#but instead whenever house isn't available chase gets the win

[all-pacas]

Chase inheriting house’s braincells the moment house lets go of his responsibility and losing all his abilities once house comes back is so funny bc it’s probably meta thing but also very parent-child coded. Kinda like being destined to mess up cooking when mom’s watching.

i'm recently really fascinated in this from a meta perspective. because like. the show is pretty fucking explicit in s1-3 that foreman is the Main Character, right? he gets the most focus, the strongest arc, he is house's special favorite (in an antagonistic way, but house clearly takes him under his wing in a way he doesn't the other two). he gets put in charge of a case in s1, and gets a whole arc in s2 where he's in charge again. foreman is the main character.

they kind of tamp down on this in s4-5 with the new team arc, but even then: foreman is the leader. he is the best of the team. he is the one house puts in charge, he is a supervisor, he is the smartest, he gets his own subplots and career. the show kind of drops this after s6 i think, although it's hard to say exactly when it happened: by s7 foreman's pathological need to be in charge is a running joke, and he starts being made fun of for it more often -- they were teasing him in s2 for it, too, but at the same time it was unequivocally true, right? by s7 they're still teasing him, but foreman isn't really given his moments of Strong Leadership to compensate. in any case, by s8 they clearly have abandoned the idea of foreman as house's natural heir, not just because foreman is now dean (instead of cameron, who in turn spend s4-5 getting lots of set up for that job): in s8 chase also starts getting very obviously thrown into the old foreman role, taking charge, being called the best of the crew, given lots and lots of focus episodes and time to shine.

i say this all because i think it's pretty clear, right? foreman is the best of the team. he is the smartest. he is the most leaderly. he has the most focus. so why, i wonder: why does chase keep getting the brain cell?

chase solves the most cases on the show outside of house. admittedly, several of them are clustered in s8, when he's being groomed to take over the department, but like. s3 he gets two independent solves; in s4.2 he solves the case two seconds after learning about it (admittedly in a moment kind of meant to show up the contrast between the old team and new candidates). in the pilot, he doesn't solve the case, but he figures out how to prove the diagnosis when everyone else is stumped. at the same time, early seasons chase isn't… i wouldn't say isn't smart, but is often slightly less likely to participate in differentials, is kind of a dumbass in a very chase-ish way; he's perceived as being a little dim. house is surprised in no reason when fake!chase says something smart, you know? chase isn't on the team for his genius intellect, he's there to keep people alive while house thinks. and that's fine! but he keeps getting that braincell.

and it's even more striking because foreman doesn't, usually. part of it is because a lot of foreman's arc is his struggles with his arrogance/coldness - he tends to lose patients to teach him a lesson, etc. and i think you can make a case that in s3, chase was written as more confident to set up his firing/leaving: foreman was going to leave as part of his development, cameron was leaving as part of hers (letting go of house -- her desire to protect/fix/shelter him by instead just letting him be), but chase doesn't really get character arcs like the other two, so we just need to prove he's ready to move on in other ways, right?

but he keeps solving cases. and foreman, really, doesn't.

i have no grand thesis conclusion here. i just find it fascinating from a meta perspective. there's a real temptation in fandom to pretend chase was always the most special smartest boy, and that really isn't the case. but because it wasn't the case, that makes his frequent wins even more interesting to me.