#justice for lawrence kutner

[kutner-elegist]

Lawrence Kutner Highlight Reel

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Kutner has 2 main looks: self-satisfied smile/smirk and confused frown when House tells him to shut up

Also Kutner sitting sideways and every way except straight and fidgeting with his badge etc is so ADHD coded

I love him so much X(

the sad thing about being into characters who aren't as popular as the main cast is that you see people posting gifsets and going INSANE over some random subtle habit the main guys have but you never see stuff like that for your lesser known blorbos. i see people posting about wilson's 2 poses constantly and that is delightful but WHO is going to go insane with me about kutner Flicking His Eyebrow Upwards or some shit

[oddlittlestories]

Two more chapters for you! (This is my House gets a tbi in wh fic)

Chapter 3: Wilson is struggling to keep his head above water through the grief, denial, and deluge of stuff to do.

Chapter 4: House is doing alright… at first. Sometimes, ‘okay’ is a fragile thing. This one has Thirteen and the rest of the ducklings.

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Tags: Medical Procedures, Medical, Medical Trauma, Brain Damage, Brain Surgery, TBI, Hospitals, Emotional Hurt, Angst

[dorkylittleweirdo]

thinking about him (lawrence kutner)

[kutner-elegist]

Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.

[kutner-elegist]

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Kutner and Faith

I also went to Catholic school so that's something I think a lot about with regards to Chase, but me being me, I also think about Kutner's view on faith a lot.

Kutner's religion was never mentioned. His funeral was a Hindu ceremony, so we can assume that his parents were Hindu and this was a part of his heritage that Richard and Julia encouraged him to keep.

What we do know from on-screen dialogue is that he is receptive to religion and has given it some thought.

He defends a patient's newfound faith when House considers it a symptom, and even tries to encourage Taub in Don't Ever Change (S4E12).

TAUB: I'm not gonna become Hasidic, I'm not even gonna become slightly more reformed. Coronary sinus normal. KUTNER: You can't have your eyes opened to something and not act on it. TAUB: I haven't had my eyes opened. I just don't think they're crazy anymore. KUTNER: Then they have something to offer.

He engages in religious discussion with a Catholic priest who lost his faith in Unfaithful (S5E15):

KUTNER: God gave the church and the kid free will. Their exercise of that free will hurt you. Means you're just a victim of God's gift to mankind. PATIENT: Oh, yeah. God wants life to have meaning, life's meaningless without free will, with free will, there's always suffering, so God wants suffering. I got tired of that argument before I even finished saying it.

KUTNER: Think it's possible God's testing your faith? PATIENT: No, I already failed.

His "superstitous" inclination is a major point in Here Kitty (S5E18):

KUTNER: Cat's brains are always in alpha mode. The few scientific tests that have seemed to confirm psychic phenomena, that's where it takes place. HOUSE: Please tell me that you were kidding so I won't have to fire you. KUTNER: I was kidding.

HOUSE: You went to a good college, a good nursing school, so you weren't always a superstitious idiot. [...] PATIENT: He [her stepson] shouldn't have died. HOUSE: You want to make it make sense. PATIENT: What's wrong with that? HOUSE: It's meaningless, is what's wrong.

KUTNER: I realize it's stupid, I just thought .... I don't know everything. I don't want want to invite— HOUSE: Great, 'cause I thought your superstitiousness had to do with your folks being killed, but "you're stupid" works just as well.

KUTNER: Whoa! (finds the death cat in his bag) HOUSE: What, you think your bag's gonna die now? KUTNER: Now you're punishing me because you think I'm superstitious? What do you care? HOUSE: It's not so much about me caring per se, it's more about me wondering why you're such a credulous idiot.

PATIENT: (to Chase) There's a reason for all the bad things that have happened to me. I don't know what that reason is, but I know that if there isn't one, if there's no greater purpose in the world, then it's not a world I want to live in.

House does know that the affinity to the supernatural is people's way of reconciling with their personal tragedies. It's possible that House's insults and pranks were his convoluted attempts to draw out an admission from Kutner that he is, in fact, "supersitious" because of his trauma. But he doesn't show Kutner the sincerity he gave the patient.

Here Kitty being the second-to-last episode before Simple Explanation, this might even be something that set off an existential spiral. I, however, choose to believe that his galaxy brain found a way out of the samsara.

On a tangential note, being Hindu correlates with higher suicide rates but strong Hindu faith is a protective factor against suicide. (Vijayakumar L, John S. Is Hinduism ambivalent about suicide? International Journal of Social Psychiatry. 2018;64(5):443-449. doi:10.1177/0020764018777523 — admittedly a low impact factor publication)

[kutner-elegist]

Kutner had golden retriever energy, especially in season 4. He might not have been all rainbows and sunshine all the time, but he was enthused and loyal. I always wondered why Kutner was so eager to please House, then I remembered House literally told him on day one “I approve of you[r shamelessness]” and “I like you, number nine.” He just wanted to be told he’s a good boy.

I need to pat his head and give him biscuits. I need to pour milk in his cereal. 🥺

[kutner-elegist]

Suicides Are Like That, and Childhood Trauma Doesn't Stay in the Childhood

content warning for suicide obv and murder

I was reading a paper about the significance of early childhood adversity in suicides and how suicidal tendencies are in the fabric of one's life rather than a direct result of recent circumstances (Lloyd, S., & Larivée, A. (2020). Time, trauma, and the brain: How suicide came to have no significant precipitating event. Science in Context, 33(3), 299–327. doi:10.1017/S0269889721000065) It's more of a meta review so I read the sources as well and they clarified things that I knew instinctively but didn't have words for.

The thing about childhood trauma is that it doesn't matter how long it has been. If anything, time can easily make it worse. What happened when you were 6 shapes your life at 7 which shapes your life at 8 and so on. But most people think it's over, or at least should be, especially something that would be considered a singular event like robbery homicide.

I don't believe that Kutner was conflicted because his adoptive parents were white™️. It certainly would have presented difficulties, but in some ways, it was probably better than being adopted by a family that looked like his parents. I think the existential conflict of having his parents violently killed and then being adopted by another loving couple was that receiving the love of the second parents would feel like betraying the first, but not accepting their love would also be betraying the people who gave him nothing but kindness. (Going from calling them Mr. & Mrs. Kutner for 3 years to Mom and Dad when they've suggested calling them Richard and Julia because they wanted him to be comfortable...)

Every birthday, holiday, accomplishments, any celebration would have felt like... he does have a family who loves him and he has good things in his life but this isn't how it was supposed to be. What do you do when you don't know how to have happiness without the grief?

I'm not comparing my situation to Kutner's, but I, too, have an event, a crime, in fact, that so much of my problems can be traced back to, from I was five years old. There's life before and life after. And you do lose memories from when you were that young, the before, the last time you weren't haunted by it. Then you only know that there was a before and your life is already in the after.

Forgetting is easier if you only have bad things to forget, as I did. Kutner, on the other hand, would never have wanted to forget his parents. He had their pictures on his wall in the same frame as his graduation pictures with the adoptive parents. He would have tried so hard to hold on to the memories he had left, even if it means keeping the pain, too. What if the nightmares of seeing his parents murdered were the only times he got to see them again?

"His parents were shot right in front of him." "Parents are ancient history." "Not to someone who actually cares."

[kutner-elegist]

Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.

On a serious note, sprinklers, especially at a place like a hospital, are installed with a system that alerts the fire department if it goes off. Falsely triggering it is an indictable crime i. e. felony in New Jersey. Hospital is a critical infrastructure, which makes the crime more serious. Up to five years in prison and up to $150,000 dollars in fines. Cuddy could have kicked her to the curb for this, but instead, she put Kutner on the same chopping block as her by turning his friend against him.

Kutner did set a patient on fire, but he did it to stabilize her heartbeat. Amber set off the sprinklers to steal Cuddy's undies. Sprinklers does help with fires but they also spray water on people, equipments, documents, everything. In Kutner's case there was actually a fire, so the insurance would reimburse the property damage. But someone who at the time was employed by the hospital setting it off intentionally? No way the insurance would pay out for that.

And most sprinklers are wet pipe i. e. the water just. sits there for years and years until the rare occasion that the sprinkler goes off. The water that comes out of it is. Not Clean. Who knows what that would do to people who were at the clinic because they're already sick???

Yet Amber being picked for elimination was just "well no one likes you" and Kutner was the liability?

I love Amber and I realize I'm watching the crimes and malpractice show, but really...

[kutner-elegist]

Kutner's Suicidal Progression

Reiteration of a previous post because that was a messy wall of text (this is still a wall of text, but hopefully less messy) and also some of my thoughts changed.

Kutner’s death feels abrupt and unexplained, but that much was intentional. Kal Penn told the producers early on that he might leave to pursue other things. There is an archived interview on this matter, and it says David Shore came up with the idea in December, and Simple Explanation aired in April, so this wasn't as last-minute as it may seem.

And yes, Kutner took his own life because Kal Penn had to leave, and of course the events in TV shows are always affected by the production logistics, but what happens in the story should be interpreted within the diegetic context.

Behavioral Changes

Kutner was known to use shock paddles where they don’t belong. Risk-taking behavior might indicate suicidal tendencies. My theory is that he was passively suicidal from the beginning, which might be why there was no noticeable change, since the team only knew him since when the games started.

The changes in behavior is there, though. His demeanor is different in season 5 than in season 4. He is a little less goofy (though he didn't lose it entirely) and more profound and serious. I do think Amber’s death was some sort of catalyst. He finally revealed how he lost his parents. He shared his experience with the patients to comfort them. The quirkiness could have been a front to mask his internal struggle, but either way, it gradually diminished. He didn't say as many funny, silly things other than sarcastic disagreements in the later episodes. The only funny thing he did in the later episodes is the “cat” pee, and that was a retaliation. The thing is, when you’re eccentric, you can become more “normal” when you’re toned down, and the altered state of mind goes unnoticed because it seems normal.

Relationship with House

Early on, Kutner was clearly very eager to please House, but less so in later episodes. In season 4, he gave House a Christmas gift even though he knows House rigged the secret Santa, and everyone else tells him not to indulge House. In season 5, he talked about it not-so-fondly and aid House is just messing with everyone again. He wanted to think that House was an ass because there was something wrong with him, but that whole ordeal was another incident of House’s antics. Kutner was confrontational with House in season 5 episodes 13 and 14, and he seems legitimately upset with House. This would be a necessary growth, but nonetheless, he doesn’t idolize House like he used to. Later, in a conversation with Taub, he said Taub used to be a successful plastic surgeon but now he is a “flunky for this mad scientist.” They have the same job, so this is what he considers himself to be, a flunky to a mad scientist. House is a mad scientist.

Discussions of Suicide

They had a patient who attempted suicide because of severe and unexplained pain. Taub said he is insane, that sane people don’t attempt suicide. Kutner's response was “Not ever?” Kutner asked Taub if he lost someone to suicide because his strong rejection indicates baggage. Kutner did say it’s people like himself who don’t do it because when life sucks from the beginning, there is no way to go but up. This, however, suggests that he had thought about this, that he’d had to convince himself that he has no way to go but up before. Kutner kept asking Taub because he doesn’t fully believe him, which means Kutner can’t be taken at his word, either. Taub eventually told him that he had a “colleague” who attempted suicide. Kutner asked if this “colleague” was Taub himself, and Taub denied it. Kutner didn't seem convinced, but drops the subject. Kutner might have hoped to talk to someone who might understand, someone who overcame it, but he didn’t want to pressure Taub.

Heightened Concern for Others

When Kutner confronted House about where Thirteen and Foreman were, he said, “You always blab to watch people react. Not blabbing means you don't want us to react, which can’t be good. Is Thirteen’s headache not just a headache? If I check with admitting, am I gonna find her name?” He even calls Foreman a hypocrite because he’s not doing everything he can to help Thirteen in order to protect himself.

Kutner deduced that something was going on with House because he ordered an MRI he knew the patient didn't need, and he didn’t see him taking Vicodin. He then went to Wilson to tell him about it. He knew Foreman and Thirteen were still together (Taub didn’t think they were) before House ever did. Foreman didn’t realize something was up with House until then. Cuddy didn’t know until Wilson told him. Three people who’ve known House far longer than Kutner, one of whom works as closely with House as Kutner, didn't realize something was wrong with House, but Kutner did. House was on methadone during this time.

Kutner sensed Taub had something going on because Taub argued with House about a diagnosis. When Kutner argued with House about a treatment or Thirteen, Taub didn't think anything of it. Kutner repeatedly tried to talk to Taub, but Taub deflects and the exchanges are interrupted by work. Kutner was so attentive about what other people were going through because he was Going Through It himself.

Kutner was the one observant and perceptive enough to notice when others had issues, the way House usually did. House was distracted, with Cuddy, with methadone, with death cat, etc.

House figured out that the death cat patient suffered a loss and the grief made her more superstitious. He told her it’s meaningless, but at least he was sincere to her. With Kutner, House actively mocked him by subjecting him to a variety of things that are supposed to be “bad luck” and when Kutner says he realizes it's stupid but doesn’t want to invite anything, House said “I thought you were superstitiousness had something to do with your folks being killed, but you’re stupid works just as well.”

I'll always think about him </3

[kutner-elegist]

Thinking about Kutner in Emancipation (S5E08)

He thought she lost her parents like he did. He believed her. He wanted to believe her. He even changed the treatment because he believed her. Only to find out she lied and get derided by House for being an empathetic orphan. In the end, he's the one to bring her parents and watch them reunite. He thought he understood, and that he would be understood, too. All he could do is walk away.

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omg I now realize…

Kutner went to Wilson because he knew something was wrong with House. Foreman only realized something’s wrong with House after speaking to Kutner, and called Wilson. Wilson confronted House about heroin/methadone, but Wilson wasn’t in the room when he ordered the MRI and only Kutner questioned it, so House would eventually trace it back to him.

Kutner used to be “those are peonies … but I’m sure they’re in the rose family” but when it comes to his colleagues, it was “YOU always blab to watch people react. Not blabbing means you don’t want us to react, which can’t be good. Is Thirteen’s headache not just a headache?”

House knows about Taub’s suicide attempt. Either he found out from spying on him, or he figured it out the way Kutner did in Painless. “Sane people don’t attempt suicide.” “Not ever?” House was there.

House will realize that Kutner cared the same way he did. Picking up on clues and demanding truth. And House didn’t Figure It Out until it was too late. That is why the final straw of his psychosis was Kutner’s “Too bad it isn’t true.”

If I hallucinated Amber and Kutner I would simply make them kiss.