By Sara M
House, still recovering from his leg surgery, vows to change his ways while downing Vicodin after Vicodin. He gets a new case in a genius performance artist named Afsoun who collapsed in the middle of her latest show, right before she was supposed to be lit on fire. It turns out that her PPTH visit is part of her act, too -- she and her assistant/lover are secretly videotaping the entire thing and some -- but not all -- of her symptoms were faked. The trick for House, she says, is to figure out which symptoms are real. He easily realizes that she has terminal cancer, something she already knew after being diagnosed by her New York doctors, but when she complains of eczema, House realizes that their diagnosis was wrong and she actually has Wegener's granulomatosis. The good news is, it's curable. The bad news is, the treatment is radiation, which Afsoun refuses, saying the radiation she had months ago when she thought she had cancer affected her brain and made it harder for her to be a performance artist genius. Her assistant/lover refuses to watch her die, and ultimately, she decides that his love and her life is more important than her art and chooses to get the radiation.
Meanwhile, Taub is suffering from a case of Super Sperm, as he manages to get not one, but two women pregnant by accident. Yes, his ex-wife is pregnant, too. It's the story arc that keeps on giving!
Finally, of course, this wouldn't be a season finale of House if something totally insane didn't happen, so after Cuddy unsuccessfully tries to talk to House about his feelings and make things better between them, she moves on and has an odd mid-afternoon double date at her home with her sister, brother-in-law, and a guy that her sister is trying to fix her up with. When House sees them enjoying life in Cuddy's dining room, he does the only reasonable thing: he drives his car through her house and into said dining room, somehow managing not to kill or injure anyone inside. Yes, House is now actively trying to murder people, including Cuddy's three-year-old daughter who may well have been home and in the room at the time the car went through it. She wasn't, but he didn't know that. So he's pretty much irredeemable, as is, I think, this show. The season ends with House -- who somehow managed to escape the police who are actively looking for him even though he was on foot and, as we know, he's not the fastest walker -- hanging out somewhere tropical and looking about as happy as he ever gets.
Well, it's season finale time, and that means House is going to CROSS the LINE and do something SHOCKING, just like he does in every season finale and also most non-finale episodes! I wonder if they make the Fox Announcer Guy re-record that promise every week or if they just use the same one over and over? We open on a close-up of Cuddy's face (soon to be never seen again on this show) with most of the color drained from it and the rest of the shot. There's enough left, though, to see the red and blue flashing lights of police cars, fire trucks, and ambulances surrounding her. Wilson's there, too, having a wound on his arm treated by a paramedic. Cuddy finally speaks, asking the cop questioning her if they're almost done so she can call Murphy Brown and get her daughter. The cop answers her question with a question of his own: "he didn't threaten you?" "No," Cuddy says. "A fight?" he asks. "Not really," Cuddy sighs. "Was there any indication that something would happen?" he asks. "Yeah," Cuddy laughs mirthlessly; "every moment I've been with him." I think it's safe to say they're discussing House. But House is not here, and Cuddy tells the cop she has no idea where he went while helicopters can be heard circling overhead, a.k.a. House CROSSED the LINE so hard this time that he got the attention of the police and/or news media choppers.
The cop thinks Cuddy is lying to him because she doesn't want to turn House in, but Cuddy says she'll file any charges the police ask her to (thus leaving the nature of those charges intentionally vague for the audience for now) and "if Greg House steps foot in my hospital again or comes anywhere near me -- I want him thrown in jail." Well, the writers sure did a great job of ruining that enjoyable aspect of the show. You know, I liked it when House and Cuddy used to bicker and have sexual tension, pre-relationship. I think a lot of people did. And, unlike a lot of people, I liked a lot of things about their relationship. But now all of that has been totally destroyed with no hope of it ever coming back for reasons I truly do not understand. It seems like, starting with when they randomly fired Jennifer Morrison, the people behind the scenes decided that they hate their viewers and want to make sure there's nothing left to enjoy about their own show by systemically eliminating everything that was awesome about it.
But aren't the few viewers who are left at this point curious to find out just what House did to Cuddy? Sure they (or he, if it's only one person, which is entirely possible) are (is)! We go back in time three days and to a gallery, where a "performance" "artist" named Afsoun stands surrounded by various objects suspended from the ceiling. A flashlight. An axe. Hand fans. A tin of paint thinner. A mirror. Bullets. You know, the usual stuff. A woman walks up to Afsoun's note-taking assistant, Luka, and asks if "we can use any of these? And just do whatever we want to her?" Luka says that's why they're there. At this point, Foreman pauses the show on House's laptop. Chase asks why they're watching this crap, and Hadley bristles, saying that Afsoun is a "genius" and just won the MacArthur Fellowship (a.k.a. "the Genius Grant") that "legally" proves this. Um, no, it doesn't. Everyone knows that you're only a genius if you're stupid enough to pay MENSA to let you join them. The Cottages look clueless, prompting Hadley to ask if any of these philistines read The New Yorker. House says he just read Afsoun's patient file. Chase asks if House should be taking new cases on since he just had surgery this morning and all. House says his doctor said he could treat patients as long as he didn't get out of bed. Which doctor would make such a careless recommendation? Dr. Hourani, says a nurse who looks suspiciously similar to Evil Nurse Brenda. Hadley can't believe that House would actually ask anyone for permission to do anything, let alone Hourani, who House kind of hates (and vice versa). House says it's all a part of the changes he's making.
With that, he skips ahead in the video to reveal Afsoun looking slightly worse for wear after her audience has indulged in doing whatever they wanted to her. Someone put a necklace around her neck. Others have drawn on her face and dress. One person put a knife in her hand. These people are pretty lame right now, so one guy steps up and pours paint thinner all over Afsoun before grabbing a book of matches. Chase stops the video there, saying he doesn't want to watch any more of this. House starts the video again. The guy lights the match and stands in front of Afsoun, who has no reaction. Luka, on the other hand, seems concerned. "He's been instructed not to intervene," House says. Finally, as the guy with the match walks towards Afsoun, Luka runs in and stops him. Afsoun passes out. House asks for diagnoses. Chase lists off Afsoun's symptoms (arrhythmia, high hematocrit, and something called "inconsistent RR variability"). Foreman would like to add one more: Afsoun is insane. Hadley doesn't think so, once again telling us how brilliant Afsoun is. House comments that Afsoun's last performance was shaving her entire body while wearing just a monkey mask. He doesn't seem to find that to be very brilliant. Hadley gives us Afsoun's tragic life story: she saw her mother commit suicide and was abused by her stepfather, then took her personal pain and made it into "art," which Hadley thinks is better than what she could have done. Like kill her brother, maybe? Foreman insists that Afsoun is crazy and wants to do an MRI (OF DOOOM!!) to somehow confirm it. House refuses, saying Afsoun is only crazy like a fox, as she's made thousands, perhaps millions of dollars off of "being full of crap." Taub has been quiet, as he's actually trying to do some work. He points out the space heater in Afsoun's gallery. House tells them to put Afsoun in a hyperbaric chamber to treat her for carbon monoxide poisoning that the rest of the performance attendees and her assistant somehow managed not to get.
As soon as the Cottages leave, House grabs his phone and texts Cuddy, who happens to be at a coffee shop. Some guy approaches her. He knows her first and last name, which immediately puts Cuddy on the defensive. The guy, Jerry, quickly explains that he's a friend of Cuddy's sister. He's seen many photos of Cuddy because Julia has been trying to set them up, unbeknownst to Cuddy. Cuddy frowns and tries to claim that Jerry must have her confused with someone else, as her name is not Lisa Cuddy despite the fact that she answered to it less than a minute ago. Jerry says he's sure this is Cuddy, as he has seen many pictures of her on many different occasions. Geez, give it a rest, Julia. Also, way to try to set your sister up with a creepo. Jerry suddenly realizes how weird he sounds and tries to apologize, but it's too late. A very uninterested Cuddy leaves.
She heads right for House's bed in the ICU, checking to make sure it isn't being attacked by the giant radioactive spiders his text to her claimed. House says he actually had a legitimate reason to summon Cuddy: he wanted to give her a box full of stuff she left at his apartment back when they were dating and this show was slightly more fun for me to watch. The box contains such treasures as a "half used bottle of lotion" and a DVD of Marley and Me, which Cuddy is downright evil if she made him watch it with her. Apparently, Cuddy has a crush on Owen Wilson. I guess suicidally destructive men are Cuddy's type. House claims that he's hoping this gesture will help things go back to the way they were before they started dating. "No more bad feelings, no more issues. Just work," he says. And then he basically tells Cuddy she can leave now. But she doesn't want to leave. She wants to talk. About House trying to do surgery on himself. House, of course, would rather not discuss this too much, simply saying he was being self-destructive and he won't do it again. He says he's "making changes" now. "Great," Cuddy says, clearly not convinced. She says talking to someone will help him make those changes. Honestly, does she really think that House can or will talk about that or anything with anyone? She has known him for 20 years now, right? And does she really think that she, of all people, is the right person for House to talk to? And yet, "you owe me," she says. So because Cuddy pulled him out of the bathtub and House showed her daughter a stupid pirate cartoon, he apparently has to talk to Cuddy about his feelings. He tells her to bring him lunch tomorrow and they can have what is sure to be a pointless discussion. Cuddy leaves, and House helps himself to some Vicodins.
Eight minutes into the show, and the credits are still rolling. There are way too many people working on House. While Afsoun hangs out in the hyperbaric chamber, Luka tells her doctors that he feels guilty for not realizing that the gallery space didn't have proper ventilation. Hadley says Luka has nothing to be sorry for, since he did stop that guy from setting his boss on fire and everything. That's a sore spot with Afsoun, who is mad at Luka for interfering with her "performance." Luka says he's sorry, but sometimes it's hard for him to be as committed to Afsoun's art as she is. Foreman asks about the time Afsoun read Luka's love letters to her out loud in another one of her performances. Yes, from the look on Luka's face, I would say that was another difficult time for him. "I read the The New Yorker," Foreman then says to Hadley, who is no doubt angry that she doesn't get to be the only special art lover of the group anymore. Luka just says that happened a year ago and they aren't together anymore anyway, so I guess that makes it okay. Or maybe that's why they aren't together.
After the break, House checks out the Nanny Cam elephant while Hadley explains that Afsoun always bases her work on "personal trauma" because she's probably really self-absorbed. Luka has been taking notes and collecting remnants of her treatment at PPTH like old needles while the Nanny Camphant videotaped her procedures. Hadley seems kind of excited to be part of this. In between trying to duck his wife's calls, Taub says they should discharge Afsoun before they expose themselves to a malpractice suit. Foreman agrees, saying Afsoun probably isn't even sick. If she was willing to let a guy set her on fire, then she'd huff paint thinner to induce an arrhythmia. Hadley protests that Afsoun's work is all about honesty, and faking symptoms isn't consistent with that. House agrees with Hadley that Afsoun isn't faking her illness, if not that her work is in any way honest. The fact is that Afsoun has a cyst on her pancreas, which Chase discovered at some point off-camera, makes House think that Afsoun's symptoms are real. He decides that she has Coxsackie B. Despite this, he lets Foreman do a CT scan to rule out gallstones and also because he knows Foreman will use the scan to check Afsoun's lungs for evidence that she huffed paint thinner. House volunteers to accompany Foreman to the booth so he can fully enjoy the moment when Foreman realizes that he's wrong, even though it means going against Hourani's orders and leaving his hospital bed.
Ultimately, the scan proves Foreman wrong and loses him what appears to be a hundred dollar bill to House. Foreman should have known better than to bet against House. Afsoun complains that she feels dizzy, and Foreman slides her out of the CT scan machine (OF SLIGHTLY LESS DOOOM!!) and says she's pale, sweaty, tachycardic, and has low blood pressure. House tells him to scope Afsoun to look for the source of the internal bleeding he believes is causing this.
Cuddy shows up in House's room with lunch for two, but he isn't there. House killed two birds with one stone; not only did he win $100 off Foreman, but he also skipped out on Cuddy.
Luka gets to take pictures of Afsoun's colonoscopy, much to his chagrin. Foreman's too; he finally gets sick of the camera, rips it out of Luka's hands, and throws it in the trash. Undaunted, Luka grabs the elephant and takes video instead. Chase and Foreman can't find the expected bleed despite all the scoping, so Foreman takes a look at Afsoun's feet. Something he sees there causes him to smile and say he didn't lose that bet to House after all.
Cuddy returns to House's bedside. This time, he's there. And she's angry. She closes the curtain behind her so they can be alone and accuses him of standing her up for lunch. House says he couldn't help it since his patient was bleeding internally and all. Cuddy doesn't care. She thinks this is another one of House's stupid games and begs him to just express his feelings directly instead of being passive-aggressive. "Let's finally have our fight," she says. House thinks they fight plenty, but Cuddy says that House's pranks and his temper tantrums in Wilson's office and somehow forcing her to go to his wedding and calling her after cutting open his own leg do not count. "You are obviously still angry at me and it's hurting both of us," Cuddy says. Does she think House will care about any of that? I honestly don't understand what she's trying to accomplish here, or why she thinks this is the best way to do it.
Foreman suddenly yanks the curtain open. "It's a privacy curtain!" Cuddy snaps at him. "It wasn't working," Foreman shrugs. Meanwhile, one of the nurse extras was totally leaning in to hear the conversation and only ducked out of the way when Cuddy got mad at Foreman. Ha! She rules. To get Cuddy to leave him alone, House agrees to meet her for lunch in the cafeteria tomorrow. Yeah. We'll see. Cuddy falls for it, though, and leaves. House celebrates her departure with a few more Vicodins. Foreman comments that House is going heavy on the drugs, like House cares. Foreman doesn't really, either. He changes the subject to Afsoun and a needle mark he found in a vein in her foot. She was injecting herself with her own red blood cells that she somehow managed to extract and keep for later use, which then caused her initial symptoms as well as the ones that made them think she had internal bleeding. House refuses to believe that he was wrong and that Afsoun is, after all, a fraud, but Foreman has more proof: printouts from her laptop browser history, where she was researching blood doping along with a certain brilliant diagnostician. "She set you up," Foreman says.
Hey, remember all those emergency vehicles in the beginning of the show because House did something unspeakably horrible and LINE CROSSING? Well, here's a reminder as we move forward in time a few days. Wilson's arm is bandaged, and now it's his turn to talk to a police officer, who asks if Wilson has any idea where they can find House. Wilson thinks he'll be in a bar, and one that "matches how he feels inside." So all the cops have to do is find the "most dark, depressing hole" in the entire state. If House is really scouring New Jersey for the bar that matches how he feels, then he is putting way too much effort into this.
However many days earlier, House confronts Afsoun. Afsoun doesn't know why House is so upset about this, saying she "thought [he] would understand someone who uses their work to deal with pain." What the hell article did Afson find on the internet that told her that? House asks why Afsoun is doing all of this. She claims that she actually is sick. Some of her symptoms were induced intentionally so she would get House's attention, but not all of them. This comes as a surprise to Luka, who asks if Afsoun knows what's wrong with her. Afsoun says she does, but she won't tell House what it is because he wants to solve the puzzle and she wants to get her art. So it's win-win! Except for, you know, all the other patients who might actually need House's help but won't get it because Afsoun is wasting his time. House asks why Afsoun chose him for this, but, of course, she won't tell him. "This is a puzzle tailor-made for you," she says. House will have to figure out which of her symptoms is real and find the ones she apparently hasn't even told him about. Yeah. That sounds like a blast. I guess it's not enough that I can't relate to the doctors on this show on any human level anymore, but now the patients don't make any logical sense. Of course, House accepts Afsoun's challenge.
The Cottages aren't so willing to deal with Afsoun anymore. House scolds Chase that he has to because he took an oath. "To be cool. Or at least that was the one I mumbled under my breath while everyone else was doing the boring one," House says. Well, that explains a lot. Meanwhile, look what's back! It's the Whiteboard O'Symptoms! This time it's the portable version, held up by Taub because that's all he's good for these days. House orders them to draw some blood from Afsoun and check it for parasites and bacteria. Foreman thinks the "new" House even is more irresponsible than the old one was, and he, along with Chase and Taub, refuse to follow orders. Hadley eventually decides to obey, saying that House is clearly going through a "tough patch" so a distraction like Afsoun might be good for him. Or at least better than whatever else he's capable of doing. Since when did Hadley care about House, anyway?
In the elevator, Taub gets another call from the ex. Again, he doesn't answer it. Foreman asks why Taub is avoiding her. I think that's kind of obvious, Foreman. Taub says he hasn't even told Rachel about Ruby's pregnancy. In fact, he hasn't even told her that he won't be cheating on Ruby with her anymore. Taub says he's just "trying to let her down easy" and he doesn't "want to hurt her feelings." More like Taub is selfish and cowardly, but we already knew that. Foreman says Taub might as well bite the bullet and tell her, because she'll find out one way or another.
Chase and Hadley are drawing blood when Afsoun complains of nausea. Luka adds that she said she had a backache, too. Afsoun says it's only a 5 on the pain scale, but Chase and Hadley know she isn't a reliable source. When Afsoun clutches her right side, they take a look and find that her pancreas is seriously sick and in danger of spreading its damage to her other internal organs and kill her if she doesn't tell them what's wrong with her in time for them to help her. She stays silent. Luka begs her to talk, but she tells him to "trust" that she knows what she's doing.
I'm not sure if House is watching porn or General Hospital on his portable television when Hadley walks in to update him about Afsoun's pancreas and how unconcerned Afsoun is about it. Hadley says the pancreas symptoms have to be real, since it's pretty much impossible to give yourself a cyst there. House says the only thing that explains Afsoun's lack of concern about her seemingly dire condition is that she already knows what she has is going to kill her anyway.
Afsoun is having another CT scan (OF BOREDOOOM!!) after the break. House has escaped his hospital bed in order to run the scan, and he tells Luka his theory. Based on Afsoun's symptoms that they believe are real and her head/body-shaving art exhibition four months ago, House thinks Afsoun has terminal cancer. She shaved all of her body hair because she knew it was going to fall out anyway, and this way no one would know. Sure enough, House finds a tumor in Afsoun's brain and diagnoses her with primary CNS lymphoma and paraneoplastic syndrome. Afsoun admits that House is correct, explaining that she went to a hospital in New York four months ago with vision and balance problems and got the diagnosis. The tumor was inoperable and the radiation treatments weren't effective, so that was that. "They sent me home," she says. She then broke up with Luka because she thought it wasn't "fair" to drag him into her health problems. "I'm involved now!" Luka says tearfully. He accuses her of not wanting to open up to him. Afsoun just says that her "mind" wasn't "clear" at the time.
House says that when Afsoun's head did clear, she apparently realized that she could turn her impending death into her best art project yet, using House to either show that even the most brilliant doctor can't cheat death or how a patient can be depersonalized into a bunch of symptoms. He's not sure which one it is. Afsoun won't say if he's right or not, just that if the latter was her original intention, she doesn't feel that way any more, because House clearly cared enough about her and her case to spend time with her and take it personally. House is insulted. He says he did not care about Afsoun and that all this "art project" is is her reaction to finding out she's mortal and human and not special. And maybe, in the back of her mind, she hoped House's diagnosis would be more hopeful than her other doctor's. House grabs the elephant camera and tells it that Afsoun should call her project "It Doesn't Mean Anything." I'm about this close to naming the recap that.
House returns to his bed, where Wilson is waiting for him. He accuses House of forging his name on Vicodin prescriptions "again." This time, Wilson actually did something about it: he called all area pharmacies and told them to get verbal authorization from Wilson before filling any Vicodin prescriptions from him. House says Wilson can get ready to be flooded with calls from his real patients' pharmacies, but Wilson doesn't care. He's sick of House putting himself in danger of overdosing or being arrested, not to mention that Wilson could get in trouble. The last straw, apparently, was when Wilson saw that House went through half a month's supply of Vicodin in a few days. House's excuse is pretty awful. He says this is all a part of trying to change for the better, and that he has to "numb" himself to do it. "What do you want from me?" he asks Wilson. Actually, I wouldn't mind knowing the answer to that question. Wilson can't possibly expect anything resembling a friend from House, right? Apparently, he likes hanging out with a guy who forges his name on things and trashes his office and yells at him all the time. Wilson just says that House is obviously "miserable" and "angry" and he has to deal with that without Vicodin. House has no intention of doing that, saying that right now he feels "nothing" and he's enjoying it. So he's going to discharge himself against medical advice and go home for more pills.
House is on his way out when he notices Afsoun still in her bed. He asks her why she hasn't left yet, and she says she's waiting for a nurse to bring her something to treat her eczema, which she believes is acting up because it had paint thinner poured on it during her exhibition. House gets his Epiphany Face. "It's not eczema," House says; "and it's not cancer."
So what is it? Wegener's granulamatosis, confirmed with a biopsy. The "eczema" was actually swelling blood vessels. It also caused her pancreatitis and the mass in her brain that apparently wasn't a cancerous tumor after all. Um ... excuse me? Are you telling me that Afsoun's doctors in New York just assumed Afsoun had -- and treated her for -- terminal cancer without doing any tests to confirm it? That is ridiculous. And stupid. I guess Wilson isn't the worst oncologist in the world after all. The best news, Chase tells Afsoun, is that Wegener's is treatable with steroids and radiation. Afsoun doesn't like the sound of radiation, saying it made her "fuzzy" when she had it to treat her NOT TERMINAL CANCER. Um ... wait a minute. If radiation is the treatment for this, then why didn't that radiation help her before? House points out that if Afsoun doesn't get radiation then she'll find it even harder to work because she'll be dead. Afsoun doesn't care. She refuses the radiation. Luka doesn't understand. "My life's not worth anything if I can't do my art," Afsoun says. Yes, once again, someone who comes to PPTH with a gift has to choose between dying or a treatment that will somehow take that gift away. Luka says that Afsoun has plenty to live for, like her friends. She's more than her art. Afsoun disagrees. Luka says he can't bear to watch Afsoun die when she doesn't have to. He was at her side when he thought she had terminal cancer, but he's not sticking around for this. He kisses her forehead and leaves. "Good for you," House says, apparently respecting for Afsoun for the first time.
House manages to stay true to his word to Cuddy and meets her in the cafeteria for their very awkward lunch. There are a lot of long pauses. Cuddy tries to break the ice by asking House to look for her hairbrush in his apartment, which was not in the box of stuff her gave her. He says he will, then asks if she's dating anyone. Cuddy doesn't think that's the best topic of conversation for them, but House says that's not fair, since Cuddy insisted on this lunch date so that they could talk about things. So Cuddy says no and that she hasn't dated anyone since they broke up. House tries to make a joke, saying "once you go gimp," but that backfires on him when a. he can't think of a rhyme for "gimp" in time; and b. Cuddy uses it as a segue to talk about his leg. House fires off a list of reasons for why he did what he did, all of which I think we've already heard at least once from Wilson and/or Cuddy, concluding that the reason doesn't matter because it was a "bad idea." He gets up and leaves, but Cuddy chases him down the hallway, urging him to talk to her. She notices that he's bleeding through his jeans, probably because he pulled a stitch, and House finally snaps. He pushes her off of him and into a wall and gets in her face, yelling before taking a second to collect himself and say, softly, that he feels "hurt." Cuddy holds his hand and says she knows and she's sorry. "It's not your fault," House says. He drops her hand and walks away. I don't know if this is the outcome Cuddy was hoping for or dreading.
Afsoun wonders aloud if she made "the wrong choice." Hadley happens to be in the room at the time, and listens as Afsoun says that Luka was by her side for everything for the last five years, "every day and every night." Except, of course, for when she broke up with him and had to go through her NOT TERMINAL CANCER treatments by herself. Hadley asks if Afsoun's real reason for her latest performance art piece was to have Luka with her this time. If so, then she did a terrible job of it, as he's gone. But, Hadley points out, it doesn't have to be that way.
Cuddy runs into Jerry at the coffee shop again. This time, she admits to being Cuddy and apologizes for being rude the other day, chalking it up to "some personal things." Jerry also apologizes for being creepy, but Cuddy says he was only "mildly unnerving." Flirty smiles are exchanged.
Well, well, well. Look who decided to pay Taub a visit at work? Yes, it's his ex-wife! He tries to apologize to her for avoiding her calls, but she interrupts to tell him why she was calling so insistently: she's pregnant. "I didn't expect that," Taub says. Neither did I -- I thought this show was a lot better than that. This is like a terrible sitcom.
Hadley enters House's office and finds him with his pants down. Um, aren't all of his walls made of glass? Why would he be doing that where anyone who walked by could see him? He's just checking his stitches, he says, pulling his pants back up. Hadley informs him that Afsoun changed her mind and is going to have the radiation therapy after all.
House decides to ask Afsoun about this. He finds her in her room with Luka by her side again, having just given her a single rose. House promptly orders Luka to leave. He asks Afsoun why she changed her mind. "There are more important things than -- " Afsoun starts to explain, only for House to cut her off and yell at her that nothing should be more important than her brain and the abilities it has given her. "It's where everything comes from, any meaning in your life, any happiness!" he says, obviously talking about himself more than he is Afsoun. He says Luka is not worth losing her abilities because he'll probably just leave her anyway because people always let you down. "If you do this, you're a pathetic hypocrite!" House accuses. Afsoun doesn't really care what House says. She just wants to know why he seems to want her to die. House doesn't have an answer for her. He leaves the room. When he looks back, Afsoun is in Luka's arms.
House returns home, where he sits around taking Vicodin until his phone rings. He doesn't answer it, but the damage is done. Wilson was calling House from just outside his front door and heard the phone ringing inside, so he knows House is in there. House lets him in. Wilson asks if House is doing okay after his lunch with Cuddy. House clearly isn't, so Wilson offers to take him out for a drink. In the middle of the day. Knowing that House has taken like a week's supply of Vicodin today. Great plan, Wilson. House limps to his bathroom and grabs a woman's hairbrush off the shelf where he knew it would be. He agrees to go to the bar if they can stop at Cuddy's first so he can drop her brush off.
In what is becoming a pattern of terrible decisions, Wilson decided they should take House's car to the bar and that House should drive. Even though, again, he is high on Vicodin and will probably get totally wasted at the bar on top of that. And, I would assume, Wilson had to drive his own car to House's apartment so why not just let Wilson drive his own car? It's like Wilson went out of his way to make this terrible idea happen. House pulls up in front of Cuddy's house and tells Wilson to stay in the car. He walks towards the house, then stops short. Cuddy has company. Julia and her husband are having coffee in Cuddy's dining room with Cuddy and Jerry. Yes, there's no better first date than coffee at someone's house with her sister and her sister's husband. That makes sense. They get up to leave the room, with no one apparently noticing the man standing in the front yard like fifteen feet away from the large window. Cuddy touches Jerry's shoulder. House decides not to return the hairbrush after all.
He turns around and walks back to the car. Wilson asks what's going on. "Get out," House says. Wilson again asks what's going on. "Get out," House repeats. Wilson obeys, leaving House with "what are you mad about? Just let it out. You'll feel better." House closes the car door and screeches away, leaving Wilson on the sidewalk figuring he should call for a cab. Well, that's what you get for letting House drive. House speeds away, then, suddenly, does a screechy U-turn in the middle of the road. The anger on his face changes into determination, and he speeds back towards Cuddy's house. Like, seriously towards Cuddy's house. As in, Wilson jumps out of the way (and manages to hurt his arm when he lands. Klutz!) as the car pulls up on the sidewalk, over the front lawn, and rams into Cuddy's dining room. Her walls are made out of paper, so the car easily passes through them and comes to a rest almost entirely in the dining room. Fortunately for pretty much everyone involved, no one was in the dining room at the time. They're all standing just outside it, staring at the uninvited guest in shock and horror.
Despite driving through a house, both House and his car haven't suffered much, if any, damage. House, who wasn't even wearing a seatbelt and thus should have been ejected through his front windshield and died, simply opens his door, steps out, closes it behind him, and picks his way across what's left of Cuddy's dining room towards the small group who are not, for whatever reason, running away from the guy who just tried to kill them all with his car. No, they just stand there and let him approach them. House hands Cuddy her hairbrush and walks out, looking quite pleased with what just happened. To Wilson, who is gaping at him and holding his wrist, he says he does, indeed, feel better. And then he just walks away. No one tries to stop him. The police apparently take their sweet-ass time to show up, since it's daylight now and it was dark when they were there. This gives House ample opportunity to escape. Just as Wilson predicted, he's in a bar. But it's not the darkest hole in New Jersey, and House isn't exactly getting trashed out of his mind. He finishes his drink, tells the bartender he's had enough, and asks what he should do today. "I don't know. Go home?" the bartender says. House smiles and shakes his head. "Not tonight," he says. And that's when we see that he's on a beach somewhere tropical surrounded by sun, surf, and happy beachgoers. He takes a walk on the beach, which is suddenly empty of people, and that's it for Season Seven.
So. The question now is, what the hell just happened? Did House actually drive a car through Cuddy's house and escape to some tropical paradise? If so, how can the show possibly recover from that? House can't return to the United States without going to jail for what should be a very long time, and they can't just have the Cottages and Wilson all move to Mexico or wherever he is and practice medicine there. Also, who wants to watch House do anything now that he just tried to kill four people (five, if you count Rachel, who he didn't know was in the room or not)? Yes, they weren't in the room when the car went through it and yes, he saw them leave the room before he decided to drive the car through it. But that doesn't really matter. He had no way of knowing that they didn't walk back into the room in between the time that he walked away and crashed through the wall. It's still attempted murder.
My guess is, then, that it didn't actually happen. Maybe House OD'd. Maybe he was in a coma from the leg self-surgery. They did make a point of showing his leg bleeding through his jeans in the same spot we saw it bleeding through that towel in the ER last episode. I'm sure there are plenty of other hints that what we were watching wasn't reality, and when Season 8 premieres, all will be revealed and the reset button will be pressed again and nothing will change. It doesn't mean anything, just like House said about Afsoun's art project. Three or four episodes into season, House will be back at PPTH doing the same thing and acting like the same asshole. Or, if it's even possible at this point, even more of an asshole. But each season, that's just a little less fun to watch until it gets to this point where it's just not entertaining at all anymore. The writers clearly don't give a shit about the medical mystery aspect of the show anymore and devote little to no effort to it. There's nothing likeable about any of the characters. The most compelling one spent the last few episodes being a hateful lunatic and now he's just driven a car into his ex-girlfriend's house. So I think it's time for me to pull a Lisa Edelstein and move on. It's been great to recap seven seasons of this show, which was, for a long time, the best thing on TV, but I'm done. Thank you so much for reading, cue the Rolling Stones, and good-bye!
Sara Morrison wants to stay in touch with all of you. You can follow her on Twitter, friend her on Facebook, or email her at saramorrison@gmail.com.