End of the Thought Process

Seeing the episode again, I’m reminded of House’s relationship with his own parents (as suggested in Season 2’s Daddy’s Boy and again in Season 3’s One Day, One room.  Interestingly enough, Daddy’s boy featured a similar scene at the end of the episode:  House peering in, unnoticed by the patient and his dad, longingly at the resolution between parent and child.

We knew in Daddy’s Boy that House hated his dad, and never really knew why.  Wilson tells us that House’s parents are disappointed in him because House is miserable despite having a life for which he should be grateful.  

That scene in Kids has always stayed with me as one of the season’s most poignant moments.  Foreman (or was it Chase?) startles him in his reverie by telling him that she’ll be “alright.”  House responds “I know.”  But he isn’t responding to the statement, he’s responding to some other thing—that emotionally, she’ll be OK.  He says it with great emotion that is probably lost on Foreman, but it clearly means a great deal to House who’s emotional well being, especially that regarding his parents, given the moment, is not “OK.”  It is subtly hinted that the healing between parent and child—understanding between a parent and a wounded child—is something profoundly important to House.  At the time we didn’t know why.  We do now.

It’s difficult to imagine that David Shore and the rest of the writers had so fleshed out the character of House during that first season (when they didn’t even know they would return for a second) that we continue to receive clarification of those first season suppositions late in the third. 

The episode itself has a much lighter feel than anything we’ve seen this season.  As it should.  The episode comes on the heels of Vogler and everyone attempts to get back to normal at PPTH.  It’s interesting that the disease of the week is a bad infection which, during the course of the episode is dealt with and eradicated during the hour—much like Vogler himself. 

House has to deal with Chase, who sold him out to Vogler (and thus giving us the basis for so much of the suspicion with which everyone viewed Chase during the Tritter arc).  How House deals with Chase gives us yet more insight into who House really is.  Wilson would have fired a subordinate who betrayed him in such an obvious and malicious way.  Chase endangered not only House’s job at PPTH, but his career (and, given how much House’s life is defined by his work, his life as well).  But House shows incredible tolerance for Chase.  Yes, he is on Chase’s case during the whole thing, a half-hearted (at best) attempt to show Chase that he’s pissed off.  But fundamentally, he understands what Chase was doing and doesn’t take it personally.  “He was only trying to protect his job.” 

House also feels the impact of the hospital’s losing $10 million.  He rides Cuddy for having docs do what nurses should be doing, and she lays it back at his doorstep, blaming him for the lack of funds to have enough staff.  Point to Cuddy.  She’s angry with House (I’m sure some of it left over from the Vogler reign).  She cuts him no slack.  When he asks for a neurosurgeon and an operating room, she snarks at him.  He tells her why he needs it and understands  immediately that House was right and she will do everything in her power to support that.  I loved that moment.

House doesn’t like change.  This is a man who’s had very little stability in his life.  As a kid (of course we didn’t know this back in season 1) he moved constantly:  changing schools, neighborhoods, peers—even countries and languages.  As a kid, he was also abused, taking what little stability a home life could give and destroying it.  It would seem that the constants in young House’s life were music, his intellect and his own company.  As an adult, his life was irrevocably changed by the infarction and Stacy’s intervention.  At this point in his life, is it any wonder that House doesn’t like his fragile boat rocked very much?

Cameron quit in her attempt at noble sacrifice after House, himself, fell on his own sword in the name of ethics (although no one understood that THAT was the reason).  “You do things because they’re right.” Cameron said.  We certainly heard echoes of that statement in Son of Coma Guy.  She crystallized the difference between doing things “to help” people and “doing the right thing.”  They’re not always the same thing, and Cameron understood that about House.  But now Vogler’s gone and House wants to go back to the way things were.  We don’t really know if it’s because he doesn’t want a new person in his department, or he values Cameron specifically:  for her insight or for some emotional attachment to her.  We do know (post Stacy) that when House forms emotional attachments, they are enduring.  Whether that’s to Stacy, to Wilson, to Cuddy, Crandall.  It’s his pattern.  So it stands to reason with Cameron.  He has some sort of attachment to her and wants her back.

Wilson sees Cameron as a partner for House.  He sees that House is attracted to her and thinks that House should get her back because otherwise (he’ll) “be alone.”  On the other hand, this is Wilson, who’s had three failed marriages and probably sees everything through a male-female lens.

Upon watching this episode again out of context as a standalone episode, I really enjoyed it.  It had humor, subtle character moments and that wonderful, beautiful baffled look on House’s face when Cameron said she’d come back if he’d take her out to dinner.  There’s a subtle shake of the head that, for a moment, said, “But I don’t understand.”  It’s a wonderful moment.  And the lighting of Hugh Laurie’s eyes in that moment was the best it had been the entire season.  I remember noticing at that second just how incredibly blue they were (ok, shallow moment over). 

The episode was also filled with much humor given by the fellowship applicants.  I loved that insight into what House really thinks it is to be a non-conformist—coming from a true non-conformist, who really doesn’t care what anyone else thinks.  And who can forget “That’s our Hitler!”