House returns tonight, and I’m politely delaying this post for my West Coast friends. However, y’all are SOL after 12am EST. If you haven’t watched the show yet, don’t read the rest of this entry.
Anyhow, the much anticipated return of House, and perhaps this year I’ll actually start making more thoughtful posts about it. I do seem to start the beginning of school optimistic that I’ll be intelligent and thoughtful about what I’m watching; always seems to devolve quickly. Of course, the difference is that I’m going to be taking a lot fewer credit hours now, not to mention not teaching or doing anything else – this should lend itself more to thougthful analysis. Tonight’s episode, for example, is an excellent illustration of cost benefit analysis and hospital administraion (Cuddy) versus doctor desire for treatment. Of course, since this is a television drama, at the end Cuddy bends and does what’s right – which is not always what is just, ethical, or beneficial – and heals the patient with House’s cure. It was a beautiful, touching scene, and I’m a big softie so of course I cried.
And then Cuddy didn’t tell House, per Wilson. Because Wilson feels House needs to learn “no”, and this is the way he will – by not having an evidence-based reason for treatment, being told no, and learning that he must always have a scientific reason, nevermind that his entire job is predicated upon seeing clues no one else does, and he not even always understands. Ahem.
I’m not certain I’ve ever been clear just how conflicted the character of Wilson leaves me. He’s an oncologist, he should understand chronic pain. And yet he has, for the past three years, scorned House his pain, refused to help, challenged him to go without medication, and generally been a complete ass. Yet at the same time he’s endearing – a funny sense of humour, wry, sarcatic, and the perfect foil to House. But over the last year, they’ve started making Wilson into something I don’t quite like, and this episode seals it. Thankfully, it looks like the following episode will blow it right open.
There is a scene about 50 minutes in to the episode that I ache in resonance to. House is running, trying to enjoy the feeling, the floating, the freedom that comes when you’re not in pain. He overheats, and stands in a fountain to cool down. But he’s finding that high, the bliss, the feeling of adrenaline and endorphins that, if you have nastyass chronic pain, you get when you’ve pain relief and no other way.
I can’t remember the last time I felt that way without the assistance of chemical aid. The last time I’ve been able to push my body to extremes and feel joy, instead of fire.
I’ve often felt they use Wilson as a plot device when they can’t fit it to any other character. This leads him to do things that make no sense based on who he’s supposed to be, the most obvious being the pain issues. (Yet look how sympathetic he was to everything that cancer patient he had the crush on wanted.)
In the beginning they had Volger and Wilson was basically fulfilling his role here. It would have made more sense, given how the episode unfolded, for Cameron to be it here, but I don’t see Cuddy having that talk with her.