love reading your house md thoughts. is there anything about the show you would change if you could?
the first thought that came to me: i'd change things so that wilson and cuddy weren't constantly trying to change house or tell him what to do re: his addiction when he so clearly wasn't ready to change.
this was a big issue for me throughout the show, because while i understand their frustration as people who love him and who don't want to see him suffer, they failed to see that the constant lecturing pushed house deeper into denial - as it often does to addicts when they're in the precontemplative stage.
what he really needed instead was support (not to be confused with enabling), acceptance and understanding of his choices - real understanding; the awareness that he is where he is right now and they can't change him. this doesn't mean they shouldn't speak up when he makes bad choices. frankly, they were fantastic friends - the only problem was that they didn't realize people don't come out of denial unless they realize it themselves.
but i can also see why wilson (if not cuddy - and only because i don't have as good a read on her as wilson) couldn't be this person for house - wilson's a fixer. he has to feel needed, so he gives people solutions to their problems - even problems they're not willing to admit to having.
house eventually did get out of precontemplative and into contemplative at the end of season 5 when he realized things were too far gone and he needed help - and good for him - but notice how he had to come to that realization himself. it really, really cannot work any other way. i speak from first hand experience.
i'm not sure if i can think of any Big Plot Things to change - the show's writing is far from perfect, but overall i'm satisfied with where they decided to go mostly. there are some things i'd change:
i wish cuddy respected house's disability more in earlier seasons;
i wish he wasn't referred to as an addict in earlier seasons when he was really just a guy in so much pain he developed a dependence (you can see how he might get defensive - and unwilling to recognize later on that he does have an addiction - when people were calling him an addict before he was even an addict);
the majority of season 8 felt like the equivalent of naruto filler episodes
while i do think house never got over the events of the season 7 finale i wish we'd seen him struggling with them at least a little while he was in prison. and i wish we'd seen cuddy at least once in season 8. at his funeral perhaps. feels wrong that she wasn't there
huddy in general. i don't know WHAT i'd change - maybe i wouldn't have teased the ship from, oh i don't know, SEASON 1 - i just know that it could've gone better. i'd have still broke them up, absolutely; but the way it ended (and even began, to an extent) in the show left me dissatisfied
lbr house escaping to some other country after running his car into huddy’s house was sort of ridiculous
house in actual band t-shirts
i'm not a fan of the whole selecting-my-employees-with-a-game-show format of season 4
more house wearing cozy-looking hoodies
my god they really ran out of plots for each episode around seasons 5/6/7. the medical stuff really dipped, too - i rewatched a few episodes from season 1 and the medicine was SO solid, leagues above the later seasons, not to mention other medical dramas: the nun with the copper T, the schizophrenic mom who wasn't schizophrenic at all, those were some of my favorite episodes, and they managed to simultaneously weave in those themes of human nature that's REALLY what this show's trying to get at. towards 5/6/7 i felt like these aspects got really messy.
more house chilling at home
that's kind of all i can think of right now! thanks for sending this in, it was very fun to answer. it's also very kind of you to say that about my house posts, especially because they (especially towards the end of the show) were more cyclic ruminations stemming from Real Actual worry/anxiety for house and some level of projection than true analysis. but thanks nevertheless, it's always gratifying to know that people have been reading them!
