On the House Finale

I didn’t watch the final season of House; I decided that House putting his car through Cuddy’s living room window at the end of the seventh season was an action that couldn’t really be walked back. But I did watch the finale last night (and the retrospective that preceded it — I’d forgotten how posh Hugh Laurie can sound).

And there’s a thought that’s been nagging at the back of my mind.

So, did House murder the guy in the warehouse?

It’s obvious in retrospect that everything in relation to the warehouse we witnessed was planned. But what I’m not clear on is this.

The guy was willing to take the fall for House when he thought he was going to die of ALS. But then House diagnosed the auto-immune disorder (due to a twig stuck in his throat that began to sprout), and he was going to live.

The guy liked to ride the dragon, we know that. But did he die of an accidental overdose, or did House kill him so that he could fake his own death?

The kicker is that the dental records were switched. Which means that, before going to the warehouse, House intended for a burned body to be found that would be identified as him.

House didn’t just take advantage of a lucky break to fake his own death. He engineered the whole situation.

But would he murder someone so he could walk away from his own life?

I’m not sure, to be honest. It’s a question that we’re not going to get an answer to, that’s for certain.

General thoughts on the finale, rather than that nagging plot point…

Well, it was okay. The first half hour was, frankly, an unengaging bore, livened at best by the ghosts of Doclings past. It was nice to see Andre Braugher for all of forty seconds. And it was definitely one of the more Holmesian episodes House has done, though I didn’t pick up on that until the actual event happened, and then I spent the next ten minutes waiting for the episode to catch up with me. The final scenes, though, were good, and they were about what I expected from them. It was nice to see Cameron back in the finale.

When I watched House, I liked it, but eventually I grew tired of it. It could have ended a few years earlier; more isn’t always better. And we really needed a guest appearance from Stephen Fry, dammit.

Oh well.

Goodbye, House.

Published by Allyn

A writer, editor, journalist, sometimes coder, occasional historian, and all-around scholar, Allyn Gibson is the writer for Diamond Comic Distributors' monthly PREVIEWS catalog, used by comic book shops and throughout the comics industry, and the editor for its monthly order forms. In his over ten years in the industry, Allyn has interviewed comics creators and pop culture celebrities, covered conventions, analyzed industry revenue trends, and written copy for comics, toys, and other pop culture merchandise. Allyn is also known for his short fiction (including the Star Trek story "Make-Believe,"the Doctor Who short story "The Spindle of Necessity," and the ReDeus story "The Ginger Kid"). Allyn has been blogging regularly with WordPress since 2004.

3 thoughts on “On the House Finale

  1. Definitely agreed that the series should have ended years ago. But, as long as it was a top-rated show internationally, many involved were reluctant to let go of their cash cow.

  2. Yeah. They ran out of things to do, but people kept tuning in. Hell, FOX wanted a ninth season at one point, and Laurie would only commit to doing the eighth.

    As crazy as this sounds, I would have ended it way back in season three. (I’m actually convinced that House died during that year’s Christmas episode — he ODs on vicodin in the episode, and then we see him looking perfectly fine in the next scene.) Barring that, I’d have ended it with “Wilson’s Heart” at the end of season four. Or some sort of different end at the end of season five.

    Basically, I’d have ended the show long before we reached the Huddy era and its aftermath.

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