house_wilson_ghc | NOT FEELING THE H/W LOVE

Well, watched "Top Secret" a couple of times, feeling bummed.

WARNING! Long rambling dissertation under the LJ cut! Possibly TL;DR! Also, spoilers inside!

It’s undeniable now. House and Wilson got divorced.

They were happily, wonderfully married throughout all of Season One (even during the Vogler mess!!). They were totally married throughout Season Two (balcony scenes anyone? House deleting the apartment message from his answering machine anyone? Still the gold standard of H/W love!).

Then along came the "Euphoria" two-parter, and then Season Three, and all my happy slashy dreams were shattered. SHATTERED.

"Euphoria" had open hostility between House and Wilson (or, more likely, hostility from House toward Wilson—here I’m thinking specifically of the scene where House snarls at Wilson, "I’ll bet you you can even have unprotected sex with your patients without even catching a damn thing. Boy I wish I had your job." YEOWCH!), and here we see House considering packing up his things and asking for his magic decoder ring back. Sad. Really, really sad. I started getting a queasy feeling in my stomach right then.

Then, somewhere after House got the ketamine treatment and Wilson started manipulating him (withholding information from House about his paralyzed patient, refusing to prescribe Vicodin, etc), House got a separation from Wilson.

The lovely sexy sparkly chemistry onscreen between House and Wilson just shuddered to a halt. Sad, sad, sad!

Then somewhere after Tritter finally got booted off the show, House filed for divorce from Wilson. Looks like the trial separation didn’t go too well.

Where’d the chemistry go? Where’d all the jump cuts focusing on Wilson and House giving one another sexy, significant looks go?

What the hell is going on, here?

In "Half-Wit," I felt more depressed. Here House is DYING OF BRAIN CANCER, and what do we get from House and Wilson? One half-assed scene with the upright piano in the patient’s room and one sneering, hostile scene in House’s office at the end. Gah!

House actually looks simmeringly angry with Wilson in that last scene. Man. It almost felt to me, on watching that scene, that House has filed for divorce in a fit of betrayed fury—and Wilson didn’t even know they were married in the first place. Bizarre! That scene actually reads to me like House is still furious with Wilson, and Wilson has no freaking clue that House is even mad. Wilson gets House flowers. House throws them out the window. Wilson cluelessly gets House chocolates. House throws them at his head. Wilson’s all like, "Pizza and a movie?" House is all like, "Choke on that pizza and DIE!!!"

Am I the only one who saw that? Just how crazy am I?

Is anyone else not seeing the chemistry?

It’s like the actors are no longer comfortable playing scenes together. It’s awful. I don’t see House and Wilson interacting on the screen any more; I see Hugh Laurie and Robert Sean Leonard pretending to be House and Wilson on a set. Awful.

And so now we come to the latest episode, "Top Secret."

I would have enjoyed this episode much, much more if there had been ANY chemistry between House and Wilson AT ALL. And I’m not even being greedy and asking for sexual chemistry. Just plain old "House and Wilson are bestest buds and Platonically LUV each other!" chemistry would have made my day.

But no. Nothing.

The banter in the bathroom? Not feeling it. Feels forced and half-assed.

The fights about House’s drug use and House’s patient? Feels like the bickering of a divorced couple, sad to say. Seriously. This is how my mom and dad used to fight/argue/bicker with each other, after they got divorced. I know firsthand how post-divorce arguments sound and look, and House and Wilson in "Top Secret" fit the bill.

But maybe it’s not just House and Wilson, HL and RSL.

The scenes between House and Cuddy weren’t all that sparkly with chemistry, either. Or, at least not the sexual kind. The scene in House’s office where Cuddy gives House the patient file for Riley (or whatever his name in the show is), I see ZERO sexual chemistry between Cuddy and House. House looks tired and distracted. He doesn’t even leer at Cuddy’s cleavage. In return, Cuddy looks tired and concerned. More maternal than anything. Odd. It’s that way in the end scene, too, where we finally get confirmation that Cuddy and House had been up to sexy shenanigans years ago, in what appears to be a one-night stand.

Sexual chemistry? Zip.

Cuddy’s still looking and acting motherly towards House, not sexual at ALL, and House acts like Cuddy is a sister or something.

This is so weird.

So maybe it’s not just House and Wilson that’s lost its zing. Maybe it’s ALL the grownups of the show.

Cameron and Chase were kinda hot in the supply closet together. Foreman was fun and engaging in the ep. Has the end of the world come about? Am I actually enjoying the scenes with the kids more than the scenes with H, Cuddy, and W?

Please counter my ~~arguments~~ ramblings if you can. Please let me know if you DID see any chemistry between House and Wilson in the last few eps. Really. I’d like to know if anyone agrees with my view, that the chemistry is alarmingly absent from H & W these days. I’d also like to know if anyone disagrees, if they DO see chemistry. That would make me feel a lot better.

So. Anyone else with problems with the show and the H/W relationship? Anyone else thinking the thrill is gone? Or do I need to start going to therapy to resolve my issues with over-analyzing a stupid show? (I mean, seriously. It's just a show! This much obsession can't be healthy.)

........send help!

ETA: Removed a few refs to "Top Secret" outside the LJ cut just in case.

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I actually think their relationship is on the mend, but it'll take some healing post-Tritter. Besides, the tension from late Season 2 on has been needed for a few reasons:
1) To reiterate House's personal demons. We could argue addiction/physically dependent all the live-long day, but the point is, his Vicodin use is getting worse, and it's impacting all facets of his day. In Season 1, when TPTB still needed to warm the audience up to House, the pills were (for the most part) treated as unhealthy but merely a quirk of dealing with The Great Dr House. Even if it only goes downhill for House's character, it has to go somewhere for dramatic purposes. My guess is that it will only get worse for him for a good long while.
2) To show the real James Wilson. To fully grasp just how lonely Wilson is (and unfortunately for him, I'd say that's a defining characteristic, right up there with codependent and self-sacrificing), the writers needed to show first the dissolution of his marriage, and show him making some pretty big interpersonal mistakes in the name of helping others.

I wouldn't call them divorced so much as in a rough patch (they are each others longest relationship, and the basis of the show), but if we're to determine where things went to shit it was toward the end of their living together, around or right after All In and Sleeping Dogs Lie. Wilson is always portrayed as the effemenate one (in no small part because RSL knows how to bring the HoYay), but if we're going off of actual behavior, I'd say that House is wicked jealous of anyone Wilson is with and Wilson is for the most part oblivious. The Odd Couple Arc was, even more than the Stacy arc (since deep down House knew it wouldn't work out), House's window to the good life. Wilson did what in most cases you're supposed to do when you're living on your friends couch, he moved out (albeit with a patient *headdesk*). In House Vs God, House is very pissed about this turn of events, and finding out about Grace only goes to magnify that. He's still quite angry about Grace (Words and Deeds). Even when there are other things he could bring up, he seems to have understood that Wilson was trying to do the right thing in the Tritter arc, and forgotten or forgiven about the Addison's guy. But spot Wilson talking to any female, and the claws are out (Fools For Love).

Either that, or they slept together around that time, and Wilson freaked because he's a closet case, but that seems almost too easy a storyline.

Either that, or they slept together around that time, and Wilson freaked because he's a closet case, but that seems almost too easy a storyline.

Uh... I totally vote for that one. Really (and shut up, I'm not delusional) it's the only one that makes the most sense. Why else is House so bitter about Grace for so long? Or about any woman Wilson thinks of hooking up with? In S1, House seems more removedly amused by Wilson's pathology. End of S2 and S3? He's acting possessive and jealous and more vengeful towards Wilson than ever before.

How else would you explain it?

Either works, but I think that had they slept together it would have been made canon. Sex sells. That, and I'm hoping their building up to that, rather than circling around it.

I don't think it'd be necessarily proclaimed in canon even it that's how it actually played out. There's too much grey area in what networks would allow on TV or how much TPTB would really want to cement the H/W relationship. I think they could have just decided to hint at it as much as possible and then gone, 'If you can't make up your own mind as to what happened from here, then we can't help you.'

That, and I'm hoping their building up to that, rather than circling around it.

I'd kind of like to see H/W relationship as on again off again, boys get their heads out of their ass, on again permenantly. So they sleep together and for whatever reason fuck it up. Sleep together, fuck it up. Slowly realize they only have each other and actually make a go at a real relationship and one that lasts. Best of both worlds there, really.

I like your points 1 and 2, bringing back the notion that all of the characters in House are there to bounce off of House and reveal things about his character, more than anything else, and yes, Wilson is lonely, poor guy. I just wish these things were handled better in the show.

Yes, things didn't turn bad for the two until after Wilson moved out of House's place and House discovered he'd moved in with Grace. After which, things have been unceasingly strained btwn the two. 9Going to have to re-watch "Sleeping Dogs Lie" and "All In" again). This makes me happy, for the reasons you pointed out:

but if we're going off of actual behavior, I'd say that House is wicked jealous of anyone Wilson is with and Wilson is for the most part oblivious. The Odd Couple Arc was, even more than the Stacy arc (since deep down House knew it wouldn't work out), House's window to the good life. Wilson did what in most cases you're supposed to do when you're living on your friends couch, he moved out (albeit with a patient *headdesk*). In House Vs God, House is very pissed about this turn of events, and finding out about Grace only goes to magnify that.

This is so juicy and fun. I love it. "House vs. God" is one of my very favorite eps, b/c of that, right there. House's reaction when finding out about Wilson and Grace cannot be, in my mind, interpreted in any other way than as jealousy--upset in a way that casual friends aren't, and beyond even the close friendships that many people share. He's mad about Wilson leaving, and he's even madder when he finds out why. Gorgeous episode. Love it. All sorts of delicious tangled-up emotions take over House in that ep.

He's still quite angry about Grace (Words and Deeds)

Yes, he certainly continues to bring it up, doesn't he? Very yummy--

--So why can't I enjoy this latest estrangement/tentative reconciliation more? "Half-Wit" and "Top Secret" both bring on supposedly good scenes between H & W that further these ideas, but.... I'm just not happy. Oh well. I suppose one can't expect to be thrilled with the H/W ALL the time. ;)

NOT FEELING THE H/W LOVE

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