"YOU WERE GONNA LET ME DO THAT?!" and everybody clapped (it's me, i'm everybody).
tw for talk of CSA
much like several other episodes in season 3, the overarching premise of 3x19 is pretty on the nose, but it's leaning so lovingly into the procedural-tv-show-genre of it all, that it works quite well. had house md's character been any worse along the way, we wouldn't relish in these silly episodes so often. not that it's completely silly, ofc; i do think that it was especially egregious to pair the patient story (which comes really close to ending very poorly) with the hudson shenanigans lol.
the premise is that the patient, lucy, has an issue with her sex hormones that's caused her to go through puberty early, and her brother has a similar problem - they are not "acting their age." house, wilson, chase, and cameron are, meanwhile, willfully not acting their age by indulging in relationship drama and, in the case of wilson and house, NOT-relationship drama. there are 2 main points amidst this low-hanging fruit that interest me...
first, i find that 3x19 is the successor of 3x14 regarding the continued emphasis on social/romantic rules and boundaries in a relationship. in the case of cameron and chase, they've reached the (current) limits of the rules they set out for one another. for all of her adapting and renegotiating, cameron ultimately won't relent to chase if her feelings don't align with what he asks of her - a real relationship.
i find this very mature of her from the jump, and i also find that their relationship being so doomed from the start (their best, most earnest traits being pitted against one another, never to be reconciled) makes for brilliant tragedy. i do buy into the whole was she ever in love with chase? debate, but obv i'll save that for the distant future because i'll surely develop my thoughts leading up.
what i especially like her, however, is the tiny implication that chase and cameron maybe aren't so doomed. cameron's heart, in the end, isn't being "stolen." it's being held gently and calmly and slowly, and there's no time limit like there was with her former husband. morbid though that may be, i love the thought.
i also talked about in 3x14 how i think cameron has a very diverse understanding/conception of love, which doesn't necessarily lend itself to the undoing of her rules with chase so suddenly. because her codes are so strong and unyielding (without some great psychological/emotional reckoning), cameron needs time...which chase gives her :) <3 in this way, they are, in fact, acting their age. not so much when chase was jealous of an 8 year old with a crush, who cameron was indulging.
meanwhile, house and wilson's exploits are in direct contradiction to the sanctity of the social contract (a phrase i will use endlessly, far before and far after the blessed 5x17 "the social contract" episode). house sets a rule up at the start - that Men Bring Women To Plays To Sleep With Them - but, when he discovers that this stringent rule has, potentially, gone horribly awry for him, suddenly he has to frantically undo the whole thing!
i will be forever in love with his "seriously?" face.
he's panicked because he's crossed his two polar opposite relationships - the rules-abiding one with cuddy (though they are constantly struggling against those self-imposed rules re: 3x18), and the No Rules Ever one with wilson. in another reference back to 3x14, i think house, like cameron, has a fluid understanding of what it means to love, only his version demands that he be his loved ones' number 1 commitment, which can't happen if these cuddy and wilson wires cross without him.
after the grand reveal that house sent the flowers to wilson, however, house makes a closing attempt at resuming the social contract that he's trying so hard to follow in order to secure cuddy. as they watch the patients' family leave, cuddy remarks that, "so much energy and drama just trying to find someone who's almost never the right person anyway. it just shouldn't be so hard."
so house invites her to a play :D knowing house as well as we do at this point, we know he doesn't mean to adhere to the gross "contract" set by him and wilson at the episode's start. this is a relationship guideline that he's stumbled upon and is willing to follow.
the second main point i wanted to make started as more of an afterthought, but there's an interesting (and unpleasant) undercurrent of dismissal regarding women's experiences in this episode. not that this is especially out of the ordinary for house md, but it was noticeable enough this time around to write about!
on a smaller scale, house's snide comment to cameron here both made me laugh (i'm awful) and gave me pause. when she asks to run tests that he finds unnecessary, he says that she can "waste her time. wouldn't recognize you if you didn't." gagged both me and her lol.
but the care and respect that 3x19, in turn, pays to lucy and cameron's scene where cameron examines her for signs of sexual abuse, shows us far more than house, foreman, or chase, could ever tell about cameron. it's a striking, grounding medical moment amidst a predominantly goofy episode, and its privacy gives us an unexpected reprieve from the stifling masculinity. it also, even just for a second, actually ADDRESSES the horror involved in a lot of the patient stories that season 3 has been shortchanging lately. TLDR i thought that moment was handled very well and reminds us of cameron's greatest strengths as a doctor.
the more obvious example of this dismissal of women's experiences in 3x19 is cuddy, ofc, who is positioned as the Unclaimable Entity around which house and wilson are running. this scene in particular fries me:
guys. trust him. he KNOWS that the X's are the kisses.
this is a clear callback to 2x17's infamous "playing poker over the phone" bit, but now cuddy is the middleman, and now we've, ofc, had to imbue the entire exchange not just with sexual innuendo, but with the threat of sex itself. and yes i'm calling it a threat because wilson wields the very possibility of him and cuddy sleeping together like a knife dripping with poison tailored for gregory house himself.
house only just barely saves things by looping cuddy back in at the end, like i mentioned before. i think that the simple fact of wilson fleeing from the sight of cuddy is contrasted with the concluding shot of house and cuddy together, close, and alone confirms that there isn't much to worry about.
something could go here about wilson following the social script, the heterosexual contract that house laid out for him at the top, to the LETTER, but that, too, is low-hanging fruit (like this guy [as house says in season 8]). this drama queen pmo.
what i feel compelled to address, however, is the scathing hypocrisy, the likes of which even house hasn't yet uttered, that came out of wilson's mouth: "it is possible to have a friend of the opposite sex."
NAME ONE. GO AHEAD. AND YOU'VE ALREADY MADE COMMENTS ABOUT CAMERON IN SEASON 1 SO SHE DOESN'T COUNT. AND CUDDY DOESN'T COUNT RIGHT NOW EITHER BECAUE YOU FOLLOWED HOUSE'S SOCIAL CONTRACT WHEN YOU INVITED HER.
i love wilson and cuddy's friendship - don't get it twisted. i just think that he's a buffoon in this episode. you deserve the prank house tried to pull on you.
titsay
andulkaphoto
areudirty
gamechangershow
turnnoffyourmind
vaporwave
