The entire thread can be read at Google Groups: Subject: HOUSE, M.D.: 33. "Need to Know" From: MDuPree@theworld.com.snip.to.reply (Micky DuPree) Newsgroups: rec.arts.tv,alt.tv.house-md Date: Wed, 8 Feb 2006 22:53:11 +0000 (UTC) Organization: The World : www.TheWorld.com : Since 1989 Message-ID: Lines: 157 Spoilers for "Need to Know," 2/7/06. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I'm not very moved to do the usual detailed commentary this time. Analyzing the second season of this show is a bit like what House said to the whiteboard: I give it so much and it gives back so little. Right now, what I really need to do is vent, and it's not going to be in chronological order, nor thematically developed. I had thought that Wilson was more than ready for a larger role in the series, but this season has had a way of making me sorry for everything I've wished for. It was bad enough that House didn't seem like House, and Stacy didn't seem like Stacy, but even Wilson didn't seem like Wilson. Maybe other people really go for that soap-operatic whipsawing; he wants her, no he doesn't; she wants him, no she doesn't. But for Wilson to be angry that House was breaking up Stacy's marriage at the beginning, only for Wilson to be angry that House wasn't breaking up Stacy's marriage by the episode's close, was just pointlessly histrionic. And the gratuitous headshrinking at the end .... I was with House on that one, but I'm sure that Wilson was meant to be speaking the truth from on high, because that's what the writers have gleaned from the first season: everyone says House is miserable, so he must be miserable, therefore he loves his own misery and seeks to perpetuate it. The perfect senseless end to a perfectly senseless plot line. When coherency is too much to ask for, standards are pretty low. Are we supposed to believe House was miserable the entire five years he was with Stacy? I can't see House not throwing Wilson's own infidelity back in his face when Wilson was obviously getting on House's nerves about his blossoming adultery with Stacy, and yet it was like the writers just didn't want to go there in this episode, so the characters conveniently forgot about all those times House gave Wilson a hard time over the subject. So House can't make Stacy happy. Now who could have figured that out from "You were the one, but I can't be with you"? Or from "With you I was lonely, but with Mark there's room for me"? Or from "I love you and I hate you. I love Mark but I don't hate him"? Or from her reaction to House reading her file? Or from all those knowing (and yet apparently instantly forgotten) looks in "Failure to Communicate" about how the patient couldn't change for the woman he loved? It's ALWAYS been that simple (though not easy). And yet every time the writers held out the hope of closure, they pressed the damned reset button again. And it wasn't just the characters that started over from scratch, but whole plot points were ignored, not only from last season, but from this season as well. Now we're supposed to believe that House has been chasing Stacy all season long? It's canonical that he was avoiding her until she started putting paperwork pressure on him. It's canonical in "The Mistake" that he said he was *sorry* for getting her to like where things were going, as if his sudden pursuit of her in "Hunting" was just to prove he could do it, not because he wanted her to come back to him. Since none of the characters seems to think there's anything inconsistent about all this, are all conflicting statements supposed to be treated as equally true? The characters had sex, but they didn't have a sex scene. I correctly predicted that they would get House's shirt off during sweeps, but it was almost anticlimactic, so to speak. During sweeps especially, that baffles me. Are the producers signaling that this show will simply never go there? I hate to sound like a pervert, but that seems like poor payment for my having endured all that back-and-forth with the soap. I think there should have been a longer buildup to Mark's outburst. I found Super-Mom unsympathetic and wanted her to get busted. I found House and Stacy unsympathetic and wanted them to get busted. The big surprise was that I found Wilson unsympathetic. Unless he had some genuine wisdom to impart from his having committed infidelity himself, I wanted him to butt out. I found Cameron's unwillingness to get tested unsympathetic. (There is one fellow whom House needs to berate for being a wuss, and it's not Foreman for taking his responsibilities seriously.) House used to have reasons for being a jerk or violating conventional ethics. They weren't always good reasons or reasons I agreed with, but there was something behind it all. Nowadays the writers seem to have picked up on how his jerkiness or amorality is a defining characteristic, but they've made him an amoral jerk just for the sake of being an amoral jerk. For example, I don't remember any instances of thievery for simple personal gain in the first season. Now he's stealing newspapers when the cashier isn't looking and trying to make off with his best friend's pot. In fact, sometimes the show itself seems to be saying, "Everybody lies, and that's for the best as long as you don't get caught." The more I examine the first season, the more it pays dividends. The more I examine the second season, the more I realize what a hash this has become. I'm almost ready to blame it on the departure of Sara B. Cooper, the only writer-producer to have been present for almost all of the first season, but who's been entirely absent from the second. Either that or John Mankiewicz seems to have stepped down from some responsibilities. Maybe continuity and common sense were among them. I know correlation is not causation, but my third-best theory is sunspots eating away at everyone's brain. I really wouldn't have pegged button-down Wilson as the type to procure pot and then roll joints for his patients. I'd expect him to give them the name of "a guy who knows a guy," but not for him to be their supplier. The implication in "Humpty Dumpty" was that House went to med school at the University of Michigan. Now Foreman tells us he went to Johns Hopkins. A minor matter, but they did the fake rooftop effects much better in "Honeymoon." Two quick good things: House's method for getting a test sample from Cameron was funny. Foreman's perspicacious cynicism about the durability of the patient's marriage was the closest he had ever come to being like House. Unfortunately, the parallel went unremarked upon by the characters, so it was probably unintentional by the writers. Of course, with the combination of the now-established audience for _House_, the return of the _American Idol_ lead-in, the lack of _Commander in Chief_ episodes for competition, and the pent-up demand for new episodes, "Need to Know" will undoubtedly be the highest-rated episode of _House_ to date, leaving everyone involved in making it convinced that they can do no wrong. -Micky --