TV Show Review - House

WARNING: Contains spoilers!

I picked up House in Season 2 or 3 like I do a bunch of TV shows: I see a random episode by chance one day, it happens a couple more times, and eventually I realize that I like the show enough to pick it up. By Season 5, my brother and I had seen every episode and bought all the DVDs. As you can tell, I was pretty into this show. As the show went on though, I began to lose interest, but in the end, I watched every single episode. This show is incredible and has had a powerful impact on my life, so I'm going to do my best to give it the proper farewell with this review while still being honest.

First thing's first, Hugh Laurie's acting is simply phenomenal, and his performance as House is vital to this show's success. House is a very complex character, and Hugh Laurie simply nails the depiction of this character each and every time. As for House as a character, he is very well-written and similar to Hugh Laurie's performance, the character's complexity is vital to the show's impact. House is obviously an ass, but he's incredibly intelligent, has a very interesting moral code, and brings a very fun brand of humor to the table. Most importantly, he isn't one-dimensional. While House tries to pass himself as an always superior beacon of consistency, we often times see glimpses of his more humane side and how he unwilling adapts to legitimate challenges to his philosophies. He tries to pass himself as distant and aloof, but it's easy to tell that like every other human being, he is an emotional person. He relishes exercising his intellectual superiority and mocking the immature behavior of others, yet he is, in many ways, like a child himself. Lastly, his clinic hour bits are hilarious.

As for the other characters, they're also well-written and 3-dimensional (minus maybe Foreman and Taub), though I don't think any of them are as well written as House. Wilson is pretty much the ultimate bro, Cuddy's an interesting mix of love interest, friend, and boss, Cameron does a great job as the warring side against House's style (follow the rules and be nice vs. fuck the rules and be blunt), and Chase is... Australian (just didn't feel like describing each and every character). The interactions between House and the other characters are fun to watch, and since none of the characters are the same, many dynamics form throughout the show.

As for plot, it is quite good overall and has quite a bit of variety despite this being a show about medical mysteries. The medical mysteries are usually well-written, but often times, the non-medical plot lines are what shine. The clinic hour subplots are almost always very entertaining along with Wilson's and House's random shenanigans (I really liked the one where they were competing to see who could keep a live chicken in their office the longest). One of my favorite episodes in fact is purely non-medical. It is the one where House merely ends up talking a bunch with a rape victim, who has the decision of whether or not to abort the fetus her rape left her with. The girl, being religious, is against it, and House, being House, is obviously for it. Both are incredibly stubborn, so we end up seeing this very engaging war between their philosophies. In the end, each character cedes slightly to the other's viewpoints; the girl agrees to abort the fetus and House ends up opening up to a patient, more importantly, another human being. We see a microscopic sliver of House's human side emerge and learn that House is actually a little more malleable than he makes himself out to be (completely unmalleable). The conversations between the two bring up good points for both sides, and that one episode actually played a big part in helping me determine what exactly my views are on religion and the universe.

The thing I didn't like about this show is that for most of Seasons 5-7, the show was entirely drama, and the well-crafted medical mysteries fell by the wayside. One of the things that I really liked about House is that it did a great job maintaining the balance between drama and non-drama, but when it got these seasons, the balance was ruined. It even seemed like the show forgot that it had a medical mystery to resolve at times, throwing in the answer in a half-assed manner at the last second with a painfully forced (more painfully forced than usual) House epiphany. The drama often times seemed contrived as well, especially the House-Cuddy stuff in Season 7. Cuddy just leaves her husband right before they get married just in time for a season finale? She was with the creepy detective dude? This entire subplot was simply a disaster and merely seemed like a ploy to get more viewers. Yes, House has to be an ass to avoid the show becoming cliched and him losing his identity, but there were just times when you wanted to slap him for the idiotic stuff he does to Cuddy. Similar to this drama, most of the other drama seemed quite contrived, random, and made us hate the characters. A lot of the relationships had little to no chemistry preceding them or even during them. Foreman and Thirteen made no sense. Taub and... everyone made no sense. Amber and Wilson? What? I can't even rage anymore, fuck drama.

One of the relationships that I really liked though was between House and the Ukrainian girl (can't remember her name). The motive actually fit House's character, it wasn't a contrived curveball, and it was subtle as opposed to a slap in the face. One of the reasons why the rape victim episode worked so well is because it was gradual. House and the rape victim had to go at it for quite a while before House lowered his walls and let her in, exposing his humanity. However, he semi-preserved his position by never explicitly admitting that he was wrong. This is necessary because House's character is too stubborn to change drastically, and for this episode, it looks the writers realized that and executed appropriately. Similarly, House's "marriage" to the Ukrainian girl is originally purely superficial, but over time, he realizes that this "fake" relationship is a lot more real than he intended it to be. On a random note, this reminded me of how Pixar's absolutely brilliant Wall-E is built around how the non-human characters are unexpectedly some of the most human characters in the story. Moving back, this gradual dynamic combined with the actress' great ultra-sincere performance delivered a believable, entertaining, complex experience.

Lastly, we have the season finale, which I thought was a worthy send off and a increase in quality for the show, along with the rest of Season 8. With Cuddy gone, there's a lot less BS drama (though I did miss her), and we see House's and Wilson's relationship expanded upon, one of the very few things that I always enjoyed in the show. Wilson's incredibly ironic cancer forces House to make an uncharacteristic sacrifice. The show plays this well, stretching out House's metamorphosis across several episodes. Wilson has always been there for House, and it's clear that House hasn't exactly been the best friend for him in return. But given the direness of the situation, we see House drop his selfishness, stop running away from reality, and realize that Wilson is simply the only constant (Lost reference ftw) that he's had throughout his life and that he's obligated to repay the favor. House sacrificing his life to make Wilson's remaining days as great as possible was simply heartwarming, and it was beautifully executed. House is consistently oscillating between unsalvageable ass and actual human being, and as a longtime fan, I was ecstatic to see House finally step it up for when it truly mattered.

In the end, despite its flaws, House was an intelligent show, and it will surely be missed. Episodic shows like House can only go on for so long though, and given how it faltered tremendously for the second half of its lifespan, it was bound to end eventually. I'm just glad that they did it in such a wonderful fashion. Farewell House.