'The C Word' Episode Review

The patient this week is a six year old girl Emily who has a rare genetic disease (AT). As she is a double carrier of the gene marker it means she doesn't present with the usual symptoms. Emily convinces her dad to let her ride the carousel at the park. After spells of dizziness she begins to have a nosebleed and collapses. Emily's parents are separated, and following the Season 8 theme of  'parents', hers argue constantly about her health and well being. In simplistic terms, it could be argued that the father represents the 'heart', taking an interest in his daughter's emotions, while the mother is the 'head', taking interest in her daughter's medical condition. The constant back and forth demonstrates the necessary interplay of the two. Her mother is a doctor who specialises in Emily's genetic condition. She joins the team. Although she tries to distance herself by referring to Emily as 'the patient' we see the impossibility of objectivity in the case. This parallels Wilson's cancer treatment. He refuses to follow medical advice and believes that he can be his own doctor. House highlights the insanity of his plan to endure a double treatment of chemotherapy and radiation because of the extreme side effects and a much higher risk that it might kill him. Wilson can't be objective despite being an oncologist. In a moving scene he picks up mementos of patients with high survival rates who passed away.

The mother takes matters into her own hands and treats Emily with a drug that is not FDA approved in her own home, which is a mirror to House accepting to treat Wilson at his apartment. It demonstrates the inevitability of loving someone so much that your heart overrides your head. In both cases these drastic treatments momentarily appear life saving (the Lex-2 was keeping Emily's lime disease at bay and Wilson appears stronger at the end), but Emily still has AT and Wilson still has cancer.

The team works with the help of Emily's mom Elizabeth, but we see a striking moment of House's empty chair. Chase takes over the diagnostics and ends up solving the case by finding a benign tumour in Emily's heart. The ducklings have proven that they can handle even an incredibly intricate case on their own. Strikes a chord about the end...

The scenes in House's apartment were incredibly moving. To see House give Wilson his Vicodin was heartbreaking in the best possible way; putting Wilson first, suffering alongside him and doing everything he can, truly demonstrated the depth of their friendship. In his Housian way he even tries to dissuade Wilson from taking the drastic route by bluntly stating all the agonising pain he will suffer. When Wilson begins to talk about dying and the implications this will mean for House legally (as Wilson is taking  lethal chemicals in his apartment) House replies that 'that's not going to be an issue'. Now, in my opinion, there are several ways of interpreting this. House jokes about dumping the body, but I think either he refuses to believe Wilson will die, or, and it gets darker here, if Wilson dies he would kill himself (as his life would no longer be worth living)... Back to the humour, in the wonderful Housian fashion, House manages to joke about how if Wilson's confessing his gay love for him, everybody already knows.

Wilson always imagined he would have wife and kids to support him during his old age or infirmity. Again, House comes out with 'you have everything you need right here. We both do.' Touching moment followed by 'industrial strength pain killer' just shows brilliance in writing. Wilson hallucinates about his eight year old patient who dies of cancer, who he told that things would get better and he would be ok. Wilson's fears are infiltrating his unconscious and manifesting themselves as hallucinations because of the drugs. He feels helpless, like a child. At the peak of his suffering he implicitly tells House that he should be the one with cancer, that if he (Wilson) had been an ass all his life who made people suffer and pushed them away, then he would deserve cancer. Another part of  the human condition, the fear of death. Wilson takes out his anger on House because of the apparent absurdity of it all; including the dark irony (as I mentioned after last week's episode) of an oncologist getting cancer. He suffers an existential crisis about the meaning of life and why the universe would do this to him, and realises the hypocrisy of telling his patients not to think about why. Wilson is dying, his white blood cell count is dangerously low but he makes House promise he won't take him to the hospital. In what he believes could be his dying moment, all he wants is to be there and have House by his side. As the sun rises bright in the sky the next morning it tells us that Wilson has lived through the night, and that House has sacrificed a lot for his best friend. But he'd rather 'tone down the bromance' so we'll leave it at that.

I loved the ending because it was so wonderfully inappropriate and funny. I laughed and almost cried simultaneously. Housian dark humour at its best. House takes pictures of Wilson unconscious, hooked up to the drugs with lots of bikini clad girls and alcohol. Absolutely fantastic episode! It was so well written and I really enjoyed Hugh's direction, especially the close ups and the moments when House and Wilson are looking beyond the camera addressing one another. I have to say the music was great in this episode, really complemented the mood and narrative.

Note
Speculation- This is just a scenario that played in my head, that I thought I'd share. It will sound farfetched and maybe 'denial-y' but once an idea blossoms it sticks no matter how improbable or impossible it sounds. Not saying this is what will happen. Emily talks about how her parents only fight about her, and that maybe when she dies, they will get back together. I have this feeling in the pit of my stomach that it won't be Wilson who dies, it will be House. In my mind, daddy is Wilson and mommy is Cuddy (not in the romantic sense). I think that if there is any chance she is coming back, it would be in the sense that it's 'too late'. Again, I'm not saying this is what will happen and it's based on absolutely NO fact (I'm spoiler free). It's just a scenario. That is all.

'Body and Soul' Episode Review

A young boy suffers from respiratory trouble after dreaming about a spirit who walks into his room and strangles him. House believes it is Sudden Unexpected Nocturnal Death Syndrome which kills males who are of Hmong heritage. It is soon noted that medicine is failing him as none of the treatments work. The grandfather believes that, similarly to his son who murdered his boss with a sledgehammer, his grandson is possessed. When science appears to provide no answer and thus no cure, the boy's mother gives up her reluctance to believe in alternative spiritual treatments. House is extremely distressed that religion could provide a cure science (he) was unable to give. The boy dreams that his grandfather is the one strangling him and when he awakes we see he has red imprints around his neck. We see the effects but not the cause.

The theme of dreams runs throughout the episode and provides scenarios in which Park fantasises about Chase and he fantasises about her, both claiming that dreams don't mean anything. Taub convinces Park that it means trust, security and friendship and so she tries to prove her theory by farting in the elevator. I love Chase's reactions to the things she says. Again we see the effects (sex dreams) but not necessarily the true cause (reason behind) the dream. It leads us perhaps to understand that not everything can be explained and that the 'obvious' explanation doesn't necessarily prove to be the correct one.

We see a further development in House's relationship with Dominika as he feels the bond between them is perhaps stronger than he had previously believed. She likes guns, she reads physics books about one of his favourite subjects, dark matter, and shows true interest and understanding. Notably, Dominika compares the understanding of dark matter, of which we can see only the effect and not the cause to spiritualism and occultism. In a true Housian way, as soon as happiness begins to materialise the ceiling drops. They are about to have sex when Dominika takes a call telling her that her citizenship was approved and that they had sent notifications by post several times. Whether Dominika leaves through feeling betrayed and angry or whether she leaves because that is what she would have done anyway, we never know. House is obviously affected by this and the expression on his face shows that he truly doesn't want her to leave. Once again House sabotages (unconsciously most likely) his relationship with the woman he cares about. He knew that she would find out eventually and that what he had done would upset her. He pushed her away because he's so terrified of happiness. That's not to say he doesn't want to be happy, and he doesn't want to be with her, he just doesn't expect it to last. Cue: Cuddy. The green card thus seems to represent the Vicodin he took when Cuddy was thought to have cancer. It's self preservation, a coping mechanism which is extraordinarily ironic. He precipitates pain only to feel the brute force of its impact.

Following the 'multiple possibilities' theme of the episode, we can't say whether it was the Ibuprofen or the grandfather's exorcism which heals Luke's heart. Adams says it's hard to believe that aspirin could heal him, the mother then says that it's hard for Adams to believe that the spiritual intervention worked. As Taub says 'there were two things we thought were impossible, one of them wasn't, that's all we know.' One of things that I have always loved about House is that when it comes to debates of this genre they never tell us what to think, they present the facts and let us decide. We fill in the blanks in our own ways, according to what makes sense for us.

So we see the beginning of the end. "I have cancer House". Wilson's expression and then House's disbelief. All this time I've been focusing on House being the one who could be ill, who fears that he will become incapable of practising medicine, losing his mind. When in fact he could lose a large part of his heart. Wilson. House has lost a lot of people throughout the years, but I honestly think Wilson's death could kill him. I'm a fan of dark and dramatic as I think its an essential part of Housian nature but it really does hit you hard when you imagine a possible scenario where Wilson is gone and House is alone. It was an incredible scene. I know this arc will be spectacular, one step closer to the end.