House, Season 5

With the spectacular season four behind us, we enter season five.

As I said before, season two is my favorite (for reasons explained then). Season five, however, has potentially my favorite story act. I say potentially because I can’t remember if I said the season four storyline was my favorite.....

Anyways!


In season five, House begins, to put it kindly, to lose his shit. With every episode he begins to degrade psychologically. He begins to question himself, and takes more and more Vicodin in order to self medicate. He hallucinates Amber Volakis, Wilson’s girlfriend from the season before, is helping him solve cases. After a short period of time, he begins to realize that this Amber hallucination is not actually helping him, but hurting; she nearly caused the death of both Chase and another patient by manipulating House into doing certain things. He gives himself insulin shock, and the visions of Amber fade. He goes onto solve a previously difficult case, but after realizing he did so by accident instead of skill, he begins to hallucinate once again.

Soon after this, he meets up with Cuddy, and, after the realization of how sick House is, they make love, with Cuddy helping him detox from Vicodin over the course of a night. This seems like a great turn around for House, as he had been becoming more and more ill as he continued on Vicodin. House doesn’t understand why Cuddy is repressing her feelings for him, and eventually tells the entire hospital that he slept with her. This enrages her, but doesn’t make her admit that she loves him or even slept with him. House is, meanwhile, working on a difficult case, and is unable to really focus on the matter until later on in the episode. He goes to Cuddy to talk, and then he suddenly has a flashback to the previous night before. Instead of telling her about the hallucinations, he insulted Cuddy, causing her to leave. He reaches into his pocket, and discovers that, instead of the lipstick of hers that he thought he had, it was actually a bottle of Vicodin. He drops the bottle. Cuddy, seeing his disturbed expression, attempts to comfort him. Amber and Kutner both appear, mocking him for his inability to distinguish fantasy from reality.

After this, Cuddy and Wilson take House to a psych hospital, and leave him there for prolonged treatment. This is where the episode, and the season, end.

I love love love love this story arc. It gives me the opportunity to see Kutner (briefly) and Amber (extensively!) during the arc. It also is well written, and incredibly well acted. I regularly watch it, just to keep my sense of drama and suspense at the level that I think they should be held. I remember watching it for the first time, and being so shocked at the conclusion. My eyes were wide, and my heart was pounding. Easily one of my favorite endings of all time.

Thanks for reading.

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