House treats a man who doesn't know when to stop talking, and Wilson's long lost brother Daniel turns up in "The Social Contract."
“Does it bother you that we have no social contract?” House (Hugh Laurie) asks Wilson (Robert Sean Leonard) regarding the unique nature of their relationship in this weeks’ House, M.D. episode, appropriately titled “The Social Contract.” While exploring the necessity of the social niceties and collaborative lies we sometimes need in order to survive in society, the story provides a framework for examining House and Wilson’s personalities and their deep friendship — and their own somewhat perverse “social contract.”…
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26 - Mithril33
As always I appreciated your review of the episode, It has become a need like morning coffee to enjoy after a good episode of House. Thanks.
I really liked your analisys about House and his relationship with truths and lies and the House-Wilson "perverse social contract".
As a Cuddy lover I enjoied even more your description of her scene!
Really a great review!
27 - j.i.m.
Barbara and fellow commenters, It has been worth the wait, for the episode and for Barbara's astute, in depth analysis that is the necessary beginning of this House discussion.
In the last scene of the previous episode, "The Softer Side" House turned the light out on Cuddy and left her alone in darkness. He had asked her to reveal herself but she had refused, so he covered her in darkness. It was not a friendly gesture.
In "The Social Contract", House not only turned the light back on, but he did it in such a way that he was only revealing himself to Cuddy and demanding nothing from her this time. Then he hurried after her to make sure the subtext of his actions was clear. Something like, "I am trying to make you happy. Did it work?" Formerly, he approached her only to confront, whether it was business or pleasure. Now, there is a wish to exchange thoughts, feelings, wishes, etc., to enable a better understanding between them. And Cuddy is assisting by beginning to create a whole new language art that is theirs alone since he doesn't communicate in the generally accepted fashion. Cuddy - "This is your way of accepting my apology..." or "This is your way of telling me I look good today..." House's Cuddy caper was set in a great location, the MRI, since it revealed his belief in her unequaled beauty, inner and outer. He sees with the eyes of love. House's behavior in this scene is finally as it should be. He even confesses his awareness of his jerkiness to her with the underlying message that he realizes she cannot trust him or his words because of this jerky behavior but that she has, in fact, been misinformed and that by House, himself. Oh, the web he wove, the hole he dug!
I liked the times I heard, "Go ahead..., Go on...(twice), asking for the truth, the full story between House and Wilson. Those words also reinforce Shores continued promises that the characters are going forward with their lives. I am so pleased that, with many topics relating to House, I can contrast the past with the present and see heart-warming, life-affirming development.
Thank you, again, Barbara
28 - sdemar
No comment other than to say "great review", Barbara. Powerful episode. Loved every bit of it.
29 - Phillip Winn
House chasing after Cuddy to explain his purpose was brilliant.
Watching this a second time, I like it more. I think I was thrown off a little by the behavior of House's sidekicks, which seems perfunctory. (There was a lot of stuff to pack into the episode, after all.) Kuttner really was oddly giddy, for example, but they let it drop.
Anyway, overlooking that, this was an amazing, fantastic episode.
30 - blacktop
Barbara, thank you for stimulating such a lively conversation about a nice episode. I didn't rank "Social Contract" among the season's best (I would put "Dying Changes Everything," "Birthmarks," "Joy," "The Itch," "Last Resort," "Unfaithful," and "Softer Side" ahead of this one so far this year).
I did appreciate all of the House-Wilson scenes and the peculiar empathy and regard that they expressed for each other. I found the reveals about Wilson's past and his brother to be flat, unsubtle, and lacking the usual nuanced and double-sided aspect of most scenes in "House."
In fact, the rather blunt scenes with Wilson were in striking contrast to the one gorgeous scene of House re-articulating his relationship with Cuddy. Now THAT scene contained so much zest, humor, reversal of expectation, ambiguity, perversely Housian romance, and truth-telling. I think j.i.m. put it extremely well: we are witnessing House attempting to recalibrate his exchanges with Cuddy to create a new private vocabulary for their relationship.
This is shaping up to be the best season of "House" so far.
31 - Flo
"I did appreciate all of the House-Wilson scenes and the peculiar empathy and regard that they expressed for each other. I found the reveals about Wilson's past and his brother to be flat, unsubtle, and lacking the usual nuanced and double-sided aspect of most scenes in "House."
My thoughts exactly! Maybe it is because we didn't see him (yet? next monday will tell) but I really don't care about Daniel and his illness. I appreciate what the interactions between Wilson and House revealed about their friendship but the way it was brought on was weird and didn't really worked well. Of course this is just my opinion but I found the patient story more interesting.
Yes the Cuddy/patient/House scene was hilarious and gave interesting insights of H/C relationship.
Kutner reference to Harry Potter was really fun too. I reacted pretty much the same way as Wilson and House LOL.
Great review for a (not a great but) good episode.
32 - Dan
This season of House has been pretty appalling. It's gotten to the point where most episodes aren't just 'bad for a House episode, good for any other show', they're just plain bad. The main reasons being the soap operas involving 3 characters with the combined depth of a paddling pool. Thank god for an episode I could enjoy from start to finish. It reminded me of how good House can still be. Funny, moving and though provoking. Unfortunately 2/3 episodes in a season of 22/23 isn't good enough.
33 - barbara barnett
Been away most of the day today and delighted to see you all carrying on the discussion without my intrusion. Great comments everyone!
Dan--have to disagree. I think this season is as strong and deep as the third season, which I loved. I wondered in retrospect whether the notion that House has stopped playing games carried through to this episode, and it has. He's honest (at least with Wilson and Cuddy--and certainly with Chase). He never made a lewd comment to Cuddy after they left the MRI as House might otherwise do (parroting the patient). He simply told her why he paged her. His honesty with Wilson and his act of friendship with regard to Daniel was also noteworthy.
Wilson's brother had only been ever mentioned in one other episode, "Histories." Wilson fans have ever since then hoped the series powers would pick up on that left-for-dead thread. People who watch the show casually might have thought that the brother came out of left field a bit, but he hasn't. And the exposition (and all of it new)was useful in setting Daniel into the overarching story and into House and Wilson's lives. Wilson fans have also been waiting for this story to be picked up ever since writer/producers lerner and friend told me that it would be last May.
I love the re-insertion of Daniel into the story, and most especially for clarifying (at least for me) Wilson's "Detox" comment about the H/W friendship being W's ethical responsibility.
34 - Gerry
I'm loving the season, too! I'm somewhere between where Blacktop and Barbara feel about The Social Contract. Overall, I loved it and I think bringing Daniel into House and Wilson's story fits really well and helps bring Wilson into better focus--and what House offers him in the friendship. This episode was such a nice bookend to Dying Changes Everything. In that episode, Wilson was focused on all the parts of his relationship with House that are difficult and require him to give. In this one, he actually verbalised to House what House gives to him and how important it is to him to have someone who demands honesty rather than charm or aid from him. As Barbara said so nicely, House gives him a beautiful truth and Wilson desperately needs this to ground him as much as House needs the understanding Wilson offers him.
I also loved the POTW and the House/Cuddy moment. I think it was very sweet in a Housean way that House didn't even consider that another man would not view Cuddy the way he does--the implied compliment is what was important about that scene, not the crassness--I think Cuddy heard it!
Kutner and Taub were also wonderful--I think they are developing a wonderful partnership, and Thirteen and Foreman had an appropriate amount of screentime which worked well.
And the Chase scene was stunning. But oddly, also gave me my bit of reservation about the episode. As good as it was, I found it slightly overwritten. I think Chase was well able to communicate that he knows House is talking about himself without the somewhat heavyhanded House in the mirror moment. I think Wilson could have brought his brother into the conversation without having to spell out so concretely how his brother's disappearance affected him. I loved the reveals themselves, but I thought there was a lot of on the nose writing that the actors could have sold with their acting.
However, that didn't affect my enjoyment of the episode as a whole and I enjoyed this one.
35 - Bertha S.
Barbara, great review but your opening line is WRONG!!!
Wilson didn't ask the question about their lack of a social contract. House did. The cobversation about their social contract was central to another shift in the H/W friendship. At the end, the point was that HOUSE and Wilson do have a social contract and do tell collaborative lies. House did so by telling Wilson it would not be his fault if it didn't work out for him and Daniel. And Wilson told House he absolutely liked monster trucks - even though each knew the other was lying.
I loved this episode and have been rewatching it daily because of all the little nuances. HL and RSL's timing during the part of the scene when House was talking to hi team and Wilson was trying to tell him he was going ahead in to see his brother was perfection.
36 - barbara barnett
Ahh, Bertha. You are correct. I flipped the names inadvertently, and they have now been correctly placed.
Absolutely House and Wilson have a social contract--and they always have, just a fairly strange one. The biggest change is that House has shown he can be "the caring one" as much as Wilson or Cuddy. In the NY scene, I also noticed upon rewatching it that House went to enormous effort not to make their conversation in any way about him. When Wilson says that his brother would call and talk for hours, House said "interesting," but deferred talking about it (I'm assuming that he was making a connection to himself and wanted to refrain from making it "about him"). That's why he didn't answer the phone as well. This wasn't about him; it was about Wilson and his brother. It's a rarely-seen side of House, but clearly one that's both there, and something he's been trying to work on these past few episodes.
37 - Luisa Borges
Barbara, loved your take on the Cuddy scene, the way you´ve evolved on it in the comments. And also this new insight about House and Wilson during the phone call conversation. Really, really, interesting.
j.i.m. - also loved your take on the House and Cuddy scene. The new light on their relationship and the link the last scene from "The Softer Side", what an interesting viewpoint. Really got me thinking.
38 - NancyGail
Part of the Hilson 'social contract" is the ability to be open with each other. Wilson can be nice, but he can get brutal too. Cuddy knows this well. The time he's really caring is with patients.
39 - Amie
Once again, thanks for the review and great comments from everyone.
Like many, I liked the episode, loved the PoTW, loved the H/W interaction, loved the theme (being truthful or not), didn't care about Daniel, and thought that they weren't as subtle as they're used to be (but wasn't it about being truthful?...).
And loved all the acting.
Especially that little "i have an idea" look House has after the first differential (and sends the team away to put a scope up the PoTW's nose), suggesting that's where he had his idea about the Cuddy compliment.
40 - Sheila
Barbara, I think House's coment "interesting" after Wilson spoke of his brother's daily phone calls & rants while in College, wasn't House thinking about his own telephone habits. I think he was doing a Differential Diagnosis on Danny. The behavior Wilson described was a little 'off' for the diagnosis of schizophrenia and certainly showed Daniel's meds weren't working. House may have pinned Wilson's guilt on 'hanging up the phone' but I think the guilt runs deeper. Wilson was rejecting his role in Danny's life @ that moment and was effectively pushing him away. Anyone who has ever had a phone hung up on them knows it's not seen as a neutral act. Wilson had build up expectations in his brother as to how he would respond & then bolted. One of Wilson's wives once said to House about Wilson attentions , " he's there for you until he's not & by that time you're addicted to all the attention."
I also compare Wilson's phone issue to House's using a sheer act of will, to see only a random event in his phone call at the end of last season which brought Amber to the bar. His thinking is " I was drunk; I needed a ride home; I made a call." The bigger subtext is : House got drunk because Wilson wasn't with him ; House made the call to his BFF to come and get him to pull him back into House's orbit. House could have just as easily called a cab. He didn't want a ride , he wanted his friend. When Wilson wasn't the one who turned up he took the bus; which he admitted to Amber he he had done before when drunk.
So the two innocent acts: one of making a call and one of terminating a call, are more complex than the acts themselves. IMO Wilson was right when he said House's explanation of Wilson's guilt was facile. It also did the job of not shaking House's denial in his intentions when making the phone call ending Season 4.
41 - barbara barnett
Sheila. I would agree with you about House's "interesting" remark. I really think the two may be connected. House calls, Wilson comes running. I'm sure that night really still haunts House although he tries to compartmentalize it away. But I do think he deferred talking about it to keep the focus away from him. House, the narcissist, was making a real attempt to focus his attention on Wilson in a way he normally reserves for his patients, and his patients only. At that moment waiting with Wilson, the world did not revolve around House's neediness, but Wilson's.
42 - Kirpio
This season really is just growing in strength with every episode! Lovely to see Chase, Taub and Kutner were playing off each other beautifully once again, and it's always nice to see a bit more of the Wilson/House friendship. The episode had me in stitches, and I liked how they resisted over playing the patient/House similarities; it made it all the more poignant when House himself spoke about how such honesty affects relationships. I notice that yet again it is Chase that elicits the emotionally honest response, just as in 'Painless'. I've always thought the relationship between House and Chase was intriguing; I don't want it explored, I just enjoy moments like these.
The Cuddy scene was fantastic, and the analysis that someone made on here - it didnt seem to cross his mind that someone else wouldn't see her the same way he does - makes it even better, I know, I know, but this season is the season of Huddy, and even if it doesn't last, I'm going to enjoy it while I can!
Thanks for a great review again Barbara, and I really enjoyed everyone's comments :)
43 - Jaim
No one has really talked about this but I felt so sad for the POTW and his wife at the end, especially when he asked if their daughter was okay and his wife said, "She knows you love her. Kids are resilent." It made me think that what she was implying was that unfortunately she's not as resilent. She loves him and takes him back, but she'll always know how he really sees her. They may have gone back to their social contract, but the hurt feelings are still under the surface.
Another thing that no one has really mentioned is how hot it is when House turns on the light to reveal he was watching the whole scene play out with Cuddy and the patient. I don't no why but I thought it was sexy in a weird voyeristc way. He's in the shadows watching her being basically told everything that he, himself, really feels about her but knows she would never believe coming from his own lips. The moment I saw the scene the first thing that came to my mind was "The Seduction Has Begun Finally." I feel this is the first time this season that he went out of his way to woo her. Sure he played her game in Let Them Eat Cake, but that was because he was provoked. This is the first time this season that he has carried out something for the sole purpose of making her feel good and making sure that she knows that he was the cause of that good feeling. I think he is now going to do more of these types of things which will ultimately lead to the anticipated sex that is going to occur later in the season.
44 - Flutesong
If a shark stops swimming, it dies. I think this sums up House. For all his bad points and lack of social conventions and conventional interpersonal relationships, House keeps on learning about himself and continually evaluates his shortfalls. The parallels to the POTW were obvious, but House has never had the platform that the POTW has available to destroy i.e. the wife and child. I don’t know how much or if House envies the patient’s position, but he certainly understands it and he also understands taking the BIG RISKS in life to get something he wants.
The humor saves this show for me each week, because I have to call House a SOB at least once an episode and the lighter moments are a relief.
The particular best moments of revelation are when House answers the phone in the waiting room when he had promised to be there for Wilson and then isn’t, instead he is solving his riddle and when he jests or is he jesting (?) to get Wilson to say he does love monster trucks in the final seconds of the show.
The last three episodes, including tonight’s (3-16-09) have been some my favorites in the whole series.
I liked your review and the comments from all over, I am joining your RSS feed.
45 - Eve K
Just a comment on the Cuddy-thing. House is a scientist and he is curious. I don't think he "knew" what the patient would say to Cuddy. He is more of a jerk than that. I think he saw it as an experiment, in the way "mirror, mirror" played out. He wanted to know what would happen, and maybe he had an idea. So, when it went well for Cuddy, and House was very pleased with that. But I don't think he thought he knew. It could just as easily have gone the other way. Or - that the patient actually didn't have sex on the brain. He might had commented on her nose or something.(He commented on Taubs nose, which got me to remember a scene from the movie "As good as it gets", where Jack Nicholson comments on both Taub and Cuddys noses, or rather the actors that plays them who played a couple in that movie.) So Cuddy had a right to be pissed at House for putting her in that position. (Love her nose, by the way) But I do agree that the moment when House turns on the light in the booth is magical, and he was very sweet when he followed her down the hall. (-:
I almost hope you dont review the next ep,(Here Kitty) Barbara, I was very disappointed. One of the worst stories in the series. Maybe it had one or two funny scenes, but no good POTW, no character development and it could have happened in any season, it was totally unconnected to the main story line. Aufghhhh! Well, it had to come. Not all of them can be great. If you find something of interest in there, i will be in awe.
46 - j.i.m.
Eve K wrote, "Just a comment on the Cuddy-thing. House is a scientist and he is curious. I don't think he "knew" what the patient would say to Cuddy. He is more of a jerk than that. I think he saw it as an experiment, in the way "mirror, mirror" played out. He wanted to know what would happen, and maybe he had an idea."
Obviously House couldn't be 100% sure about the patient's reaction or that it would be about the subject of sexual attraction. I do think that almost every time House sees Cuddy, his mind is partially or completely confronted by his physical and mental attraction to her. He assumes, perhaps arrogantly, that the patient will be confronted with the same physical reaction. House is very confident in his ability to read people and manipulate them. He is also accustomed to being right when he does so. Given who the patient was, House was probably 95% sure of the triumph of Cuddy and, thus, himself. He knew the man was mature, perhaps 45 years of age, his occupation, and family connections. With the eyes of love, House assumed that this patient would be more interested in Cuddy in all her sophisticated, womanly beauty than in the lab-coated, boyishly curved 20-something girl-woman who exudes almost no sensuality in comparison to Cuddy. It wasn't much of an experiment. In "Mirror, Mirror", House was less than confident that he would seem more authoritarian than Cuddy to the patient. I don't think he considers himself (House) a man's man.
47 - Joe
Wilson tells House that their friendship is an "ethical responsibility" in Season one's Control, not Detox.
48 - barbara barnett
Joe--you are right of course. Detox has the compelling "Of course I've changed" scene. Ooops.
49 - Epiphany
I'm late to the party on this one, but season 5 is just airing here in the UK (Emancipation has just played). However, I couldn't wait and I've managed to catch some later episodes online.
I wanted to comment on one particular aspect of this instalment: House's jealousy/insecurity/resentment over Wilson and Taub. Kudos to Hugh Laurie yet again because there is a scene in the differential where the adage 'if looks could kill' takes on a literal meaning. The intensity of that expression on House's face disturbed me - I had to look away. And the racquetball test that followed was soooo cruel. Usually House's antics tickle my funny bone, but not this one. It was downright mean; poor Taub. One thing that annoyed me slightly - has Doris Egan forgotten that Wilson is also supposed to be Jewish? House's diatribe about Jews and their athleticism, or lack thereof, is dented somewhat because of this oversight. I love this blog, by the way!