Letters to the Editor

• House finale pretty bad

  [Read the article: I Like to Watch]
  [Read more letters about this article: Here]

  First, I really enjoy this column and the letters it elicits. Heather may get some "facts" wrong, but to me she generally gets the overall Gesalt correct.

  Re Lost, I find I have nothing to say and no strong reaction. I think it could be great or bad from here out. No great violation of the sense of the program, characters, or anything else.

  The House finale, on the other hand, seemed awful in nearly every respect, and I generally have really liked the show.

  The finale seemed incoherent and inconsistent as to character and as to overall plot, and as just general continuity. I think, or used to think, that an underlying theme of House was that House seemed like just an a-hole, but somehow either through his brains and sort of outlaw code of conduct, or perhaps just because of the people around him (which it could be argued he arranged), that there was a coherent whole that caused everything to work out alright. For instance, House could be way out on a limb of some sort, but his team or Wilson, or Cuddy, could always be counted on to bring things back to some kind of reasonable, which of course gave House the ability to to way off in the first place. And House could be some kind of guru or Zen master teaching his charges through paradox and what seems like mean things, to be better physicians and people, even if he could not keep him self together. And, on some level, he always put his patients first. For instance, he was hard on Chase when Chase screwed up. In any event, I think you could make an argument that things worked out, at least for the patients, even if once could not really figure out everything that House was doing, so a patient or a hospital administrator could put up with it.

  How is it that Foreman gives what seems like 8 weeks of notice but hangs around, still fully engaged in work, while Chase, apaprently, must leave right away, and Camaron can apparently drop a note and walk out the door. How can any real life medical team that does anything worthwhile possibly go from 4 people to 1 overnight and be at all effective for anything. I just do not see how these goings on could possibly be good medicine, good personnel practice, or good career planning. And Cuddy and Wilson seem to have little effect on House in this regard, unless it is Wilson re Foreman. And why would Foreman be any more important than the other two to House, if he actually is? Except that he is been there a bit longer, why is Chase any more ready to leave than is Foreman or Camaron? Why doesn't Cuddy offer Chase a spot with a team to compete with House at the same hospital? She did that for Foreman. If Chase is senior, why is Foreman top guy all of a sudden? It just does not seem to hang together.

  Cameron and Chase getting together just seemed trite. Clearly, they are made for each other anyway. And, yeah, Foreman really is a decent guy that has standards and does not want to be like or continue to be associated with House's shennanigans. Yawn. Unfortunately, it does turn out that Cuddy is a pushover when it comes to House. I think that weakens the story for the future.

  Anyway, in this finale, it seems to me that House is shown to be "just" an a-hole, not an a-hole with a personal code and a plan, and someone that his environment will in fact let him be reckless and impulsivem self-destructive and destructive to his environment. No way on earth any patient would want their team of doctors and their hospital behaving this way.

  Two guys smoking cigars in a modern hospital room with a patient that has heart problems? That is as surreal as anything in the show!

  (Good comment re "bingo." That scene makes more sense now. The helicopter seemed like pretty exciting drama. I am not sure I care about what the immigration laws would actually require.)

  On careful watching, it certainly appears that House bought himself the new guitar, unless he was just expected it from someone else and recognized what it had to be from the label. The new guitar looks generally like the old guitar, but the inlays on fretboard are different, so it is very hard to tell what the similarity is supposed to mean. (Maybe, if he gets a whole new team, each will be exactly like the one of the existing team I sure hope not.)

  The patient's malady in this episode was poorly explained. Just seemed like "magic." If it had been better explained, it would at least seem more credible. The focus seemed all on soap opera.

  All of this said, I would not disagree that the show needs an injection something, maybe lots of stuff, new. The finale just seemed like a poorly done, lazy way to more on. I think the show can continue to be great, but it will do so more by ignoring the logical revelations of this finale than by builiding on many of them.

  Permalink Monday, June 4, 2007 11:43 AM