"I want to say we’re very happy with [the coming season]. This has turned out to be a real opportunity. We’re really doing some cool stuff at the start of the season and it’s pumped some fresh blood into the show - not that we needed it."
*****
"But the stuff that I’ve always loved about the show is the House character and how he reacts, not particularly to romance, but to deeper life and death issues and issues of right and wrong and questions of how to live a good, moral life. And how he reacts to the [patients] who are brought in each week and to the regulars. Getting back to the fundamentals of these medical cases and these character cases. It’s not so much about the medicine; it’s about the characters. "
*****
"The green card marriage? We don't deal with that. He may be [married], but we don't deal with that. You know, everything has moved on. The world's changed. House is still House, and he tries to put the world back together. "
*****
"So we've got some new faces, some new situations, new dynamics and we want to kind of get back to basic principles of the show."
*****
Yeah okay, I just wanted to be sure I didn't dream up all that stuff he said over the summer.
On to other things, I'm not going into every detail about the episode, if you saw it, then you know what happened, no need for me to rehash anything.
By revisiting the green card marriage that Shore specifically said he wasn't going to revisit, it's possible that they're trying to convey to us the extent of House's loneliness and his humanity. He likes Dominika, I mean who wouldn't? She's cheerful, friendly, and energetic...all the things House is clearly not. She just wants to stay in America, is that so bad?
Did anyone else notice House was awfully quiet during the green card interview? I did. The normally snarky pain in the ass was unusually quiet, probably because he knew that when it comes to fighting the feds, they'll always win. In this case, keeping his mouth shut was probably the one thing that kept him out of jail, that and the fact that we all know there's no way House is going back to jail, not yet anyway. I'm not even going to go into how ridiculous that interview was much less the whole idiocy of the green card thing. I do however, see the irony in House having to deal with the consequences of his actions. I mean seriously, how stupid can you be? The brilliant doctor, reeling from the breakup with Cuddy, tries to piss her off and and get her to object to the phony marriage, thus proving that she still loves him (she never said she didn't love him), goes so far as to marry this woman but oops...Cuddy's so pissed off at him she can't even object to it. House no doubt is wishing he hadn't done it but alas he did and if he thought it was just going to go away (as we did) it isn't, at least not yet.
When House goes home at the end of the day and sees his apartment turned asunder with Domika's shit everywhere, the look on his face seems almost relieved. He's been going home to just his scotch, vicodin and monster trucks so long he's lonely. Remember when Wilson stayed with him? Wilson cooked and cleaned (well they were supposed to take turns but you remember how well THAT worked out eh?). Wilson's early morning grooming habits annoyed House and yet he intentionally sabotaged Wilson renting another apartment because he liked having him there. Sure, Wilson threw a wrench into House's organized chaos, but he liked having him there. Same goes for Alvie. When Alvie showed up in Season 7 and sold some of House's stuff to pay for the paint to redo his apartment, House had a major fit. But ultimately he liked having Alvie there..remember them playing football in the apartment? House liked Alvie and as we recall, he also lied to help Alvie keep his citizenship status (Alvie was a US citizen but he couldn't find his birth certificate). So while Dominicka may drive House crazy with her goofy dancersizing to Amy Grant, at least there's someone there when he goes home from work, even if it is just a short time. We know Dominika will be around in episode 14 and 18 but hopefully she'll fly free and leave us after that. One can only hope.
I'm not overly concerned with any kind of relationship between House and Dominika. Like everyone else except Wilson, she wants something from him, in this case a green card. She told him she was too smart to fall for him and love is a big deal for a guy like House. After Stacy and then Cuddy, no way is he going to let himself fall into that again. Sure, part of it was his fault, his inability to communicate makes having a serious relationship problematic so given he couldn't make it work with the only two women he ever really loved, I think he's done going down that road. At this point, House is all about protecting himself.
My friend and television writer Mindy Peterman pointed out an excellent observation...that right now House is scared because he feels like he is not in control of his situation. Dominika has to live with him for six more months and if anything is out of whack she gets deported, he goes to jail (yeah right!). In a sense, it's like a prison sentence for him. Someone else is in control of his life at home and home is the only place House feels secure and safe where nobody can get to him. It's his haven and now he's got to share it with someone else and NOT because he wants to, but because he has to. Yeah I think he's scared alright. His whole world is being turned upside down.
During the episode House is back to his old tricks, baiting his team and pitting them against one another in an effort to pick a team leader. Frankly I don't think he cares about that, I think he's just in it for the fun. At the end when he's standing there outside the lab talking to Taub, it occurred to me maybe the only one fit to be team leader is the only one smart enough not to fall for House's shenanigans, hence Taub, who opted out of the antics. We were all told after the critics screened "Nobody's Fault" that the episode could make a difference for House, in that it could be game-changing but only if House actually got something out of it. Ok, did he? Where's the lesson House learned in Nobody's Fault? Or was there a lesson at all? Remember at the end of "Chase" he said "you re-evaluate your life after you make a mistake, you didn't, you just got stabbed." House's apology to Chase makes it clear he believes he made a mistake, but then this quote and his behavior last night negates that. I'm totally confused on exactly what House feels.
As to the POTW, was there a POTW? I don't remember because see...there was so much going on with House, Dominika and the team prepping them for the interview, I just lost track of the medical part of this story. Which leads me to something else, I thought the powers that be were going to go back to the basics, with more focus on the medical cases and how House deals with them, rather than the annoying antics and subplot. If you recall, in Season 7, TPTB spent so much time on House and Cuddy's relationship, it became the sole focus on the episode, leaving the medical stuff in the background. I say quality over quantity. Just as in Season 7, TPTB could have given us more quality House and Cuddy yet made it the subplot and not overshadowing the POTW, so too could they do that this season with the antics. What happened to balance?
All in all I'm not quite sure how to rate the episode. My favorite parts were Wilson attempting to be the English neighbor, House and Taub's interaction and bet at the end, and House going home with that look on his face when he sees that his new roomie has pretty much taken over his place.
Before I leave you, I wanted to once again to praise the amazing way Hugh Laurie uses facial expressions to convey House's thoughts and feelings. It was done extremely well in this episode, as always. The man can say not a single word and yet you can tell so much about his character by watching his face and his eyes. Truly remarkable.
I am looking forward to Blythe (Diane Baker) showing up in the next episode. After seeing the five promos I will say that things aren't always what they seem. I'll leave it at that. I do hope we'll get an amazing interaction between House and his mom, who as it turns out does not know her son was in prison. House once referred to his mom as a human polygraph, we'll see if it still holds true. We deserve some quality time between Blythe and her son, I just hope at some point we get it.
Adios for now.
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