Imagine a lucrative profession that is rewarding financially, but ends up costing you some dose of personal fulfillment. What if one day your investment in your profession causes you to be isolated to a point where, through some tragedy or natural cause, you die alone? Would you trade in the financial gain and success for the rewards of a meaningful relationship then?
These are just some of the questions I think characters began to ask themselves in this week’s episode. With ghosts of the past echoing through, I did find a connection between this week’s patient of the week, Burt, and House. Plus, I believe Masters and Chase also gave fans an insight into what I believed to be the theme of this episode…the greater fulfillment of an enriching personal life.
Let me work backwards this week and begin with Masters and Chase. Like House’s habit of needing to be right, Masters has the habit of always wanting to be truthful. It’s a great quality, don’t get me wrong. However, when it comes to patient care, that bedside manner isn’t going to be one hundred percent beneficial. This is something Masters begins to realize as the story progresses. Because of her push for the truth, after the team finds out about his secret life, the husband tells his wife the truth and she gets angry. But the icing on the cake comes when she found out the doctors knew about his secret life before she did. She then refuses to comfort him anymore and leaves him. Masters still wants to tell the patient that his wife isn’t coming back but thankfully Chase reminds her that this isn’t the time to throw the truth out there, especially when they are dealing with a very sick patient. The truth was the last thing he needed to hear. After the patient’s condition worsens and he falls in a coma, Masters is commissioned by House to ask the wife for consent for radiation treatment. Knowing how dire this situation is, she confesses to Chase about her own personal relationship connection issue. Because she was so invested in her studies, she chose to put friendships and relationships on hold, because she figured she still had time Now, she begins to wonder….how can she ever be a good doctor and relate to patients on a personal level if she’s lacking in her own establishment of personal relationships. The lesson Chase passed along to her is that sometimes hope is better than the brutal truth at least when it involves patients and their loved ones. Yet, I think Chase could have been giving her a message too…be hopeful and only face the brutal truth in your own life when it is necessary. Sometimes one can help the other.
In the course of the episode, as Chase was mocking Masters for not having anyone, Masters was on Chase’s case for his lack of respect for women and his arrogance in jumping from one meaningless relationship to the next. It may be great that Chase can get any woman he wants, but is he getting any personal fulfillment from it? I think for Chase there is still some emptiness in the aftermath of his divorce from Cameron. All he has right now is his job and a bevy of women, but what else does he have in his life? Where is the reward? Where is the feeling of completeness? For as much as Chase brought forth the idea of hope, I question whether he has lost his. From his perspective, he knows how much the brutal truth can hurt or how much a delay of confessing the truth hinders a relationship. Because of Cameron’s altruistic ways, Chase’s reluctant confession to her that he in essence killed Dibala was a cause of great distress for him. And it resulted in Cameron questioning his honesty and faithfulness. These scars that I’m sure he still bares seem to be manifesting themselves in his newfound playboy persona. However, as fans have come to understand, this is not exactly who Chase is. His playboy attitude has caused him to withdraw from who he truly is and has made him appear to be nothing more than a womanizer to a woman of intellect. I think understanding Masters’ fears and her desire to develop personal relationships, put things back into perspective for him. Maybe Chase was on this protest of meaningful relationships, because his heart had been broken when he invested so much in it. Yet, seeing the difficulty someone else was having maybe helped him see that on some level he wasn’t alone. Masters’ pursuit of study and Chase’s bed hopping ways were not helping them fill the void of connection in their lives. As a result, their priorities changed I think.
Now we get into what I thought was the best parallel of past and present….our patient of the week and House. If you look closely at the life of Burt, the patient, you may notice how it resembles the idea of House’s life previously. Here was a guy who worked for a real estate company until he hit hard times in the recession. Rather than waiting it out, he maxed out his credit cards, took a double mortgage out on his house and sold all of his and his wife’s investments. To top it all off, he didn’t tell his wife about any of it. He just led her to believe that things were normal while he was out doing a bevy of janitorial jobs to pay the bills. When aches and pains set in from his job, he hid them with Vicodin. Otherwise, his wife would know something was wrong. He basically hid his pain and his embarrassment from her. At one point, Burt asks Chase if he ever did anything in a relationship he wished he could take back which seems to illustrate his feelings of guilt. When Burt finally decides to come clean to his wife, she leaves him. Masters was correct in telling the wife that Burt was only trying to protect her from the truth, but in reality all he did was hurt her, make her angry and “stupid” in her eyes. His lack of trust in her was an insult to the point when she refused to worry about him anymore. It wasn’t until he was dying and in a coma that she came back to his bedside. In a heartbreaking moment she tells him she’s pregnant and that she loves him unaware that he cannot hear her. Then tragedy strikes and he dies with the last emotion of loneliness in his heart. He never knew she forgave him and all hope for a happy ending was destroyed.
If we take a time machine back to season five, we see how House himself hit hard times in his personal life with the indirect death of Amber, the death of his father and the suicide of Kutner. House’s investment in the puzzle was being clouded by depression and an increase of pain in his leg due to emotional distress. Rather than confess to Cuddy what was going on with him mentally and emotionally, he hid the truth perhaps out of embarrassment. Her star diagnostician was collapsing. Oblivious to what was going on with House, she is blindsided when he collapses in her office and the truth of his delusions rear their ugly head before her. Perhaps, like Burt’s wife, this is what led her to feel hurt, angry and stupid. Therefore, unable to believe that he could trust her, she throws in the towel and refuses to worry about him anymore. But like Burt’s wife, tragedy struck and Cuddy found her way back to House again. All it took was House’s honesty, raw emotion and the death of young girl to see that House found himself again. For House, I’m sure the very act of hiding the truth was something he wished he could have taken back along with the many times he hurt her just like our patient of the week. But at least at the end of season six, hope was restored for House.
Now, we venture into the present day. For years, House’s high came from the Vicodin and the puzzle. But now, House’s high seems to be the very feeling of happiness and love. When Burt dies, we find House pondering what’s worth more to him saving lives or maintaining his happiness? He provides Wilson with three cases this season where lives were lost. At first, I was like many fans and thought he was going to go and end his relationship with Cuddy, because of his life versus death dilemma. Yet, on a second viewing, I began to realize that House may have been telling us more than what appeared on the surface of the conversation with Wilson. Although he was drunk, he was thinking clearly in spite of Wilson’s assessment of him. Twice House was accused of selfish thinking based on “experience” by Foreman and Wilson even though House argued to the contrary. Keep this in mind when you think of the scene in the bar. After House confesses to Wilson that his relationship with Cuddy is a “distraction” and has made him a crappy doctor, he pauses for a moment and asks how Cuddy is. Hearing that she is worried and upset with him, House says he has to tell her the truth. But what “truth” was he referring to exactly? House had every intention of attending that dinner. Do fans think that he would seriously want to miss the board freaking out over his mariachi band? My feeling is that the truth to which House was referring was the reason why he disappeared on her and to let her know that it wasn’t intentional. That doesn’t mean that I don’t think he seriously considered what was worth more to him…the medicine or his relationship. But I think he realized that patients do die. He probably came to the realization that being able to talk about the loss with someone rather than allowing the failure to fester and move on was worth more to him. He has someone to go to that can comfort him and that is his fulfillment. He chose to be the man with Cuddy and not just the man with the answers. Yet, I think he wondered if she would still love him even if he weren’t her star diagnostician anymore since that is what defined him. I think this is why he felt the need to tell her that being in love and happy makes him a worse doctor with the silent question of “are you okay with that?” looming.
Also, I had the feeling that Cuddy may have been misunderstood as well. Again, dialogue for me was the key. Notice what she says to House when he comes knocking at her door. She’s irritated that he “disappeared” on her and that he wasn’t answering his cell phone. She made no mention directly of the dinner. Think about it for a second. Someone you love is supposed to be home or somewhere at a certain time and that person never shows up. What do you do? You call them to make sure they are okay. How do you feel when they aren’t answering? Worried. Scared. House didn’t screw up by not coming. He screwed up by not calling or telling her the truth of what was going on in his head. When he was honest with her about his inner debate of love versus lives, I think she understood that he didn’t brush her off intentionally. He was struggling with an issue. That’s why he was drunk and got lost for awhile. When he tells her that he chooses her and that he always will putting his head on her lap, I think that look in her eyes was acknowledgement of his inner battle. Plus, she may have even been a bit relieved that her fear of him breaking things off with her was squashed by his confession. She understands that House has always selected medicine over happiness. They very fact that she meant more than that had to hit her hard as well. Also, in that moment, I think the anger disappeared and she was more relieved that he was safe, because anything could have happened to him. That road had already been crossed at the end of season four.
I know many fans probably weren’t satisfied with House’s choice. I ask those fans, what means more to you personally…personal fulfillment or professional? What reaps the most rewards? Does it feel better to share good and bad days with someone or have no one with whom you can share them? I think these were the issues faced by my chosen characters. Personally, I enjoy being a success at my profession but feel complete being able to share my heartache and triumphs with people close to me. If I didn’t have anyone, these emotions would be bottled up inside and I would nowhere to turn.
What are your feelings? I’d love to know. Please feel free to include your thoughts in the comments section.
Until next week, which is looking like a phenomenal episode, this has been Diagnosing House.
Thanks for reading and we’ll see you next week!
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