Pardon the Interruption: House 6:19 - The Choice

Overall: 6.3

I think the writers are starting to rediscover this show's emotional core. Took them long enough!

(Note: Appended to the review below are a few remarks on last week's episode. I just got around to watching it tonight, and as I came away with a different impression than did my co-author, I figured I'd pipe up with my own thoughts.)



Plot Synopsis:

The official recap can be found here.

Writing: 7.0

This script -- is actually not that bad. The plots don't fit together as seamlessly as I'd normally prefer, but individually, they make sense. In fact, for some characters, we appear to be swinging back onto the right track. At the very least, Taub seems to have recovered his senses thanks to House's reverse psychology (a tactic that appears to be favored by at least one other character, as I'll discuss below).

House's plot -- reminds me why, personally, I'll never be able to give this show up. There has definitely been some drift this year when it comes to writing a "recovering" House, but I think the show runners have finally struck pay dirt in allowing Wilson to enter another relationship (my thoughts on that relationship can also be found in the appended comments below). It was devastating enough for House when Cuddy decided to move on, but now that Wilson is making his own hesitant attempts to do the same, House has found himself in a very dangerous place. He genuinely wants his only two friends to be happy, but he also doesn't know what he's going to do if they are no longer 100% available 24/7. Thanks to some psychiatric intervention, he can now admit - openly - that he doesn't want to be alone, and he recognizes that the life he led "before" was tragically incomplete -- but he still doesn't know what to do with that new-found self-knowledge.

Anyone who has ever gone through a psychological recovery process will tell you that despair is inevitable; once you recognize that you have a problem and start attempting to move forward, you eventually hit that wall - that point when you realize exactly how far from your ultimate goals you really are. House is there. In this episode, we can see it in his eyes. We can see his recognition that he needs to reach out to his team, but we also see him struggling with a classic fear that has afflicted many a gifted kid - that fear that through a lifetime of developing one's talents and pursuing one's obsessions, you have rendered yourself completely unable to relate to the rest of humanity. I sort of know how that feels. And House has to deal with one more problem besides: up until the past few years, he has coped with his social anxiety by persuading himself that humanity as a whole is debased and broken and not worth his time. So not only does House fear his own inability to carry on an ordinary conversation, but he also has to fight against personal programming that has him convinced that other people can only hurt him in the end. That's a huge uphill battle - and House is fully aware of this fact.

I'm babbling. Suffice it to say that I grok what the writers are doing with House, and I think it's realistic psychologically. Granted, it took awhile to finally get here, but I think my trust in the writers where House the character is concerned has once again been vindicated.

Acting: 6.0

Unfortunately, I don't much care for the actor who plays the patient of the week and am similarly unimpressed with the actress who plays his fiance.

Message: 6.0

About the gay reprogramming issue: I agree with the show runners that such methods are abusive and ultimately futile. I think we're born with our sexual preferences, and no amount of shock therapy is going to change how we're wired. However -- I think it does homosexuals a disservice to adopt the politically correct notion that they have absolutely no control over their impulses - that, indeed, they will die inside if they don't satisfy said impulses - and I actually agree with the patient's insistence that we can choose how we express (or not express, as the case may be) our inclinations. I know of at least one person - a Catholic - who has consciously decided to stay faithful to the teachings of the Church despite her homosexuality, and I think she would certainly object to the idea that gays are rutting animals who can't help themselves - or that gays have to build their identity entirely around their sexuality.

And now for a bonus comment on last week's episode:

When I watched Open and Shut, I did not come away with the sense that the writers were supporting open marriage. Here's why:

First of all, when House makes his remark about the rarity of perfect monogamy in the animal kingdom (a debatable remark scientifically), the writers allow Taub to reply with the observation that animals also kill and eat their own young, thereby effectively laying waste to the naturalist fallacy.

Secondly, notice how the husband responds when one of his wife's on-the-side lovers decides to visit. "This is our family space!" he snarls. Hmm. If this open marriage were so wonderful and hunky dory, why would the husband be so insistent that their daughter not be exposed to her mother's infidelity? That to me reads as an implicit acknowledgment that open marriages are damaging to children.

Thirdly, House turns out to be right about the husband's "score card," which suggests that the patient's open marriage is not marked by sacrificial giving and love, but is instead marked by selfish game play.

Fourth, open marriage certainly doesn't work out for the Taubs.

Fifth, when House makes his remark about his patient's "sleeping with other dudes," his voice is dripping with contempt. At least here, House's romantic moralism seems to stay very much intact.

Sixth, when Taub tells the others that he didn't go through with the whole open marriage idea, Thirteen's response reads to me as mock disappointment, not genuine disappointment. And that suggests to me that Thirteen, like House, is rather fond of reverse psychology. "Tell him what he apparently wants to hear, and then let him discover for himself that he's an idiot," Thirteen seems to be thinking.

I do agree that allowing Taub to entertain the idea of having an open marriage is a poor choice - something done just for the shock value. But I think, based on the evidence above, that the writers come down on the right side of the issue overall.

On another matter altogether, it appears my suspicions regarding Wilson's first marriage were somewhat correct: the break up was in fact a two-way deal. In typical Wilson fashion, Wilson gave Sam everything she wanted regardless of his own needs and then sat on his growing feelings of resentment, gradually becoming more and more distant and cold. Sam then responded to Wilson's drift away from her by becoming angry and demanding. It's actually a pretty common pattern, and I don't think it's fair to conclude outright that Sam was a selfish bitch who drained Wilson dry. I think Wilson shares some responsibility for the failure of that marriage. (Which means that Sam's apparent insincerity might have been a case of poor acting rather than a deliberate choice. Either that, or writing pelican A is not talking to writing pelican B.)