"Need to Know"
Wilson/Cuddy! Hangin' out together at the front desk and plotting (much more lightheartedly than in "Detox") re: House. I love how quickly they size up the situation and move into action.
Dammit, I missed Wilson with the joints because I'm a pushover and helped my father carry a ceramic saw to his car. I love that scene. :(
Wilson is still conspicuously preoccupied with getting House to talk. Talk talk talk, should we talk, we need to talk, do you want to talk, is this something we should talk about, are you ditching the conversation, I may need to have an actual conversation about [it]... They are so married. I wonder if he's this insistent on communication with his wives or if he's only like that with House.
Stacy/Wilson! A tiny bit more backstory to the post-infarction days. Imaginings of what Wilson means when he says he picked up the pieces afterwards; while I don't doubt that he helped House through the anger and frustration and heartbreak of those days, Stacy immediately undercuts his admittedly over-dramatic recap. There must be a middle ground between Wilson's emphasis of his own importance in House's recovery and Stacy's denial that she caused House any pain. Also, that scene would be even better if the editors had put another half-second pause before Wilson's "Are you being...intentionally thick?" because it throws the rhythm off and turns their heretofore excellent banter into a script reading.
"You're married." "Not to you." Hypocrite freaks out when women cheat. First to Stacy, then to House re: the patient ("to cover her pathetic lie"). Unconsciously anticipating Julie's affair much? Or just sublimated self-loathing? Hm.
Lord, House and Stacy in bed screams that it's the most awkward situation Hugh Laurie has been in on the show. Unflattering angles for both of them, smiles like winces, and his hand on her side looks-well, awkward, not like they're reunited lovers but like HL is thinking of his wife back home or is acutely conscious of the production crew watching or something. But their embrace on the roof and his quiet "Still fits" evens the score. Missed that the first time. In fact, watching the House/Stacy arc now, I'm finding the whole thing more sympathetic, even moving, whereas the first time through I couldn't wait for her to leave the show. Go figure.
Fake sunset = godawful. The parallel of House/Stacy followed by House/Wilson on the roof is nice, though, especially since Stacy takes House's crap and leaves, whereas Wilson proves once again that he knows House better than anyone. Even if his little speech grates on the nerves. Hey, and House says "Don't do this," which prefigures Wilson's "Don't" in "House vs. God" that in turn prefigures House's "Don't" in "No Reason." They are so married.
House and the little girl remains adorable, specifically when he stands up and holds out his hand like he does it every day and she takes it. This was before the "House is good with kids!!!!111!" overkill.
Oh! And I never noticed that House grabs the swab for Cameron's HIV sample before he turns to the whiteboard. He's planning the declaration-of-love bait-and-switch that far in advance. Nice.
"Distractions"
Despite the numerous times I've watched the lecture hall scene, it took until now for several things to register. First, House saying "Shhh" twice to Wilson is sexy. Second, in order for Wilson to know all that stuff about House's education, House must have told him. It's an obvious point, but I never really imagined the scene that had to have taken place much earlier where House fills Wilson in on his misadventures at med school.
Ah ha ha, "Blow a ... ton of money on a plasma TV" is still funny. As is watching Wilson throughout the whole scene instead of watching House.
Wilson with the cutlery, shouting! That will never stop being awesome. Notice how he deconstructs House's actions while hurting him more, yet stops him from drinking caffeine that might make his migraine worse and gives him a glass of water to help. He's angry that House is being stupid and gives him a couple of good jolts that express those feelings, all while actually trying to make him feel better. "It's very you." They are so very married.
House looked a little nauseous after making the anesthesiologist wake up the kid. Why so disturbed at that but not at scaring Katrina girl half to death in the MRI in "Who's Your Daddy"? A difference between pain and fear?
"I'm hallucinating." Oh, ha, ha, post-"No Reason." Bleh. Also, why does Cameron have no problem walking in on him in a towel in the showers but she won't go into the men's room with the rest of the staff in "Clueless"?
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Of
all the posts in all the fandoms in all the world at
ship_manifesto, there's only one pairing represented for House: House/Wilson, by the inimitable
pun. I say it's high time for some Wilson/Cameron lovin'. *significant look at
thewlisian_afer* Just throwing that out there.
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Taped the Outer Limits episode RSL was in in 2000, "The Nest," this afternoon and watched it before House came on. He is very, very pretty in it, with loose hair parted near the middle and short in the back like in The I Inside, and a cream-colored sweater with three buttons near the neck-oh, just look at
michelleann68's
screencaps (some spoilers in there somewhere), which will give you some idea, though RSL doesn't cap well.
The plot was terrible, as were the dialogue and some of the acting and half the graphics, and the end sucked, and bugs + mouths = gross even when the bugs are clearly CGI in those shots, but I got what I wanted and am pleased. He played a range of emotions pretty effectively, which is a bit of a triumph considering the script. And I believed that his character was actually capable of performing his job (head of the research facility featured in the episode), which is more than I can say for the people playing the (mad) doctor, the freaked-out female researcher or the inexplicably creepy and ineffective psychologist-friend. RSL's monologue near the end about his tragic past was just lovely. Heck, even his coughing-up of "polar mites" was convincing. There were some amusing Wilson-y bits in there too, like getting to say "polycythemia" and "erythrocyte," sticking a needle into his own arm (just like House in "Distractions" tonight), and telling his not-really-friend that he was "not in the mood" to play foosball. And some Prey echoes, what with the parasite plot line, his character being pretty much in charge of figuring out how to cure everyone/get out alive, and a trip to a cave full of the little buggers that they close using explosives. I also, um, enjoyed seeing RSL be all lovey-kissy with his character's fiancee.
But the end. Erg. The whole dramatic B-plot to this episode is that RSL's character, Robby, knows the visiting psychologist, Jack, from childhood, when they were best friends until Robby and his brother Matt fell through some pond ice and Jack saved Robby but had to let go of Matt. Robby understandably holds Jack responsible for his brother's death. At the climax of the episode, in which Robby, Jack and Robby's fiancée are the only three survivors of a polar mite infestation, Robby has to choose which of the other two will live. (He can save one of them, you see, because the mites can only survive in anemic patients and he's immune due to the aforementioned polycythemia, and a transfusion of his type-O blood would do the trick.) The whole hour has been building up to this confrontation between Robby and Jack-in which Robby admits after 20 years that he's been traumatized by his brother's death and hates Jack, and Jack explains what it was like in his position, to be 10 years old and have to decide who would live and who would die, and gets Robby to admit that he never considered what Jack must have gone through himself-and at last, Robby takes his fiancee's hand in his and then also Jack's (mm, slashy), and smiles a little. And you think-well, I was thinking-"that's it, after all those years of churning hatred, Robby's going to save the man who once saved him and have to live with the burning guilt of having let someone he cares for die, and the fiancee isn't going to believe it, but ties between men over 20 years supercede a relatively brief engagement"-and then Robby freakin' chooses the fiancee, and what the hell was the point of all that? Apparently the "twist" is that Robby later gets called a hero in a newspaper, which is supposed to echo the hollow praise heaped upon poor Jack after the accident when they were kids. So it was just a story about vengeance and a selfish desire for recognition. Ew. Just, ew.