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housemdork · 10 days ago

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house md rewatch: 2x19, "house vs. god"

the term "functional vampire" rewired my brain, as did this entire episode.

this one completely upended my episode rankings. i think this may be my favorite episode of the show thus far. now i have to contend with that/balance it for my season review smh. fittingly, this has the potential to be my longest recap yet, so godspeed to you, soldiers!

i think i'll start with an odd exchange between wilson and house (before shit hits the fan) that i think encompasses 2x19's conflict.

predictably, house is absolutely enraged by the patient, boyd, claiming to be a faith healer. house hates the concepts of religion and faith on principle because he can't rationalize how someone can believe in something that they empirically cannot prove. he has a really odd way of explaining why this makes him so mad:

"you know, i'd get it if people were just looking for a way to fill the holes. but they want the holes. they want to live in the holes. and they go nuts when someone else pours dirt in their holes."

house's irritation stems from the way he thinks people cling to uncertainty. rather than attempt to solve it, they attribute that uncertainty to a higher power and get upset when someone - like house - attempts to disrupt that. in house's worldview, however, his very profession necessitates a rejection of that uncertainty. the more boyd pushes back on this, the more frustrated he gets.

i start with this bit first because everyone in 2x19 is subject to uncertainty, and he's no exception. at the end of the episode, when the case is all said and done (much more on that later), boyd comes to apologize to house (which pissed me off lol because boyd was 15 with a fever. house is just a cunt). he says the following, very prophet-like: "you're lucky. you go through life with a certainty that what you're doing is right. i know how comforting that is. good luck."

not only is "luck" a concept that is probably foreign to boyd, but this draws a very uncomfortable attention to house's inevitable fallibility, which we just saw some of in 2x17. house, try as he might, cannot be certain, especially because the solution to boyd's case was such a fluke, and wilson was the one who prompted the answer, anyways. house does so much to preserve, if nothing else, his intellect, but some small piece of him is aware of its imperfections. he's trying to get out of his hole, but it's not as easy as he claims:

wilson, meanwhile, attempts to control the uncertain, rather than deny it outright like house. when we first meet grace, wilson is trying to convince her to keep undergoing treatments, or at least palliative care, for her terminal diagnosis; they both know that she has a limited amount of time, but if he becomes EXTREMELY involved with her, by his logic, he can have a hand in solving/mitigating that uncertainty. that's the plain jane version, at least...much more to come.

meanwhile, and much more subtly, 2x19 posits chase as the middle ground between these 2 modes of handling uncertainty. he just...lives with it. whether or not this is a remnant of his upbringing or not, i found his respect and intrigue regarding boyd's faith to be really fascinating. when house first learns that boyd is a faith healer, chase interrupts to say: "a lot of people experience their religion as something more than symbolic." this then goes on to have massive, very palpable ramifications, reaffirmed by the last tally marks he put on the house vs. god whiteboard.

i really like the contrast this has with cameron's quick treatise on religiosity, or a lack thereof, when giving the MRI with foreman. whereas chase can exist within the uncertainty, can understand the draw of The Holes house hates so much, cameron rejects it altogether, saying that it is beyond our comprehension and thus should be beyond our concern. given that she's so involved with the here-and-now, so overextended into the lives of her patients, this tracks, at least to me.

another big marker of uncertainty's impact (and certainty's impossibility) occurs via house's poker game. he keeps wilson out because he knows that wilson, of all people, can not only read him, but has a lie brewing that house can't decipher without external help (a message from "god," maybe?). and when that lie gets revealed, wilson is right: "you're mad because i lied to you and you couldn't tell...that's why you didn't want me in your poker game, because when it comes to being in control, gregory house leaves our faith healer kid in the dust...if the universe operates by abstract rules, you can learn them and protect yourself."

this is just one of the ways poker functions in 2x19 - a site for uncertainty to flourish. i think it's weird that there are 2 poker-themed episodes so close together, but i think the premise functions even better in "house vs. god" than in "all in." blasphemy, i know.

with all that being said, house's diagnosis of wilson as a "functional vampire" actually encompasses a lot of the ways the characters encounter/handle (however subliminally) the uncertainty between faith and unbelief. it's also how they legitimate and self-actualize - their actions yield an action or phenomenon that they benefit from in return. it's another example of house implicating himself in his tirades against wilson's bullshit, and i eat it up every time. let's make a list:

boyd and house are united by their need to "heal." i'll say this till i'm blue in the face - house has remained a medical doctor because he cares about people, and the rush he gets from solving a case is baked into that face. boyd, meanwhile, gets the satisfaction of loving people and feeling like god's chosen. ironically, however, boyd is more cognizant of their similarity than house is. his parting words about luck imply that he's even reconsidering this calling, while house remains victim to its absolutism - he can't conceptualize any other version of life.

house's trademark neediness, which he admits to, also qualifies him as something of a vampire. taking and taking from wilson emotionally fulfills his sense of self and a need for wilson (that we haven't really addressed yet) is a lot like wilson's vampirism, just in the reverse. this episode is sooo "vampire empire" by big thief-coded.

wilson's functional vampirism is the best way his need of neediness has been conceptualized yet. whereas an "ordinary" person would get burnt out by his work in oncology, it provides him with an endless stream of needy individuals. it's kind work tainted by an insane degree of selfishness. specifically regarding grace, wilson needs to be the one to help grace rather than anything extraneous; that's why he's especially upset with house and co. when he sees that boyd has been "helping" grace. i don't think his concern over false hope is untrue, necessarily, but that's definitely not the sole operating factor here.

the boyd and house parallels regarding their own vampirisms actually transfers to boyd and wilson by the end of 2x19, however subtly. their bodily sins (both to do with sex) are both represented and disguised by their need to help people. they both get some reward from helping grace - boyd reinvigorates his faith and wilson fills the gaping black void of neediness in his heart (plus sex. he's such a villain here).

next. did you guys know that there are gay people in our doctor show? 2x19 is bursting with a lot of subtextual queerness not limited to strictly comphet wilson or hilson or house's bisexuality but a wonderful combination of all 3, and then some.

comphet wilson is here, and at his most troubling. i mentioned in an earlier recap that wilson's love language (to use a dated term/concept) is very clearly acts of service. he describes to house how he ended up moving in with grace after helping her with groceries, transportation, etc. while still being overly involved and unprofessional, these are objectively kind actions. so, like always, wilson has to ruin it by injecting sex into the mix.

at this point, it really seems like wilson truly can't conceptualize any sort of relationship between a man and woman - professional, platonic, romantic, etc. - that doesn't end in sex. maybe he's spiraling a bit post-julie, but it also reads as a frantic attempt to control the uncertain both within 2x19 and beyond. what lies beyond the heterosexual is uncertain, if not incomprehensible, to wilson, and his catch-all for relationships is working again after he failed to satisfy julie. it's double-sad, really.

meanwhile, the house/wilson synergy doesn't just implicate wilson in this scenario; house's innate queerness comes part and parcel with his reliance on wilson. i'll make a much longer post (more likely a formal, thesis-driven article, actually) on this at some point, but all the ways that house deviates from the textbook Normal that exists in house md may be read as markers for house's queer identity. i sure read them that way. one of his most maladaptive traits is his misanthropy; at ground zero, his disability unfairly isolated him from the life he once knew. 2x07's comparisons between the gay patient, kalvin, and house reaffirm this.

so it bears underscoring that the only offered solution to house's neediness and isolation atp is wilson specifically. his neediness is compatible solely with the man who can never be fully satisfied in his (sexual) devotion to women. this is not heteronormative in any way (sorry to keep abusing that word). remind me of this seed of a thought when we get to the blood donor/recipient conversation because then they literally start invoking penetration when having this exact same conversation lol.

lastly, i think it's pertinent that are 2 major scenes that associate masculinity, sex, and shame in moments of exposure: the poker game itself and when boyd reveals his rash, his sign of herpes encephalitis. in both cases, the setting is dominated by men (isn't most of house md? lol) with prying, diagnosing eyes. house, wilson, chase, and foreman are quite literally looking to diagnose boyd, but boyd's father is trying to discern boyd's character, to determine where things have gone wrong regarding his faith.

the physical act of revealing the rash is almost like a humiliation rite for boyd; they demand that he take off is clothes and the rash is just below his waist. boyd, and boyd's persona, come crashing down in this moment, as he's failed to live up to the standard imposed by himself and his faith community around him by having sex.

the poker game, meanwhile, moves this dynamic away from physical humiliation and into mental/emotional strife. it's also highly ritualized (a theme in house and wilson's relationship throughout the show - games!). wilson is put under the same diagnostic microscope, except these ill-informed strangers, whom house doesn't even give names, are trying to discern the details of why wilson is screwed up.

once again, another persona collapses under the weight of these masculine gazes bent on exposing the respective scenes' primary subject, thus engendering sex and gender-based humiliation. insert something about how "all will be revealed in god's eyes" here, idk.

following all of this, wilson somehow makes a somewhat redeeming statement (he is NOT absolved. i'm glad he lets grace go on her merry way to her trip in florence, and i hope that she wasn't too in-shambles over him). after deliberating on the legitimacy of house's "victory" over god, wilson declares that, "it is possible to believe in something and still fail to live up to it."

on an immediate level, this implicates the image that boyd wanted to maintain, one of purity and healing and godly influence. in wilson's case, this is to do with his own kind, nonmanipulative oncologist (and heterosexual) persona.

but writ large, this applies to every character. cameron will always be living up to her impossible convictions, believing in them strongly despite circumstances like those in 2x18; chase will continue to try to live up to his idea of what house requires of him; foreman will try to live up to the idea that he's nobly above the rest of the team, struggling against that which makes him similar to house; cuddy will try to live up (and succeed, dammit!) to the astronomically tough expectations and standards demanded of her stature. the list goes on and on. maybe those standards are everyone's metaphorical "holes," and this episode does an excellent job exhuming how house md characters live inside of them.

this mammoth-sized recap is to say nothing about the second gag-off that these 2 have on the street, or not the real nitty-gritty of it at least (i love how house always gets SO CLOSE to winning during their fights, but wilson pulls out a heavy-hitting read at the last second). nor do i really get into the larger narrative house md builds around atheism. i'll link what i've said about that in the past here. but overall, after i've sat down to write this, i'm confident that "house vs. god" is my favorite episode of the show thus far. the only one that could give this a run for its money upcoming is 2x24.

one last thing...

HE LOOKS SO GOOD IN THIS EPISODE. I CAN'T STAND IT. THEY DID IT ON PURPOSE. THEY SPECIFICALLY MADE HIM EXTRA GOOD LOOKING SO HIS VILLAINY WOULD HURT MORE.

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molosseraptor · 7 months ago

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I need to brag on this guy because I'm just so incredibly proud of how far he's come.

In a little over a year of regular work, this dog went from unable to be inside a building that wasn't his house, unable to be in sight of a strange human (and definitely not touched), and was on the verge of being returned due to all his health and behavior issues to this guy. This guy who had his first Conformation show today. A show where he let strangers touch him inside a building surrounded by other strangers on a scary slippery floor and even made actual human friends. He wagged his tail at the judges! I don't even recognize this guy.

He had some scary health issues as a puppy that involved a lot of medical care and non-consensual touching both by vet staff and his family out of necessity. As a dog who is also dealing with some genetic temperament issues, this was probably the worst possible start to life for him. He was immunocompromised and unable to go out in the world at all during this critical time of development. He only went to the vet, where it hurt and was scary, and only saw his family and the vet staff, who would always be doing scary things to him, so he had no trust in people or places or anything at all.

His person is a long time dog sports handler and, prior to us working together, used to be a very "traditional" trainer. Her typical methods weren't working for him and there were some scary incidents before she reached out to me last July. Us meeting was a last resort before she officially made the decision to return him to his breeder. There was a lot of work that needed to happen to repair their relationship and it's still a work in progress, but between scentwork and the lessons we've done it's really come around.

In the time we've been working together, he's now been able to successfully trial and title in a few scentwork venues, go to the vet and get vaccines/microchipped without sedation or medication, attend a few large dog shows and events and now compete himself, make a group of human friends, and basically do anything we've asked of him so far. A huge amount of training and even more management and environmental curation has created this success, but the biggest win is that he's learned to trust us to handle things and keep him safe.

Even when he's being asked to do things that are hard for him, like moving his feet or touching his head, the judge examining him, or just simply walking through narrow spaces, he is checking in with me, allowing me to handle it, and able to actually relax out in public in and out of his crate because he doesn't feel like he needs to constantly be watching his back for triggers. I'll handle all that. He just needs to eat cheese and have fun.

That wagging tail at the judge after nailing a perfect free stack on his down and back is everything to me.

#client dogs #he's such a handsome big feelings boy #he showed beautifully in both shows and group rings today #hopefully tomorrow is just as smooth #this was just supposed to be a warm up for our show next month #but he's actually getting looks from judges #we ended the day with a guardian group 4 out of 8 dogs

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