it.
Here's why -
How likely is it that House is blind to his own symptoms? Yes, I realize that addiction comes hand in hand with denial and sometimes a spade is just a spade. But consider this: the ep in which we see House truly dealing with this is the exact same episode in which every other plot point is about how what is obviously going on is not what is actually going on. It starts from minute one with the ME-style teaser of a sex scene that wasn't a sex scene and continues right until the very end when we find out that it was Wilson who tried to get House off the vicodin, not Cuddy.
The A plot and B plot of House always relate to each other. Usually this means that something in the clinic makes House see his case of the week in a new light. The A plot was the dying kid. The B plot was House going without vicodin. When every other ep has involved some form of parallel between A and B, why would they stop that now?
The A plot was all about how the kid had lupus. It was obviously lupus. All signs pointed to lupus. It was utterly ridiculous for anybody to look at it and think it was anything but lupus. Except House shot down the lupus idea from the start, and as ridiculous as that looked he was right. The B plot was all about how House is addicted, all his problems are due to the addiction, it is so obviously an addiction problem. Except House shot that down from the start too. You can see why this gets me thinking.
Also notice House's (both the man and the show's) usual method of narrowing down the difficult diagnosis: try something that's painful, horrible, and possibly fatal, and use the body's reaction to that to determine what the illness really is. If House was willing to give the kid the wrong medicine simply because a worsening of symptoms would give him the diagnosis he needed, it's not that much of a stretch to think that House would watch his own worsening condition when he was off the vicodin and do much the same thing.
Now, yes, granted, by the end of the ep House admits that he's addicted to vicodin. But as House himself has said in the past, the answer isn't always one single illness. House having a vicodin addiction doesn't rule out him having another problem. As House keeps ambiguously saying, "I'm in pain." We always assume he means just his leg, and possibly also his unhappiness at life because of his leg. But it's entirely possible that there's something else going on. "I'm in pain" is a very curious statement for House to repeat over and over again, particularly given that we know he doesn't care to admit specific vulnerabilities.
Also consider how during last night's ep House was more than happy to lie about his own condition. He made up a new story each time somebody asked him about his hand. Now maybe he was doing that for the meta-joke of using the stock excuses of abuse victims simply because he was annoyed by people bothering him, but this could also be a sign that we shouldn't always trust what House says about himself with regards to his physical state. If he's happy to tap dance around the truth with his hand, he could be just as happy to tap dance around the truth of what's truly going on with his leg, or what's truly going on with those symptoms that look a great deal like withdrawal.
Plus last night's ep was all about the fine line of difference. The kid isn't eating - he mentions the food, Chase says it's the medicine. The food turns out to be the plot point. The kid mentions the cat. Everyone says it's a symptom, House says it's a clue. The crucial difference is whether or not the cat was ever real, and again House is proven right.
It just seems to me that if over and over and over again we're told that the obvious thing isn't really what's going on, then there's more to House than that vicodin addiction.
Which would actually make sense with the Holmes parallels, when you think about it. After all, Holmes enjoyed cocaine, but we're not ever meant to look at Holmes and consider him an addict with a problem. It's possible that House might simply be a modernization and that they've decided to go with a storyline where the drug of choice for the protagonist is a problem, and if they do - well, hey, that's fairly dark as a storyline and I'm all on board.
But if they truly want to keep the parallel then the vicodin can't actually be a problem and the only way it's not a problem is if House has an illness that the vicodin is somehow helping him with. If they play that out - well first off I'll be this show's bitch for the slow foreshadowing that they did - but oh how yummy could that be as a storyline.
So that's my theory. Of course, I could be wrong.
Trip report to come later. But first - House!! Please tell me I am not the only one who saw last night's episode because dude, DUDE! Before I just liked the show. Now I may actually be a whore for it. I'm not too proud to admit it.
Oh and,
basingstoke? Wouldn't mind your thoughts on this.I don't know where this ep fell in terms of when they filmed it and when they meant for it to air, but I hope it came on the tail end because it really feels like it's addressing all the issues that people, self included, had with the show. Yes, the "person is sick and nearly dies from various treatments until the cure is discovered" thing is still in full force, but around that we had a lot of character development, and fleshing out of relationships and dynamics that were previously very flat.
Cuddy, IMO, is the one who has benefitted the most as time has gone on. When the show started she was a very stereotypical, ye olde "You're off the case, McBaine!" type character. Now, however (and in the eps that aired before this), we're seeing that she's not there for the sole purpose of annoying House, nor does she even see herself as being there for that purpose. We're seeing how the hospital really is her baby, and that she actually brings some skills and savvy to the party. Sometimes that means helping House, sometimes it means getting in his way, but at least now when she does things it's not because she's essentially a plot device to create obstacles to the story.
Now obviously the star of last night's ep was Hugh, and his OMG so good job of going through the withdrawals. But I have to give some major props to RSL and what he did with Wilson. The interesting thing I find there is that Wilson didn't really have a lot of lines (not that he was silent, but he wasn't in the foreground as much as Cameron was, or even Foreman) but RSL still managed to make Wilson a strong presence, particularly as House's friend.
The moment that especially gets me is when Wilson and House have the talk about House being an addict. Watch Wilson's face when House makes it clear that he is not giving up the Vicodin. You can feel the chill that just shot through Wilson's spine. RSL doesn't have a single word to say in that moment, but you know just by looking at him that Wilson just realized that his friend is in trouble, and there isn't a damned thing he can do about it. Beautiful stuff.
Now here's where I get into the realm of pure speculation. And let me say that that's all this is. I have no House spoilers or anything like that.
basingstoke posited that if House gets a season 2, House will have a Moriarty in the form of a virus. I'm going to take that one step further: I think there already is a Moriarty, and House has it.Here's why -
How likely is it that House is blind to his own symptoms? Yes, I realize that addiction comes hand in hand with denial and sometimes a spade is just a spade. But consider this: the ep in which we see House truly dealing with this is the exact same episode in which every other plot point is about how what is obviously going on is not what is actually going on. It starts from minute one with the ME-style teaser of a sex scene that wasn't a sex scene and continues right until the very end when we find out that it was Wilson who tried to get House off the vicodin, not Cuddy.
The A plot and B plot of House always relate to each other. Usually this means that something in the clinic makes House see his case of the week in a new light. The A plot was the dying kid. The B plot was House going without vicodin. When every other ep has involved some form of parallel between A and B, why would they stop that now?
The A plot was all about how the kid had lupus. It was obviously lupus. All signs pointed to lupus. It was utterly ridiculous for anybody to look at it and think it was anything but lupus. Except House shot down the lupus idea from the start, and as ridiculous as that looked he was right. The B plot was all about how House is addicted, all his problems are due to the addiction, it is so obviously an addiction problem. Except House shot that down from the start too. You can see why this gets me thinking.
Also notice House's (both the man and the show's) usual method of narrowing down the difficult diagnosis: try something that's painful, horrible, and possibly fatal, and use the body's reaction to that to determine what the illness really is. If House was willing to give the kid the wrong medicine simply because a worsening of symptoms would give him the diagnosis he needed, it's not that much of a stretch to think that House would watch his own worsening condition when he was off the vicodin and do much the same thing.
Now, yes, granted, by the end of the ep House admits that he's addicted to vicodin. But as House himself has said in the past, the answer isn't always one single illness. House having a vicodin addiction doesn't rule out him having another problem. As House keeps ambiguously saying, "I'm in pain." We always assume he means just his leg, and possibly also his unhappiness at life because of his leg. But it's entirely possible that there's something else going on. "I'm in pain" is a very curious statement for House to repeat over and over again, particularly given that we know he doesn't care to admit specific vulnerabilities.
Also consider how during last night's ep House was more than happy to lie about his own condition. He made up a new story each time somebody asked him about his hand. Now maybe he was doing that for the meta-joke of using the stock excuses of abuse victims simply because he was annoyed by people bothering him, but this could also be a sign that we shouldn't always trust what House says about himself with regards to his physical state. If he's happy to tap dance around the truth with his hand, he could be just as happy to tap dance around the truth of what's truly going on with his leg, or what's truly going on with those symptoms that look a great deal like withdrawal.
Plus last night's ep was all about the fine line of difference. The kid isn't eating - he mentions the food, Chase says it's the medicine. The food turns out to be the plot point. The kid mentions the cat. Everyone says it's a symptom, House says it's a clue. The crucial difference is whether or not the cat was ever real, and again House is proven right.
It just seems to me that if over and over and over again we're told that the obvious thing isn't really what's going on, then there's more to House than that vicodin addiction.
Which would actually make sense with the Holmes parallels, when you think about it. After all, Holmes enjoyed cocaine, but we're not ever meant to look at Holmes and consider him an addict with a problem. It's possible that House might simply be a modernization and that they've decided to go with a storyline where the drug of choice for the protagonist is a problem, and if they do - well, hey, that's fairly dark as a storyline and I'm all on board.
But if they truly want to keep the parallel then the vicodin can't actually be a problem and the only way it's not a problem is if House has an illness that the vicodin is somehow helping him with. If they play that out - well first off I'll be this show's bitch for the slow foreshadowing that they did - but oh how yummy could that be as a storyline.
So that's my theory. Of course, I could be wrong.
