House Series Finale

I've been watching House since about 2005 or 2006 or so.

It's a show about an asshole doctor who is really good at solving medical problems.  There's some other doctors there, supposedly he works at a teaching hospital, but honestly, they shouldn't be learning from him.  You can't learn smarts.  House is a genius, so his ability to solve problems is inherent.  Other doctors may be good doctors, but it's inherently impossible for House to teach them to be geniuses because they don't already have it in them.  And if they do, then he doesn't have anything to teach them, because he's a bad teacher.  He's not trying to teach them to be better doctors, he's trying to teach them to be geniuses, to solve problems like he can, and they can't.  Simply because they are not like him.  Which characters have reminded him of throughout the entire series.  Sure, everyone has their moments, and maybe the doctors have learned to reach for solutions to problems instead of just giving up, but they should already know that.

So the show's been on 8 years.  He's basically solved just about every medical problem he's been presented with.  He's had numerous brushes with dead.  Saved his friend's lives countless times.  And besides all that, he's a basket case.  He's mentally unstable, he's an ex-convict, he's undergoing psychiatric counseling, he's a drug addict, he hallucinates.  He's an abrasive, mean, cruel asshole who thinks everyone lies and is a general misanthrope.  And you forgive him all that because he saves people's lives.

I suppose in a way, House is every doctor.  They are elitist pricks who try to shove pills down your throat and ignore your opinions about your own body because they think they know better.  And you tolerate them because supposedly, they save people's lives.  Honestly, it makes me wonder what the numbers are.  Do they save more people that they kill?  Did House?  You just never know.

I wasn't liking the series finale.  I honestly thought they should fast forward 5 months to house getting out of jail, show wilson dying, and having house be there at the end.  I think they even alluded to that in last week's episode.  Wilson is house's best friend, by the way, played by robert sean leonard, I think his name is.  We learned several episodes ago that wilson has inoperable cancer and will die in about 5 or 6 months.  I only know who he is because he was in "My best friend is a vampire." which was an excellent movie that came out many years back.  okay, maybe it wasn't an excellent movie, but having seen thousands of monster movies and disliking vampires as much as I do, I liked that vampire movie, so that says a lot.  Anyway, I wasn't liking the series finale because they were spending way too much time doing flashbacks to what supposedly happened before the series start.  I really don't like flashbacks.  And then House was hallucinating through half the episode, which I don't like either.  I know technically they are only supposed to be his own thoughts talking back to him, but anyone's who's watched the show knows his own mind plays tricks on him sometimes so you just never know whether what you are watching is real or not, and I hate that about movies and TV shows.  There's nothing more annoying than getting to the end of a long movie or a long series and having them go "and it was all just in his head, none of that actually ever happened."  Totally blows.  plus, with all the flashbacks, it was hard to tell what was happening in the now, and then what happened back then, and what was the future, it was just all over the place.

Of course, they did pull a fast one on me there.  The show's going along and I figure out the ending.  Then they show something and I think "oh, ok, maybe I was wrong."  I have been wrong before, it happens.  I am not afraid to admit it.  Only this time, I wasn't.  Spoilers...

House dies at the end.  In a fire in a collapsing building.  When it was collapsing, I knew he wasn't going to be dead.  I knew that wasn't how they would end it.  And when they pulled a covered body out a building without showing house's face, i was pretty sure.  And then the medical examiner confirmed it was his body, which threw me off.  So then everyone is at House's funeral and Wilson gets a text from house telling him to shut up.  Turns out house made it out of the back of the burning building and now has plenty of free time to hang out with wilson during his last 5 months of life.  In case you don't know, house was going back to jail for public vandalism or something because he was on parole and violated his parole and had to finish out his sentence, which meant he'd miss wilson's last 5 months of life.  They'd been friends for 20 years, so that would have just sucked.

So House fakes his own death, and he and wilson take off on a motorcycle tour of the country.  And house, during all the hallucinating he was going through in the burning building (probably while high on heroin, I'm guessing) decides to change and become a better person.  So pretty much in the last few minutes of the series, they save House's life (wilson's pretty much a goner, so there's no hope for him) but he gets to start over completely.  I don't know if he'd go back to his old life after wilson's death or just pick up as a doctor somewhere else, and they never show that, so we have no way of knowing, but House's decision to be a better person is supposedly all he really needed.  I assume from the little bits and pieces that they show that he'll eventually return to his old life after wilson goes.

End spoilers.  This show was a departure for me.  I don't typically like medical dramas.  Not since Quincy, ME, back in the 70's, anyway.  It's funny, my mom was watching this old game show on the game show network last week, they had Jack Klugman as one of the celebrities and the solution the normal folks were trying to solve for big cash prizes was "Quincy ME."  Jack klugman, in case you don't know, starred in Quincy ME, and none of the normal folk could guess the solution, despite Jack Klugman knowing it, which was hilarious.  At the end of the puzzle he had to correctly guess his own show's name just to win the money for the contestant.  I laughed.  HE turned to the show's host and said "And you wonder why i say I'll be in the unemployment line."  Funny jack!  So true if they couldn't even remember the name of his show while he was the celebrity guest.  Too funny.  But anyway, I only started watching House because one of my ex-bosses suggested it.

The show started in 2004, when I started work at my last job, and I have been out of work just over a year now, and the show is over.  I guess the ends of all these series and their finales, like the House finale, is a suggestion that maybe I am on the cusp of a new stage in my life, like House is.  I'd certainly like to think so.  It's not so much the last stages weren't so great, because pretty much all I've ever done was have fun (and I'm going to continue to do so), but maybe I can have fun in different ways now.  Less poor ways.  lol  I once took a questionnaire to determine how in touch I was with my "inner child" as they used to call it.  Turns out, I AM my inner child.  We are one.  I may be 42, but I continue to look at every day as a new adventure, and i don't care if i live to be 142 (or more) but I'll still enjoy having as much fun in every day as possible.  Some days, that may not be a ton of fun (like when i actually have a job to go to), but there's always another day to have fun!  Until there isn't, of course.

In preparation for that possibility, I've told my nephews to put on my tombstone as my famous last words: "Relax!  I got this!"  Always leave them laughing, I think Leslie Neilsen said.  That's assuming I don't outlive my nephews.  I've done so much stupid shit in my life that I think my nephews could laugh about it for a thousand years.  And since I'm not dead yet, there's more coming!  Oh, the hilarity!

As an aside, there was a House retrospective done by Hugh Laurie (who plays House) before the series finale.  I knew he was english, but I was completely surprised by how his voice was accented when he wasn't playing House.  He didn't sound anything like him.  I'm not sure how that's possible, but I guess that's why it surprised me.  The clipped english didn't even remotely remind me of House's speech patterns, which I guess means Hugh Laurie is a hell of an actor.  Props, Hugh!  Well done on the american accent.