More general House thoughts

[flippet]

 Okay, so I finally saw the Friedman/Hess vlog.  (It was taking too long to load a couple of nights ago.)


I'm kind of upset, but perhaps not for the expected reason.  

I'm upset not because yeah, it looks like the H/C romantic relationship is over.  Rather, I'm upset because of how casually and cavalierly the writers seemed to approach the whole thing - and how *wrong* they got it.  

I'll try to explain myself, but I feel I'm a bit scattered tonight.  Here goes anyway.

Basically - they went - oh, let's explore who House is in a relationship.

So they put him in a relationship.  A relationship.  A typical 'relationship'.  Because wheee, won't that be fun, because House is such an a-hole (Sara's words) that he'd never do well in a relationship, could never keep it going, because Cuddy deserves so much better than the jerk that House is.

This pisses me off because, House and Cuddy were already in a 25-year-long relationship.  A relationship that worked for them, that was dysfunctionally functional.

And the writers took them out of that relationship, and put them into a typical, girl's-not-getting-what-she-wants-and-needs-from-a-guy kind of relationship, that was essentially unrecognizable from the kind of relationship they already had.


They said 'okay, we're gonna start it *here*, and end it round about *here*' - completely NOT taking into account whatever growth and change might happen along the way.  Yeah yeah yeah, you're saying 'well, but they're writing (or not) that growth and change, surely they'll limit that to make it logical.'  I don't know.  

I think that the writers are seeing these characters in a very different way from how the viewers are seeing them.  And if the writers think that what they're putting on paper is how this character is, then Hugh is fucking up royally - he's putting much more humanity into House than the writers intended.  

From listening to Hess and Friedman - it sounds to me like they're saying that House is such an organic jerk that a relationship would be impossible for him - basically, that jerks don't deserve love.  

But my problem with that is a) frankly, they're wrong, and b) Hugh doesn't play House like a completely unmitigated asshole from A to Z.  He puts nuance in, he puts sympathy in.  And I would argue that if someone's behaving like an overtired, hungry, cranky toddler, perhaps what they need is MORE love and understanding, not less.



So that's my rant for the evening.  I don't know if I got across everything I was thinking.  I've had some alcohol, so.


But yeah.  That would explain why Cuddy especially was so unrecognizable.  This wasn't House and Cuddy, expanded.  This was Relationship!House and Relationship!Cuddy - similar only in surface appearance.  :-P

Comments

[leli-5.livejournal.com]

I have to agree. I've found this whole dating plot arc to be rathe cringeworthy, mostly due to the hamfisted attempts at ohnoes!relationshipDRAMAZZZZ that they seemed hellbent on using as a replacement for the tried and true House/Cuddle relationship (non-sexual) hurdles.

In my opinion, the old pair played off each other like a flint - yes, there was friction and sparks but it WAS functional. The whole dating tangent felt like they took that perfectly usable tool, took it to a Justin Beiber concert, doused it in lighter fluid and put on a pyrotechnics show for a high school audience. Nevermind that the characters were completely ill suited for it.

Okay, that metaphor got hella garbled but I get points for trying because I've been up since five, when I was awoken to deal withthe most epic blow-out diaper mess EVER.

[mauje.livejournal.com]

Hi!

Hope you don't mind me stopping by your journal. Saw your reply to my comment over at H_C, and I wanted to come over and read your thoughts.

You know I totally agree with you, and you expounded on the issues extremely well.

As I have said elsewhere, I felt worse after watching the vlog and reading the DS interview than I did actually watching the episode.

It bothered me to no end to hear the writers essentially 'dumb-down' these characters in order to try and justify a break-up.

I also couldn't believe they admitted that they put an exact time frame on this relationship. Why would one ever purposely put a limit on their creativity like that, and why would you be stupid enough to admit this to your viewers?

This relationship was over before it even began. The writers weren't going to take the time to slowly weave issues throughout different episodes and have things slowly build over time. Why would they? They were working under time constraints, and why put effort into something you knew wasn't going to last anyway?

This time limit on the relationship showed in what we saw on screen, too. We got superficial issues that were neatly tied up into little bows after each episode, because hey! we've got to quickly explore(seriously, I cringe that they would even consider what they did exhausting the exploration; it's insulting)this relationship so we can say we did, end it, and move on!

Sorry, I didn't mean to go off on a long winded tangent, but I could talk about it for days, considering how angry it makes me.

But it is comforting to know that there are others out there with similar feelings over the same issues.

[seri-scribble.livejournal.com]

House is STILL on? :P

I must say, there's nothing here that convinces me I made the wrong decision in abandoning the show... (But please feel free to tell me if/when House becomes an underground boxer and/or space pirate ninja and/or starts making out with Wilson* with some frequency.

*or I dunno, an evil clone of himself**. That would be pretty interesting television too.

** said evil clone would CERTAINLY speak in a british accent.

now I really want that to happen

...I apologize for leaving this mess of a comment on a thoughtful post. XD

[hooloovoo_42]

OK, now I've seen it, that sucked!

I'm mostly mad at Cuddy and Wilson. They *know* House, they know how his mind works. Heck, even the team know that House is distracted and clearly worried about Cuddy, but he's too House to do the right thing.

But the ending - you took Vicodin, I know why you did it, but I don't really care, bye - that was just crap. And we go back to the end of the last season and the season before and the season before (I can't remember how many times) with House sitting on the bathroom floor with pills in his hand. But this time, there's nobody to come and take them off him.

So the last third of the season is going to be Cuddy being all upset and House going back to being House 1.0. So 7 seasons and we're back to the beginning.

My other question is exactly what procedure did Cuddy have done? They took a tumour out of her kidney. But she's up and about and walking and clearly driving. She was lying on the sofa on the side where she had surgery and sat up without any trace of a wince. She's either on f*cking amazing drugs, or they extracted the tumour with a magic wand.

[alice-1005.livejournal.com]

Hope you don't mind me venturing here and yes, I agree. The writers became so lazy and sloppy and just turned them into a typical tv relationship. We flailed shipp-ily with ever ep, but at the end of the day, there wasn't any genuine, well done exploration--which is what we wanted, and deserved.