Obligatory televisual aside couched in non-spoilery generalizations

[sigma7]

I want to give the writers of House credit for planning this season's arc out from the very beginning, because if so, it's a fantastic piece of misdirection. But I can't. I'm willing to believe they stumbled into the shape the season took (influenced, I'm sure, by the writers' strike), sort of how Lost only acquired a sense of direction when its end-date became firm, or Preacher's final issues, for that matter. I can't believe Ennis intended the Alamo showdown to be between...the characters it featured, though there's a poetry in God being conspicuous by His absence yet again. And I found Cassidy's final letter to Jesse too metatextual to be taken otherwise: "Isn't it funny when you think your story's going one way, and it turns out it was going another way all along?"

That's how I felt after watching the House finalé tonight. Because if they drew this arc out from the very beginning, with this ending in mind -- that's bloody brilliant, that is. Even if it's unintentional, in the right light, it still looks good.

(Warning: spoilers in comments, some protected, some not.)

Comments

[autobotsrollout.livejournal.com]

For someone who generally doesn't watch the show, spoiling, plz?

[sigma7.livejournal.com]

The season opens with all of House's minions gone, either quit (Cameron, Foreman) or fired (Chase). So he starts by bringing in a ton of applicants, assigning them numbers, and they have pseudo-reality-show contests for the first half of the season, getting eliminated, occasionally arbitrarily, occasionally (as the season bores down on the halfway point) for better reasons. The final four Cylons are the final three to be hired and Cutthroat Bitch, aka Amber Volakis, is the last to be fired (and you see her character take a few steps toward someplace different in the process). AV/CTB reappears on the periphery a few episodes later as Wilson's new girlfriend, whose identity he tries to keep from House for as long as possible. And she predictably acts as a wedge between them -- well, actually, more accurately, House predictably acts as a wedge between them because he's a mischevious misanthrope with only one friend.

But here's the thing -- if you approach this season as being about the original team, or even about the new team, that's not right. If you approach it as being about Amber Volakis, or specifically her role in the House/Wilson dynamic, that's much more plausible, and much more interesting than any other shape you can give to the season.

By the finalé's end, that dynamic is in a completely different state -- we're just not certain what specifically that state is yet -- than it was. And this is a relationship that's broken a few marriages and survived felony forgeries, firings, and all sorts of law enforcement leverage. Wilson sees House as being responsible for her death -- not completely fair but not without reason -- and despite House's willingness to risk his life to save her, Wilson's not at a point of forgiveness yet. And Amber's the catalyst of the whole thing.

Genius if they intended it from day one, but even if they backed into it, it still tastes like art.

Regardless of the writers' intents, the acting was just excruciating -- in a good way -- tonight.

[aardy.livejournal.com]

'Twas an excellent episode (I was tearing up a bit towards the end), but arrrgh, that ending (for all of the plots/subplots)! With writing and twists like that, they definitely don't need an explicit cliffhanger like they've done the last couple of seasons to make me wonder what the heck they're going to do at the start of next season, and have me waiting there, glued to the TV, with bells on.

And I was happy to again hear mentioned the words of the Immortal Jagger that seem to have become the overarching theme of the show, but this time without trudging out the song itself yet again. (Though even without that, this ep. was rather heavy on the music, wasn't it?)

(Off in Rule #34 Land: Given their respective hangups and predilictions, I predict Cameron/Thirteen and/or Cameron/Chase/Thirteen slash.)

[sigma7.livejournal.com]

I predict Cameron/Thirteen

Given the way this show gave us canon!C/C, I don't think you can put Ca/13 (is that an isotope?) completely out of the realm of possibility.

Hell, I liked the idea of the reason Thirteen was being so squirrelly was because she was the one Amber was dating when Kutner asked her out. The self-test angle was supremely uninteresting and not engaging -- maybe in any other episode, but not this one. And I like Hadley.

[aardy.livejournal.com]

I kept thinking that 13 was squirrelly because of secretly dating Amber, but now I can't remember whether that's canon or just in my head.

The self-test subplot seems to be less about moving 13 along her path and more of a hook to get House thinking about his own actions--but once that box was opened, they then had to follow through on it. The test results, though, stacked another "my life may have just ended" plot point onto those of Amber, Wilson, and House (whose true health status we don't fully know yet).

As for planning this from the beginning, if they did, they didn't tell the actors. There was a brief interview with Olivia Wilde (13) in the Chicago Tribune weekly TV listings a few weeks back in which she stated that none of the actors playing the room full of applicants knew which three of them would be the three (four, as it turns out) chosen to join the show, so those first several episodes amounted to tryouts for the actors, too.

I think the most likely explanation is that the writers strike gave them time to think and put together a master plan. Still, the last chunk of this season has been pretty much as good or better than the best parts of the previous seasons, except may Season 1, which is still my favorite.

[foenix.livejournal.com]

Yeah, since we knew from the start that they didn't know WHO would be sticking around on House's new team, I find it hard to believe they had this planned when they didn't know where Amber would be after 10 episodes.

Of course, I'm guessing, since I've yet to watch the episode. Gimmie two hours. ;)

[querldox.livejournal.com]

I tend to think this came about post-writer's strike, if only because Cutthroat Bitch/Wilson seemed to come a bit out of left field. I don't recall any small moments between them prior to her initial departure that would've set up a possible relationship or even dating, particularly given Wilson's previous choices of women who need him/look at him as a hero.

Don't get me wrong; I think the relationship did work, particularly when House realizes that Wilson's dating a female version of House, but I think if that was the plan all along, there would've been more of a setup for it.

However, I'm on a mailing list that includes a House staff writer. Don't actually know them myself, so don't know what the odds are on getting a response or whether they'd want such public, but I could post a query and see if they respond.

[sigma7.livejournal.com]

I have to concur -- it did actually work when I thought it had no chance, when I thought Amber was just godlike in her ability to make people miserable (the mattress subplot changed my mind). And yeah, I think we'd have needed one Amber/Wilson scene (no more, I think, or else the revelation in "Frozen" would've been too obvious) for it to have that thread through the series.

She was a character I realized I wanted to see more of only the moment she got fired -- and I think they still managed to not do enough with her. But what they did do, they did pretty damn well.

Also, if all the new team members leave in the off-season, at least we know where they went -- Taub went to spend moar time with his wife, Thirteen left to see more of the world before she twitches into oblivion, and Kutner becomes Batman.

[wenchamok.livejournal.com]

Fantastic episode. I <3 Wilson, and he had me close to tears. *wibble* I don't think it was planned out all season, and Amber/Wilson did seem a little weird at first, but wow. What an ending.