Hi Helen! I feel like youāre the best person to dive into Chaseās psycheāand Iām sorry if youāve answered this before, but I was rewatching Better Half and got to where Chase something like if you loved someone youād off yourself if youād become a burden to them.
Do you think heād actually expect that if itās someone he truly loves e.g Cameron, when they were married?
I think so. (With caveats.)
I mean, that's essentially his argument in Better Half already: the patient is married, and his wife is clearly miserable but is with him and devoted to him out of a sense of obligation and commitment: Adams wonders if perhaps he had tried to run away out of guilt, which leads to Chase's hypothesis.
ADAMS: You think it's possible he knew what he was doing? Like some part of him gets what he's putting his wife through, so he tried toā
CHASE: Kill himself? It's what I'd do if I were him. At least I wish I would.
ADAMS: I meant run away. You think you should kill yourself if you become a burden to the people who love you?
CHASE: If you really l love them back, thenā¦ yes.
ADAMS: That's really dark.
CHASE: It's not naive.
ADAMS: I just believe people are capable of more than you do, apparently.
CHASE: My dad left me alone to care for my alcoholic mum and raise my baby sister. I was just a teenager. I spent half my time changing diapers and the other half cleaning up my mum's vomit.
ADAMS: But it must've been important that you stayed for both of them.
CHASE: Mum died after a few years. It was ugly and painful, and she went with me hating her. My sister ended up drinking half of her life away and hating me because I couldn't help. After mum, I had nothing left. So do I wish mum had used a gun instead of a bottle? Yes.
(As an aside, Adams's logic in this scene is interesting: she thinks the husband leaving might be an act of selfless love, and seems to approve of that, but dying would not be. Or maybe Chase's bluntness just threw her.)
Chase is pretty clear here, even if his logic is fucked up. The kind, loving thing to do is to prevent pain for your loved ones. If you, like this patient or his mother, are making your loved miserable and unhappy and causing them to hate you, the best, selfless thing to do is to not do that. Don't burden them, don't cause them pain. He frames it as an act of love, and says that he hopes he could do that -- be "selfless" and "loving" instead of causing his loved ones pain -- if he was in a similar situation.
It's worth pointing out that, as Adams says, this is very dark, and more than a little fucked up. I've seen people call him ableist for this, although I think context does matter here: Chase isn't advocating that all (or even most) disabled people should die rather than accept care; he is responding to two specific and extreme situations. We also know he is not an unbiased narrator when it comes to his mother.
We have known since S1 that Chase was parentified and burnt himself out trying to take care of and "fix" his mother, and that he failed. By Better Half, we have also learned she was not just emotionally/verbally (according to him in a cut line in Socratic Method, "all alcoholics" are emotional/liars) abusive, but physically as well; now we learn he also had a sister young enough to be in diapers, which would have increased his burdens exponentially: a toddler is not someone you can leave unattended to fend for themselves, and we know from The Mistake and Cursed that Chase was doing this for at least 2-3 years, since she died in his final year of high school and he became his family's sole caretaker at fifteen. Chase has reason, in other words, to hate his mother, and even to idealize her death: if she had killed herself right away, maybe his teenage years would have been different; easier. If she loved him and his sister and cared about them, why would she do this?
Still fucked, of course. But clearly borne out of a lot of resentment and hurt.
And the thing is: we see plenty from Chase in S6, and before, to imply that this isn't a simple retcon. Even if his exact philosophy hadn't been established yet.
Post-Dibala, Chase is very clear that he does not want Cameron to know, because it would "be a burden to her." (Coincidental but fantastic phrasing.) He spends weeks trying badly to hide his guilt and remorse, and avoid her when he cannot, but we see Chase doesn't really have this issue with for example Foreman: while Chase doesn't at all confide in him or open up emotionally, Chase's main and only concern is protecting Cameron from what he believes is the hurt and pain of the truth. He tries this in a few ways: confessional (where his goal is specifically to "get past this"), throwing Foreman under the bus, etc. It isn't that Chase's guilt is only fear of what his wife will think, but it's clearly a large part of his reaction, and precisely what House preys on to get him to stay in Diagnostics.
(While Chase's quick moving on in the rest of S6 is probably more down to the show's habit of containing arcs to 6-7 episode chunks, you could make a case that him being largely okay with Dibala after the fact and after Cameron has left also implies his guilt/fear was mostly about her, not the murder.)
And this is actually a fairly consistent trait of Chase's: he doesn't like to ask for much. He has a fairly easy-going personality, true: there aren't a ton of hills he's prepared to die on. But time and time again we see that he is intensely private (nothing makes him madder, in early seasons, than people poking into his business), and that he prefers to keep things to and deal with it himself. He digs his own holes in The Mistake, and avoids telling House what's going on in Cursed long enough that House actually gives up maniplating and asks him directly what's going on. Hell: Chase's father dies, and six months pass before anyone finds out. Apparently he had no intention of mentioning it to anyone.
We see this with Cameron, too. While he is fairly assertive with her generally, we learn in The Itch that he has been feeling unwanted by her for over a year, and yet didn't say anything (only passive-aggressively tried to avoid the problem) until she brings it up: later, despite being clearly upset about the sperm situation, Chase actually treats it as a given that Cameron will get her way for several days ("yeah, boyfriends always get what they want") before finally admitting he can't do it and calling off the wedding until she's sure. This isn't quite the same thing as Chase lacking backbone or willpower: he dumps her in Saviors, he's actually just fine at sticking up for himself when he deems it appropriate... but Chase does have a pattern of tolerating and not wanting to bring up his issues, to handle everything by himself. Even when he can't.
Better to die than be a burden, right?
Of course, Chase is kind of a hypocrite. We see he tends to have a protective streak, and wants to take care of others: see how often he reassures or comforts Cameron, or how desperate he is in After Hours to make sure Thirteen is okay. I'm not at all convinced that if Cameron became disabled he'd immediately go "okay, let's look into euthanasia," lol. (Maybe after years of misery and resentment.) He already hated his mother; he can see how miserable everyone in Better Half is. And I'm not sure he'd run off and off himself if he was in this situation personally (he himself says he "wishes" he could be that selfless/loving). But I think he would try to handle it alone, to shove Cameron away in the name of protecting her from the burden, in hopes of keeping her from hating and resenting him as he did his mother. Because that's exactly what Chase did do after Dibala. To cause your loved ones pain means you don't love them; love is conditional and must be earned. That's how Chase was raised by his mother and by his father, after all. And he's not going to burden the people he loves.
