There’s a few different tress around the parking lot where my car spends a lot of time. About 10 days ago, those trees were flush with color, just unbelievably rich purple and reds and blues, a picture perfect vision of springing. A week later, the colors were faded and those leaves (or petals or whatever) were falling off the tree, lining my windshield and occasionally sneaking into the floor of my car. This happens every year, the brilliance of the colors last around a week, and then trees snap back to being only excess leaf and seed producers, littering the parking lot and the cars with whatever’s blown off that day.
There are definitely some times where I rather be that tree. (I’m plenty miserable most of the time as it is, might as well add a dash of brilliance.) There’s not really a lot of times where I wish I had that tree; I’d rather be around things that are going to be consistently good than those who are going to be mostly bad and occasional great. Maybe I just rate dependability higher than most, but I think it’s because I know there’s going to be plenty of things going on where dependability is not even an option, so I might as well grab it where I can.
This is all a roundabout way to talk about this last season’s of House; I didn’t check, but I assume last night was the season finale because they did a season finale type episode. It also was yet another miserable episode, from a show I find I’m still faithful to only for those rare moments of brilliance.
Not much worked for me this season. The Foreman/13 romance may have been great on paper, but sure didn’t come across on screen. Taub might be interesting if had more than one storyline they kept running with him; he’s a man completely defined by his affair on this show. And then Kutner – on a show where the clues are supposed to be all there for us to see (but only for House to find), they did an arc where the clues are purposefully non-existent. Followed by one where we’re supposed to be watching the clues again, except we’ve just been told not to bother, they’re not going to add up. (I don’t really mind the effect of the big undo, just that we’re doing big undos.)
House likes to end seasons with ‘what you’re seeing may not be what you think you’re seeing’ episodes, so I guess this was a return to form. It’s just that previous seasons had such well told stories, I was more willing to accept one that forced me to take bigger leaps. This season was filled with episodes where I wasn’t just fast forwarding thru the usual malady right before the commercial break (except for that one episode), but skipping thru all the stuff not directly dealing with the patient. The interpersonal drama hadn’t been so good for long enough that an episode mostly revolving around it wasn’t what I wanted.
The Mos Def episode was as good a one hour drama as I’ve seen this year (not that I’ve seen a lot) – it was the moment of brilliance breaking up the usual miserableness. I spent most of the season leaving episodes sitting on my TiVo and watching them in bunches just to get thru them, and while it was nice to get that great show ever so often, I could probably find more good ones elsewhere. Maybe it’s best to follow House’s example here and break with the illusions of what this show is, and rehab myself with something better.
I want to write more about shows I actually liked this season, but we’ll see if I get around to it.