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house_wilson_ghcOne of House's mottos, and David Shore's themes, is that "people don't change". Yet for some of us, there is some compelling evidence that this may not be true.[Poll #1821759]
Please remember that this discussion is not the place to bash other ships, actors, or fellow fans. If you want to rant in a way that violates the comm rules, link people to your own journal. Otherwise, happy discussing!
Please remember that this discussion is not the place to bash other ships, actors, or fellow fans. If you want to rant in a way that violates the comm rules, link people to your own journal. Otherwise, happy discussing!
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Date: 2012-02-25 07:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-02-25 08:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-02-26 11:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-02-25 08:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-02-25 08:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-02-25 08:39 pm (UTC)I also found House's nonsensical violence in S7 (remember the arrow-shooting at the hooker?) totally unbelievable.
But of course there's a strong basis in canon for your and barefootpuddles's viewpoints.
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Date: 2012-02-25 09:43 pm (UTC)In a less than efficient way I'm trying to say that Wilson is more aware of his tendency towards bisexuality or homosexuality than House is but he runs from it or at least tries to hide the truth from House because House has been very loud about his macho heterosexuality and has made fun of Wilson in derogatory ways for acting 'gay' or feminine. Wilson might therefore believe that House would be disgusted if he found out that Wilson wasn't straight as an arrow and end their friendship. Therefore, Wilson runs away when he gets too close to revealing to House his love and desire for House, which Wilson is aware of, not in denial of (examples of running away would be when he was living with House after Julie (ran to Grace) and then when he gave House the organ in season 6 (ran to Sam) ); because he doesn't want House to be disgusted and terminate their friendship. Wilson's lack of dating since Sam left may be to the fact that the failure with Sam convinced Wilson that he couldn't hide the fact that he was gay or bi any longer (and unable to make a relationship with a woman work) but if he tried a relationship with a man and House found out House might be alienated, so he's chosen not to date at all. (Wilson 'knows', after all, that he couldn't approach House with his love for him because that would definitely push House away so, if he were to try a relationship with a man it would have to be someone other than House.)
Am I making any sense at all?
ETA some emphasis or clarify a thought.
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Date: 2012-02-25 10:01 pm (UTC)I also felt as though Wilson was trying to feel out House's opinions of non-straight relationships in the episode where he had the asexual patient, in the form of a bet. He read him facts out of a medical journal, and even stated that by them stating to the patient that his asexuality was only a cause of some sort of illness, that that would be akin to telling a gay person that they're really really straight.
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Date: 2012-02-25 10:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-02-25 11:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-02-25 11:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-02-25 10:58 pm (UTC)On the other hand, in earlier season, House was making lewd jokes about Chase's ass, and he never seemed to find Cameron remotely attractive despite acknowledging her beauty. A bit like an artwork, not a sexual person, and excatly what you would expect from a gay man. Wilson was the one who seemed less at ease with homosexuality. They have changed a lot also in this respect.
My imoression is that the whoring etc was some decision in (I guess) season 5 by TPTB House's straight and in love (not just making fun of the slutty clothing of) Cuddy because we can't have a gay main character.
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Date: 2012-02-26 12:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-02-26 09:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-02-26 07:11 pm (UTC)That makes me think about something that happened with my daughter the other day. We were walking out of a department store the other day when this very good-looking, well-dressed young man (early twenties?) passed us going the other direction. My 15 year old smiled at him flirtatiously and he smiled back so she turned around to get a good look of the rear view when he walked up to his boyfriend and gave him a lingering kiss on the mouth.
Em turned to me, huffed, and said, "Damn! Another fine piece of flesh taken! Does every good-looking guy in this hick town have to be gay?" Then she quickly added, "It doesn't bother me if someone is gay. i have lots of friends at school who are gay, lesbian or bi--but could mother nature have the courtesy to leave a few of the hot ones for us poor straight girls?"
I have to admit I laughed at that one!
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Date: 2012-02-26 08:49 pm (UTC)LOL! There was a time when I felt the same. I sometime wonder whether gay men are better quality as average. I hope not.
And I'm a bit envious that you live in a part of the world where gay men feel safe kissing each other on the mouth in public. [In Milan two young men were beaten up for hand-holding last December. In center-town, in the middle of the Christmas-shopping crowd.]
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Date: 2012-02-25 08:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-02-25 08:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-02-25 08:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-02-25 08:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-02-25 08:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-02-25 08:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-02-25 10:14 pm (UTC)I do feel she changed but I think it could be realistically connected with life events like falling in love with House around the same time she became a mother. It seems to have shifted something in her, causing her to lose her edge and destroy her confidence. I have seen infertility due that to women, as well as loving the wrong guy. It sometimes seems that otherwise confident, powerful women can be hit tremendously hard when motherhood and love doesn't come easily after a lifetime of being successful in other endeavors.
It is a shame though that TPTB did that too her even if it could be realistic as she was such an awesome character when she had her confidence.
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Date: 2012-02-25 11:04 pm (UTC)I don't see how maternity or love(?!) can bring anyone to such crazy behavior. Her dumping Lucas and starting a relationship with House was disgraceful (feel free to call me a bigot there). And her sexual manipulation was so OoC I can't believe it.
Plus, what she showed is not love. I am sorry, but if you love an ex addict and he relapses under extreme stress you help him, you don't throw him under the bus. Well, yet another case of my moral compass being all skewed. Ignore my craziness.
Still, we do agree that Cuddy was an awesome character: a powerful, mature woman, able to keeo a hospital AND House under control, and they destroyed her.
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Date: 2012-02-25 10:20 pm (UTC)I can't really explain the violence that came out on season 7's finale. A lot of the other stuff about House seemed to change on an episode to episode basis, so I had pretty much come to accept that House's personality was the most fluid of anyone's. How he acted was connected to how much emotional and/or physical pain he was in in any particular episode. But to visit violence towards someone he loves, well....I just never, ever saw that in him. He usually turned that kind of anger inward. The episode where he smashed Wilson's posters seemed out of character to me too. It would have been a great storyline if House had turned out to have a brain tumor. The way it was written instead was one big WTF? on the character of House IMHO.
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Date: 2012-02-25 11:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-02-26 12:09 am (UTC)So true, a tumour from the use of the experimental drug, for instance, or a pheochromocytoma causing an upsurge of adrenalin resulting in severe irritability, rage outbursts, and emotional instability. Heck, we could have had some awesome H/W as Wilson recognized it, diagnosed House and tried to convince him that something was wrong with him beyond being angry over being dumped by Cuddy. It would even explain his crashing into Cuddy's house because it was such a sudden, impulsive, uncharacteristic raging behaviour for him. The writers could have actually made some sense out of he nonsense but decided to make things worse and assassinate House's character at the same time.
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Date: 2012-02-25 09:21 pm (UTC)Cuddy's character got torpedoed in S6. It wasn't the same woman we'd been watching for years. I didn't mind the fumbling in S5, since she was an inept at relationships as House. However, in S7 she was turned into this crazed needy bossy bitch, and House...who I don't know who the fuck that was onscreen, but it wasn't House. Most of the gravitas that distinguished his character beneath the eleven-year-old exterior has been removed. Now he's some jerk who walks into the room, says "put him on plasmapharesis" or makes fart jokes.
Wilson is the saddest case, to me. The complexity of the House/Wilson relationship, whether you see it as friendship, love, or a mixture of both, was so well done. Wilson's character made sense; he was not a soft, needy woobie. He was "in charge of the relationship", manipulative, and smart. Now, it's hard to watch Wilson when he's onscreen. It's again that sense of, who is that?
In short, argh.
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Date: 2012-02-25 11:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-02-26 12:11 am (UTC)Edited because of %$#^^@! autocorrect!
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Date: 2012-02-25 11:55 pm (UTC)It's "everyone lies" now, like the lies are big and grand... but at one point it was "everyone lies, the only variable is about what." It's not always a big lie about symptoms or what you did in Mexico that you shouldn't have been. It's lying about what you like, who you are, trying to make yourself more pleasing to your significant other. But at your core, you are still you. You're lying through your teeth, because to say truth, you feel they would leave you at best and forever hate you at worst. And when that true self comes out, they swear up and down how you've changed. But the truth of the matter is, you've only been wearing a mask of yourself, hiding away. You haven't changed one lick, you've just learned how to be a very good liar.
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Date: 2012-02-26 05:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-02-26 03:56 am (UTC)Cuddy.
Cuddy went from a more-or-less competent person who was House's boss first, a somewhat tolerant friend second, and a possible source of UST a long way third, to an unbelievably incompetent bitch-on-wheels with baby rabies. For no good reason that I could discern, except to force Huddy down the throats of the collective viewership.
I liked and admired the Cuddy of the first three seasons or so. But by the end of S7, the word "loathing" but faintly describes my feelings about her. The writers did a hatchet job on her character of unequaled proportions, and definitely changed it massively, shoveling in a whole bunch of retconned nonsense to try to make it seem as if she had always been that way.
"People don't change" -- it is to laugh.
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Date: 2012-02-26 04:09 am (UTC)I feel the way you do about Cuddy, about Cameron, only in reverse. Early seasons had me cringing when she was on screen. Eventually she morphed into a likeable character that I wished the show had kept. But they completely changed her personality to do that.
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Date: 2012-02-26 11:18 am (UTC)In fact, had Cuddy remained the character she was, I think she would have been a very suitable partner for House. Wilson weeping his heart out as best man at their wedding, heartbroken since Cuddy had managed to make House keep Vicodin and alcohol use under control and thus enhanced his brilliant mind would have been perfect.
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Date: 2012-02-26 04:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-02-26 11:23 am (UTC)I'm now the happy atheist mother of three atheist, unbaptized kids.
PS I also didn't want kids at all from puberty, except when I got to know my husband I really, really wanted some kids to have him as father.(/tmi)
People DO change. You stop changing when you're dead.
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Date: 2012-02-26 08:38 pm (UTC)I agree.
To some extent it might be a semantics argument. Do we call it "growth" rather than "change". Or is it "revealing" layers we didn't know we had before, or "reacting" in new ways, or whatever. But my feeling is if you would have handled something one way at some point, and now you handle it in another way, that is change.
I believe a lot of change is on the edges, and very subtle. Eventually though if you put it all together it adds up to real change. I once wrote a fic about House changing so subtlety that Wilson didn't even notice. Of course IMHO the show hasn't really done that nice subtle thing with most of the characters. Perhaps a bit with Chase.
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Date: 2012-02-26 09:09 pm (UTC)Great point. Some of the major changes in life are often just accepting one's true nature.
I once wrote a fic about House changing so subtlety that Wilson didn't even notice.
link pls? (I need an icon with a puppy, cats never look pleading enough)
Of course IMHO the show hasn't really done that nice subtle thing with most of the characters. Perhaps a bit with Chase.
Cameron was also done well; I even found Wilson oscillating choices in the Tritter arc believable (and heartbreaking). It's more the recent season that, uh.
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Date: 2012-02-27 05:20 am (UTC)link pls? (I need an icon with a puppy, cats never look pleading enough)
That's because cats are always sizing you up for edibility. ;P
No need to plead anyway, you are welcome to it. I wrote it before your time in the fandom. It's called "The Very Hungry Caterpillar - The House Version" (I don't know if they have the story in Italy, but "The Very Hungry Caterpillar is a children's story book where a caterpillar changes into a butterfly)
http://barefootpuddles.livejournal.com/2391.html
Edited because my typing fingers are being uncooperative tonight.
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Date: 2012-02-27 06:47 am (UTC)That, and anyway they're entitled to your services. If you don't feed them they'll complain, not plead.
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Date: 2012-02-26 07:13 am (UTC)Anyway, in a show with so many writers and several inconsistencies I find it hard to see the boundaries between the characters and the creators. I don't know what to categorize as change/character evolving or simply the specific writer's opinion/headcanon about the character.
However, in general, I believe that some of the characters have evolved but I can't say that anyone has fundamentally changed. And I guess that's what they mean when they say that people don't change too. I dunno, in my eyes, evolving (or devolving in some cases XD) is not exactly the same as changing.
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Date: 2012-02-26 07:54 am (UTC)Wilson--has changed in all the ways other posters have said.
Cuddy--I've said previously that she changed around seasons 3 and 4. It has been awhile since I saw those early episodes, and I'm wondering if maybe we just saw more of her later, if the 'change' wasn't just the result of a broader view and more screen time. At any rate, after S5 I saw no subsequent change in her personality. Everything in S7 was something I had seen in previous seasons.
House--He's changed in major ways. He's gone from being a mostly rational if messed up adult with an idiosyncratic set of ethics that he adheres to, to being Dennis the Menace on Viagra. I stopped watching S7 when, in Pox, I realized I had no idea who Hugh Laurie was playing. The guy on my tv who tolerated the huddy mess, who didn't care about finding answers or saving patients or what the truth was, who did nothing but whine --I don't see House in there anywhere.
Others have brought up the violence. We've seen House be violent before in very minor ways. He hit Wilson with his cane twice (once over Stacy and once in Birthmarks) and hallucinated punching him once (not sure if that counts). He hit a patient's father, albeit for a specific medical reason. Smashing up Wilson's posters was weird but I could see House doing that if he were very off balance. But House was never violent or threatening to a woman. As much anger and hurt as he felt for Stacy, he never raised so much as his voice to her, let alone his hand. If he wanted to punish Cameron for leaving him and being happy, he could have done something to her rather than to Chase, yet he never even considered it. So House's violence in Moving On came out of the blue. Like the rest of S7 it made no sense and directly violated what we knew about House.
Since then it seem to me that the writers have tried very hard to justify last season's finale. The hitting and smashing this year stems from that, I think, though I was pleased when Wilson punched House. The worst of the mess this season came when House was shocking a patient's heart in Better Half, and he deliberately did it when he knew Foreman was touching the patient. Maybe I'm overreacting, but I have to assume there is a reason that people normally try to avoid doing that. Yet that scene was played for laughs.
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Date: 2012-02-26 11:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-02-27 03:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-02-26 09:03 am (UTC)The most noticeable might be Chase. For the most part he is the same, but he seems much more comfortable in his position on House's team. At the beginning he was the whipping boy and low man on the totem pole, which is funny in retrospect considering he was working for House before both Foreman and Cameron joined. Foreman said it early on, he had this "hang out" mentality, and it wasn't odd to see him smiling occasionally. Now, after killing patients, his dad's death, and a divorce, he's detached himself. His entire role is quiet and understated. Obviously House has no qualms making jokes at his expense, but they roll off him a lot easier now, I think. Jesse played it very well in "Last Temptation" where he tells Masters to not take House's job offer and just leave, before she changes. He doesn't even look away from the computer(they're in the MRI room).
Cameron stopped letting people walk on her. She definitely grew, but by the time she left, she was still very sensitive to patients. Her heart stayed mushy; she just became used to House.
Foreman's not changed at all. It may be that he's in the same vein as House; neither of them seem to learn. He's certainly no less prideful.
Cuddy was hopelessly in love with House, and she let it compromise her job. I guess she changed because her expectations of House the Boyfriend were different than House the Employee?
Taub has become a lot less snarky, or at least less mean-spirited, since Kutner killed himself. It was probably the best thing that could have happened to the character. He is, in a weird way, the moral center of the show without Cameron. There's a real sense that he tries to better himself but just sucks at it, which I never got from Seasons 4 and 5.
Wilson and Thirteen might fit Option 1 a little better. I think they adapted themselves to accommodate House and his antics. WIlson being House's best friend has been shown to compromise lots of things for House's sake, most of which House has deemed as a form of weakness(which we all know is just playing hard to get). Thirteen opened up due to House's relentlessness with her. They act certain ways because of the situation they've been put it in.
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Date: 2012-02-26 08:41 pm (UTC)