my name is lu. my blood type is o- and I am a registered organ donor. this is my general blog for reblogs/house fandom posts. follows come from my writing blog, bloodtypist!
My friend posted something about being “Eric Foreman if he was a girl” and I thought that’s surprisingly based and I was very curious to hear what it was about his character that made her feel that way. Turns out we were not talking about Dr. Eric Foreman but instead the Guy from That 70’s Show. Needless to say I was immeasurably disappointed and will forever be searching for Girl Dr. Foreman… I know she’s out there somewhere…
Premature graying runs in my family, but from what I can tell so far I don’t seem to have inherited the trait. So, some of it is jealousy (especially because it seems unfair for someone that handsome to age so gracefully cough cough) but a lot of it is also AWOOOOGA BOIOIOIOING HELLOOOO BEAUTIFUL
every house/wilson conversation is house being like. hello my good buddy wilson. you're wearing that tie that brings out your eyes and you're looking extra fuckable. are you cheating on your wife? and wilson being like oh house, my long-suffering friend, you look for qualities in me that you can't find in yourself because you're so miserable
perhaps veering more into the headcanon side of things, but in the interest of comphet wilson i wanna hear your take: do you think wilson would ever cheat on house?
my personal interpretation has always been that part of the reason wilson is a serial cheater (other than, of course, the inherent misogyny and lack of respect) is that someone as repressed and out of touch with his own desires as he is can never be fully satisfied in a relationship with a woman and will keep on trying to chase that next high, no matter how fleeting. which is, of course, in direct contrast to his relationship with house, who he consistently prioritizes above all other relationships in his life and who he quite literally never grows bored of.
i think theres a parallel in how wilson tells cameron the person he cheated on his wife with made him feel "funny", vs how in "Birthmarks" after house and wilson's reconciliation, wilson says its the most fun he's had in weeks. even if the person he is talking about with cameron isnt house, i think this shows a clear pattern of behavior in how wilson seeks these little thrills in his relationships, but how with women he always finds himself growing bored, meanwhile house and wilson can go through quite literally their biggest fight in their whole relationship and wilson will still come out the other side entertained.
youd think that make house the pattern breaker and possible exception to this behavior from wilson, but then im reminded of season 6. house's assessment of wilson's cheating is that he "eats neediness" and attaches himself to women who need him, but then loses interest when they stop needing him as much. in season 6, house is the healthiest he's ever been, sober and fostering real connections with other people. so what does wilson do? he kicks house out of their shared home and gets with another woman sam, quite literally making the same justifications to himself that its ok because house doesn't need him to take care of him anymore. allegorically, its literally the same thing wilson did to his wives.
in a show that grapples constantly with its central question of "people don't change", i always wondered, if the rules of their engagement changed and they found themselves in an actual romantic relationship, if wilson could overcome this particular flaw of his. i've seen both interpretations in the fandom and both (IMO) have merit, but im interested in hearing what you think!
this has been sitting in my inbox for a hot minute because i have been thinking about this relentlessly...
this is such an excellent question, so i'll give my boring combination disclaimer/answer here at the top: i fundamentally cannot see them in a romantic relationship. i think we shoot ourselves (themselves?) in the foot the moment we introduce a "social contract" into the mix. we know textually that it's the absence of any set of rules that makes those 2 flourish, so things would inevitably crash and burn them under that pretext imo. but! i'm not picky about this. i love everyone's interpretations/readings :D
my slightly more interesting answer (and i just got an ask today with a similar premise actually!) is twofold: hilson's mutual toxicity tends to keep them in-sync despite the changes that come their way, and cancer changes everything, whether or not they're on-board for that final change or not.
while this is just speculation (so headcanon adjacent, i guess), precedent tells us that these 2 can never be doing well at the same time. either they're sharing in mutual strife, which helps them get through it a little better because they love being miserable together (despite what wilson says; we all saw 2x14-2x19), or they drag each other back down. the perfect storm of season 6 was too perfect, and this time wilson was the one to "ruin" things (i'm sympathetic to house moving out eventually, but damn was it done cruelly)...so he kinda doomed things to failure. cuddy's line in 6x22 about everyone moving on without house was hurtful, but wilson was the first to drive that nail in.
so of course they have to sink into the trenches together again! of course their heterosexual relationships fail! they have to either be united in their misery or yanking the other back down. we love the subconscious codependency superseding everything else in their lives >:)
but wilson getting cancer is my favorite element of this question (though "favorite" makes me sound evil lol) because this forces change. house md gets really close to reifying their very pessimistic assertion that people don't change; it's only at the final hour does the show recant, but it still doesn't paint a kind image. only in burning buildings and under the terminal 5-month-gun can these 2 change in a way that's meaningful.
AND! your question supposes that to change means that they would move away from each other...but they don't! wilson has changed his entire oncologist-ethos, and house has completely decentered himself for the first time ever (for better or for worse) -- they still go back to one another. that's my overzealous, over-optimistic belief that no, wilson wouldn't leave/cheat on house, provided that cancer is involved.
and in the land of Comphet Wilson (headcanon territory now), i think that they would change in order to be with each other sans toxicity because, as you've said, he's never been fully satisfied in a relationship. i think the burden of his general unease in his specifically heteroromantic/sexual relationships can't be overstated, and it affects how he perceives so many other relationships as a result -- except his with house! because no social contract! wilson's stress about cuddy in season 3 showcases how Confused wilson becomes when the wires cross, when he can't choose a delineated social script whenever there's a woman & potential sexual subtext at play.
you said in your latest recap that house is hot so i have to know, who's hotter, house or wilson? or is there a dark horse in house md that's hotter than both of them?
oh i'm so glad you asked
let's get the secret third answer out of the way - cuddy is hotter than both of them. if there is such a thing as objectivity in these matters, then she's the answer. i'm not grifting lol i sincerely believe this.
but if i listen to my heart, wilson is hotter. every damn time. i love house and i love looking at him but wilson is for me. and LET ME BE CLEAR. i am NOT talking about the sexy & sensitive doctor propaganda that season 1 proliferates. i'm not even talking about his greatest early season hits, either (i.e., mcgill sweatshirt).
i am being so sincere when i tell you that season 8 wilson is the hottest any character has ever looked in house md TO ME.
it's the age. it's the solemnity (even pre cancer). it's the grey. it's how the years have made him tired, yes, but so much kinder. it's the subdued physicality that makes him so hot throughout the show all matured. it's the hair. a lot of it is the hair.
what do you think the root cause of wilson's obsession with adhering to social norms is (not just in a comphet way, but all social norms)?why is he so terrified to break away from societal expectations, so much so that he feels the need to create personas?
does it have something to do with danny---is it intertwined with his fear of letting people down, and his need to be needed by others? is he afraid that by breaking away from societal expectations, he will let others down and not meet their needs?
i'm not sure. it seems easy to reduce the cause of his personas to danny's running away and that one missed phone call, because it's the biggest piece the show gives us about wilson's past. but at the same time, the connection between adhering to social norms and his codependent tendencies feels extremely tenuous. so idk. what do you think?
oh user iscariio you always put the most thought-provoking things in my inbox. now i get to sing house md's praises about they characterized wilson by Not characterizing him. this is probably gonna be really long so i apologize in advance.
the deeper i go into my rewatch project, the clearer it is to me that wilson, by comparison to the other major characters, is very enigmatic, and that they've built in some narrative fluidity/mystery into his character to always keep us wondering about why he got like this. everyone else has some sort of inciting event (mostly off-screen) that, over time, we can unpack and understand. just sticking with the og cast, there's house's infarction; cuddy's infertility; cameron's husband; chase's parents/childhood; and foreman's brother and his mother's alzheimers. obviously these characters are not and should not be reduced to these events alone, but they're each very distinctive starting points for how they unfold across the seasons.
but what about wilson? we get the tease about his brother in 1x10 (one of my favorite moments in all of season 1), the admission that he's a shitty cheating husband in 1x05 (which is then reiterated A Lot), fleeting info from bonnie about their marriage and how house had a hand in ruining it, and that's...kind of it until season 5. yet it feels like we know so much about him! we've seen him undergo relationships, mistakes (often in tandem), the entire tritter arc, amber's death, but we don't really know why he acts like that in each of those situations, and i think that's because house md fashions wilson into a mosaic of Traits and Moments and Problems that never quite amount to anything solid. in that narrative choice comes that foregone solidity. that's a more metanarrative reading; in the reality of the text, this is why wilson is the walking gaping hole of neediness. he's incomplete by design!
(even in terms of the surrounding cast, too - we meet cuddy's mom, house's parents multiple times, chase's dad, foreman's family, taub's wife [a lot], kutner's parents (in absentia), etc., etc. danny, meanwhile, is just a room away! and we don't meet him!)
all of this is to say that you're right - the phone call with danny, while an excellent chronicle in wilson's backstory - isn't narratively satisfying enough to clarify his entire character for us, and i don't think that it's meant to be. that's why house is pretty incredulous about the whole thing, and that's why, after he admits to wilson that he thinks wilson and danny won't go anywhere, the door just closes on the entire affair. oh 5x17 "social contract" how i love you...
the mosaic called James Wilson instead carries so many broken pieces that almost paint the answer about his fears of failing social conformity, but only almost: his "failure" of danny, his profession that threatens burn out, his vague, sort of self-conscious agnosticism, his lacking sense of self (very chicken & the egg because which came first, the poor sense of self or the personas? which tried to solve which problem?), and, of course, his struggle with sexuality (while i am fully married to Gay Wilson, no matter the reading, he clearly experiences some deep issues in his psyche regarding intimacy that lead to a whole lot of Bad Choices and Not Enough Guilt).
the surrounding needy characters (primarily house, ofc) fill in the empty mosaic spots because that's what the incomplete spots are for. by adopting everyone's neediness, he can find that sense of self. just about everyone goes to him for advice at some point. whatever wilson is missing in our eyes (the Reason for all of this), he's also missing.
and then for him to get CANCER? the all-encompassing, amoral villain of the show that collapses wilson's entire person, right as he's trying to bring all those pieces together for the first time and live life for himself? just before we could get a wholistic view of him? bro...
TLDR the non-answer to your question is the best answer we could ever get imo. he's designed to not make entire sense, and this plagues him as much as it plagues the audience. he's an innately uncomfortable and shifty character, never pinned down, but so integral to the structure of house md and its titular character that we have to make do with his instability if we're to get through this. i mean, the show ends when he ends, after all!
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