I can't get no satisfaction.

The last couple weeks of television have been rough. Let's just admit it together, now: the strike crippled TV as we know it and now we're all struggling to catch up. I think this is especially true with serious character dramas, like House, MD. Sorry, fans, but Grey's Anatomy doesn't actually have character development to be affected, nor does Two and a Half Men or Law & Order, but House and its ilk does. You can feel when you watch that the writers and producers are working with half time and thusly trying to shove all they can into a few short episodes, which means it ends up feeling false. House doesn't know, at least in what we've seen, that 13 is bisexual. Since when have Chase and Cameron still been together? And don't get me started (again) on Amber and Wilson.

With the season finale being a week away and Amber's mysterious illness building to its conclusion, I am pondering not the season but rather the series finale. A friend of my feels that it's "unfair" that Amber should get sick and (possibly) die, because it's already a show about misery and someone (Wilson) deserves a happy ending. I argue that the misery is the best part of the show.

In fact, I would argue that it's so much the best part--and so integral--to the show that there are only three ways the series can actually end without being the least satisfying piece of tripe imaginable. And here they are.

1. House dies.
   The cyclical nature of the season finales have worked this way thus far: House loses someone he loves (Stacy); House gets hurt (shot); House loses someone he loves (the fellows resigning or getting fired); House gets hurt (bus accident). House puts himself in some of the most ridiculous and dangerous positions imaginable and never seems to expect that he'll die or almost die. There's also the argument that with episodes like "97 Seconds" (House electrocutes himself to see if there's anything "there") and "House's Head" (House self-medicates and goes into cardiac arrest), his self-destructive behavior is amping up. I don't think it's too much of a stretch to imagine a finale in which House dies. It could be in the tireless pursuit of knowledge and a cure for a disease, but I think it's more likely to happen that he destroys himself. House is surprisingly adept at putting himself in danger, and wouldn't it be just like him to get in a bad motorcycle accident and be lying in a coma while the team has to scramble to save the half-diagnosed patient of the week? The patient lives, House dies, and the show ends (in a way) as it began. It is, after all, the pilot in which House gives his "dying isn't dignified" speech. It would be a strong coda to the show, too.
   
   
2. Wilson or Cuddy dies.
   The cyclical nature of the season finales being as they are, House could possibly lose someone he cares about. But who does he care about? The two people he most is connected to and cares about are his two close friends: Wilson and Cuddy. The fellows dying would be bad but not necessarily touch him the same way losing either of these two would, and in the same way, I don't think there's going to be an emotional connection to any new character in the next few seasons that will rival the connection he has to these characters. I'd go beyond calling it unlikely to calling it "impossible."
   But if House is going to be affected by a death, anyone's death, it's going to end up being either Cuddy or Wilson. Frankly, I think that Wilson is a more likely candidate. Cuddy and House are close, but not like House and Wilson. If House is going to lose someone who he cares about, Wilson will be this person. It may crush House worse than anyone else he knows--it may be worse for House than his own death--but it's a possibility. Especially since I get the feeling that House is very much the kind of person who "don't know what he's got 'till it's gone."
   
   
3. It's all a dream.
   In "Three Stories," arguably one of the best season one (or perhaps overall) episodes of the series, we discover that House underwent surgery for his infarction after he was put into a drug-induced coma. From the point of view of the show, he comes out of the coma with his injured leg, but as we watch the show, we realize that "time is not a fixed construct." The show slides through time almost fluidly, when three months and three minutes can all take place in the same episode. It's never been perfect reality. Plus, we get to see inside House's psyche several times ("No Reason", "House's Head", even "Three stories" to an extent) in a way that no other show does. It's entirely possible, perhaps even logical, that he could still be in the coma and this reality we see as the viewer is actually the drug-induced reality of House's head. We know what his mind is capable of. Why would this not be a expanded a few beats further into it being all one giant, drug-induced dream? Reality is not a fixed construct in the House universe, either.
   

It's not that I want my show to end. It's not that I like thinking about the series finale. But I think, in a way, the show is edging along a terrifying cliff. Finding a satisfying ending is going to be a challenge, but there's no room for "happily ever after" in a show that is about, in its essence, misery.

It's just the level of misery we find at the end to mitigate the misery we've had from the start. Maybe it won't be warm and fuzzy, but it will be a little less frigid. At this point, that's the best we can hope for.

A Tretise on Amber Volakis

My friend Carrie and I, last night, were currently embroiled in an epic (epic) text-message conversation about this David Shore interview and the titles of the rest of this season's episodes. Or rather, that is how it started. It swiftly made a change when I got on the subject (as I often do) about Amber, and her relationship with Wilson, and the ineffective plot device of the recent House/Wilson/Amber "triangle", if you will.

I am the first to concede that the arc with Wilson dating Amber could have been absolutely brilliant from the get-go. Moving from my reading of the "new" ducklings as aspects of House's personality, Amber fits right in; she basically is House in heels and a skirt, a counterpart to Cuddy's version of "tough woman" politics in a male-dominated field, and serves as a balance to Cameron and 13 as the other major women in the competition-cum-House's life. I really liked Amber as a character. As a person, I thought she was underhanded, cutthroat, and winner-take-all, but that was what I, as a viewer, was meant to see in her. She was meant to get on my nerves at times and for that she was absolutely stellar. I respected Amber. I wouldn't want to have beers with her or watch American Idol while sharing a plate of nachos, but she was well-written and well-done.

My problem with Wilson and Amber as a couple, and indeed the entire plot with Wilson and Amber as a couple, is what it's done to Amber as a strong personality. I no longer can look her in the eye and see the Cutthroat Bitch because, from the minute she started crying at the end of her swan song episode, she was no longer the Cutthroat Bitch. Even if she was upset, even if she thought she deserved it, it felt massively out of character for her to cry in front of anyone, up to and including the patient. Another friend once described Amber as "calculating", and I think that's the perfect word for her; no one that calculating and manipulative would have broken down in front of these people she is trying to impress and win over the way she did.

I could have lived with that, but frankly, nothing's been improved with the advent of Wilson's dating game. I wish I had "Don't Ever Change" on my harddrive to watch again, so I could lay out all my issues as well as I'd like to, but to me, the most telling moment was when she arrived home in Wilson's McGill sweatshirt. Now, I understand wearing your boyfriend's shirt; I've been guilty of it. I understand comfortable clothes. But Wilson is at least three sizes bigger than Amber, and for her to leave the house in his clothes? From the woman who is always perfectly put-up with neat hair, makeup, jewelry, et cetera? Completely wrong for the character. If she'd been home and lounging around, I would happily take that. But for her to arrive from being out dressed like that is completely contrary to everything we'd seen of her so far. I am not necessarily saying that people who look nice for work are incapable of wearing crappy clothes outside of the house on other days, but frankly, there is so much of Amber's personality up to that point that is against the very notion of her leaving home like that that I cannot process the sudden "cutesy" and "I belong to Wilson" image that is her in that too-big sweatshirt. Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but when she arrives to House's office later to confront him, she's wearing nice clothes again. Clearly, she does think about what she wears even when her dress doesn't necessarily effect what happens to her. (Meaning that she could have worn junk clothes to House's office and it wouldn't have mattered; she was already fired.) So why that time?

More than that, the whole "love versus respect" thing? No. Not only was it cliched and possibly some of the purplest prose in the show (again, I wish I had the episode), but it was just wrong for Amber. When have we ever seen her care a mite about love? When has she ever cared about being accepted or part of something? She's a self-serving bitch who wants to be on top. That's why the character was a fan-favorite. That's why people were sad to see her go. She never made any pretense about being more or less than that, and it completely cuts apart her character to suddenly make her craving love as much (or more) than she does respect. Show us some inkling of her having that as part of her personality. Drop us a line about it! But of course, they never did, because it wasn't there.

I realize that the strike rushed and changed some elements of the storylines that were meant to weave together for Season 4 - we were knocked down to a sixteen-episode season, for god's sake - but the fact is that, by making Amber the flavor-of-Wilson's-week, the writers ruined Amber. Using her as a device for delving into House and Wilson's relationship and looking at how Wilson, at base, does crave someone with House's personality traits? Brilliant. But I saw very little of House in the Amber we met in "Don't Ever Change". Instead, I saw someone who was just like Wilson's wives, and that's something we know he does not need or want. Why not keep her as she was? Why not press Amber as the bitch and have Wilson really adore her despite that?

But no. He meets her crying, he comforts her, and it's just another tooth in the gear called "Wilson's vicious cycle." There will never be any real future with Amber because Amber is no longer the kind of woman Wilson truly craves - self-actualized, confident, honest, ballsy. Instead, she's a shell of that woman, and frankly, unless dating Wilson is a ploy to get back at House, I don't see any way of salvaging her character.

It's sort of ironic that she features so heavily in "Don't Ever Change." The character who changes most is not House, or Wilson, but her.