House: Joy
By fred | October 29, 2008
(S05E06) This episode is called ‘Joy’, but that seems to be one thing this show doesn’t really have. While we can surely have a great time watching the show, it’s no mystery that it is mostly known as the show with a cranky doctor who’s probably depressed most of the times, and the pills can’t hide that, which might be why he feels the need to bring misery to everyone around him.
He just does that, with everyone. Whether he’s known them for years and not, whether they’re friends, colleagues, employees, or even his superiors, House has a way to deal with people and everyone gets the same treatment, and joy isn’t really a part of it, ever. Despite its title and the effort made, by the end of this episode, Joy wasn’t going to be anywhere near the hospital and any of the characters.
This week, some things worked, some where really great in fact, and others didn’t really worked. First with what did work : of course the opening scene, it was brilliantly directed and created a very nice sense of, well, weirdness. You didn’t really know what was going on, but you could tell it was happening, right now, leaving us probably as confused as the patient of the week himself was.
This actually lasted for longer that just the opening scene, and created a very nice effect all along, which probably felt even better that the show isn’t used to do such things. It reinforced the notions of confusion of course, but also that joy was nowhere to be found. House loves to have many parallels between the weekly case of the main characters of the show, and this week one was how everyone is joyless, not just the patient.
Remember how Cameron was so happy and free for her first days at the hospital not under House ? That was her tasting joy for the first time in a long time, because as long as you’re working for House, or have him work for you, or are his friend, he’ll make sure you don’t get there. See the staff, his new team was unanimous to say that both patients were “weird” — some blamed depression, others had other theories, but they all agreed that something was up.
Yet, until House put his finger on it and showed that they were simply lacking joy, they didn’t get that. Because in their lives, they are not happy either. Actually, I’d say we have an exception : we all know about Thirteen, Taub and his marriage aren’t new either, and Foreman is a sad boring guy. But Kutner, this guy doesn’t seem depressed, he’s the only one who actually seems to have fun on occasions, and that might just be why he was the only one who went ahead and bet with House.
Maybe this is only true because House didn’t really get to him so far, he never did look into his past and tried to bring into the light some dark secret about him, like he did everybody else, did he? All I know is, I can’t wait for a more Kutner-centric episode myself.
Anyways, House was exceptionally mean to Cuddy all along, and while it’s nothing really new for him, it did feel like he was crossing a line, no? I felt like he was a lot more aggressive and, actually, mean-spirited. Usually House is a jerk, it’s been accepted by everyone I think, but this time it was like he really wanted to stick it to her, that she didn’t want a baby, that she would be a terrible mother, that this was a bad decision.
I’m not sure what he was really trying to accomplish here, but he really was trying hard.
And now we can talks about what didn’t really work so much, and that last scene. But first of all, I wasn’t sure how they could go on with Cuddy having a child, as this would automatically have an effect on the show, and not necessarily for the most interesting, so I guess it’s understandable that they didn’t want to let her actually have it - besides, remember that as long as House in around, there can’t be no joy.
