House M.D. returned for its fifth season on Tuesday, and what a return it was. In an emotionally wrenching episode, the denizens of Princeton Plainsboro Teaching Hospital grapple with loss—and the realization that there is no ring road around grief. The key story, of course, is House and Wilson, as they face each other for the first time since Amber’s death, mired in guilt, anger, and fear. Oh, and love.

Unlike the post-shooting season three premiere, this time the opening episode does not skip past the emotional aftermath of a momentous event. It may be two months since Amber died, but as Wilson has been on leave and avoiding House, we get to see the first time they come back into each other’s lives.  House signals his fear of what he’ll face by avoiding going to see Wilson, to everyone’s surprise, but of course, he eventually does. And what he finds is that Wilson is going to even bigger lengths to avoid him—Wilson is resigning and probably leaving the state.

House is shocked at Wilson’s plan for dealing with his grief, but he stubbornly refuses to try and reach Wilson at an emotional level. He’s willing to call his friend an idiot, but not to say he’s sorry. He claims he doesn’t feel sorrow or guilt because he wasn’t to blame for the accident. But Cuddy doesn’t accept that House feels nothing, and indeed viewers know from "Wilson’s Heart" that House is very sorry indeed that Amber died and he feels a survivor’s guilt he knows is irrational but there, nonetheless. Yet he resists opening up verbally to Wilson, although he is willing to walk away from his patient to show Wilson how much he cares. He’s hoping that Wilson, as he did in the series’ premiere, will see that House’s feelings are revealed by what he does, not what he says.

Cuddy is concerned for both men, sure that they are both avoiding their real emotions and all will be well if they can just talk. She tells House that if he wants to keep Wilson, he needs to show Wilson he is not alone and that House is sorry Amber died. In a key confrontation, Cuddy yells at House as he closes his door, telling him that he is avoiding getting vulnerable before Wilson because he’s afraid that if he shows Wilson how much he genuinely cares for him and feels badly about Amber, Wilson will walk out anyway. Cuddy says House is running away just as much as Wilson is, and of course, she’s right. She tells House he has to do something to keep Wilson and emotional blackmail isn’t it.

As we’ve seen in past, House may blow a lot of smoke when the people he trusts give him relationship advice, but he often follows it. However, Cuddy hasn’t necessarily picked up on the nuances of Wilson’s feelings, as her funny yet poignant couples counseling shows. In her zeal to heal her friends’ rift, she seems to have forgotten that House told Wilson he was sorry during the deep brain stimulation in "Wilson’s Heart," and nobody besides House seems to think House’s willingness to do the very dangerous DBS showed his feelings for Wilson in action. Wrestling with his fear, House gamely goes into what is mostly uncharted territory for him: he expresses his feelings in words.