In the second season of House, the main story arc is one that focuses on the relationship between House and his previous flame, Stacy. House treated her husband Mark in the season prior (he is paralyzed as a result, against House’s best efforts to stop it from happening), and the two reconnected. Their relationship is quite a mess, as both have feelings for the other but refuse to acknowledge the pachyderm in the room. They finally kiss in the episode “Failure to Communicate”, and have resolved (without actually saying it to each other at first because, god forbid, they be wrong about the other person’s feelings) to try again. Stacy decides to leave Mark for House, but he, House, panics, telling her that House cannot make her happy, and that she should stay with Mark, in the episode “Need to Know”. She leaves, and Wilson is furious at Houses need to be self destructive and self loathing. House is affected by this for, I think, the entirety of the series, up to when he and Cuddy get together at the end of the sixth season.
The reason I say that is because House begins to regret his cowardice about relationships, and begins, at least in my opinion, to seek out the company of other women to fill that hole. Yes, they’re hookers, and yes, he saw hookers previously, but the instances became more frequent and he became more open about them, sending a clear message to everyone (and most importantly, to himself) about his ability to ignore the frivolous concept of human connection and love. Of course, that isn’t true, because he sinks deeper and deeper into self loathing depression as the series continues. I believe “Need to Know” is the turning point for the worse for Gregory House. He declines steadily until he and Cuddy get together, but that’s for another post.
Season Two is my second favorite season of House for that very reason. Looking back on it now, it is so elegant and subtle a fall that no one noticed the slip. House was doomed from the moment he reconnected with Stacy, because he cannot handle emotional attachment of any kid. He committed emotional suicide. This could have been a season of turning for the better for House. He could’ve become a better person by being with Stacy, or by not forcing a relationship upon Stacy, who clearly was married. House did so to prove that morals are stupid, and that logic and rationality are more important. In his twisted way of combining logic and dark emotions, he rationalized that he liked Stacy, Stacy liked him more than Mark, so they should be together. He threw out all of the conventional norms, not because he truly wanted to be with her, but because he wanted to prove to everyone that he was above it. But he wasn’t, and isn’t.
A lesson he never learned, it seems.
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