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aalgorithm · 5 days ago

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house md rewatch: 3x07, "son of coma guy"

one of my house md greatest hits, not least because "maybe i don't want to push this till it breaks" will sustain for the show's entire run.

i am sending doris egan fan mail. i am singing her praises. i'm putting her face on a t-shirt, and on the back i have printed all the episodes she's written like a concert tour. first "house vs. god" and now this one? 2 of my greatest hits of all time?

i'm tempted to write out a disclaimer about "hilson posting below," but i think this is just what 3x07 was putting down, so no qualifiers will be used! and this is a massive one, so if you read till the end, i appreciate you big time.

starting right at the top, house's trashy tv gives us a look inside his upcoming encounters with wilson, down to the setting (a car!). the tv show features who appears to be a married couple, arguing about where they're going and whether it's time to "throw in the towel."

if anyone knows what this show is, please lmk just to sate my curiosity.

okay! sure! immediately afterwards, house's lunch with coma guy (who, in a rare moment of series synergy, was also named dropped way back in 1x13 [gabe]) is interrupted by an angry wilson who reveals to house that tritter is on to him, and that wilson knows he stole his prescription pad. unsurprisingly, house's first reaction is to deflect and shrug off the severity of their new circumstances - a precursor for the following 40+ minutes.

the introduction of coma guy's son, kyle, produces the cleverly muddy analogy that will carry through 3x07 - is house the son, or the father, and who does that make wilson? the answer will repeatedly flip-flop, culminating eventually in a big shrug. but at first, kyle's devotion to gabriel for the last ten years, despite receiving "nothing" in return on account of gabriel's vegetative state, seems like a loose-fitting comparison to wilson's devotion to house for the 15-ish years that they've known each other atp.

kyle's inability to detect movement (exemplified by house hucking a bag of chips at his face lol) also lends some weight to the comparison - kyle's "immobility" mirrors his dad's; they are equally immobile in their respective ways about the world, a lot like house and wilson.

what stuck out to me more this time than my previous watch was how often house insists that gabriel is in a vegetative state and not a coma. i don't think we've encountered someone in gabriel's shoes before in the show (please correct me if i'm wrong), and house md definitely treats the onset of a coma as the tragedy/failure to end all other tragedies/failures.

more importantly, though, this distinguishing secures house's later ability to relate to gabriel. when he describes gabriel's potential to be "revived" to the fellows, he insists that gabriel may still have mental and motor function, and that his muscles have yet to atrophy. in other words, he's still viable (in clinical, dehumanizing standards). if we factor in gabriel's literal immobility and house's more metaphorical version (i.e., being uncompromising about tritter), this means that house is still viable. he can still get out of this mounting legal situation; he isn't a lost cause to wilson and those who are going to bat for him. if gabriel is in a coma, however, it's over for them both.

ever since 2x21's and 3x01's very clear references to resurrection - and the resulting characterization of house as jesus in those contexts - i've been super interested in catching any explicit biblical references in house's medical successes. while the one at play in 3x07 may be a bit of a stretch, i still think there's some worth in bringing it up (plus i have been taught to never doubt doris egan's game!).

foreman's resurrection in the vein of lazarus represents one of jesus' 3 resurrections, and i think gabriel's sacrifice to "resurrect" kyle from a near coma is most similar to jesus' resurrection of the son of nain, a widow. this comes in the gospel according to luke:

"Soon afterward, Jesus went to a town called Nain, and his disciples and a large crowd went along with him. As he approached the town gate, a dead person was being carried out—the only son of his mother, and she was a widow...[Jesus} said, “Young man, I say to you, get up!” The dead man sat up and began to talk, and Jesus gave him back to his mother" (luke 7:11-15).

but in a season that's dedicated to deconstructing our reverence and sympathy for house by way of his addiction, 3x07 makes sure this parallel isn't absolute. this resurrection comes at a cost - the cost of gabriel's life (voluntarily given, ofc). the notion of "an eye for an eye" is much more old testament than new testament, and would characterize house as more of an unflinching, less benevolent god than we've seen him thus far (via his actions, never his words lol).

regarding house-as-jesus, i'm always compelled to mention house's cane as a reference to jesus as the shepard. when gabriel wakes up (just a pseudo-resurrection because it fails in the end), his cane is prominently featured:

related still to this passage from luke, i've written before about the significance of house and wilson's road trips across house md - in every instance, these trips bring them both closer toward death. i think the fact that house completes this almost miracle after traveling is another inversion of jesus' journey to nain to heal.

(i also wrote about the ultimate significance of house's roadtrip line about wilson: "wilson believes that if he cares enough, he'll never have to die" in that linked post, so i won't yap about that in here.)

what's most present in 3x07, and what's ultimately the foundation for the entire way in which i view/appreciate house md, is the question of unconditional love. i've already written loads about it, but 3x07 captures the debate so well in a way that's thematically carried all the way till the end of the show.

"son of coma guy" interrogates unconditional love by pairing it with crime, which threatens the environment that drew house's friends to him in the first place. season 3 drags house's problematic eccentricities out of the morally/ethically grey areas and right into the law-abiding rulebook, whether characters like foreman dispute that rulebook or not (hell yeah @ foreman!). house's insistence that everyone but wilson stay out of his private/domestic sphere often protects them from major fallout, but that's not an option anymore.

what captures this shift perfectly is house's refutation to wilson about the impossibility of unconditional love, which comes about regarding gabriel's seeming disregard for kyle.

wilson: "in terms you understand, we have an evolutionary incentive to sacrifice for our offspring, our tribe, our friends - keep them safe."

house: "except for all the people who don't. everything is conditional. just can't always anticipate the conditions."

flawless way of communicating the ongoing turbulence between these 2 and, finally, some clarification on what this topic means to house. wilson is right and successfully couches the idea of unconditional love in language that house himself used in 2x04 to decry the patient's free-flowing altruism. obviously, this idea of changing conditions is a dramatic-irony-infused nod to tritter's ongoing investigation that house doesn't know about. yet the real gag is how each of the fellows and wilson have pretty seamlessly adapted to these changing conditions and act in house's best interest without being told.

despite disagreeing over house's capacity for betrayal and selfishness (foreman believes that house would exploit wilson; cameron can't stomach the thought; chase is interestingly mute on the subject), the fellows work that conflict into a unified, lie-for-house front in 3x07. cameron takes personal offense that tritter asks her to rat house out, banking on loyalty; again, chase is kinda skittish/ambivalent; foreman hates cops and would rather stay with his ilk (like wilson said!).

all things considered, these 3 reactions represent, to me, the behavior of devotees who each have their own reasons for believing, but believe, nonetheless. chase continues to struggle with that balance - individualism vs. devotion - but, for now, the latter holds. like we've established, house has been deified to his fellows. the much later fact that they all told house about tritter's investigation reaffirms this.

what's extra interesting to me, the wilson-obsessed, is how wilson is introduced as the litmus test for how far house has fallen. it always piques my interest when another character acknowledges the stature wilson holds in house's life, and cameron's incredulity reiterates to the viewers how crazy house's choice to steal the scrip pad really was. but this also reinforces what i've been saying about wilson as an equal to house, rather than a devotee. this has come up before in my recaps (like 3x02 off the top of my head), but wilson holding onto equal playing ground with house is the way into their relationship, and the way into wilson suffering the most at house's hand.

there's no reverence for house that motivates wilson's lies to tritter which, at face value, sounds harsh. but that reverence requires distance. instead, what replaces that at-arm's-length admiration is the unconditional love that wilson harbors for house, whether either of them know/understand this or not.

the tension within wilson's capacity to love house is like a slow to burst bubble growing throughout 3x07 (and throughout the tritter arc). wilson's diagnosis of why house went after his livelihood and not that of his fellows speaks to this:

"no, i mean, why my pad? foreman, cameron, and chase's pads are just as convenient. but their association with you is involuntary...i associate with you through choice. and any relationship that involves choice you have to see how far you can push before it breaks."

that's a hell of a threat! it makes us anxious! and it also reifies the idea of the fellows as devotees and wilson as an equal; they are in service to house, while wilson is there at a closer, more human level. if we read a bit into house's psychology, this need to rest wilson comes from a belief that house does not deserve unconditional love, less so that the concept doesn't exist altogether.

breaking my containment rule here to say that, even though wilson is the one who rats house out to tritter in the end, i still argue now (and will argue then) that this doesn't mean he's confirmed that unconditional love isn't real, or that he doesn't have it for house. house's idea of love/loyalty (especially in these early seasons) seems to mean people giving in/giving him what he wants. wilson is remarkably consistent in wanting house to get help (does everything point back to 1x11?), and equally as consistent in the fucked up ways he goes about shepherding house into said help.

against all odds, however, 3x07 features house relenting and practicing his own sort of unconditional love, both of which involve an interesting adjustment of his beliefs over assisted suicide (3x03). when gabriel asks his ultimate question - why did house become a doctor? - i think house's answer is hedging around the much larger point i will always try to make about his career choice. he's too embarrassed to admit it, but his doctoring implies a love for humanity (one that's pretty damn unconditional!), and he's willing to help gabriel kill himself to save his son. his belief in the greater good, the preservation of life, supersedes one of his strongest convictions that suicide indicates failure.

house relents to wilson once he and gabriel decide that the only way to save kyle is to "kill" gabriel for his heart. when wilson protests, house says: "maybe i don't want to push this till it breaks." here, he accounts for those changing "conditions." though they may shift and change, especially when someone as turbulent as house is involved, shielding wilson from those conditions surely counts for something.

in the end, house's version of unconditional love is very in-line with gabriel's - they can only practice it in private, under the cover of loneliness. gabriel has no idea what he would say to kyle in these last moments, just like house has no idea how to return all that wilson (and even the fellows) have done for him. all house can do is remove wilson from the situation. i think this fits with the idea that house struggles with unconditional love because he doesn't think he deserves it. that need is almost an embarrassment or weakness on his part, and wilson's threat threw a spotlight on that weakness.

additionally, 3x07 inverted 2x19's "functional vampire" concept so well. house md (specifically doris egan!!) has converted wilson's toxic need for neediness into a pillar that house needs to survive, forever challenging not just our sympathy for house, but our otherwise rigid definitions of good/bad that characters like cameron forever grapple with (sidebar: this is why "vampire empire" by big thief fits both house and wilson at different points in the show; i think about this often lol). i talked about how we had yet to understand house's need for wilson, the need that wilson responds to throughout season 2, and i'm starting to really appreciate how we learned about wilson's side first - a fakeout before getting to the meat of what it means to be house's closest friend.

a quick note on the visuals of 3x07 - when the trio rounds out their trip without finding the hoagie, gabriel draws the car to a stop near a museum called "the house of wax," whose slogan is "seeing is believing." i LOVE this detail because it implicates 3x07's themes of crime and devotion. tritter's investigation relies on exposure and catching house in the act; the fellows see house pop vicodin all day, every day, but have to downplay/deny this.

"house of wax," meanwhile, implies both house's facade - having it all together, a functional addict, unbothered by tritter's threats, etc. - as well as his inevitable collapse. this is perfectly in line with wilson's reference to icarus in 3x02. again, my apologism never fails; house's wings really seem like they're about to melt!

next, i want to talk about a concept that i'm seeing - a commitment ritual between house and wilson (thus far; this may extend to other characters later on). in keeping with the "intricate rituals" of it all, wilson actually subverts his propensity for (HETEROSEXUAL!) infidelity to cover for house. after pretty inexplicably snatching house's cane on his way out of the assisted suicide, we see wilson in the hotel casino with an immediate pit in our stomachs because he's making a move on a married woman who has 3 kids. yet RSL's fleeting "oh boy" expression tips us off that this may be more than wilson on his usual cheater-extraordinaire grind:

the ritual in question is building an alibi for house wrapped in the guise of a potential sexual encounter. he even brings house's sexual exploits into this scheme by asking the woman if she's interested in swinging...with "house." this is such a rare moment of willing embarrassment for wilson, who reacts very poorly to public shame. all of this combined with the exchange of money (to a man) to conceal house's latest crime within the faux-sexual encounter is A Lot, and i love it.

additionally, house md has imbued a lot of meaning behind the act of taking/receiving house's cane. the fellows have each handed it off to house after moments of heightened stress, and tritter has deprived him of it in 3x06 as a means of showing off his power. that wilson takes the cane in a way that's helpful/benevolent - reinforcing house's alibi - showcases that equality between them.

finally, though it feels small, the presence of wilson's love-language in 3x07 stuck out to me this time. superficially, it's hilarious that the unwitting participant in this roadtrip-suicide-organ donation scheme is the one desperately trying to grant the dying man his last wishes (very oncologist of him). but i like how house calls him out on this secondhand obsession with the hoagie; it meant so much to wilson, despite how superfluous it was, solely because it meant so much to gabriel.

house says that wilson "moved heaven and earth" to get gabriel that hoagie because wilson's need to be needed trumps everything else; his willingness to give into house's addiction reiterates his identity as "a functional vampire." this would all be true (and is, to a point) if the conversation weren't interrupted by the revelation that wilson's bank accounts have been frozen as part of tritter's investigation, and that the only way to regain access is to submit to tritter's demands.

house. i'm going to hold your hand when i say this. no one on earth would enact this kind of commitment to you just because it served their own needs. you are receiving unconditional love, which is why you can't apologize for anything, because you can't admit that that kind of love even exists in the first place.

i really like the association of food with vicodin because it characterizes house's presence in wilson's life (and wilson's way of engaging with him) as consumption. house takes wilson's food and, by extension, his vicodin, which physically and mentally sustain him, just like wilson's commitment do. it begs the question: "who's the vampire now?" there's a post out there that's about how wilson's return to house is a form of self harm, and i think that's apt here.

because what does wilson do to round out the episode? he tells house that dinner is on him. okay. sure. whatever.

i have no complaints. no critiques. no qualms. i love being so decidedly sure that this is my favorite show, especially when episodes like this one come around that just rock my world. the end!!

#i’m actually putting this one on main bc i’m so excited by the recap and by the episode itself!#and hello larger audience of 12 years #if you’re interested in the 2000s medical drama house md #i have been doing this massive project over yonder on my side blog :)#house md

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