THE VERSION OF AMBER IN HOUSE’S HALLUCINATIONS WAS STYLED LIKE THE VERSION OF HER BEFORE HER AND WILSON GOT TOGETHER. STRAIGHT HAIR, NO CURLES. SHE WAS THE VERSION OF HERSELF THAT BELIEVED SHE HAD TO CHOOSE BETWEEN LOVE AND RESPECT. PARALLELING HOUSE’S FEELING OF NEEDED TO BE BRILLIANT TO BE RESPECTED.
“I’ve been lying to you in increasing amounts ever since I told you you looked good unshaved, a year ago”
WRONG — you love his stubble. you love that he looks like a mutt with behavioural issues you adopted from the pound. you want to feel his stubble on your skin but youre too much of a coward to ask, aren’t you wilson?
I can’t be the only person who gets slightly… taken aback when house does actual doctor things. Like cpr. Or any form of treatment.
Because usually he just limps around slagging people off and committing medical malpractice and hate crimes and being homoerotic with Wilson and popping pills. Seeing him actually physically save a patient is quite jarring.
Like, no, house, that’s not your job. Go back to your office and throw your stress ball against the wall like a REAL doctor.
i think there’s a really interesting metatextual component to how we view house md’s finale. and this isn’t taking shots at anybody because any and all interpretations of the finale are valid /gen. but i think we can relate some of the discourse back to how the show is told strictly through house’s pov about 95% of the time.
i wrote a little bit about why i find the season 4 finale so successful here and the points still stands: when we’re so entrapped by house’s pov, we come to view wilson (among other characters) are entities that serve house’s narrative. so when season 4 bursts that bubble/breaks open that box, so to speak, it’s extra jarring. the scope of wilson and amber’s tragedy goes way beyond what house can handle on his own, so the scope of the show expands at a textual level. like house, we’re forced beyond an inherent selfishness as viewers of wilson’s story. cool stuff!
and this happens again with the series finale (the cancer arc at large, really) in an even more overt way. wilson’s cancer exists beyond house, and wilson’s reaction to it are beyond house’s control. all of 8x21 is house rejecting wilson’s desires to die in peace, without any chemo, and only in the final hour does he accept this as an unyielding fact. he can change, contrary to his prior beliefs, at the very end.
so - to read the finale against the grain, or to believe that wilson ended up changing his mind and seeks treatment, reverts house md back to its original playbook. wilson exists within house’s narrative. his textual choices are, at the end of the day, in service to house’s perspective, and in service to the former ethos of the show that prided itself on house’s namesake.
with all that in mind, and despite how much it hurts my heart, i have to believe that wilson stuck to his original plan and waited out the ~5 months till death. shortly after, then, house went with him. i read/enjoy other versions of the story because sometimes tragedy really is TOO MUCH, but this is my raw take on the ending. i hope i don’t sound combative at all!
