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“Rubber bullets were designed for ricochet fire” is a nice and convenient lie but it’s still a lie.

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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.

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study

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this vexxes me

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Sketch

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having one of those weeks where grief is so interwoven with bliss that i feel that despite the muck and the suffering of it all, i am perhaps one of the luckiest persons alive

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sharing my columbo stickers with the hoes

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There's no normal explanation for this.

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larvie and libro UPDATE! a new comic and an RSS feed!! (finally) enjoy! :D

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house md rewatch: 1x11, "detox"

house's first dance with withdrawal, the ducklings' shaken faith, and wilson's devotion.

i will be hilson posting in here but! i swear it's actually rooted in some serious thought & consideration lol.

at the top of the recap, i'll include a question - house was dressed pretty well this episode, and has been thus far, with collared shirts, coats, etc. just no lab coat. do you think this changes over time just due to normal tv wardrobe changes, or can we take this as another example of his canonical decline? i can go either way, myself.

anyways! doesn't he look like that one portrait of mary in the above picture? this episode felt like microdosing 5x23-6x02 (iykyk). after rearing its head pretty strongly in 1x09, house's vicodin takes center stage, and he makes a pretty interesting claim to cuddy in the conversation that precedes their bet: "pills don't make me high. they make me neutral." the question of what neutrality means for house is SO interesting.

repression/suppression is a theme we commonly associate with wilson as the show evolves, but 1x11 is super up front that house is Holding Things Back via his addiction (he won't use that lingo at first), which is yet another tease at what his collective backstory looks like. we also get the first mention of his infarction in this episode, along with a vague timeline; wilson details that it happened "a few years ago."

i always thought the premise of this episode is kinda...cruel, which had me gagged when they revealed that the scheme to get house off vicodin for a week was wilson's idea. but i think the cruelty of the idea helps characterize house as being truly and impossibly difficult. "cuddy" (wilson) would not have concocted such an insane scheme, full of temptation of the highest order, if house would be receptive to a lesser offer.

i was really struck with mapping the patient's experience onto house's this episode, and i think the plotlines coalesce nicer than usual in this episode, with a little quirk at the end. the patient, keith, presents with inexplicable internal bleeding, and a true avalanche of failed diagnoses follows. the team eventually lands on lupus - the first time lupus is condemned as a non-answer for house - which sends house over the edge because it's too simple.

lupus represents the admittance that he's an addict with a problem. it would explain so much about house, yet it would also tie him up as A Man With Problems in a neat little bow, too simple for house to make peace with. it's his lived experience; he knows the complexities of what brought vicodin into his life more than anybody (though someone in particular comes pretty damn close). lupus, or the title of addict, cannot fit. because then it's simple. because then house can't hide from the simple, serendipitous, brilliant diagnosis.

this parallel comes to the fore in a heated debate with the ducklings. house admits to cameron that keith's symptoms make lupus "more likely, BUT," that "but" doing a lot of heavy lifting. it could be lupus, he could be an addict, BUT that can't be all there is to it. so he majorly jeopardizes the patient by insisting they investigate hepatitis E.

this debate is so intense that it causes a definitive split from house, which really takes off with cameron after foreman pokes fun at her unflinching loyalty/kindness toward house (i think foreman holds a very reductive view of her and house, but i digress). she can either evade the truth about the treatment toward keith's father (which chase advocates for), or tell the father the truth (foreman's choice). when the elevator eclipses her, a nice visual representation of her ingesting both her peers' opinions, we're not clear what her solution will be.

that she first lies to the father and then violates house's wishes, admitting that she believes in the lupus diagnosis, is probably the greatest hit to the ducklings' faith in house yet.

i know i'm bouncing around a lot here, but this is a congested episode (in a good way!) and i want to make sure i don't forget anything. intermixed with house's rapid decline (in time with keith's almost exactly) are wilson's attempts at helping/solving house. first he hires a masseuse for house, and while my knee jerk reaction is to declare how misogynistic the resulting scenes are, i really need to understand why wilson looks so excited by All This:

i know this isn't really the time/place (and it's too early in the show), but like. sure. hire a bossy masseuse and make jokes about house not getting any lately + imply that you're not getting any, either, despite being married. okay whatever. to say nothing of the house/cuddy masseuse debacle of season 7 lol.

what is generically important about the masseuse is that wilson already feels guilty. he knows he's putting his friend through a hard time - in his mind, it's for house's own good - but tries to alleviate some of it. cuddy, meanwhile, does no such thing lol because she 1) probably understands the value, both for house himself and the hospital, in house getting clean and 2) doesn't have enabler disease like wilson. more on that later.

the next glimpse of wilson's guilt comes after house breaks his own hand. this one is pretty obvious - even though wilson is intrigued to learn that house's brain prioritizes this immediate physical pain over his chronic pain, wilson is still distantly responsible for this. and of course house md takes care, once again, to show us how gentle is by nature:

but a little deeper than this is a perverse interest/satisfaction. i don't think wilson directly experiences this, per se, so much as the audience is tipped off to another dimension of his knack for Getting To House. his guilt is competing not just with a sense that he's doing house a favor by drawing his addiction into the light, but also a small excitement for being needed (this also comes together with confirmed enabler wilson later). house's relief is - understandably - visualized like a moment of ecstasy, and wilson is directly or indirectly responsible for each.

relief from the masseuse, relief from breaking his hand, and relief from winning the bet that wilson constructed.

the power dynamics of 1x11 are subversive here. house has been the one in charge, even winning over cuddy on most occasions, but wilson, the orchestrator behind the scenes, reduces house to this state, and it's not without some satisfaction. hilson psychoanalysts hopefully get what i'm putting down here lol. this reversal is UNDONE, of course, by the total failure of the bet because house only gets halfway to help, halfway to the intended solution.

in house's mind, by the end of the 7 days of no vicodin, sure. he's an addict. but just like how lupus was too simple for keith, that title alone is too simple for house. he's addicted without the problem. how can neutrality be a problem? how can his functionality, which he sees as unimpeded, be a net-negative just because it's narcotic-inspired?

another departure before circling back to that integral house and wilson conversation about addiction without a problem. another way 1x11 highlights wilson's guilt and the cruelty of the entire bet is when cuddy accuses house of "playing chicken" with the patient's life. this is right after it's revealed that cameron told the truth about the lupus diagnosis, so the father is up in arms. however, when cameron explains that she managed to convince the father to trust house anyways, house counters with: "that's when he caved."

they always cave, especially when they go to the Wilson School of Enabling. wilson and cuddy have been toying with house, and it crosses a line eventually.

thus, wilson surrenders to house after yet another brief yet revelatory conversation: "you are not just a regular guy who's getting older. you've changed. you're miserable, and you're afraid to face yourself."

"of course i've changed!"

"and everything is the leg? nothing's the pills? they haven't done a thing to you?"

"they let me do my job, and they take away the pain."

obviously, this conversation is a failure, as is the bet. house proves his point - he is in less pain on vicodin, and they do let him do his job. it's wilson who's concerned with his quality of life. it's wilson who knew him best pre-infarction. it's wilson who, selfishly, wants him back to how he used to be.

if we weren't dealing with THE james wilson, i think we could write off the episode's conclusion as a sad end to a selfish endeavor on his part. yet he makes a fleeting remark to cuddy at the very end that basically dooms himself. when she asks him, "what are you gonna do?" wilson says, "nothing. i've done enough damage."

oh boy!

as we know, wilson will go on to try to help house curb his addiction in the future but, more than anything, he will indulge the hell out of it. season 3's central conflict rides on that fact. the guilt wins out in the end, not house's brilliance, nor inner strength, nor the ducklings' shaken faith, nor the very premise of the episode/the bet itself. wilson caves just like the patient's father did because this - house's pain, his addiction, is infarction - is a fact of life. and, hey, if house's addiction is problem that's unable to be fully solved, than wilson gets the endless well of neediness he's been masochistically searching for.

what an absolutely insane foundational episode for these 2.

lastly, i have 2 separate notes that i want to make:

after keith's father punches house in the face, nobody helps house up. cuddy attempts to but doesn't really follow through, and what's more important is that the ducklings just leave him collapsed on the floor. even though house ends up being write about the final diagnosis (which is the craziest one yet), something has definitely shifted.

foreman being the one to hand house vicodin so he can get through the case really affected me this go-around, but i can't put my finger on exactly why. please share your thoughts, if you have any!

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gay married couple discussing who’s the bottom or top tonight

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Robert Sean Leonard & Hugh Laurie as “James Wilson” and “Gregory House” in House, M.D. | 07x05: “Unplanned Parenthood”

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through pure random chance someone said "jerma rip your shirt open" and he said no i like this shirt. let me put one over it and rip that instead. and he gave the nation of mexico an eternal gift

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my favorite genre of wilson

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mature middle-aged men btw

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