TV Review: House, MD - "Meaning" (Revisited)
Published March 09, 2008
"I can make him walk, I can make him talk!" House implores Cuddy. ("I can help him — I can make his life better — I can make his family's life better" — this is what he's really saying.) This is the “fulfillment” that House gets; this is the joy and satisfaction he derives from the diagnosis. Yes, the final piece of the puzzle falls neatly into place, but it’s meaningless to House unless it means something to the patient, unless he can send the patient home better off than when he came onto his service. This is ultimate job satisfaction for House.
But Cuddy shuts him down, believing that House has to learn when “enough is enough.” House’s self-esteem is completely tied up in his ability to make inspired connections between disparate facts that no one else can. Taking that away from him, which is what Cuddy is doing here, strips House of the very thing that makes his medical value unique. If they can't let House be House, then who is he? With Wilson, Cuddy, and Cameron all accusing House of playing at some sort of game with a traumatized patient, and in light of House’s own fear of the ketamine’s cognitive side effects, his own confidence begins to unravel.
Worn down by a combination of his own confusion and the barrage from his closest colleagues, House is convinced that his motives and judgment are wrong. He broods in his office the next morning, depressed that he’s failed not only the patient, but his own impossible test. “Cuddy was right; I was only in it for the puzzle,” he confesses bitterly to Wilson, his voice tinged with self-loathing. “She was right to shoot me down.”
Wilson has oft stated that House’s success is all about luck, and this plays out in the final scene, as Cuddy herself uses House’s treatment on the patient. House was right; but Wilson insists they not tell him, in order to rein him in. I have never felt worse for House. And, in my opinion, nothing can justify this action. The short-term result is to leave House feeling both isolated and desperate. And it sets him on a path that will lead to nearly tragic consequences by Christmas (“Merry Little Christmas”).
Hugh Laurie does a magnificent job in this episode (but when does he not?) revealing the conflict raging in House, as well as his delighted joy and the depths of his despair. So much happens in this packed episode that it's easy to ignore the effortless range of Laurie's performance in it.
- TV Review: House, MD - "Meaning" (Revisited)
- Published: March 09, 2008
- Type: Review
- Section: Video
- Filed Under: Video: Television, Video: TV Recap, Video: Drama
- Part of a feature: Welcome to the End of the Thought Process: House MD
- Writer: Barbara Barnett
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I completely agree with you HL_L. The tragedy of this episode was that it started House on a downward spiral--one that his colleagues should have suspected would happen. (Especially Wilson). House was in such isolation at the end of the episode. He felt trapped and that no good had come from the ordeal he had put himself through by "choosing life" (as Wilson said.)
Brilliant review as always, I love your "revisited" reviews! I so enjoyed seeing House be happy; I had hoped that TPTB would not end that joy quite so fast. But everyone's reactions to House foreshadowed all that I hated about Season 3 -- and that was a lot. I agree that what they did to House was unforgivable.
Blowing his idea off as a "hunch" was just stupid and totally unbelievable. Experienced people who have hunches (doctors, law enforcement officers, scientists, etc.), aren't just blindly guessing. They may not be able sometimes to articulate very well what is behind their "hunch," but it is still a deduction made from a lifetime of experience. I try to just keep telling myself, "artistic license," the need to create drama, the need to keep the drama going, etc., etc., yet I still get infuriated!
I just thought everyone around House in Season 3 (especially Cameron & Wilson) was/were acting out of character (from the way they'd been carefully crafted & set up in the 1st 2 seasons). I hated, and still hate that.
Barbara.
I have been a silent reader of your articles on House since you "took over" frome Diane Kristine. I love them, they are so well written and expresses most of my own thoughts on House and the fabolous acting of Hugh Laurie. (Are there ANY emotions he is not able to express, or ANY more or less outragous behaviour he can't convey without grace and humour!? He seems to bring out new nuances to his acting all the time.)
Like so many of your readers you have also opened my eyes to the more subtle messages of the episodes and the series as a whole. Thank you! This has also made me read all your previous posts on Thought Process. And for the first time in my life I have read some fan-fiction!
Thanks for enhancing my already huge enjoyment of House and Hugh!
Thanks NLP and Tigerfeet. I was a big fan of Diane's reviews (and she was a lot quicker to get her reviews up than I am--still don't know how she mangaed that).
I will continue the "revisted" episode reviews while we're waiting for new episodes to appear. This week (and it appears that FOX is rerunning season three in order now. Cool) we have episode 2 of season three, "Cane and Able," which features such a brilliant performance by Hugh L.
And Tigerfeet--welcome to the guilty pleasure of fanfiction!
Up later today: The "Thought Process" House Trivia Quiz
How real is House's not understanding self-sacrifice? He is perfectly willing to sacrifice himself, not generally for another person, but for his principles. (Think of the Vogler speech.)
How real is House's not understanding self-sacrifice? He is perfectly willing to sacrifice himself, not generally for another person, but for his principles. (Think of the Vogler speech.)
I think that House not only understands self-sacrifice, but (in his own) was does it. As you say, he self-sacrifices for a principle (and his very strict--though elaborate--moral code); he also has done it for patients--Carly for one, but also when he's risked suspension or firing for other patients as well (Mark Warner, The Howard Hessman character in Sex Kills, among others).
But I don't think that House perceives what he does as "self-sacrifice" as he said to Wilson in Don't Ever Change. He is self-aware of many things. He is not self-aware of his better nature.
And if he doesn't sacrifice for Stacy, I don't know what he does. Now, Wilson is not entirely wrong to say that House, on some level, wants to be miserable. A person can get stuck living in a certain way and be afraid to change, even when they know change would be good. But there's more to House's actions than just fear or self-pity or emotional inertia.
Funny, I haven't done this kind of character analysis since high school English class -- and never thought I'd be doing it on a TV character!
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Great review, Barbara!
I think one of the key things of this episode, looking at it in the retrospective light of the further events of Season 3 (what is referred to as the 'Tritter Arc'),as you pointed out, was the isolation House was placed in by having his team reject this new 'persona' that he was projecting and by the loss of his two closest friends and supporters. Everything that subsequently happened, including the return of House's pain, can be linked to these events.
What I found to be interesting from these first few episodes of Season 3, too, was that the speculation that House needed to be in pain and on narcotics was a necessary part of his brilliance. Imo this episode showed that it wasn't true...that House fundamentally was brilliant, and being miserable or in pain was not the trigger for his unique ability to process information.