Has House (or other main characters) Changed?

[barefootpuddles.livejournal.com]

One 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!

Comments

[fluttershy.livejournal.com]

Wasn't House a girl all throughout season seven?

[barefootpuddles.livejournal.com]

I think that in early seasons several of the characters seem different, but for the most part it is due to us not knowing the characters very well. As times goes on we see the subtly in them. However, I feel that both Cameron and Wilson changed significantly. Cameron became very confident and less naive than she had been. The former because she got out of House's shadow and off the team, and the latter because of the time she had spent on his team. So for me it makes sense. Wilson lost his relaxed demeanor that he had in season one alongside his easy going way of dealing with House, but that could be explained by his dissolving marriage/Volger/Tritter all in quick succession. My fannish heart says that is was also the time that he actually fell in love with House, and that precipitated depression which fundamentally changed his world view as he became far less optimistic/hopeful.

[taiga13.livejournal.com]

Chase sold out House in S1 and was a suck-up for the first three seasons, now they've gone to great lengths to show that he's Loyal and Noble and Strong. In short, he changed. If people really don't change, David Shore, then Chase would still be a weasel and a suck-up. Cameron also changed during the course of the show, becoming less naive and more tough and independent. For a while she did so without being cynical, which I appreciated a lot, but they had to have her change that way too.

[rslhilson.livejournal.com]

It's funny - I think House has changed dramatically, but the writers don't feel the same way. I almost feel like this question is more about the consistency of the writing than about true character change.

[cuddyclothes.livejournal.com]

It is the writing, and the change in management, and to a certain extent (although this fell through in S6 IMHO) the characters growing and deepening. Chase's change made sense to me because he had a period of not working for House and not having to do anything he didn't want to. Also, he grew up. Cameron changed because she also grew up. As for Foreman, it saddens me that in the early seasons he has more of a sense of humor and "street smarts." Even when he's talking to a patient about how he always feels like he has to prove himself. The character was sidelined into this boring caricature. I guess it's just easier for the writers to keep him that way.

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.

[lilithisbitter.livejournal.com]

Fundamentally, you will always be the same person. You can't change that. What you change is the you that you present the world, the pretty lie that you decide that people will accept over the real you. People are layered that way. The truth of the matter is people never change. And it just might be that person in question, you never really knew them.

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.

[alternatealto.livejournal.com]

I voted for "at least one person has changed during the show's run for no good reason" (although some may dispute the second half of the statement).

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.

[chocolate-frapp.livejournal.com]

If people don't change IRL, how the hell did I go from being a homophobic christian to an atheist with more gay friends than straight friends?

[roseofpain84.livejournal.com]

Sometimes I wonder if the show's insistence that people don't change is so that House can have an epiphany at the very last moment and say 'Oh..guess what! People DO change after all!'...XD
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.

[yarroway.livejournal.com]

Mostly, people do change IMO. Cameron and Thirteen did in ways that made sense. Foreman mostly didn't change at all. Chase changed in ways other posters have pointed out. Kutner changed drastically. He went from someone who had risen above tragedy to someone who destroyed himself. By tptb refusing to provide an explanation for this, it will forever be ooc in my book. I never bought their reasoning that in real life we often don't see someone's suicide coming and that we don't discover the reasons, because this show has never particularly concerned itself with RL and because that makes for a very unsatisfying story.

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.

[jpblack.livejournal.com]

I went with the third one. I think the characters grow, but they aren't all that different.

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.