what do you think about how wilson is like the only one who doesnt view house as this god figure and in birthmarks he shatters a church glass
i think. i think a lot. i think so deeply about 5x04 "birthmarks." i watch 5x04 "birthmarks" like once a week and let me tell you that what you've just said is so very brilliant.
it's about their irreverence. it's about how nothing is sacred between them - not even A FUNERAL. it's about rejecting the symbolic implication of the dead body in the background (their past) and violently thrusting themselves into the present (throwing accoutrement out the window, a callback to their past AND confirming hope for their future). it's about almost being characterized as a follower of house as god, but remaining a staunch companion on equal ground when house says that he still needs wilson. it's about returning to their symbiosis, however toxic it may be.
I really do think that in whatever alternate universe in which Hilson is canonized it would have happened in season 8, during the “you-know-what-word” episodes
I came across one of your s2 ep analysis and I have to say I really appreciate the comphet take abt Wilson and how he views relationships in a lens tinted w sex as a transaction. I saw the recent ask about Wilson not being a perfectly good character and got even giddier bc it feels hella good seeing retroactive fandom discourse about Wilson and/or house in the context of the episode. Tbh the writing is something I feel is underappreciated since we view the show as dated and (at least I do) often end up reducing some of the messages as "good for its time" when sometimes I love how accidentally relatable and earnest house and Wilson's characters and by proxy relationship is compared to other TV friendships and clearcut romantic queer relationships respectively (for context I eat Hilson up as both a queerplatonic and romantic ship). I wonder if you feel the same way about the shows overall characterization watching it now vs back in 2004-7. Love how messy the characters' morals and behaviors are but are still presented as trying hard to be good
Anyway thank you op for your time 🙏 ig this isn't really an ask more than wanting to know more about your feelings on the show's early seasons as a whole not per ep I eat ur recaps Up have a good one aaa
THANK YOU FOR THIS QUESTION and for reading the recaps! it means sm <3 and if it's okay with you i may word dump in response. this warrants a read-more tab...
i completely agree - i certainly find the writing underappreciated. i've also said before that i wouldn't write about something this much if i had more critiques than praise for it; not that i wouldn't find parts to enjoy, but i don't wanna devote thousands of words to apologizing for/sweeping under the rug the 2000s of it all. of course, there are still episodes like "skin deep" that are pretty unforgivable (at least to me), but i think the word you used - "earnest" - is the heart of the matter. there's a certain fearlessness baked into house md, esp the earlier seasons, that, while engendering some Iffy Moments, actually does a lot of work to preserve the show's ingenuity and sincerity.
i fundamentally read house md as queer, and i don't qualify that with "well queer for the 2000s, i mean." i think you're in the same camp as me, too. that disclaimer takes away from that earnest that we don't always get today, in a world full of ticking boxes at the expense of rich characters with real lived experiences. personally, i wish there were far more nonbinary characters in the stories i enjoy today, but it's equally as important for those nonbinary characters to be fully realized people with "messy morals and behaviors." i wish we had both, and i think we can, but damn if i'm not tired of waiting lol -- this was a tangent lol, i apologize.
comphet wilson - for how silly it sounds written out like that lol - is a product of this textual sincerity and fearlessness.
there's a piece of literary criticism i read during my MA program that i'm gonna link here because it explains a lot of how i feel about house md's sticky position between dated humor and timeless human experiences: eve kovosky sedgwick's "paranoid reading and reparative reading: or, you're so paranoid, you probably think this essay is about you." if you can stand her dense talk about freud and 1990s queer theory, it's an excellent read.
this essence of this piece, and a lot of sedgwick's work in literary theory, is that there is such desolation in queer lives and queer narratives, that to sustain ourselves, we need to find aspects to reclaim in these texts. she's mostly talking to ppl like me (burgeoning literature phds and jaded literary critics), but the point stands that if we keep locating the suffering of queer folks, it becomes self-repeating, self-injuring, and self-flagellating. paranoid reading becomes about exposing the problems of a text; it's never about celebrating the merits therein, even if this evolves some degree of reclamation. she writes that,
"in a world where no one need be delusional to find evidence of systemic oppression, to theorize out of anything but a paranoid critical stance has come to seem naïve, pious, or complaisant" (125-6), meaning that, to read positivity into something that would easily be qualifiable as reductive, of the oppressor, hegemonic, etc., makes us ignorant and complacent.
she also states of queer studies that, "my impression...is that we are liable to produce this constative formulation...as if it had a self-evident imperative force: the notation that even paranoid [queer] people have enemies as if its absolutely necessary corollary were the injuction 'so you can never be paranoid enough'" (127), meaning that, in a society that has forced us into states of paranoia to avoid oppression, we reinforce paranoia at the expense of our own joy & liberation.
is that kinda insane to bring into a tumblr question about house md (2004-2012)? yeah, a little! but sedgwick invites us to abandon our constant, draining vigilance and let texts from freud to house md reinvigorate ourselves, to stop keeping an eye out for places where wilson's womanizing can mean more than "he's just a shitty womanizer," places where amber volakis is not just the "female house" but a character strung up with the dual-pronged weapon of heteronormativity and misogyny who STILL emerges intact, places where chase can be trans because it's rejuvenating to the viewers in the year 2025. we're not naïve for indulging in it. we're self-sustaining. THIS is called reparative reading <3
so yeah! i agree with how you characterize the show! i think tv today is too self-conscious to take the risks that lend house md to being read thru a queer lens. and i think the case we can make for wilson's compulsive heterosexuality may be one of the strongest examples of that. i am so sorry that this post is of biblical proportions, but as soon as i read your question, i knew i had to drag out that essay!
desperately need you to elaborate on your thoughts abt how house is the “baby”, amongst the big 3
dw i will elaborate! it sounds so silly every time i write it out lol.
1x18, "babies and bathwater," asks the question is house worth throwing the whole hospital under the bus. in this goofy metaphor, house posits himself as the baby since we don't need to throw the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak. meanwhile, both cuddy and wilson struggle with their own iterations of that problem, with cuddy able to see the forest for the trees and wilson eventually relenting to house's POV - even if house isn't the hospital's baby, he may as well be wilson's, so he votes against the hospital's best interests. i argue that this dilemma recurs somewhat in 3x06 when the intro scene introduces having a child as a way of fully committing to someone or, in paul anka's view, the ultimate/only way to fully commit.
but when i was thinking about this more last night as Sleep Was Taking Me, i figured i needed to give you a more thorough/interesting answer so bear with me here, if you will. introducing the conceptual "baby" into the house/wilson/cuddy dynamic shines a light on all the ways these 3 maintain (or fail to maintain) heteronormativity. i just realized that i get to talk about comphet wilson hehehehe.
house - as arguably the most queer-coded character of the bunch imo - rejects falling into that preestablished normalcy both on account of his innate rejection of the status quo and also because he's been pushed out of the social "circle." he defines this as the boundaries set by the most privileged in society, which include "able bodies." i talked his this in my 3x04 recap and will continue to do so forever! lol. i think this rejection and subsequent othering allows house to subsume the baby/bathwater issue, as well as the other heteronormative ways individuals are "expected" to show commitment in a relationship - reproduction being high on that list. he can be their commitment, unwittingly or not.
cuddy, meanwhile, strives constantly toward motherhood for myriad reasons. there are cuddy devotees who can speak to this more than i can, but i'll give it my best shot. cuddy does have a persona, tied up in the way she visually/physically presents (hyper feminine) and how she then subverts the expected stereotyping/objectification that comes her way by being That Bitch. sometimes i find it very elle woods of her. she's able to (successfully and fruitfully) perform the role of businesswoman, a frontward facing role, and maintain both the baby (house) and the bathwater (PPTH at large).
this is why it's SO fascinating that her disability (infertility) is invisible. for all of cuddy's frontward facing success, her body, too, is socially othered, though only in privacy/to those she's most intimate with. she can only mother the Conceptual Baby (FOR NOW. i'm talking strictly in the run-up to rachel here). this is also a good time to mention the social stigma around IVF/fertility treatments, which still exists today. under that stigma, cuddy fails in her performance of heteronormativity because she can't reproduce in the "normal" way. just typing all this out is giving me the ick...medicine is banked on so much misogyny.
when we throw wilson into the mix is when i get really excited. wilson bears all the markers of a successfully heterosocial/sexual individual on the outside. but some of glaring questions that the series will continue to ask him are why no kids? why no "real" relationship? why no commitment? again, in keeping with paul anka's reductive view of commitment (which house md sardonically injects into 3x06), then wilson fails in this regard, too. the only commitment he can show (and chooses to show against his better social interests, more often than not) is to the Conceptual Queer-Coded Baby that his gregory house.
in 2x22, cuddy and wilson even attempt to bond over the question of parenthood when she's secretly considering asking him for a sperm donation, and their subsequent reactions speak volumes. cuddy can hardly broach the subject because to do so would reveal the intimate ways she feels like a failure, and wilson can't even meet her eyes when asked about being a father because, under any heterosocial scrutiny, his persona starts to wear thin. what bonds them together is the baby concept.
TLDR: cuddy and wilson's often undying commitment to house is the closest they can get to "a baby," inherently queering their characters because they fail the socially mandated heterosexual reproduction. and i don't mean to cast house as a man child lmfao. i'm just pointing out what 3x06 was laying down!!
i'm so sorry to anon that this became so long, but thank you for giving me the space to ramble about this! it's always a good time, seeing how these 3 align, diverge, and continue their cyclical destruction of heteronormativity, for which they're always socially punished.
Wilson hates sleeping on House’s sofa. He goes to work tired and sore from the uncomfortable positions he finds himself in every night. His sweat condensates on the smooth leather material, which squeaks and creaks with every movement. On the rare (and I mean rare) occasion when House leaves for work before him, Wilson sneaks into House’s bedroom to catch a few winks on his mattress. House, of course, knows immediately when his pillow suddenly starts smelling like Wilson’s hair pomade - a scent he is familiar with for completely reasonable, heterosexual reasons.
Whenever House and Wilson have things they need to talk through that they can’t discuss with each other, Wilson will talk it over with Cameron or Thirteen, who both genuinely care about his troubles. Thirteen often has advice relating to navigating queer relationships, and she helps Wilson confront some of his heteronormative thinking patterns by psychoanalyzing him ruthlessly.
Cameron is more likely to offer a shoulder to cry on, taking a less psychoanalytical route in helping Wilson with his relationship issues. She definitely therapizes him to some degree, but a more “and how does that make you feel?” type of therapy - Cameron knows Wilson is almost as emotionally constipated as House, so she helps him get in touch with his emotions.
House, on the other hand, uses his free time to bother Chase and Foreman. Chase is sort of depressed and needs guy friends, so he agrees to go drinking with House, who uses the time to dump his relationship problems on Chase. Chase is initially dismissive, not wanting to hear about his boss’ boyfriend troubles, but eventually does warm up to it and gives House very guy-to-guy dating advice.
When Chase isn’t as bothered as he hoped, House corners Foreman. I imagine House makes Chase explain his and Wilson’s relationship problems in an uncomfortable amount of detail to “catch Foreman up to speed.” (They’re definitely using the whiteboard for this) Foreman is grossed out by the whole thing and gives terrible advice.
House is mostly killing time until Wilson is talking to him again, but secretly does take some of the better advice to heart - only after trying to horrible advice first and making things ten times worse.
