My House marathon is still continuing, and I’ve now reached the end of the third season.



Firstly, I did not hate the Tritter arc as everyone warned me I would. Actually, I thought it was somewhat better written than the Vogler arc, because Vogler aside from his introduction was presented as squarely in the wrong, the embodiment of the evil pharmaceutical industry and going after House for purely selfish reasons. On the other hand, it was to be expected that given House’s rudeness to patients, he’d one day piss off the wrong person, and Tritter never lost the benefit of the doubt, i.e. the impression we’re meant to believe he didn’t solely act because House was a jerk to him but because he genuinely believed House was a ticking time bomb. Vogler gets soundly defeated and we don’t even see him slink off, Tritter gets also defeated, but we see him say goodbye and again, the impression is that he means it when he wishes House good luck and expresses the hope he was wrong about House. Mind you, even a European like me with no knowledge in American law can doubt Tritter would have managed to freeze Wilson’s accounts (and later Foreman’s and Cameron’s), but I don’t expect legal realism on my tv shows.

The other reason I’ve heard for hating the Tritter arc was that everyone became unlikeable. I didn’t think that, either. I thought House behaved more like a jerk than usual, fulfilling Wilson’s diagnosis of him pushing and pushing and pushing people to make them desert him and fulfil his view on humanity, but everyone else was doing their best under dire circumstances. As for House himself, did anyone seriously expect a misanthropic addict under pressure with the emotional maturity of a child would become more likeable instead of less?

Familiar faces this season: Marc Blucas (aka Riley from BTVS) and Joel Grey (Broadway legend, Cabaret, also guest starred in BTVS and in Alias). Here Grey played the first not creepy role I’ve seen him in, though of course his ethically challenged doctor gone patient had a morally ambiguous past. When House pretended to euthanize him, and Foreman and Cameron left but Chase stayed, I thought: “Whoever said Chase has a bigger crush on House than Cameron had in the first season was right.” Mind you, in this particular case Chase could simply have been pro- death by choice for cancer patients, but it context, given the sheer amount of abuse he puts up with from House this season, I’m thinking daddy issues and leftover guilt from the first season don’t explain it anymore. He must have a masochistic crush. Speaking of Chase’s love life, the mini arc of him and Cameron starting with the casual sex again and then Chase developing feelings for her, in reverse to the usual female/male cliché, worked quite well for me. From Cameron’s side, since Chase is neither dying nor an authority figure it’s no wonder she thinks she won’t fall in love with him, and what I especially appreciate, given the way tv tends to confuse stalking with romance, is that Chase doesn’t do that. I’m not sure they’ll stay together but by the end of the season, these two neurotic kids have actually the sanest, most relaxed relationship with each other on the show. Who’d have thought?

Of course, dysfunctional relationships are also fun. I’m still valiantly fighting the temptation to ship House with anyone except his true love, Vicodin (there are some characters whom one loves to watch but would really not inflict on anyone romantically…), but it’s hard to interpret his behaviour towards Wilson and Cuddy this season as something other than: please, don’t become a couple, I want both of you to be/remain in love with me! Also, said shenanigans were fun as poor long suffering Wilson caught him on the flower thing and reciprocated with the “Yes I do… did you really believe me?” mind game, and Cuddy got to call House out on his remembering whom she made out with two Christmas parties ago, not to mention interrupting her dates. Also, I much appreciated House getting guilt-tripped by Wilson’s ex wife into taking care of her dog for a while. (All of Wilson’s exes must spend at least some time trying to figure out how to pay House back for emotionally draining their man on a regular basis…)

Am in two minds about the fact that the case Cuddy was allowed to solve instead of House meant saving a pregnant woman and her baby, because of the possible “every woman wants to be a mother” subtext, but on the other hand, both the woman in question and Cuddy want to be mothers without getting married or being in a permanent relationship with a man, so one can also read an endorsement of lifestyles other than the nuclear family into this. In any case, I’m glad we got an episode showing Cuddy to be a gifted doctor.

House giving his teenage stalker the Casablanca speech, this time literally the Casablanca speech, word for word, made me feel smug, because I knew back when he gave Stacy a more Housian variation of that speech that he had to be a fan. I have some vague theory, based admittedly also on Woody Allen’s Play it again, Sam, that said speech is basically wish fulfilment of a male fantasy: the gorgeous woman who dumped you in the past turns out not to have dumped you but to have been torn away from you by cruel circumstances, and now she’s ready to throw her whole new life away to be with you again, but you don’t have to commit, you can be noble instead and send her away for her own good. (In the scene with the teenager, it’s of course meant and played as a parody by House and the scriptwriters alike, complete with House detecting the medical cause for the teenager’s crush on him when he switches from the end speech to the other famous one with “here’s looking at you, kid”. But usually, it’s played straight. Which is why my favourite Casablanca adaption, heretically, is the season 2 DS9 episode starring Quark as Rick Blaine and Natima Lang as Ilsa. Guess what, in that one, it’s Natima at the end who makes the speech and says farewell to Quark because though she does love him, she regards her political work as more important.

Back to House and House: House’s more humane moments like his reaction when the fetus/baby grabs his finger mid-operation (which could have come across as trite, but instead to me was a very powerful moment, and Laurie completely sold me on House’s stunned reaction) and his dealing with the rape victim (sidenote: though I’m sure we’re all stunned by surprise House’s father was a bad one; sidenote II: and he’s definitely replicating some of that relationship with Chase, also not a surprise) were sprinkled in between him being even more pushing and alienating in the Tritter ark and being his usual self afterwards. That Foreman’s resignation actually wasn’t retracted but followed by Chase’s firing and Cameron’s resignation was a surprise because it genuinely changes the format of the show; that House did it at all in Chase’s case and didn’t fight to keep them with the other two wasn’t, though the fact that in Airborne, he makes some passengers into temporary replacements for Cameron, Chase and Foreman shows he’s aware he needs their feedback. But with someone so paranoid about needing anyone, that’s bound to rather lead to him letting them go than the reverse.

Now I’m ready for season 4…