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.)

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[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.