A Reflection on The Final Problem: 'Everybody Dies'

'Everybody Dies' breaks the prescription mould of the procedural episode at PPTH. The episode begins with House in the dark, lying on a cold, dirty floor. From the dusty, dark quality of the opening scene there is a sense that the episode will take place, for the most part, in the shadows. House wakes up to find Kutner standing over him, a suicidal reference to his state of mind. In a TVLine Interview Shore describes how the hallucinations interact with reality, most amusingly when Kutner sticks a piece of gum on the sole of the dead patient's shoe. The patient, a heroin addict, works as a parallel for House himself. He pushes everyone in his life away and is openly an addict. However, he offers to take the fall for House's flooding prank when House tells him he's dying. He was prepared to sacrifice himself, as House does for Wilson. In true Housian fashion, the medicine appears to be more important than the patient, and House is compelled to tell him that he will live, only to continue uncovering the mystery, or so he says. So onto plan B.

As a reflection of the Holmsian detective style, there is no straightforward search for the truth. The episode is fragmented and does not happen in chronological order. In great part, the episode takes place in House's mind. Wilson dying of cancer forces House to reassess his own life, and when forced to go back to jail, he must either accept his fate or fight against it. As we all know 'dying changes everything', so in a true homage to Conan Doyle's 'Reichenbach Falls' and in a similar way to Moffat's modern day Sherlock, House decides to create a scenario in which his 'death' allows for a new life and time spent with Wilson. House sacrifices his chances of ever practicing medicine again, of living his past life, for Wilson. In the end, what makes life worth living for many of us, are the human connections we have (we need the eggs). 

I watched the episode in a more or less paralysed mental state. I was terrified of what the end would mean, not only for House, but for myself and so many others. Now comes the time when I admit that I initially interpreted the episode in a completely different way from the way it was intended. For me, House was hallucinating and seeing all those who had meant something to him in his past, and who represented a part of his subconscious, after tripping for the last time on heroin (a tribute to Holmes, no doubt). I believed that ironically, the moment he decided to live, to go on, despite knowing he would lose his friend, was the moment it was too late. I thought the plan to run away, continuing with the Thelma and Louise analogy from 'The C Word', was a plan that could never happen, created by House in hope. I wasn't under the impression House died when the building collapsed, (especially as a friend suggested a Holmsian ending), I believed it at the end, almost like a triple bluff or inception. I believed that what were supposed to be misleading clues, ie Dr. Nolan at Mayfield, were in the end real ones. What also led me to believe this was the song used at the end, what I like to call 'Amber's Song', 'Enjoy Yourself' (It's later than you think): the song she sang repeatedly to House while he was hallucinating in season 5. It has a melancholic tone which really tugs at the heart strings. The 'Dead Poets Society' reference, although more aptly applicable to Wilson, also made me question House's end.  But House survived the fire, and the torments of his mind and what's to come. This way the end is more open, fans can write endings for themselves, for the fates of House and Wilson. After all, Kutner does say: 'Death's not interesting. You exist for what's interesting.'

What I really enjoyed was the embedding of stories and the metaphors throughout the episode. House crashing through the weak floorboards becomes a metaphor for two stories: when House crashes through one floor to the other it suggests that it was a facade, a fake floor. The real floor lies beneath, representing the escape plan. The constant images of fire appear to signify an all encompassing destruction or end, the hell House is currently living in. The truth, that House is alive, becomes buried under piles of wood and burnt debris. When the building collapses two crosses can be seen in the framework of the wood, side by side, seemingly to mark House and Wilson. In addition, the repetition of House: 'He's happy', Amber: 'He's dead' points to House's plan to 'kill himself'. Only after the fake death can he be free and potentially happy with Wilson. House's understanding that their fates lie in his hands appears to come just after the moment in which Wilson tells him there is only one person he can count on. The axiom 'Everybody Lies' is present throughout, indicating the fake story.

I have to say, I did miss seeing Cuddy, she was such an important person to House. So it was fitting that she was at least referenced as one someone who really impacted House's life. Stacy's scenario was surreal. Seeing House hold his would-be child demonstrated just how much that life was not for him. House's mind can't help but think of a parallel life he could have lived, a life in which Wilson would not be dying. In 'The C Word' Wilson breaks down in a sort of existential crisis about how the universe is unfair and the pointlessness of life. In 'Holding On' House goes as far as to present fake patients Wilson saved, at the cafeteria, to show Wilson just how much his life has meant. House constantly asks Wilson (and others) to sacrifice for him throughout the series, Vicodin prescriptions, lying, alibis, covers... But in the final episode House makes the ultimate sacrifice for Wilson. As Foreman says in 'Holding On': 'Enduring pain to do some good for someone you care about...isn't that what life is?'

I loved seeing Amber again, she was one of my favourite characters, especially as I am absolutely fascinated by House's mind and how it works. In 'Blowing the Whistle' I was convinced House's MRI prank was a way to check whether he was ok, as he showed real fear that his mental capacity and ability to practice medicine was declining. In clever Housian style, while House was worried for himself, and our focus was on him, Wilson was silently suffering with cancer, and the news came like a knife to the heart. So in 'Everybody Dies' we see a focus again on House's mind, on his ability to fabricate a fake death and get out of the back door of a burning building, magician style.

It was interesting to see Cameron again, playing with reverse psychology, telling House to give up like Wilson did. As it would be the last thing Cameron would say it was a suggestion that House couldn't possibly die, things would be the opposite of how they seemed. The funeral scene was touching, especially as the last thing House says before his fake death is that he can change, something he has fought against throughout the entire series. There is a bitterness that House is so selfish to end his own life, which is disproven when he survives. It was also odd, again surreal. It somehow showed that this scenario was a mask for what was really happening. The text Wilson receives from House was truly Housian: 'shut up you idiot'. Basically code for 'I love you'.

I really liked the scene where Foreman finds House's name tag and understands what he had seen: the crashing down of burning planks crushing House, when Wilson and himself stood before the building was an illusion created by perspective. Regardless of all their arguments, they were friends, and it's great to see him happy for House.

Seeing Wilson ride off into the distance with House was a bittersweet moment. House has always been weary of happiness, how short lived it can be, but this is a reminder of how much Wilson has represented happiness for House throughout their friendship. We also see that life goes on, Taub works things out with his daughters' mothers, Chase becomes the head of diagnostics, the wheel keeps turning. What a fantastic and complex ending to the show.

The Warren Zevon song is so incredibly fitting: 'Keep Me In Your Heart (For A While)', and there is no doubt that we will. Thank you to David Shore for creating such a profound and complex character, an antihero unlike any other. Thank you to all the writers, actors, directors and crew who have worked so hard on this global phenomenon of a show. Thank you to the fans, and now friends, who have made this experience even more special for me. Thank you to Hugh Laurie for being absolutely brilliant and for making me laugh, cry and most importantly, think.

Goodbye House MD.

'Runaways' Episode Review

My initial reaction to this episode was that there was something left to be desired. But and it's quite a big but,....there are some very interesting aspects that caught my eye throughout the episode. First of all, the title. Why the plural? The POTW is the main plot runaway, in the more literal sense. In subsequent sub plots there is Foreman, who runs away from his affair, Taub, who initially runs away from bonding with his daughters, and House, who goes as far from the hospital as he can, because he can (ankle monitor free).

The POTW is a young homeless runaway who comes into the clinic in order to con an unsuspecting doctor for drugs. Unfortunately, or fortunately as the case may be, she gets House. She starts bleeding from her ear and House admits her into hospital. Adams wants to call social services but House understands the girl's reluctance to contact her abusive mother and go into the system, and so he stands up for her. Her mother, or biological mother as House calls her, is a drug addict who emotionally abused her daughter as a child by taking drugs in front of her and making her the caretaker of the family. House needs the mother's permission to operate on the patient and bluntly tells her that she is nothing but the egg donor, and that the daughter is much better off without her. House even tests her by leaving his bottle of Vicodin next to her, but she resists temptation to try and become a better mother. There appears to be resonances of a personal anger here, relating to House's tenuous relationship with his father, who he admits (in One Day, One Room) abused him. Reversely, in House's case, John is not his biological father but served the purposes of one, and House wishes he had not. House likely sees himself in the girl, she has the opportunity to live free from the abusive parental treatment that he lived through. However, poignantly, without the mother's presence, the eventual diagnosis of intestinal worms would not have been possible.

House follows Foreman around, making use of his new found freedom for the usual purposes of blackmail and extortion. He threatens Foreman with photos he took of him with a married woman he is having an affair with. This leads the wife to tell her husband the truth. She believes it will make Foreman feel less guilty but it leads Foreman to push her away. Without the exhiliration of doing something secretive and adventurous that he shouldn't, Foreman loses interest. House jokes that the only thing missing from a snapshot of Foreman's life is a cane. The more Foreman runs away from becoming House, the more he becomes him.

Taub is feeling a lack of connection with his daughters. This biological dad lightly parallels to the POTW's mother who neglected her daughter as a child. He tends to read magazines rather than try to have a relationship with them. Eventually Wilson advises him to find common ground and we see them beginning to bond, through baby style sport talk.

There were also some wonderfully Housian scenes in terms of humour. Chase talking to the babies about how men love commitment free sex in baby talk was fantastic. Also, House feeling the need to go clay pigeon shooting (mostly to con Adams) and bet on turtle races just because he can were true to his nature. The episode isn't one of my favourites, as I still feel there was something missing in terms of that underlying oomph we find in episodes that really make us connect. However the look into House's nature, his connection to the POTW and the possible glimpse into his past intrigued me.

PS. Odd clinic patients. 

Better Half Episode Review

We finally see the end of the hiatus with the airing of Better Half, episode 9 of Season 8. This week's POTW suffers from severe early onset Alzheimer's disease and struggles from moment to moment to understand what's happening and where he is. He begins to cough up blood while awaiting to be OKd for an Alzheimer's drug trial. Enter Dr. House and his fortune telling index cards. I was glad to see his mischivous ways in action, always manipulating Foreman to get his way. In order to get his ankle monitor removed House plots to make Foreman feel superior and in control.

The wife of the POTW has stayed with him for ten years, giving up her job to look after him round the clock. Weariness sets in and she begins to break. As Chase says, it's not only the sick who needs looking after. However, she begins to plan her future with another man and it's implied she sleeps with him when she takes a night off from her husband's bedside. She is racked with guilt when her husband then disappears to be found at the soccer training ground where he used to coach a team of youngsters. The interesting notion here is whether he ran away because of habitual routine many years ago or whether he wanted to run away because he believed his illness was a burden to his wife and he no longer wanted her to suffer. This parallels Chase, whose mother drank herself to death, but not before Chase had to look after her and his baby sister for years as a teenager. Chase would rather her have killed herself with a gun and ended the misery they were all living through. A hard pill to swallow. Chase can't forget and the patient can't remember.

The POTW suffers from a moment of paranoid aggression and punches his wife in the face. We see just how hard the disease is on family life. The patient begins to regress and loses his ability to speak English and starts speaking his native Portuguese, leading to a very touching scene in which House translates for his wife. He speaks of how they met and how he knew she was the one. He would always say "There she is" when he saw her. The poignant blow comes at the end when the patient doesn't recognise his wife and we see just how heartbreaking the disease can be. The symptoms from the other mysterious disease merge with his Alzheimer's, making it hard to diagnose. In the end the patient suffers from Reye's syndrome which swells the brain and liver. Usually it's only found in kids but is aggravated by asprin which the patient takes continously (because he forgets he's already taken one) because of a sore throat. Foreman is the one to solve the case because of a vase of flowers which have not wilted in his office, linking to the patient's wife being a former botanist and keeping asprin in the house. It made me think whether House let Foreman present the correct diagnosis as he had done earlier in the episode or whether Foreman really did diagnose it himself. After all the "nurses hate" Foreman, so who put flowers in his office? My guess is House. Also, the flowers not wilting is perhaps a metaphor that all is not lost for the patient, who begins to recognise his wife again when he starts getting treatment. It could also represent the notion that people pretend they are ok. Instead of wilting when it seems they should, something keeps them going and they fight instead of giving up.

The clinic presented an asexual woman who would definitely not have featured in "Fugliness Weekly". Wilson is perplexed by an attractive, healthy woman who appears to have no sex drive. He tells House, which of course means a bet is on. House suggests that Wilson would only have told him about her if he didn't believe the patient himself. $100 dollars and House can't examine or talk to the patient. Rules were meant to be bent so House examines the husband instead who says he is also asexual. It turns out the husband has a tumour in his brain which decreases his libido and that the wife was lying in order to make the marriage work. This parallels the wife of the Alzheimer's patient keeping up appearences to keep her marriage from crumbling.

House uses his $100 bill to light cigars with Wilson. Throughout the episode we see friends who, despite the outward appearance of seeming so different (the contrasting view of the patients), fundamentally share a deep understanding. The light hearted scene at the end when they put their feet up and share a smoke appears to mean things are good between them.

The contrast between the humour throughout the episode (House/Wilson, House/Park/Adams) and the Alzheimer's patient and Chase works wonderfully. It's interesting that we don't know whether the wife stays with her husband or not as it makes us project our own ending and think about what we ourselves would do. Great episode to kick off the second half of season 8.