Spoilers for last night's "House" coming up just as soon as I get my best friend to oversee this blog entry...Okay, that's two really strong episodes in a row. I'm just skeptical about the bigger picture.
Hugh Laurie, Robert Sean Leonard, Lisa Edelstein and Anne Dudek were all terrific as House realized he was so far down the rabbit hole that he had no choice but to admit his weakness to his closest friends. The case was interesting; it was nice to see the team solve the problem without House, and the last few episodes have made much better use of Chase as the one guy in the hospital who has no problem saying no to House.
But what, ultimately, are the implications of House's Vicodin detox? The Amber hallucination may have gone away, but the leg pain will be worse than ever, and House is enough of an addictive personality that I can see him going back to the pills (albeit maybe in smaller doses) just as easily as the show abandoned his various cures for the pain in the past within an episode or three.
"House" as a series has a mixed track record about major change. The disbanding of the original team took, though it's taken the writers nearly two seasons to figure out what to do with Chase and Cameron. None of House's major life changes or epiphanies ever stick, however, and David Shore has been on record as saying he doesn't believe House can really change.
And if that's the case, why are we bothering to play around with this? Just to finally put House and Cuddy together romantically for a while? I like the two actors together -- especially in an episode like this where Cuddy isn't acting like a lovestruck middle schooler -- but if I'm just waiting for the other shoe to drop, I can't really invest in it.
I know some of you will say -- because you've said it before in the last few weeks -- that Shore can't win: if he doesn't change anything, he's accused of predictability, and if he does, we all assume it's a fake-out. But those accusations and assumptions also come from our knowledge of what the show's done before. If they had spent more time on the ketamine cure, for instance, I'd have more faith in this storyline's long-term viability. But they abandoned the idea as soon as it was expedient, and so I'm skeptical.
Again, I don't want to take anything away from "Under My Skin" itself. I'm just going to be casting a very wary eye as I watch next week's season finale.
What did everybody else think?
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