House finale; thoughts on my experience in the fandom since '06
THE FANDOM
My first fandom was Star Trek, beginning in the '80s. The first fandom in which I read stories online was Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles, circa 1997, followed by several others. The first fandom in which I engaged with people on listservs and in person and gave presentations at cons was Harry Potter, starting in 2004. House, though-House was where I posted my first fic in a community setting, made my first fanvid, made online friends through nothing but fic and meta conversations for the first time.
I was already watching the show when I started my own LJ in fall 2005. The first fic ( Dissonance), still a favorite and arguably my most personal, came in early 2006. pun left an amazing comment on it at the same time I commented on her House/Wilson 'ship manifesto, and eventually that friendship led to my introduction to the incredible NY fangirl brunch crew: no_detective-who-was-moonlash_cc, linaerys, scribblinlenore, the lot. topaz_eyes was there too in the comments to "Dissonance"-and what a thrill it was when some of my stories made it onto her epic House recs lists-and bell, and daasgrrl, and leiascully. Soon enough I "met" nightdog and perspi and zulu and parrot and elynittria-who-was-noydb and firestorm and iggy and jadesfire and purridot and mer and I can't even list you all-and of course deelaundry, never guessing that half a decade later I'd be living nearby, enfolded into her family's life in so many unexpected, wonderful ways.
The fandom was much smaller then. There was a high ratio of high-quality fic. The vids were funny (or uber-sentimental, but let us look back with rose-colored etc.). The feedback was substantive. It was great.
Over the course of watching this series, I've lived in three different states and had four different day jobs. I burned through a crush on Robert Sean Leonard. SGA flowed and ebbed. I wrote some of my favorite fics for House: Untouchable; the sestinas and the epic poem; A Helping Hand, whose comment quality surpasses that of anything else I've written. Episode-wise, the high point for me remains "Son of Coma Guy."
With all that nostalgia in tow, you'd think the end of the series would have been saddening. Truth is, though, that I fell gradually out of love with the show years ago. I felt distanced from the last few seasons. Watching became more and more of a chore. What did the showrunners do to the characters that they hadn't done a half dozen times before? Why did their Deep Existential Questions feel so tired? I've never watched another series that gave its characters so little space outside their relationships with the main character. I've never watched another series that was so obsessed, textually and extratextually, with the question of whether a main character can change. I've never gone through eight years' worth of episodes that in the end delivered such tiny, incremental shifts. If that's an accomplishment in itself, it's not one I would have hoped for.
A series finale is supposed to be a time to look back at all the crazy things that have changed all the characters since the pilot, shown how much they've grown or lost or shifted philosophies or changed sides or whatnot, sometimes to the point where they're unrecognizable. Maybe part of the dissatisfaction I feel stems from the fact that I tend to watch plot arc-based science fiction, whereas House was episodic/procedural (by definition; later seasons certainly shifted the focus of the show from the PotW medical plots to the soap opera lives of the characters). But there's no reason more couldn't have happened in where everyone ended up, mentally and professionally.
LEADING UP TO THE FINALE
Last week's episode and this week's retrospective had perked me back up about this show for the first time in a while. I really should have done a post after "Holding On." It was Wilson-centric. It had moments of real emotion. It showed House finally making a concerted and apparently successful effort to stop manipulating his friend for his own benefit and actually be there for him. I was loving the recent trend of House actually being a decent friend! I knew he had it in him!
We also had a live glimpse, at long last, of one way House relates to Wilson's parents. We never got to meet Wilson's family, but at least we were given that breadcrumb. The ep had maybe the slashiest moment of the whole series that wasn't even undercut immediately afterwards (only once earlier and once several scenes later), when Wilson said he needed House to say out loud that he loved him, which as a bonus felt like a callback to "Son of Coma Guy" (/"Untouchable"). Despite all the usual frustrating and/or ludicrous elements-Why did everyone except Taub keep trying to run Wilson's life and tell him that his decision was wrong and selfish? How did the plumbing backup get so massive? How do you get fingerprints on paper that's been soaking for days? etc. etc.-it was enough to bring me back "in" to the show.
The retrospective tried hard, like a video yearbook, and it was entertaining, although with the amount of stuff they tried to fit in there, it frequently felt rushed. (No time for the writers to introduce themselves? Really? Only a cursory answer to the judges' question of whether House, on balance, is a good guy to have on your team?) But it was overall nice to see all the behind the scenes people; I haven't followed any actor interviews and whatnot in years. The House-and-Wilson 007 paintball schtick was excellent fun, of course, and to be honest one of my favorite shots of the night was RSL's face when he sat all stubbly in that chair next to Hugh's at the end and his gaze flicked up, eyes all big and brown like they used to look. (Poor guy, sick with the flu on the last day of shooting!)
Most of all, I loved the shot of Hugh Laurie walking down the set hallway with his arm around Jennifer Morrison's shoulder, saying into the top of her head, "You are missed." It reminded me so poignantly of leaving school and hearing sentiments like that from teachers, and it conjured up this deep sense of nostalgia and fondness that I hoped the finale would prolong.
It did not.
THE FINALE
Mostly what I feel about the finale is apathy, mixed with disappointment, with a bit of relief at the last few minutes. As you can imagine, that general "eh" has made it difficult to muster up a reaction post.
I know other people will feel differently, but here's how it went for me. First 45 minutes (House in burning house, hallucinatory ghosts of episodes past): painful. Next 10 minutes (fake-out, funeral): rushed, so that what could have been a moving, illuminating, and summarizing assessment of House's character through the eyes of the people who knew him-now, that would have been a more interesting finale-instead blew by before you knew it. Last 5 minutes (free to ride into the sunset): nice, if implausible. Overall, the pacing was strange. They should have aired the retrospective earlier and made the episode two hours long, so they could have delved properly into each of the facets of House's decision not to kill himself instead of skimming and skipping around.
I dunno. Maybe if I watched it again or read the script, it would sound more profound than it did the first time.
(Forgive me; I'm working through my thoughts as I write.)
First of all, it felt like backtracking. The week before, House got to a point where he was able to put his own wants aside and serve his friend. Then the rug got yanked out from under him-which was his own fault, through a prank that didn't even make sense in the first place. Then he threw his chance away by too overtly manipulating Foreman, and then too overtly manipulating Wilson. Burning all his bridges. HOUSE, WHY SO SELF-DESTRUCTIVE? UGH. But that is the point, I suppose. That is his tragic flaw. It's just unfortunate that they had to orchestrate this whole contrived scenario-prank, conveniently long sentence, patient, fire-because, like Wilson, obviously House's choice can only be between something unpleasant and DEATH, double ugh-to force House into the final confrontation with himself.
Character vs. self should be an enthralling situation. Sadly, for many seasons on this show it has not been. Ever since "No Reason," whose tricks made me angry, I've been wary of the writers. "One Day, One Room" sealed the deal. I'm not surprised that the finale didn't thrill me, since it was done by the same guy who wrote those and others of my least favorites (and a few excellent ones, too, to be fair, but when it came to the Big Thematic Episodes that Furthered and/or Revisited House's Conflicts, he tended to blow it, as far as my tastes go). I thought the writing in the "What have we learned over the course of the last eight years?" conversations was clunky. The series always was better at telling than at showing. Here we had yet more screen time of people psychoanalyzing House. I'm also not a fan of frequent-flashback structures.
So, you know. Not primed to love it.
I liked: the callback to the "Son of Coma Guy" question of whether unconditional love is real. Whether House is worth loving. Whether he thinks he is worth loving. And yet. I can't help but feel that the whole thing could have been much more elegant. Grander in scope.
At least. At least they didn't Give House Religion. That was a big fear, that this man's staunch atheism would soften into a grudging acknowledgement that there's some kind of higher power and that that admission would lead him to change for the better. Wilson's confession a couple of weeks ago that he thinks there's something after death seemed to foreshadow it.
At least they didn't play "You Can't Always Get What You Want" again. I wouldn't have been responsible for my actions.
At least at the conclusion of these pessimistic years there was an optimistic ending that allowed House to continue on his recent path of being an actual friend who will admit that he cares for and about another human being. Some people have been calling the final scene "fan service," but the showrunners and the actors have always said that the House-Wilson relationship is the core of the series, so it's not a surprise that a hopeful conclusion would involve the both of them being happy.
I can't help but ask all the practical questions, though. Where's he going to get his pills? How does he expect to be able to help Wilson when Wilson's health declines? What about House's own inevitable leg- and drug-related health problems (another plot point that got dropped along the way)? What on Earth is he going to do after Wilson's gone and he has nothing left to do but live his life…with no legal identity? And the big question: Do we really anticipate that House isn't going to relapse into being a selfish asshole who believes that intellect trumps all and love is a lie, and sooner rather than later? A lifetime of habits vs. one epiphany, literally under fire.
And the dental records. Was House supposed to have switched those before or after he lay down to die in the burning house? If he did it before, then he was planning for the possibility of faking his own death-Plan C?-but why would he have done that if he was also actually planning to die in that building, as the first three-quarters of the episode showed? If he did it after… how stupid was he to walk around PPTH where anyone could see him when he was supposed to have been dead? I'm just imagining some lab tech saying to the police, "House couldn't have died in the fire, I saw him down the hall an hour after you supposedly pulled out the body." Stupid; risky; typical; but House was supposed to have changed….
I kept saying I wasn't going to be able to tell whether the journey through all these seasons was worth it until the finale. Elynittria once wondered if we were watching the equivalent of a Bach fugue-repeating notes and melodies, themes, all building on each other. If I recall correctly, she later gave up and said it wasn't going anywhere after all. I've toyed with the idea of making a House vid that set clip after similar clip to Ravel's "Bolero," but only if all those repeated characters and repeated plots and repeated questions built to a substantive climax and didn't prove to just circle around and around. Somehow, even after watching, I still can't tell if the finale pulled together all the themes of the series in a well-crafted, meaningful way-that will take a rewatch or a script read-or if it was yet more rehashing with minimal and/or too-sudden progress-which is what it felt like at the time.
Until that day of clarity, there are other people's posts:
A BRIGHTER NOTE
The finale doesn't really feel like an end, because I've been "out" of the show for so long. (I also missed a bunch of episodes in the middle of season eight, so there are still new episodes to watch.) But it is an end, and I know many people are anxious about the fandom dissolving, about losing their LJ/DW friends. I don't think we need to worry-because we're all still here now. Like me, a lot of you have migrated away into new fandoms and retreated into RL activities over the past few years. House fandom has been atrophying for a while. Yet we're most of us still reading one another. Why should that stop just because the show has stopped airing?
♥
You are, as always, welcome to engage and disagree with me in comments. This time, though, be warned that I might not be able to say anything more profound in response than *shrug*!
My first fandom was Star Trek, beginning in the '80s. The first fandom in which I read stories online was Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles, circa 1997, followed by several others. The first fandom in which I engaged with people on listservs and in person and gave presentations at cons was Harry Potter, starting in 2004. House, though-House was where I posted my first fic in a community setting, made my first fanvid, made online friends through nothing but fic and meta conversations for the first time.
I was already watching the show when I started my own LJ in fall 2005. The first fic ( Dissonance), still a favorite and arguably my most personal, came in early 2006. pun left an amazing comment on it at the same time I commented on her House/Wilson 'ship manifesto, and eventually that friendship led to my introduction to the incredible NY fangirl brunch crew: no_detective-who-was-moonlash_cc, linaerys, scribblinlenore, the lot. topaz_eyes was there too in the comments to "Dissonance"-and what a thrill it was when some of my stories made it onto her epic House recs lists-and bell, and daasgrrl, and leiascully. Soon enough I "met" nightdog and perspi and zulu and parrot and elynittria-who-was-noydb and firestorm and iggy and jadesfire and purridot and mer and I can't even list you all-and of course deelaundry, never guessing that half a decade later I'd be living nearby, enfolded into her family's life in so many unexpected, wonderful ways.
The fandom was much smaller then. There was a high ratio of high-quality fic. The vids were funny (or uber-sentimental, but let us look back with rose-colored etc.). The feedback was substantive. It was great.
Over the course of watching this series, I've lived in three different states and had four different day jobs. I burned through a crush on Robert Sean Leonard. SGA flowed and ebbed. I wrote some of my favorite fics for House: Untouchable; the sestinas and the epic poem; A Helping Hand, whose comment quality surpasses that of anything else I've written. Episode-wise, the high point for me remains "Son of Coma Guy."
With all that nostalgia in tow, you'd think the end of the series would have been saddening. Truth is, though, that I fell gradually out of love with the show years ago. I felt distanced from the last few seasons. Watching became more and more of a chore. What did the showrunners do to the characters that they hadn't done a half dozen times before? Why did their Deep Existential Questions feel so tired? I've never watched another series that gave its characters so little space outside their relationships with the main character. I've never watched another series that was so obsessed, textually and extratextually, with the question of whether a main character can change. I've never gone through eight years' worth of episodes that in the end delivered such tiny, incremental shifts. If that's an accomplishment in itself, it's not one I would have hoped for.
A series finale is supposed to be a time to look back at all the crazy things that have changed all the characters since the pilot, shown how much they've grown or lost or shifted philosophies or changed sides or whatnot, sometimes to the point where they're unrecognizable. Maybe part of the dissatisfaction I feel stems from the fact that I tend to watch plot arc-based science fiction, whereas House was episodic/procedural (by definition; later seasons certainly shifted the focus of the show from the PotW medical plots to the soap opera lives of the characters). But there's no reason more couldn't have happened in where everyone ended up, mentally and professionally.
LEADING UP TO THE FINALE
Last week's episode and this week's retrospective had perked me back up about this show for the first time in a while. I really should have done a post after "Holding On." It was Wilson-centric. It had moments of real emotion. It showed House finally making a concerted and apparently successful effort to stop manipulating his friend for his own benefit and actually be there for him. I was loving the recent trend of House actually being a decent friend! I knew he had it in him!
We also had a live glimpse, at long last, of one way House relates to Wilson's parents. We never got to meet Wilson's family, but at least we were given that breadcrumb. The ep had maybe the slashiest moment of the whole series that wasn't even undercut immediately afterwards (only once earlier and once several scenes later), when Wilson said he needed House to say out loud that he loved him, which as a bonus felt like a callback to "Son of Coma Guy" (/"Untouchable"). Despite all the usual frustrating and/or ludicrous elements-Why did everyone except Taub keep trying to run Wilson's life and tell him that his decision was wrong and selfish? How did the plumbing backup get so massive? How do you get fingerprints on paper that's been soaking for days? etc. etc.-it was enough to bring me back "in" to the show.
The retrospective tried hard, like a video yearbook, and it was entertaining, although with the amount of stuff they tried to fit in there, it frequently felt rushed. (No time for the writers to introduce themselves? Really? Only a cursory answer to the judges' question of whether House, on balance, is a good guy to have on your team?) But it was overall nice to see all the behind the scenes people; I haven't followed any actor interviews and whatnot in years. The House-and-Wilson 007 paintball schtick was excellent fun, of course, and to be honest one of my favorite shots of the night was RSL's face when he sat all stubbly in that chair next to Hugh's at the end and his gaze flicked up, eyes all big and brown like they used to look. (Poor guy, sick with the flu on the last day of shooting!)
Most of all, I loved the shot of Hugh Laurie walking down the set hallway with his arm around Jennifer Morrison's shoulder, saying into the top of her head, "You are missed." It reminded me so poignantly of leaving school and hearing sentiments like that from teachers, and it conjured up this deep sense of nostalgia and fondness that I hoped the finale would prolong.
It did not.
THE FINALE
Mostly what I feel about the finale is apathy, mixed with disappointment, with a bit of relief at the last few minutes. As you can imagine, that general "eh" has made it difficult to muster up a reaction post.
I know other people will feel differently, but here's how it went for me. First 45 minutes (House in burning house, hallucinatory ghosts of episodes past): painful. Next 10 minutes (fake-out, funeral): rushed, so that what could have been a moving, illuminating, and summarizing assessment of House's character through the eyes of the people who knew him-now, that would have been a more interesting finale-instead blew by before you knew it. Last 5 minutes (free to ride into the sunset): nice, if implausible. Overall, the pacing was strange. They should have aired the retrospective earlier and made the episode two hours long, so they could have delved properly into each of the facets of House's decision not to kill himself instead of skimming and skipping around.
I dunno. Maybe if I watched it again or read the script, it would sound more profound than it did the first time.
(Forgive me; I'm working through my thoughts as I write.)
First of all, it felt like backtracking. The week before, House got to a point where he was able to put his own wants aside and serve his friend. Then the rug got yanked out from under him-which was his own fault, through a prank that didn't even make sense in the first place. Then he threw his chance away by too overtly manipulating Foreman, and then too overtly manipulating Wilson. Burning all his bridges. HOUSE, WHY SO SELF-DESTRUCTIVE? UGH. But that is the point, I suppose. That is his tragic flaw. It's just unfortunate that they had to orchestrate this whole contrived scenario-prank, conveniently long sentence, patient, fire-because, like Wilson, obviously House's choice can only be between something unpleasant and DEATH, double ugh-to force House into the final confrontation with himself.
Character vs. self should be an enthralling situation. Sadly, for many seasons on this show it has not been. Ever since "No Reason," whose tricks made me angry, I've been wary of the writers. "One Day, One Room" sealed the deal. I'm not surprised that the finale didn't thrill me, since it was done by the same guy who wrote those and others of my least favorites (and a few excellent ones, too, to be fair, but when it came to the Big Thematic Episodes that Furthered and/or Revisited House's Conflicts, he tended to blow it, as far as my tastes go). I thought the writing in the "What have we learned over the course of the last eight years?" conversations was clunky. The series always was better at telling than at showing. Here we had yet more screen time of people psychoanalyzing House. I'm also not a fan of frequent-flashback structures.
So, you know. Not primed to love it.
I liked: the callback to the "Son of Coma Guy" question of whether unconditional love is real. Whether House is worth loving. Whether he thinks he is worth loving. And yet. I can't help but feel that the whole thing could have been much more elegant. Grander in scope.
At least. At least they didn't Give House Religion. That was a big fear, that this man's staunch atheism would soften into a grudging acknowledgement that there's some kind of higher power and that that admission would lead him to change for the better. Wilson's confession a couple of weeks ago that he thinks there's something after death seemed to foreshadow it.
At least they didn't play "You Can't Always Get What You Want" again. I wouldn't have been responsible for my actions.
At least at the conclusion of these pessimistic years there was an optimistic ending that allowed House to continue on his recent path of being an actual friend who will admit that he cares for and about another human being. Some people have been calling the final scene "fan service," but the showrunners and the actors have always said that the House-Wilson relationship is the core of the series, so it's not a surprise that a hopeful conclusion would involve the both of them being happy.
I can't help but ask all the practical questions, though. Where's he going to get his pills? How does he expect to be able to help Wilson when Wilson's health declines? What about House's own inevitable leg- and drug-related health problems (another plot point that got dropped along the way)? What on Earth is he going to do after Wilson's gone and he has nothing left to do but live his life…with no legal identity? And the big question: Do we really anticipate that House isn't going to relapse into being a selfish asshole who believes that intellect trumps all and love is a lie, and sooner rather than later? A lifetime of habits vs. one epiphany, literally under fire.
And the dental records. Was House supposed to have switched those before or after he lay down to die in the burning house? If he did it before, then he was planning for the possibility of faking his own death-Plan C?-but why would he have done that if he was also actually planning to die in that building, as the first three-quarters of the episode showed? If he did it after… how stupid was he to walk around PPTH where anyone could see him when he was supposed to have been dead? I'm just imagining some lab tech saying to the police, "House couldn't have died in the fire, I saw him down the hall an hour after you supposedly pulled out the body." Stupid; risky; typical; but House was supposed to have changed….
I kept saying I wasn't going to be able to tell whether the journey through all these seasons was worth it until the finale. Elynittria once wondered if we were watching the equivalent of a Bach fugue-repeating notes and melodies, themes, all building on each other. If I recall correctly, she later gave up and said it wasn't going anywhere after all. I've toyed with the idea of making a House vid that set clip after similar clip to Ravel's "Bolero," but only if all those repeated characters and repeated plots and repeated questions built to a substantive climax and didn't prove to just circle around and around. Somehow, even after watching, I still can't tell if the finale pulled together all the themes of the series in a well-crafted, meaningful way-that will take a rewatch or a script read-or if it was yet more rehashing with minimal and/or too-sudden progress-which is what it felt like at the time.
Until that day of clarity, there are other people's posts:
- thedeadparrot's reaction post
- topaz_eyes wrote an analysis of what each character-hallucination represented for House. It is smart. Unfortunately (for me; not a fault of her argument), it doesn't make me like the episode more. ETA: and a follow-up.
zulu started a discussion on the best TV finales.
A BRIGHTER NOTE
The finale doesn't really feel like an end, because I've been "out" of the show for so long. (I also missed a bunch of episodes in the middle of season eight, so there are still new episodes to watch.) But it is an end, and I know many people are anxious about the fandom dissolving, about losing their LJ/DW friends. I don't think we need to worry-because we're all still here now. Like me, a lot of you have migrated away into new fandoms and retreated into RL activities over the past few years. House fandom has been atrophying for a while. Yet we're most of us still reading one another. Why should that stop just because the show has stopped airing?
♥
You are, as always, welcome to engage and disagree with me in comments. This time, though, be warned that I might not be able to say anything more profound in response than *shrug*!