11 - Everybody lies. Just don't lie to yourself.
In honour of the series finale last night.
House is one of the greatest antiheroes to ever grace American TV. I fell instantly in love with the character and the show, but I forced myself to stop watching around the 3rd or 4th season when they started attacking his character with consecutive, over-arching storylines designed to "humble" him. This tends to happen when a series with an antihero goes on for a certain amount of time.
I hated hated HATED it. And I figure yelling at the tv to tell it as such was a sign to have some time apart.
So I bitterly dropped the series from my weekly watch-list because I just couldn't stand those characters that tried to change him and because I didn't want to see House turn into the "normal" good guy everyone wanted him to be. Not even for a second. I wanted to preserve my memory of House as a character that never compromised. So when I heard that this was the final season and Cuddy was no longer in it, I just had to tune in again. And you know what? The show was as awesome in the 8th season as I had remembered it in the first! Only this series has ever been able to make me laugh out loud and cry a river AND THEN LAUGH AGAIN in the span of one episode. But more than anything, I was so SO happy that the writers stayed true to the character of House.
House vs. Faith and House vs. Expectations to be a better man were constantly recurring themes, and how the show handled them for the final time was frank, honest and thus, truly wonderful. He wouldn't/couldn't let anyone try to change him, no matter how much he cared or respected them. There were many times, of course, when he was so. Agonizingly. CLOSE. But in the end, the big and little decisions he did make were not based on someone else's standards or expectations, but based on (and driven by) his own feeling of self worth.
Thank you, Hugh Laurie, for such a beautifully flawed character and a brilliant show!