Now in its eighth season, House is a show that never changes. This
week's new episode, "Better Half," highlighted that fact more than ever.
Dr. House played mind games with Forman and made a ridiculous wager
with Wilson. That sentence could've been written back in season 1.
You'd think that either rehab or prison would've changed House even the slightest bit, but no. This week he did exactly what he always does and he got his ankle monitor off, the last thing tethering him to his jail time. Without that minor form of punishment, It's almost like that whole prison thing never even happened.
Now more than ever, I'm hoping this will be the show's final season. There doesn't seem to be anything left for the show to do. House will never change and things at PPTH will always remain the same. There will always be an annoying pretty girl who acts as the moral compass for the team (Adams has quickly become Cameron Light). Doctors will randomly vanish from an episode and it won't matter at all (seriously, did anyone miss Taub?). And Wilson will always enable House's bad behavior.
One of the final scenes this week was particularly noteworthy as Wilson, having lost his bet to House about the allegedly asexual patient, sat beside his friend and used the flaming $100 bill to light his own cigar. First, after all the recent hubbub about the 99 percent, watching a TV character use a $100 as a lighter is just obnoxiously wasteful. But worse yet, Wilson seems to have completely given up any hope of making House a better man.
After eight seasons of Wilson trying to get House to open up, to be more compassionate, he's thrown in the towel. The fallout from Cuddy clearly dashed any delusion that House would ever evolve into a more sensitive person, so now Wilson is content to sit back and embrace the indulgent, selfish lifestyle of his BFF.
If he can do it, then so can I. I'll still watch House and occasionally enjoy it (Park's confession about bedding 30 guys in a Jewish frat made me giggle quite a lot), but much like Wilson, I'm done hoping that it will get better. It is what it is, a show that is stuck in traction and spinning its wheels, using the same formulas it always has.
Hopefully this will be the last season, because if nothing will ever change, it's time to stop.
(Image courtesy of FOX)