House’s psychotic break was five of the creepiest moments of television I’ve ever seen.
I keep wishing Stephen Fry would guest on the show. I know it would be gimmicky, but it would be so good!!!
So wrenching. House is totally insane, yet he diagnoses pancreatic cancer just from the way a guy adjusts a belt. Now this brilliant diagnostician has to go to the mental hospital, and PPTH loses its best mind – literally.
I wonder if, next season, House does not show up back to work at the hospital but there will be several episodes taking place in the creepy psychiatric facility. Gad! As I stated on another board, that place looks like there’s ankle deep water in the basements, rats, and torch-lit halls patrolled by retainers named Boris and Igor :eek:.
I’m pissed I didn’t tape it so I could go back and look at his interactions with Cuddy again. It was really well done because I never got The Sixth Sense vibe from it, even with the preview teasing us about a big twist.
Like she’s so used to his sexual comments that she does just lets the “barn door” comment go and doesn’t pick up on what he is saying.
I agree. I am still shaken about it and knew I had to come here and debrief! My neighbors don’t watch it so I couldn’t work it all out with someone.
Hmmm…but he had to have the initial conversation with Wilson, right? Although, Wilson conveniently says he won’t say anything to Cuddy…
:smack:
I saw that part and somehow totally forgot about it. Thank you!
Regarding checking House for a brain tumor, didn’t he just go through a bunch of tests with Wilson when House told him he was seeing Amber?
Know how his right brain got mad at the girlfriend for bringing the deodorant - threw the bottle and slapped her? Well he tried to chase after her and maybe right brain was still mad and refused to let him chase after her? That’s what I figured anyway.
This would be a great ending for the series but I am selfish and I want more House! I did totally cry though, I hope I wasn’t the only one…seeing that his detox and happiness was a sham was totally depressing.
Hah! A little credit please? I just about nailed it! http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=516413 #44
I’m guessing that it all came out when Cuddy and House walked into Wilson’s office at the end. He said to Cuddy, “but I told you I needed you; you helped me . . .”
Also, a brief flash, but it looked like the bottle this time was oxycontin - as addictive as it gets.
They said several times in the last ep that Vicodin addiction can cause hallucinations. I’m betting this psych hospital has a lock-down addiction treatment ward, which is what House needs. I’m hoping he will also get some treatment for his basic emotional problem, but that will take years, so no worries, plenty of fodder for future seasons!
Re: dropping him off - it’s not unusual to let addicition patients walk in of their own accord like that. Makes a real difference if you don’t have to waste ten days waiting for them to stop whining about how they’ve been forced into it. And it really suits House’s personality to do it this way.
Amber did an utterly fantastic job, I thought. The level of evil she managed to put into what, five words? Right up there with “Heeeeeere’s Johnny!” in my book, maybe even better.
Anduinel summed it up well, but another important point is that the deoderant was probably causing the seizures in the first place, POTW may never have needed the surgery which divided his brain.
Chase/Cameron, I thought was wonderful. They did such a good job of looking deleriously happy. Can you imagine how difficult it must have been for them to shoot that scene? After having been engaged in real life? [Shudder]
Re Cuddy - I think the oxytocin was on her cup - because she’s in love with Wilson. . .
Can someone please either fill me in on what happened in like the last minute of the episode, or else point me at a YouTube video or something so I can see it (which would be preferable?) My stupid DVR cut out right as House was looking up at the building (which I guessed to be a psychiatric hospital, of course, but if the words above the door ever became readable, I missed that part). Thanks. I’m getting really tired of Comcast cutting off the recording right before the end.
It never occurred to me that House might have had a mental break – After all the previous talks of Vicodin causing hallucinations, I assume that’s what was causing this. House is fantastic at scamming to get his fix, which is why I thought they were putting him in a “lock-down” type place to detox, rather than one of those fru-fru detox summer camps. Also, Amber is creepy as all get out.
That’s basically it–House goes into the Psychiatric Hospital with Wilson looking on, and the door closes behind him kind of looking out. It’s intertwined with Cameron and Chase getting married with a worried Cuddy looking on, holding her baby.
Oxytocin is also involved with female reproduction. I’m gonna quote Wikipedia here only because I’m too lazy to go through my Biopsych textbook, but I remember learning this:
It is best known for its roles in female reproduction: it is released in large amounts after distension of the cervix and vagina during labor, and after stimulation of the nipples, facilitating birth and breastfeeding, respectively.
Cuddy is a mom. Remember House’s actual comment to her - about her suckling her kid? That’s the cause of the oxytocin to show up on her coffee. Oxytocin is involved with maternal behaviors, but also can be related to bonding, trust, etc.
Agreed. They just need to work out the logistics. If Fry can occasionally pop up on Bones, which shoots right next to House, why not have him take a short walk over to the other set?
I didn’t get that “Arkum Asylum” vibe, but maybe it’s just me. It looked like a stately university campus to me. Maybe it’s partly because Wilson mentioned (previous episode) that he had a colleague in a “nice” facility outside of Philadelphia and I assume it’s the same place.
I agree that Amber’s scene was totally creepy.
Yeah, I didn’t see that coming. Damn. I thought the big ending was going to be that Cuddy resigned or House was actually fired for real.
Speaking of which, I kinda wish they hadn’t had her fire him, because that’s just going to be one more time she says something and doesn’t back it up. She can’t fire him, because he is the damn show, and there’s no way they’ll completely change the feel of the show with him at another hospital. Why do the writers keep pushing the one button we know they can’t push?
Also, re: Chase & Cameron, I could not believe they actually shot that wedding scene. Considering the history between the two actors, ugh, all I could think of was how horribly strange and uncomfortable it must have been for them. 
Is it the same facility Wilson’s brother is in? 'Cause that could be interesting? Although I think that may have been “up north”.
He’s having psychotic breaks due to his heavy drug use. If there’s not some other factor (tumor) then they should stop if he can truly detox.
Figuring out what was real in the ep and what was part of the break is still a little sketchy for me though. The long series of flashbacks were presented as if they comprehensively “fixed” for the audience all the things that were delusional.
But if so, that still leaves me unclear on:
- Whether he really told Wilson he had slept with Cuddy. Wilson’s non-House interactions with Cuddy were ambiguous: he seemed to act like he knew they had slept together (or at least thought they had), but it was deliberately made ambiguous (i.e. he didn’t come out and tell her, and they presented a motivation for him not to want to)
- Whether he really shouted about them sleeping together and she subsequently fired him.
I can’t quite recall his first conversation with Cuddy in the ep: was it played so as to be ambiguous (i.e. he thought he was confronting her about the sex, but she thought it was about the nasty remark about her suckling a baby, which was her motivation to tell him that he was inappropriately crossing the line) or did he actually come out and say that they had slept together?
Be a lot clearer if House and Wilson had later talked about how he hadn’t slept with her, but I can see how that wouldn’t really have fit thematically into the ep once they did the big reveal.
I’m betting that if the show comes back, the first ep will be pretty fun: House will diagnose someone with a serious illness in the mental hospital, but no one there will believe him and he’ll have to rope the team into coming to help figure it out.
I also only saw the brief flash, but thought it said CODONE - i.e., his Vicodin (hydrocodone) or possibly oxycodone. The pills they’ve shown him taking are too big to be Oxycontin, but they aren’t always meticulous about that.
A few notes: At one point when House was having his self realization you saw the bottle said, …ODONE. So it was hydrocodone, not oxycontin as someone upthread mentioned.
I hate when shows break continuity. In the Vogler arc from season one it was firmly established that House could only be fired by a unanimous vote by the board of directors, which almost certainly didn’t happen here.
House’s moment of realization, the appearance of Amber and, to a lesser extent, Kutner, was quite probably the simultaneously creepy and depressing TV scene I’ve ever watched.
I agree that the Cameron/Chase thing had to be a killer for the actors to shoot. That was so in the forefront of my mind the last couple of weeks that it was hard to really appreciate the storyline.
Lastly, I’m not sure of the actual FDA and AMA guidelines, but can a physician who’s been under a psychiatric commitment continue to hold a license and prescription authorization? Does it matter if you’ve gone in voluntarily vs. been committed by a court?