Fill me in, please!!! SPOILERS for tonight's and upcoming eps

[flywoman]

So of course I have to wait for the episode to come up next week, but my understanding from reading comments is that Cuddy and House had various weird dreams about their relationship and/or life after it, House couldn't stand to face his fears about Cuddy without getting back on Vicodin, Cuddy broke up with him for it, and next week's promo suggests that Depressed!House is going to jump off a building???

And what are the titles of the next two episodes? "Fall From Grace" and "The Dig"? Sounds really ominous. Unless Cuddy is just going to die really quickly from her totally unexpected and ridiculous metastatic cancer.

Comments

[cuddyclothes.livejournal.com]

How much info do you want?

[flywoman.livejournal.com]

As much as you're willing to give. I've been reading all of the spoilers and comments on house_wilson.

[stenveny.livejournal.com]

She did not have cancer, but House was terrified that she did, and after several attempts to deny/deflect his terror, he showed up in her hospital room in time to support her before and after diagnostic surgery. She realized after the fact that he had taken Vicodin in order to fortify himself (her dreams were trying to send her the message that he couldn't deal with such stress without the aid of narcotics), confronted him and accused him of spending his life trying to avoid pain, and left him. At which point he begged her not to go, and then relapsed for realz.

The promos for next week's episode show a stoned House, living for some reason in what appears to be a hotel room (what the hell happened to his apartment?) and insisting that he is fine. Masters tells him that his judgment is impaired, and Cuddy is arguing with Wilson that she can't fix (House's) problem; she *is* his problem. There's a glimpse of House standing on the (hotel? rehab center? wtf?) balcony railing, about three stories up, and smiling. The spoilers mention that House has some "business away from the hospital, during the episode which I assume means drug treatment or pain management appointments, but for all I know at the rate we're going could mean he's joining the foreign legion.

I was not fond of Wilson in this episode. Foreman was more openly concerned about House than Wilson, who was imo insufferably self-righteous. YMMV there.

I liked it. The pacing was kind of choppy, but the conflict was credible, dream/dance sequences were well done, Chase was fantastic, and the POTW storyline featured an ethically conflicted, empathetic Taub. And of course, Hugh Laurie knocked it out of the park.

[flywoman.livejournal.com]

What, she didn't have cancer after all? Thank you, I sure didn't manage to get that from the comments!

When you say he only relapsed for realz after she broke up with him, you mean that he had taken the Vicodin already, but... just a little bit?

I've actually been looking forward to this episode A LOT without knowing anything about the denouement. I have no doubt that HL did a fantastic job, and I'm excited to hear that my boy Chase was fantastic too.

[stenveny.livejournal.com]

He had taken, he tells her, one tab, just to get him through the crisis. The ep ends with him on his bathroom floor, throwing back two vicodin.

My question is, if he's back on it for good, who's his new prescribing physician? His stash can't last forever -- is Wilson back to writing his scrips, or does he have a pain management doc, or what?

[flywoman.livejournal.com]

Good point, unless they're the pills he took off last week's patient. If Wilson did write a scrip for him, I'll be really bummed.

[flywoman.livejournal.com]

I froze the frame on the vial, and it's from the PPTH pharmacy, prescribed to him, but there's no other name on it.

[stenveny.livejournal.com]

Interesting. I dont suppose he bypassed the DEA requirements somehow and self-presecribed, or forged a prescription?

[flywoman.livejournal.com]

I should say, there could well have been a name, but we aren't able to see the other side of the label (where Wilson's name was on Cuddy's sleeping pills).

[deelaundry.livejournal.com]

Wilson was Cassandra in this ep, foretelling of doom and not believed.

I disagree that he was self-righteous in this ep (we've seen him be that before, for sure). He wasn't holding himself up as a better example; he was simply telling House what he had to do. And he knew House could do it, because House did it for Wilson. Wilson escorting House into Cuddy's patient room would have been just as much a crutch as vicodin. House needed to be able to take that step by himself, and he couldn't. It's horribly sad.

[flywoman.livejournal.com]

So he could do it for Wilson but not for Cuddy? What are we supposed to make of that?

[stenveny.livejournal.com]

Good question. He was convinced that if Wilson died, he'd be alone -- at the time, Cuddy wasn't in his life -- and he was able to handle it sober. I don't think the threat of losing Cuddy is supposed to be that much more crushing; more likely, her condition was more dire than Wilson's. She was much more likely to die of metastatic disease (they thought she had mets to her lung) than Wilson was to die of complications from a living organ donation.

[deelaundry.livejournal.com]

I agree with you. (Except, Cuddy was in House's life, and if something had happened to Wilson, I'm convinced she would've been there for House... but House probably didn't consider that, so it's moot. Anyway.) I agree with you that Cuddy had a much higher likelihood of dying and therefore it was more difficult for House. It's also easier for House -- and most people -- to handle a reasonably predictable outcome, as there was when Wilson was donating his liver, than an uncertain outcome, which was what Cuddy faced.

There's also the problem I've had with the House/Cuddy romance the whole season: that it's not based on a firm foundation of friendship and mutual interests. The show could've built it that way, and didn't. A twenty-year friendship that had already withstood trials was able to withstand Tritter, Amber's death and Wilson's surgery. A romance that wasn't built on mutual respect couldn't withstand a health scare. It's very sad. I feel awful for House and awful for Cuddy.

[flywoman.livejournal.com]

It is sad, but inevitable as written. They've been emphasizing from the beginning that they didn't have much in common, that Cuddy expected House to be other than he was, and that House basically has been clinging to her as an alternative to the drugs he would have swallowed if she hadn't shown up just in time. It was just a question of when and how, not if, it would end. Although I'm also feeling a bit jerked around by the way in which the writers chose to handle it.

[stenveny.livejournal.com]

Yes, ideally, he would have become (or realized that he was) strong enough, by season's end, to break up with her --whether he chose to, or not -- which would have brought the relationship out of the "rescue" mode from "Help Me" to a more equal footing, with both parties equally invested and equally capable (and equally stubborn.) But addiction is a process of relapse and recovery rinse and repeat, and relationships between saviors/save-ees rarely end well, so I guess this resolution was more realistic.

And this way, of course, House gets to be right. He predicted all along that it wouldn't last.

[flywoman.livejournal.com]

I would have liked to see them decide, as equal adults, that they were incompatible as long-term partners because of who they were and what they needed. But given the way the relationship started, I guess it makes sense that the writers went the love-as-addiction route. Still, it seems ridiculous that Cuddy would suddenly decide to give up on him because her drug addict boyfriend slipped up just once when he was afraid for her life.

Maybe her nightmare about him and Wilson bringing up Rachel was just too terrifying.

[stenveny.livejournal.com]

I'll go one step further, the show writers have gone to great lengths this season to demonstrate an *absence* of respect between these two very strong, independent characters, who at times haven't been very respectable -- Cuddy's been whiny and manipulative and House has been childish. It could be argued that these are characteristics they have both always had, but not to the same degree or disastrous effect. About the time "Pox" aired, I started to wonder what they saw in each other in the first place, and by "Two Stories" I barely recognized either of them.

[flywoman.livejournal.com]

Ah, see, I have been struck by these aspects of their dynamic for a long time - even wrote a fic about it, A Valiant Woman. They had great chemistry, but they also seemed to bring out the worst in each other. It might have been different if Cuddy weren't his boss, but I think her need for power and his for freedom are fundamentally incompatible.

[stenveny.livejournal.com]

And *that* would have been a much more interesting reason to explore, and ultimately end, the onscreen relationship. Instead we have a man fearful for 14 episodes that his girlfriend will leave him, and in episode 15, she does. Missed opportunity.

[pgrabia.livejournal.com]

I think that Wilson knew House could do it ordinarily, but i don't think Wilson understands just how much Cuddy has beaten him down with her manipulations and impossible-to-meet expectations. I think House was on the edge already so he didn't have the same strength and stability that he had when Wilson went under the knife.

I think Wilson was genuinely concerned about House and what would happen if he and Cuddy broke up. He knew there would be pieces and didn't want to have to pick them up--because he didn't want House to fall to pieces in the first place.

[deelaundry.livejournal.com]

Agree with your second paragraph wholeheartedly.

I have a different perspective on Cuddy, though. I think House has spent this season running in circles based on what he thought Cuddy's wants were. He put that pressure on himself. There have been one or two things that she's insisted on that someone else might not -- the masseuse comes to mind -- but as Wilson said, on some things you have to compromise. House isn't very good at compromise, at all. Which is why it was funny/sad to see him try in an overexaggerated manner to do so early in the season.

No, I don't think House was actually happy with Cuddy, in a long-term, sustainable sense. But I also don't think Cuddy was a puppet-master pulling his strings. I think she was trying her best to have a good relationship.

[fleurione.livejournal.com]

There's a glimpse of House standing on the (hotel? rehab center? wtf?) balcony railing, about three stories up, and smiling.
i just watched the promo, and if i am not mistaken there is a wilson in the corner, looking up - and that's when house smiles? though it's a somewhat creepy manic smile...

[cuddyclothes.livejournal.com]

Okay, the reader's digest version:
1) Cuddy has mass on kidney, might be cancer that has spread to her lungs
2) House does not show up until right before the operation
3) She discovers he's been taking Vicodin
4) She breaks up with him
5) General misery all around, except that of course she doesn't have cancer.

Wilson's in it a lot. POTW is boring.

Great dream sequences:
1) House fights team Zombie! I love Foreman!Zombie!
2) 1950s sitcom scene w/ H/C
3) 2 1/2 men sitcom w/ H/W
4) The musical number is absolutely fucking awesome (it's Cuddy's surgery dream, and it makes perfect sense AND it shows that Hugh Laurie can do anything).

[flywoman.livejournal.com]

WILSON! And I'm really looking forward to seeing the (remaining) dream sequences.

And she doesn't have cancer. WTF. So, um, "Fall from Grace" and "The Dig" probably DON'T refer to Cuddy then. And yet we know we're going to be at Arlene's house at some point. Do you think they're still going to try to pull off a wedding, or is this it for their relationship??

[stenveny.livejournal.com]

DS has said that he won't jerk the audience around with repeated breakup/reconciliation without very good reason, so I think this is it.

But what he considers very good reason probably differs from my definition.

I'm feeling just a little bit jerked around, but I'll get over it.

[deelaundry.livejournal.com]

POTW is kind of boring, although I liked the Taub ruminations about the patient. We also got to see Magic-Schoolbus-Cam again! (When they show recreations of what's happened inside the patient's body.)

[flywoman.livejournal.com]

Cool, I've been missing that magic cam a lot!

[pgrabia.livejournal.com]

He was so sexy in top hat and tails singing and dancing. Shame they couldn't have shown Wilson singing as well. Oh well. It was a good number, though it's significance for what was going on still escapes me.

[flywoman.livejournal.com]

I think it foreshadows House's relapse and their break-up ("Judgment Day").

[stenveny.livejournal.com]

I didn't realize until I read the blogcritic's review what that "candy" epiphany was about. In each of Cuddy's dream sequences, House had candy -- a candy cane, a lollipop, whatever it was he was chewing in the western sequence, bubble gum in the sitcom. Her subconscious knew she was involved with an addict under stress. That's sufficiently fantastic writing to make up for "unplanned parenthood" and "two stories."

[flywoman.livejournal.com]

I didn't realize until I read the blogcritic's review what that "candy" epiphany was about.

Yes - she gets the epiphany about it when her sister mentions that Rachel calls her sleeping pills "candy."*

That's sufficiently fantastic writing to make up for "unplanned parenthood" and "two stories."

I'm not sure that the most fantastic writing in the world could make up for "Two Stories."

*FINALLY was given a link to a site that let me watch the ep.

[yarroway.livejournal.com]

Wasn't it just last week that he showed up at her place drunk and passed out in her lap? That'd be a big red flag for me.

[barefootpuddles.livejournal.com]

It was a good number, though it's significance for what was going on still escapes me.

It was telling Cuddy that House was stoned.

Lyrics at the beginning:

Forget your troubles come on get happy, you better chase all your cares away...

House did that with vicodin.

[flywoman.livejournal.com]

What totally kills me is that over on the Cuddy comms pre-episode, they were interpreting these lyrics as a good thing.

[yarroway.livejournal.com]

Flywoman, I hope you don't mind if I ask a couple questions too.

If she didn't have cancer, what was wrong with Cuddy?

Was someone using sleeping pills and calling them candy?

And can someone please tell me why Wilson's getting a bit of grief?

[flywoman.livejournal.com]

It was a benign tumor. She'll be fine.

Cuddy was using sleeping pills, and her sister mentioned that Rachel called them candy, which led to her epiphany that House eating candy in her dreams meant that he was going to resort to drugs to cope with his fears of losing her.

As far as I can tell, Wilson is getting grief because he didn't hunt House down when he went AWOL at one point in the episode, and he expressed his desire (to Foreman) not to have to pick up the pieces when Huddy imploded due to his friend's inability to man up and be with Cuddy in her time of need.

[yarroway.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

Kind of sad that Cuddy and House both have to drug themselves. I've never thought this relationship was good for either of them. Hopefully she'll relax once she's single again. Ironically enough, sleeping pills are pretty habit forming.