Wow, I’m pretty much just dead, utterly utterly dead. I’ve always thought House MD was my inspiration to want to go into film and this episode just made me more certain of that. I know a lot of people have mixed feelings about this episode and what it revealed, but for those of you that feel cheated, this episode reveals so much more about whom House is and the story he created about himself that he wished was reality. I’m sorry in advance for anyone who is not Huddy, but seeing as this episode pretty much revolved around their story I’m going to be mainly discussing them in this article.
I thought since the chronology of the last couple of episodes is all jumbled up and we don’t really have any sense of what’s going on, I’d start with the end so that we can make sense of what’s happened throughout the episode. I give massive props and a standing ovation for the end of this episode, I adored the beautiful parallel of Cameron marching down the aisle towards Chase, towards her future, while House is too “marching” down the long drive (the road is impeccably straight) to his future in the mental institution. At this point the viewers are supposed to feel unsure of what’s going on, what was real about this episode and what wasn’t, and in this way, the viewers are directly put into House’s shoes as we share his uncertainty about reality. But as we progressed throughout this episode we were not only privy to sharing his detachment with reality, but we took the biggest step into House’s mind ever, we saw “the story you [House] made up about who you are”. We were allowed to see so much about who House wished he was, his deepest desires and how most of that revolves around his love for Cuddy.
What we know is real
There are only a couple of things we know that happened for real, we know that everything that happened with the patient is real and therefore everything stemming from the patient aka the differentials, the conversations at his house etc. are all real because they stem from interactions with the patient.
We also know that the Chase and Cameron interactions are real because they got married in the end, when House was not there, proving that in fact they really are married (squee). Therefore all of the interactions with Chase and Cameron involved are real, even the one about being homeless in the end with House and Cameron is real because Cameron uses it later to tell Chase how much she wants to be with him.
And I think that’s about it, everything else can be debated in my opinion.
The POTW
First of all, the actor did a fantastic job, I completely bought that the hand had a life of its own, he was incredibly believable. This patient is absolutely key to the story and sets up the metaphor which is then graciously given to us by Amber in the end in her creepy return. The left side of the brain is the rational side, the side that gives answers for everything we do, the one that is non-impulsive and the (I got a little confused so please straighten me out if this is wrong) one that creates the story for which we live. The right side on the other hand is the impulsive, instinctual and not always explainable side of our brain. The left tries its best to explain why the right side is making us do certain things and blocks out what the right side is trying to tell us, therefore the explanation created is one that normally is delusional and false (proven by the patient standing up and then stating he was cold). This is the idea that runs through this episode of House and what made this episode have such a devastating impact. From the first House and Cuddy interaction in “Under my Skin”, it seems that House’s left brain has been creating his own “story”, a false explanation, a hallucination hiding what his brain has blocked out. The fixture with the coffee cup and the pancreas obsession are the hints that the right brain has desperately been trying to throw at House about his current state of mind.
It also ties into the Chameron plot. Cameron has been irrationally holding onto her dead husband’s sperm, she explains this action as having a safety blanket to fall back on if her marriage with Chase falls apart. In reality she is deluding herself and Chase eventually figures it out. She wants to hold onto his sperm because she wants to keep something of the man she used to love, her right side was making her “irrational” attachment to her dead husband’s sperm, her left side seeing the irrationality in this tried to give a “rational” explanation for this, but just ended up blocking the real reason. Ah I freaking adore this episode.
The Huddy section
Now I know a lot of you are mad, you feel lied to, cheated and downright duped because as it turns out the sex and all of the House and Cuddy interactions after “screw you” in ‘Under My Skin’ are in fact a hallucination created by House’s vulnerable, guilt ridden, schizophrenic mind. But what we learned from his “story” means so much more than the original interactions. Now I know I might get a lot of crap about saying this, but after seeing this episode, I’m (and have been for some time) completely and utterly certain that House not only loves Cuddy, but may actually depend on her more so than any other character. *hides from rational non-shippers* and I will go on to prove that with the remainder of this article so to quote the infamous Bette Davis, “fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy night.”
Let’s start with the hallucination that House created to block out the Vicodin. The hallucination starts right after “screw you” as we see later that Cuddy actually walked out after that before House could sum up the courage to say what he really wanted to say, “I need you”. But in the hallucination, House manages to finally let his walls drop around her and admit what he needs. The way in which Cuddy efficiently raids his Vicodin supply, lovingly takes care of him and eventually helps him Detox completely in one night (this now explains the strange time leap they did) highlights just how much House depends on Cuddy as a source of hope. As opposed to what Shore once said about Cuddy not being something that “House can grab a hold of and everything is going to be alright” in House’s mind he seems to associate those two things together. We’ve always seen Cuddy as House’s protector, and it seems that House views her in the same we as we viewers do, the light that will solve all of this problems, unfortunately for House this isn’t the case. His hallucination also explains of few things that seemed only slightly out of place in the last few bits of the episode. The Michigan admission and the “I always want to kiss you” being some of those things. For two characters that refuse to be emotionally honest with themselves as well as each other, it’s kind of hard to believe that there would be two admissions of love within the span of a few minutes. Now obviously it’s not entirely implausible, since it fooled all of us, but it was just that slight bit out of character to hint to us now that we have hindsight on the matter. But again it does reveal a whole host of ideas as well as brings up many questions.
The first question, is that really House and Cuddy’s back-story, or is that something that House wishes were true? Let’s say that it’s the first option, the fact that hallucinated Cuddy reveals this means that House is suddenly digging deep into his subconscious to finally realize something about their relationship even back then. If it’s the second option, then he desperately wants that to be the case, he wants Cuddy’s specialty to be born out of her love for him, he wants her to be there because she loves him, he desperately wants to believe that she does and always has loved him.
I always thought the “You want to kiss me” exchange was just a little bit off, and I guess here’s why….it wasn’t real! Poor House, he doesn’t hallucinate a mindless one night stand with Cuddy, but instead hallucinates what he’d like her to say to him, what he ‘d like to say to her. It’s not fantasy stripping or even a princess Lea get up, but a tender confession of feelings, with a soft kiss and then the sex. It’s what House really wants.
House wakes up the next morning, suitably alone since the sex actually did not happen, but under the pre-text that Cuddy snuck out before he woke up. He wanders into the bathroom, imagining a kiss mark on his cheek and notices with a small smile that Cuddy left her lipstick there in her rush to get out. But as we learn later on, the lipstick is not what’s there; in fact it is the substitute for Vicodin that House has created for himself. Okay can I just say this quickly…….JESUS FUCKING CHRIST! Cuddy became House’s Vicodin. His addiction, his crutch and the thing that he thinks keeps him functioning. He replaced her for the Vicodin. Essentially he depends on her. There are two sides to this, just like there are two sides to everything in this episode.
1) House depends on Cuddy and she keeps him going
2) Their relationship is a poisonous addiction that will eventually kill one of them/ hurt of them deeply.
While the Huddy shipper in me screams to ignore the second option, it makes things ever more interesting because I think both play a massive part in how House views Cuddy. I think that option number 1 is a given as I have already explained, but option 2 I believe represents House’s deepest fears about Cuddy and their relationship. His talk with Wilson (whether its real or not I don’t know) about either him or Cuddy getting hurt reveal the poisonous aspect of their relationship and how easily it could slip into that. Now either Shore is foreshadowing and telling us that Huddy in fact is horrible, or the option I prefer lol, is that he is showing us that House doesn’t open up to Cuddy because he is sure, subconsciously sure as well, that Cuddy and him will end up like his relationship with Vicodin, an addiction that in fact limits him and hurts him more than it helps him. He tosses away the Vicodin bottle in shock and disgust and “realizes” he can never be the man from his “story” and his deepest fears are inevitable.
Now we get to the really sticky stuff, where I can’t tell what’s real and what isn’t, but that’s the beauty of it all. Wilson’s talks with House, real or not real, pretty much boil down to the same thing. Cuddy isn’t a challenge or a puzzle for House to solve, his crazy antics and his confession to Wilson prove that in fact Cuddy means a lot more to him than that and in fact he doesn’t want to screw things up, he doesn’t want to act like a child a ruin things, he doesn’t want Wilson interfering and ruining his plan and finally he tells Wilson that in fact, he doesn’t want to be the man with all of the answers….he wants to be the man with Cuddy.
His interactions with Cuddy on the other hand are a tab bit trickier. There are only a few scenes that I know are either real or a hallucination so I’ll list what I think:
Real
- The talk at the beginning in House’s office (I think this is real, because it leads right off of a differential which we know are real, but House and Cuddy are on two different pages)
- Anything regarding clinic duty is real because we have the Squawker who is real
- The ‘I slept with Lisa Cuddy’ scene is real (why she’s in her office crying, but the Wilson scene doesn’t have to be real for that to happen)
- The talk in her office when House realizes his hallucinations
Not real
- The only scene I think maybe is not real is the one where she is crying, and yelling at him in the hallways. I was surprised while watching it because Cuddy is always so in control of her emotions and if she really cared about her “image” then she wouldn’t be yelling at him and crying because he revealed their sexual exploits. Crying in her office, as it turns out is what she’s doing, seems much more like the Cuddy we know.
And because the scene takes place in House’s mind, it reveals more about the way in which he views their twisted relationship. He has accomplished his task in making her angry and now for some reason he thinks this will lead Cuddy to abolish her wall she is deliberately putting up between them and “fall into his arms” as Wilson put it. But the Cuddy he has thought up is not up for that kind of crap and instead she’s completely devastated and hurt, as Wilson warned him that she might be. He sheepishly asks her to move in with him, not a joke at all in my opinion, but Cuddy laughs at what she thinks is him making fun of her and fires him as she walks away. In my opinion, this is House subconsciously recognizing how many miscommunications plague their relationship. In a moment of complete honesty, and again just slightly out of character, House again asks for what he really wants and instead of throwing her arms around him and kissing him like she should, she remains incredibly hurt and betrayed and storms off. *huggles them both*
This episode was a major break-through moment for Huddy, as Lisa Edelstein said it really showed how much House depended on Cuddy, how much he wants to be the "man with Cuddy" to be the man from his "story" but how in fact he can't be, and how his twisted mind thinks that Cuddy and him will only lead to failure and hurt.
So then we finally get to the end, where Cuddy reveals that she overreacts a lot to what he says and storms off all of the time, this triggers something in House’s brain that slowly reveals to him what the left side of his brain has been hiding all along. His imagined sex with Cuddy, his detachment with reality and his inability to tell what’s real from what’s not suddenly accosts him and in the defining moment of the episode he reaches into his pocket and retrieves his lipstick only to discover too late that it is merely a Vicodin bottle, the dooming element of his personality. He then mentally resigns and he and Cuddy go to Wilson so that House can be checked into the mental institution.
And so this article comes full circle, like the episode, I hope you enjoyed it, and I hope those of you that were disappointed with the episode and distressed over losing a major moment of your shipping will realize the genius, beauty and thought that went into creating an absolutely jaw dropping episode.
P.S. I was too excited to write this article that I didn't even wait for pictures to be put up to use.
I thought since the chronology of the last couple of episodes is all jumbled up and we don’t really have any sense of what’s going on, I’d start with the end so that we can make sense of what’s happened throughout the episode. I give massive props and a standing ovation for the end of this episode, I adored the beautiful parallel of Cameron marching down the aisle towards Chase, towards her future, while House is too “marching” down the long drive (the road is impeccably straight) to his future in the mental institution. At this point the viewers are supposed to feel unsure of what’s going on, what was real about this episode and what wasn’t, and in this way, the viewers are directly put into House’s shoes as we share his uncertainty about reality. But as we progressed throughout this episode we were not only privy to sharing his detachment with reality, but we took the biggest step into House’s mind ever, we saw “the story you [House] made up about who you are”. We were allowed to see so much about who House wished he was, his deepest desires and how most of that revolves around his love for Cuddy.
What we know is real
There are only a couple of things we know that happened for real, we know that everything that happened with the patient is real and therefore everything stemming from the patient aka the differentials, the conversations at his house etc. are all real because they stem from interactions with the patient.
We also know that the Chase and Cameron interactions are real because they got married in the end, when House was not there, proving that in fact they really are married (squee). Therefore all of the interactions with Chase and Cameron involved are real, even the one about being homeless in the end with House and Cameron is real because Cameron uses it later to tell Chase how much she wants to be with him.
And I think that’s about it, everything else can be debated in my opinion.
The POTW
First of all, the actor did a fantastic job, I completely bought that the hand had a life of its own, he was incredibly believable. This patient is absolutely key to the story and sets up the metaphor which is then graciously given to us by Amber in the end in her creepy return. The left side of the brain is the rational side, the side that gives answers for everything we do, the one that is non-impulsive and the (I got a little confused so please straighten me out if this is wrong) one that creates the story for which we live. The right side on the other hand is the impulsive, instinctual and not always explainable side of our brain. The left tries its best to explain why the right side is making us do certain things and blocks out what the right side is trying to tell us, therefore the explanation created is one that normally is delusional and false (proven by the patient standing up and then stating he was cold). This is the idea that runs through this episode of House and what made this episode have such a devastating impact. From the first House and Cuddy interaction in “Under my Skin”, it seems that House’s left brain has been creating his own “story”, a false explanation, a hallucination hiding what his brain has blocked out. The fixture with the coffee cup and the pancreas obsession are the hints that the right brain has desperately been trying to throw at House about his current state of mind.
It also ties into the Chameron plot. Cameron has been irrationally holding onto her dead husband’s sperm, she explains this action as having a safety blanket to fall back on if her marriage with Chase falls apart. In reality she is deluding herself and Chase eventually figures it out. She wants to hold onto his sperm because she wants to keep something of the man she used to love, her right side was making her “irrational” attachment to her dead husband’s sperm, her left side seeing the irrationality in this tried to give a “rational” explanation for this, but just ended up blocking the real reason. Ah I freaking adore this episode.
The Huddy section
Now I know a lot of you are mad, you feel lied to, cheated and downright duped because as it turns out the sex and all of the House and Cuddy interactions after “screw you” in ‘Under My Skin’ are in fact a hallucination created by House’s vulnerable, guilt ridden, schizophrenic mind. But what we learned from his “story” means so much more than the original interactions. Now I know I might get a lot of crap about saying this, but after seeing this episode, I’m (and have been for some time) completely and utterly certain that House not only loves Cuddy, but may actually depend on her more so than any other character. *hides from rational non-shippers* and I will go on to prove that with the remainder of this article so to quote the infamous Bette Davis, “fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy night.”
Let’s start with the hallucination that House created to block out the Vicodin. The hallucination starts right after “screw you” as we see later that Cuddy actually walked out after that before House could sum up the courage to say what he really wanted to say, “I need you”. But in the hallucination, House manages to finally let his walls drop around her and admit what he needs. The way in which Cuddy efficiently raids his Vicodin supply, lovingly takes care of him and eventually helps him Detox completely in one night (this now explains the strange time leap they did) highlights just how much House depends on Cuddy as a source of hope. As opposed to what Shore once said about Cuddy not being something that “House can grab a hold of and everything is going to be alright” in House’s mind he seems to associate those two things together. We’ve always seen Cuddy as House’s protector, and it seems that House views her in the same we as we viewers do, the light that will solve all of this problems, unfortunately for House this isn’t the case. His hallucination also explains of few things that seemed only slightly out of place in the last few bits of the episode. The Michigan admission and the “I always want to kiss you” being some of those things. For two characters that refuse to be emotionally honest with themselves as well as each other, it’s kind of hard to believe that there would be two admissions of love within the span of a few minutes. Now obviously it’s not entirely implausible, since it fooled all of us, but it was just that slight bit out of character to hint to us now that we have hindsight on the matter. But again it does reveal a whole host of ideas as well as brings up many questions.
The first question, is that really House and Cuddy’s back-story, or is that something that House wishes were true? Let’s say that it’s the first option, the fact that hallucinated Cuddy reveals this means that House is suddenly digging deep into his subconscious to finally realize something about their relationship even back then. If it’s the second option, then he desperately wants that to be the case, he wants Cuddy’s specialty to be born out of her love for him, he wants her to be there because she loves him, he desperately wants to believe that she does and always has loved him.
I always thought the “You want to kiss me” exchange was just a little bit off, and I guess here’s why….it wasn’t real! Poor House, he doesn’t hallucinate a mindless one night stand with Cuddy, but instead hallucinates what he’d like her to say to him, what he ‘d like to say to her. It’s not fantasy stripping or even a princess Lea get up, but a tender confession of feelings, with a soft kiss and then the sex. It’s what House really wants.
House wakes up the next morning, suitably alone since the sex actually did not happen, but under the pre-text that Cuddy snuck out before he woke up. He wanders into the bathroom, imagining a kiss mark on his cheek and notices with a small smile that Cuddy left her lipstick there in her rush to get out. But as we learn later on, the lipstick is not what’s there; in fact it is the substitute for Vicodin that House has created for himself. Okay can I just say this quickly…….JESUS FUCKING CHRIST! Cuddy became House’s Vicodin. His addiction, his crutch and the thing that he thinks keeps him functioning. He replaced her for the Vicodin. Essentially he depends on her. There are two sides to this, just like there are two sides to everything in this episode.
1) House depends on Cuddy and she keeps him going
2) Their relationship is a poisonous addiction that will eventually kill one of them/ hurt of them deeply.
While the Huddy shipper in me screams to ignore the second option, it makes things ever more interesting because I think both play a massive part in how House views Cuddy. I think that option number 1 is a given as I have already explained, but option 2 I believe represents House’s deepest fears about Cuddy and their relationship. His talk with Wilson (whether its real or not I don’t know) about either him or Cuddy getting hurt reveal the poisonous aspect of their relationship and how easily it could slip into that. Now either Shore is foreshadowing and telling us that Huddy in fact is horrible, or the option I prefer lol, is that he is showing us that House doesn’t open up to Cuddy because he is sure, subconsciously sure as well, that Cuddy and him will end up like his relationship with Vicodin, an addiction that in fact limits him and hurts him more than it helps him. He tosses away the Vicodin bottle in shock and disgust and “realizes” he can never be the man from his “story” and his deepest fears are inevitable.
Now we get to the really sticky stuff, where I can’t tell what’s real and what isn’t, but that’s the beauty of it all. Wilson’s talks with House, real or not real, pretty much boil down to the same thing. Cuddy isn’t a challenge or a puzzle for House to solve, his crazy antics and his confession to Wilson prove that in fact Cuddy means a lot more to him than that and in fact he doesn’t want to screw things up, he doesn’t want to act like a child a ruin things, he doesn’t want Wilson interfering and ruining his plan and finally he tells Wilson that in fact, he doesn’t want to be the man with all of the answers….he wants to be the man with Cuddy.
His interactions with Cuddy on the other hand are a tab bit trickier. There are only a few scenes that I know are either real or a hallucination so I’ll list what I think:
Real
- The talk at the beginning in House’s office (I think this is real, because it leads right off of a differential which we know are real, but House and Cuddy are on two different pages)
- Anything regarding clinic duty is real because we have the Squawker who is real
- The ‘I slept with Lisa Cuddy’ scene is real (why she’s in her office crying, but the Wilson scene doesn’t have to be real for that to happen)
- The talk in her office when House realizes his hallucinations
Not real
- The only scene I think maybe is not real is the one where she is crying, and yelling at him in the hallways. I was surprised while watching it because Cuddy is always so in control of her emotions and if she really cared about her “image” then she wouldn’t be yelling at him and crying because he revealed their sexual exploits. Crying in her office, as it turns out is what she’s doing, seems much more like the Cuddy we know.
And because the scene takes place in House’s mind, it reveals more about the way in which he views their twisted relationship. He has accomplished his task in making her angry and now for some reason he thinks this will lead Cuddy to abolish her wall she is deliberately putting up between them and “fall into his arms” as Wilson put it. But the Cuddy he has thought up is not up for that kind of crap and instead she’s completely devastated and hurt, as Wilson warned him that she might be. He sheepishly asks her to move in with him, not a joke at all in my opinion, but Cuddy laughs at what she thinks is him making fun of her and fires him as she walks away. In my opinion, this is House subconsciously recognizing how many miscommunications plague their relationship. In a moment of complete honesty, and again just slightly out of character, House again asks for what he really wants and instead of throwing her arms around him and kissing him like she should, she remains incredibly hurt and betrayed and storms off. *huggles them both*
This episode was a major break-through moment for Huddy, as Lisa Edelstein said it really showed how much House depended on Cuddy, how much he wants to be the "man with Cuddy" to be the man from his "story" but how in fact he can't be, and how his twisted mind thinks that Cuddy and him will only lead to failure and hurt.
So then we finally get to the end, where Cuddy reveals that she overreacts a lot to what he says and storms off all of the time, this triggers something in House’s brain that slowly reveals to him what the left side of his brain has been hiding all along. His imagined sex with Cuddy, his detachment with reality and his inability to tell what’s real from what’s not suddenly accosts him and in the defining moment of the episode he reaches into his pocket and retrieves his lipstick only to discover too late that it is merely a Vicodin bottle, the dooming element of his personality. He then mentally resigns and he and Cuddy go to Wilson so that House can be checked into the mental institution.
And so this article comes full circle, like the episode, I hope you enjoyed it, and I hope those of you that were disappointed with the episode and distressed over losing a major moment of your shipping will realize the genius, beauty and thought that went into creating an absolutely jaw dropping episode.
P.S. I was too excited to write this article that I didn't even wait for pictures to be put up to use.
