I have long been a fan of "House" despite not really ever being into medical dramas. I was drawn into the series because of Hugh Laurie (best known to me at the time through the BBC's "Blackadder"), but stayed with it because I enjoyed the character immensely, found the Sherlock Holmes aspect of the show interesting (it's far more of a mystery show than a medical one), and was intrigued by the question being asked: "Is it better to have a sympathetic, kind, compassionate person who will be with you while you die or a cold, cruel, bitter person who will help you to live?" The series seemed to be dealing with the question of methodology vs. results. Does it really matter how you do something as long as you are ultimately successful, or does the method by which you achieve success matter?
That said, the series finale was on last night and I was disappointed. Spoilers below.
The episode begins with the needlessly abstract "House is talking to his hallucinations" bit they have done before in the show. I groaned, since this probably meant that the story for this final episode would be more about House's personal hang-ups and neuroses and less about House's relationships with the other characters, and it was those relationships that really needed to be resolved. We know all about how screwed up House is, what we wanted to know is would he ever get past that with the people who care about him. House making peace with himself is great, but we wanted to see him do that with others. It's called "closure." We didn't really get it.
There were some, well, let's say "issues" with the plot. Here are the ones that bother me:
1. House is in the burning building at the beginning of the episode because he has apparently gone off with his patient to shoot up heroin in an abandoned factory. This completely invalidates everything he has been doing in the lead-up episodes to the finale. Up to this point, House's primary motivation has been to A) manipulate Wilson into aggressive chemo to keep him alive longer for purely selfish reasons, and when he realizes the stupidity of that, his motives shift to B) staying with Wilson for the final 5 months he has to live. Running off to an abandoned building to shoot smack is not compatible with that. It comes entirely out of left field and feels contrived just to get him talking with dead characters in a burning building. It's lazy storytelling.
2. Why in the hell does the heroin addict patient give the address of the abandoned factory he goes off to to shoot up with House as his residence address? Does the addict actually live there? If so, since when do drug addicts provide accurate information when they are trying to scam opiates out of a hospital doctor? He seems to have given this address solely so that Wilson and Foreman can show up just in time to see House inside the burning building and watch the fire consume him. More lazy storytelling.
3. House fakes his death by "switching the dental records" with the dead addict. This raises a few questions: how? In order to do that he would have had to break into his own dentist's office, steal his dental records, find out where the dental records of the addict were, break into there, switch the records and fake the accompanying documentation to match, break back into his own dentist's office, replace his records, and do all of that without giving the police of the dentists even the slightest clue that either place had been broken into or either records tampered with while hoping to God that those were the only records, which they probably weren't. And he would have had MAYBE 24 hours to accomplish this in. LAZY storytelling.
4. House is a felon facing imminent jail time, jail time the police and House's co-workers are very aware that he is desperate to avoid at all costs. The death of such a person would immediately raise every red flag that exists for the police. Every aspect of the death would be investigated, and even if House successfully managed the amazing "Mission Impossible" level dental records switcheroo, that would not be the first thing the police would check anyway, it would be the height of the remains. Since House was a full half a head taller than the drug addict patient, the police would never have even considered that the body was his. And we know that House did not switch IDs with the body, since he somehow manages to sneak into Foreman's office at the hospital and plant his ID where Foreman can find it, letting Foreman know that House is alive. Foreman's reaction to being made aware of the faked death is....unlikely, shall we say.
5. The forensic exam of the remains was done at Princeton Plainsboro hospital...the hospital House worked at. In a suspicious death of a known felon, the examination would never be done at the hospital the supposed victim worked at. This would be a clear conflict of interest, especially since Wilson and Foreman have covered for House before, and the police are aware of this.
6. In order to successfully fake his death, House would have to walk away from everything. He would have to abandon his bank accounts, his money, his apartment, his motorcycle, his car, his stash of Vicodin, everything. If he touched any of it, every cop in New Jersey would be looking for him by breakfast. That's the first thing the police look for in a potential faked death: did any of the "victim's" stuff go missing? So House has nothing now. No resources, no money, no transportation, no Vicodin. Yet he manages to not only move freely about the area while funeral preparations are being made, but also to actually attend and witness the memorial (as proven by his perfectly timed text to Wilson). The police would have been watching that ceremony closely just in case he was stupid enough to do this. And then House is just openly sitting on Wilson's door stoop waiting for him in broad daylight. Seriously, police in New Jersey must be utterly incompetent.
7. At the end of the episode, House and Wilson ride off into the sunset on motorcycles so that Wilson can enjoy his last five months with his friend. This cross-country motorcycle trip is something House would want to do with his last five months and not something Wilson would ever want to do (Wilson has in the past been emphatic about his utter disinterest in motorcycles). This means that either House has browbeaten Wilson into spending his last months on Earth placating House (which would mean House has not changed in the slightest, has learned nothing, and is still a massively insensitive prick), or Wilson has had a complete personality alteration.
8. In order to do the trip in the first place, Wilson would have had to buy two (obviously new) motorcycles since House could not even go near his and has no resources to acquire one himself. The police would notice the best friend of the supposedly dead motorcycle nut buying two new bikes and disappearing.
9. It is strongly implied that when Wilson's cancer gets "too bad," House has agreed to help him end his life. Is this really in character with House?
10. The only reason for the motorcycle trip seems to be that the writers wanted a classic, cliche-ridden "riding off into the sunset" ending. LAZY LAZY LAZY writing.
