Unfortunately, they don’t go away permanently. More always seem to sprout up someplace else. But for every weed that grows in our lives, another beautiful flower blooms to overshadow it. A great example of this appeared in this week’s episode House., where House and 13 and the POTW dug down deep to find the flowers among the weeds.
There were actually two patients’ of the week in Monday night’s episode, a husband and his wife, who was a hoarder. Apparently, her hoarding was triggered by miscarriages as a result of Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. Both got sick from the conditions the hoarding caused. In a sense, Nina (the hoarding wife) is similar metaphorically to House. House may not physically collect things but he mentally collects them. It almost reminds me in a way of this season’s “You Must Remember This.” Among the memories and emotions House collects, not many are good. To use a term Chase uses in the episode they are, in a sense, “rubbish.” Very rarely does House tend to focus on the positive aspects of his life. He collects the junk of bad memories and emotions until it overshadows the beauty beneath his withered soul.
The husband mentions to Masters that to some people the junk that his wife collects appears to be just that….junk. Yet, she sees the beauty of things that may otherwise seem repulsive to anyone else, mainly due to the fact that each thing offers something unique with a story to go along with it. The husband offers this beautifully articulate description of his wife’s collection that reminds me very much of House and his life.
“To everyone else the world is full of junk, meaningless, ugly, broken things. But to Nina, every shape, every color, every texture, smell, they all tell a story. They’re all worth treasuring. I wouldn’t wish what she has on anyone. But every now and then I get a glimpse of what she sees. It helps.”
The battles House has dealt with emotionally are probably in his view junk. I have no doubt that House sees himself as meaningless, ugly and broken. Look at how many times he was willing to die rather than live through pain physically and emotionally. The one aspect of House’s life, that he treasures among the junk, are probably his patients and his experiences with them that perhaps have taught him a little about himself. As we’ve seen from the last seven seasons, House’s patients have revealed some of House’s personal layers. Additionally, some of the people House has encountered in his life have also given us layers of House and brought out unexpected areas of his personality. These people were able to display some of the beauty underneath House’s misanthropic personality. As a result, there are others who see the humanistic side to him and embrace it, but wouldn’t wish his problems on themselves. To be able to sift through the very essence of House’s accumulation of misery and heartache one would need a flashlight, a compass, a good psychological dictionary and many tissues.
I would be remiss, if I didn’t mention Cuddy as one of those people who did see the beauty in House and on some level probably still does. She realized how screwed up he was when she began a relationship with him, but embraced it. Unfortunately, she didn’t stick around to see things through. The husband reminded me of Cuddy. When he discovers that his wife had been pregnant three times and miscarried, he was taken aback that she lied to him. This reminded me of the beginning of the season when House lied to Cuddy about the treatment for his patient. In both cases the issue was resolved. But something Nina said instantly struck me as to why House may have still been guarded when in a relationship with Cuddy. Nina’s husband wonders why she lied to him for nine years. Nina responds by telling him that she didn’t want to lose him to which the husband asks, “What have I ever done to make you afraid of that?”
As we know, House has trouble comforting and opening up to people. But how many times have we wondered why that is? Does it have something to do with his childhood? Did John House have such a tough reign that showing any kind of emotion or compassion was frowned upon? House has accumulated the junk of his past to a point where his disease is emotional instability. Is House afraid of telling people about his past, especially Cuddy, because he thinks they will abandon him if they discover the truth? The husband’s question to his wife may mirror House’s life in that what has Cuddy or anyone else done to give House the impression that his secrets would cause their abandonment of him.
In this episode though, House finds a bit of an ally in terms of emotional baggage when he picks up Thirteen from jail. What was interesting about House and Thirteen’s interaction is how similar in personality they were shown to be. House makes an profound statement when he takes her shopping that seems to probably echo his own fears. When he mentions how she is known by a number, his assessment is that Thirteen is afraid to show the real version of herself because she may view herself as weak. Is this why House is afraid to open up? He’s afraid that if anyone saw the real version of himself that they would view him as weak? Perhaps this is a clue as to why he doesn’t openly show his emotions and keeps them buried deep within. He doesn’t want people to view him as weak. He puts forth the arrogant, misanthropic persona as a cover for the emotional baggage he carries from his past. Maybe by doing so he thinks people won’t see him for how broken he truly is and the emotional turmoil he buries. Yet, in a few instances he let his guard down in front of Thirteen. The first time was when he told her he was Cuddy’s “weirdo” boyfriend up until two weeks prior. At first Thirteen laughed it off and didn’t believe him until she saw the pain in his eyes. This in turn led her to open up and reveal part of why she was in jail….that she had killed a man. In that open moment of vulnerability by House, Thirteen was able to be honest with him in terms of her own vulnerability.
At the spud gun competition, due to a Thirteen slip up House discovers the truth as to why Thirteen was in jail. She euthanized her Huntington’s Corea suffering brother. After she pours her heart out recalling her emotional story, she is stunned at the lack or reaction from House. He simply stands there and says nothing after she confesses her gut wrenching story to him. She didn’t care what kind of reaction she received from him as long as it was some sort of emotion. This prompts her to give House a bit of a sting by saying “No wonder Cuddy dumped you.” What she didn’t realize at the time is how true her statement was. Cuddy did break up with him as a result of his inability to take on someone else’s pain. I think the very verbalization by an outside party who knew nothing of his situation was sobering for him since, after Thirteen makes that comment, he hangs his head down, turns and walks away without a word. When he does this, I think Thirteen does realizes that House is capable of feeling something.
The final moment in which House lets his guard down is when Thirteen picks him up from jail for shooting his nemesis with a spud gun. House tells her the sheriff let him off with a warning which appalls Thirteen. She is amazed at how he always seems to get what he wants. In a serious tone, he tells her “not always” saying how on that particular day it would have been his and Cuddy’s one year anniversary. I think in that moment Thirteen understands that House really is not okay with his break up.
Even though House may have not revealed too much of his emotions during this trip with Thirteen, he does show her he cares by making a pact with her that when the time comes, he will euthanize her if she wants him to. In this instance she will not die alone, as she suspected she would, when her disease overtakes her. House probably was able to relate to that fear of dying alone. Therefore, he offers her an opportunity that he feels he will probably never have. It is tragically poetic in a sense, because he gives her the hope that he may have lost.
Aside from the emotional, there were some other similarities between House and Thirteen as well. Both have that ability to lie to shield the truth and attempt to end a conversation. Earlier the one morning House guessed that Thirteen could have been in jail because she and a man did drugs and the man died of an overdose. When House offers to make some calls to speed up the process of reinstating her medical license and offer her an opportunity to be his assistant in the meantime, Thirteen decides to offer up the lie that he guessed correctly.In this instance, she can give House the idea that he was right and get a chance to keep working at PPTH rather than serving fries without having to reveal the actual truth. Therefore the questioning by House can stop.
Initially, Thirteen is hesitant to get involved in the Spud Gun competition. However, she starts playing with House’s spud gun and her drive for science gets her pumped to try and fix House’s gun so he can beat his opponent. The thrill of the game and the prospect of outsmarting House’s nemesis are too irresistible for her to resist. How many times have we seen House use games to outsmart people in his orbit? Her scientific deductions regarding his competition become appealing to House as well, since he has someone interested in one of his crazy hobbies.
The final illustration for me in this episode in terms of House’s life, even though I felt the insertion in this particular episode was off from the overall feeling of the episode, was the last scene with Taub and his wife Rachel. Taub carries on a tryst with his ex-wife to a point where Foreman thinks Taub is taking advantage of her. Turns out that Rachel is very into the whole thing and doesn’t feel as if she is being taken advantage of. She of course feels that what they are doing is “dirty, messy and dumb.” However, she tells Taub that they tried doing everything right in their marriage and it “sucked.” Thinking about this very idea, perhaps this is where House and Cuddy messed up in their relationship. Maybe they both tried to do everything right rather than be themselves, especially House. Rather than being open and brutally honest with her, he was fearful of losing her, again like the patient of the week. Perhaps if House and Cuddy played more and got involved in the forbidden nature of their relationship, then their relationship may not have taken that turn for the worse. Who really knows at this point? But it is an interesting idea to consider and perhaps an intentional illustration by the writers of the episode.
Monday night’s episode did offer up a lesson on how shoveling though the complexities of life lead us to truth and the human condition. We tend to bury our secrets and fears deep within until someone takes out the shovel and starts throwing away the layers. One thing I did take from this episode is that I believe or hope in this case that Thirteen served as a catalyst to get House to take a look at what his lack of reaction and emotional connection does to other people. But also how just giving a small piece of himself does make a difference, which is what Cuddy was trying to tell him in “Bombshells.” Whether or not House can let go of the reasons he holds himself back to the world and the people he loves remains to be seen. Yet, it’s those very introspective glimpses that make the character of House so compelling and so mysterious. There’s always a method to the madness. Perhaps one day viewers will understand more House’s madness and why he guards his emotions.
Why do you think House holds back in terms of his emotions? Do you think it could be due to his childhood or overall past? Do you think he fears people will abandon him if they knew the truth?
As always, I’d love to hear from you, so feel free to comment away in the comments section.
In the meantime, next week’s offering is Masters’ swan song. I wonder how that will go. Until next week, this has been another edition of Diagnosing House.
Thanks for reading! We’ll see you next week!
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