ZERO :: the Fool (annwyd) wrote,
ZERO :: the Fool

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I. This post was going to be another single-fandom-focused one, but I decided I'd had enough of that, thank you very much. Besides, it'd mostly have just been bitching.

II. I also wanted to mention the nightmare I had the other day. It was terrifying. My parents and I went to a production of Sunday in the Park with George, but when we got there, we found out that the play had been totally butchered in order to insert hip and trendy stuff about war, plus flashy scenery and stuff. It was a Sondheim show, and it was so bad that I walked out halfway through. What a horrible dream.

...I wish I were making this shit up. However, it does remind me that I should do another Sondheim Pimping Project post soon. Sweeney Todd is next!

III. Here's the bitching, though.

Funnily enough, my main problem with this arc of House isn't that it's grossly unrealistic. We already accept that the show is going to play fast and loose in terms of how the medical profession works sometimes, so I'd be willing to suspend disbelief a little further to accept the same thing about law enforcement on the show (although it's even worse than their treatment of medicine).

No, my main problem is that it's supposedly all about what a huge problem House has with his drug addiction, but the only time we ever see this addiction being an actual problem is when he's off the drugs. When he's on them, he's brilliant and effective. When he's off them, he screws up. Simple as that.

And since, so long as House is given the drugs, the addiction isn't a problem, he's being persecuted for no reason. And there's no tension to that. All we have is one asshole persecuting our poor hero, who also happens to be an asshole. There could have been tension--the setup of Tritter as the cop equivalent of House had promise. But it was dropped, and Tritter remains a shallow character with no point but to persecute House.

And nothing changes. House doesn't learn anything, because he's right--the fact that some asshole is on his back claiming that his addiction is endangering lives (when the show has shown us repeatedly, every episode, that it isn't) isn't really his fault.

Worse than that, he's suffering no consequences in his interpersonal relationships, which are the only place where he really has been an unjustifiable asshole this season--in other words, the one matter he should be seeing consequences in. Instead, the people around him sulk for a bit, then let him keep treating them like crap while believing he hasn't done anything wrong.

Worst of all is Wilson. You know what? Wilson was entirely fucking justified in selling House out. Because he was being raked over the coals for House, and House refused to even be there for him. And yet this episode, all Wilson needed to do was see how needy House was, and he went back to tending to him. That makes sense in the context of their codependent-as-fuck relationship, but it's an incredibly frustrating, unsatisfying conclusion for the viewer.

(And by the way, House is my favorite character, so I'm not being extra hard on him because I prefer Wilson or something.)

I get the impression that a lot of that doesn't make much sense, so let me try to sum it up:

The latest episodes have been trying to drive home the point that OMG HOUSE HAS A PROBLEM WITH DRUGS HE NEEDS TO ADMIT IT OK?! But all the evidence from previous episodes tells us that House only has a problem with drugs when he stops taking them. Meanwhile, House has been fucking up his interpersonal relationships left, right, and center, but he hasn't actually suffered any consequences for that--instead, the show has been harping on the DRUG THING OMG. The way it comes off, House seems like a martyr (being persecuted by a villain with no redeeming qualities) who gets persecuted for something he's innocent of while getting away with all sorts of unrelated awful crap.

That said, this season can still salvage itself if it gets the Tritter crap over with quickly and then spends the entire rest of the season dealing with the emotional fallout and how House has to work to repair the relationships he fucked up in his desperation. But given the way this series tosses continuity aside (except with Cameron--sometimes she seems like the only character who's really grown over the course of the series, although of course the Ducklings in general have become more House-like), I'm not holding my breath.

IV. That aside, I am so stalled on my bleach_yurithon fic. Why the hell did I assign myself the hard one? Oh, right, because I had an idea for idea which I can't seem to get to work now. ghdlfkjs. Maybe I'll do a quick catch-up on recent chapters in order to revive my interest? That might help.

V. On the plus side: did an icondump at andthekey and opened suzaku_euphemia for business.

VI. Want Geass 10 now. D:
Tags: dreams, house, sondheim
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