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

[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.