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housemdork · 4 days ago

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house md rewatch: 2x07, "hunting"

i can't wait for what a certain moot has to say about this one :) <3

i find this episode Very Crowded but, fortunately, there's a clear frontrunner for what to focus on - doctor allison cameron, ofc. there are plenty of stacy developments to account for, and more ways to diagnose house, yet the entire watching experience had me itching to pan back to her ordeal (and chase's, by extension).

what i took away from 2x07 was that it's another installment in the "can people change?" question, and it draws a new line between house and cameron, despite them both responding in tune with one another. the answer is no, but one character won't test any hypothesis contrary to his preexisting beliefs, whereas the other makes desperate, failed attempts to do so.

house opens the episode with the lie: "people change." his change arc in 2x07 was a farce designed to manipulate stacy, setting the no-change precedent for the episode. it's extra sad to me that she can't immediately see through this lie like the audience can (yay, effective dramatic irony!) because so much has, in fact, change about house in 5 years, just not in the direction that he's pretending.

wilson, annoyingly, does nothing to help or hinder house's scheme to get stacy back by violating her privacy and reading her therapist's notes. he feigns disinterest and disappointment until house mentions that, according to the notes, mark and stacy haven't been sleeping together.

do i bother to comment on how wilson is always the one to judge the merit of a relationship based on sex? or do i chalk it up to 2000s humor + the fact that he's a gross cheater and has a one-track mind? all signs point logically to the latter, but i can't help but make the note about wilson and transactional romance & domesticity. what i will do is link my post about wilson's encounter with asexuality, and how it rocks his view of how this kind of relationship can exist, even if, textually, it ends up being acephobic in the end. we take what we can get in this house, i guess (spoilers for 8x09).

i'd be remiss if i didn't mention the first definitive gay joke that introduces a comically flamboyant patient (more on him later!). in isolation, it's very funny haha 2000s, but with the foreknowledge that wilson moves in with house in the not-so-distant future, i think it's pretty poignant, the image of them both leaving house's apartment in the morning post-dissection of another couple's domestic troubles.

anyways.

house and stacy's bonding over a stray rat - the beloved steve mcqueen - is such an odd way of characterizing house's place (or lack thereof) in their relationship. maybe i'm not reading it right lol. he's a pest. he engenders sympathy in stacy, sure, but mark, the one whom the rat antagonizes, plans on killing him. not only that, steve mcqueen has been poisoned not by what house presumes is mark's smoking, but stacy's. if this weird textual device doesn't spell out toxicity, i'm not sure what does.

stacy, for now, saves herself by seeing through house's farce. this episode does good work in reminding us that house is kinda shitty without absolving her half of the almost-affair. house explains to wilson that he goes over to stacy's place whenever mark is away dealing with his new disability; on both house and stacy's part, this is shockingly shitty. while mark does the very work that house refused to/struggled to, he's being hurt without even knowing.

when he starts hurling accusations at stacy that she let this happen (she did), and demands that she admit that she let this happen "because you want to be with me," she says that, "i don't anymore." i love this line, simple as it is, because it shows a capacity of stacy's that not many other characters in house's life have: the capacity to leave. obv their saga isn't over yet, but i can't help but think about how nothing but house's Typical Tomfoolery is enough to get wilson to come back in 5x04 after a very similar confrontation.

MEANWHILE, AMIDST ALL THIS INTERPERSONAL DRAMA, cameron is potentially infected with HIV when kalvin, the patient, coughs blood on her. the unfolding events are, imo, highly understandable. she avoids any conciliatory remarks from the team or any external comfort. instead, she takes kalvin's advice to live a little, so to speak (more on his exact words later). she takes meth! from kalvin's stash that was supposed to be destroyed!

here, cameron's change is the extreme version of house's, so much so that it needs ushered along by meth. he tries to change for an angle; cameron tries to change out of self-preservation. kalvin has told her that she will become "a new person" with drugs, and in the face of a radically changed life against her will, she seeks this change out. my read is that she's angry to find that her moral compass is fundamentally a part of who she is; she can't forgo the pain/weight with any escapism.

interestingly enough, her sleeping with chase isn't something she "wouldn't do" if she wasn't on drugs; it's something her high-strung convictions wouldn't let her do. we saw as early as 1x03 that she has this side to her. after telling wilson that we can't control our emotions, just our actions, in 2x06, this is such a brilliant way to up-end that principle.

unfortunately for cameron, this is escapism, not change. she's embodying the greg house experience, just in acute form - she can block out her nature and her reality, but only for so long. when she returns to work, she's just as much of a guiding light for the team as she was before. it's only her delivery/intensity of emotions that have changed.

she's angry with kalvin for lying about his history but, more than that, i think she's angry that nothing has genuinely changed within her. kalvin promised something new, but now she's still the moral compass, just with a raging hangover:

she delivers the strongest line of the episode here, too: "you want to kill yourself? fine. but stop recruiting." she sees through the escapism that kalvin - and house! - propagate. it doesn't solve anything.

pivoting to kalvin, specifically, his story is partially why this episode feels so crowded, because he makes another bold claim that defines not just 2x07's conflicts, but a lot of season 2 thus far. he tells cameron, on the subject of her lifestyle and drugs, that, "love is love. satisfying is social validation." cameron's life is only satisfying, in kalvin's view, atp, but don't so many of house md grapple with this innate difference? let's make a list of how this applies to season 2:

what even is love atp? we've spent 7 episodes debating the answer now among almost all of the characters.

wilson has been the persona guy so attached and damaged to his lies in his personal relationships. he can claim sexual satisfaction with his wives and in his affairs, but that's not love, even by his own 2x06 metric. also, he's gay.

stacy claims that she's satisfied with mark, but nothing more. it's clear that she's misusing "love," and for all of house's scheming on that front, i'd say he's right that she's unfulfilled.

judging by cameron's interactions with kalvin and her choice to act on his advice, she wants to want more. she wants to be rid of the burden her convictions carry. she's satisfied and doesn't know (yet) how to pursue the love kalvin speaks of.

house. meanwhile, rejects such social validation in favor of the Love alone. he won't compromise and would rather be shut out entirely than settle. this is very love/hate binary of him, which we established in 2x06, as well.

lastly, this applies to chase's dilemma in sleeping with cameron - it was more than satisfying, but can it be real, if she wasn't truly herself? i'll leave it at that for now. don't want to get ahead of my future recaps!

allow me to conclude another mammoth-sized recap with something that's near and dear to me, and something we take for granted: house is queer. this episode is very important in establishing that. he's so much like the patient that it's crazy. i'm arguing that simply by comparison alone, 2x07 is the most definitive avenue for reading house as queer that we've seen yet.

house seeks escapism from responsibility and regret just like kalvin. house seeks Love, not social validation. house feels preemptively excluded from that social validation in the first place on account of an irrefutable part of himself - his disability. house is socially othered but leans into it, like kalvin. house pretends not to be bothered by said othering when, from the very second episode, we see that this is another farce. house's physical/social difference is the source of familial trauma and unrest; house's resulting irresponsibility harms those around him, like kalvin's. house's irresponsibility is not cut/dry his fault; neither is kalvin's. they both take drugs to alleviate the ways in which they're isolated. cameron, point-blank, deconstructs this as total bullshit.

there's something overwhelmingly cathartic about this scene. house wielding his cane to choke out a homophobic dad who would let his son die rather than take a quick blood test? gold. and yeah, i argue that the dad is kinda shitty. the reason why kalvin couldn't help his mom is linked to his sexuality, and, in chase's words, "our bodies aren't donor farms for our parents."

beyond that? house is kind to kalvin. he's kinda disinterested in his sexuality apart from how AIDS plays a part in his potential diagnosis. plus the fact that he has a gay "stalker" in the wake of the AIDS crisis and the resulting social abuse and discrimination is treated a lighthearted, ordinary component of his life.

tldr: in a very 2000s tv sort of way, house md draws a meaningful parallel between 2 forms of discrimination, ableism and homophobia, and dares to suggest that it's front man may be queer.

#there was sm to get to in this one #i wanted to talk more about chase but i also really needed to address House Is Queer #we talk a lot about how it's a subliminal characterization #or just a vibe that we get #but there is lots of textual evidence to back it up #house md #malpractice md #greg house #james wilson #allison cameron #robert chase #stacy warner #house md rewatch #rewatch 1 #season 2

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