I certainly don't see Season 5 as a farce. Overall, it's working for me better than Season 4 did even if I don't like it as much as I did the first 3. I miss the clinic patients terribly. In most of my favorite episodes, the patient of the week's situation/ailment paralleled House's situation. This year that was true of Not Cancer, Adverse Effects and Joy -- seeing only what's wrong with the world, a warped perspective and not being able to feel joy. Birthmarks had the biological parents vs. the people who raised you -- which ones are truly your parents and who made you the way you are. But, as far as I can tell, Dying Changes Everything and Lucky Thirteen were about parallels with Thirteen's situation. If someone sees the House parallels in these, I'd love to be enlightened. (And, yes, fellows should get the occasional very special episode but even then there should be some tie-in to House other than his lesbian fantasies.) Although, as I typed the above, I finally saw a theme for this season. It's "you're miserable, House" without (thank goodness) everyone repeating those three words every episode.

He didn't have any motive in digging up things on Foreman than wondering what he'd bring up. He was intrigued on what he dug up, so he hired him. There was nothing specific there other than the same motivation he had on digging up things on his new team. But didn’t House say in the pilot that he was looking for someone with ‘street smarts’ to add to his team? I think he didn’t want to add another ‘circle queen’ or doctor’s son to the ducklings. (He probably didn’t know at the time of hiring him that Chase’s history was more interesting than ‘wealthy doctor’s son who also goes into medicine’.) He was probably intrigued by Foreman’s background when he first applied, the whole working his way up thing, and the discovery of the juvenile record was the fillip that convinced House that Foreman would add something good to his team. I don’t think for one minute that he was just rummaging around in Foreman’s past without a motive. I think House always has a motive. How ironic is it that Foreman has always been the most conventional duckling, unwilling to step outside the box, and it was the doctor’s son who became the best lateral thinker. I haven't seen a House who respects boundaries about people's privacy since season one. I know it's a mileage varying issue, so we've probably covered the topic now, so I'll just say that the moment for me that made me stop and take stock of what I thought I knew about this character was when he broke into Stacy's private therapy file for manipulative purposes and shared what he found with Wilson, with not a blink of remorse at any point. That was a very critical point for me in deciding whether or not I wanted to continue to watch this show. To my regret, I wasn’t watching House from the very beginning. I got into the show from watching the USA Friday night repeats after Monk. I left the TV on for this medical show (and I don't watch medical shows) and barely paid attention at first, but I was soon hooked. I didn’t know House very well when the breaking into Stacy’s file took place, and I remember being shocked that he did that and almost, almost, deciding that I didn’t like this character at all and it was time to find something else to watch. I am so glad I didn’t. Every TV show is unrealistic. Every show operates under its own particular rules. Getting DNA results within hours? Try weeks or months in the real world. A lab of one goth girl who can do everything? Laughable. Crime scene techs who run interviews with suspects? Please. Denny Crane? Wouldn't be allowed near a courtroom. So accepting a House view of the universe in which doctors run lab -*test*-('")s, surgeons perform every type of operation, the timeline is hard to pin down (though from the first season we were informed that time isn't a constant, so that shouldn't be any surprise) and illnesses follow atypical paths is not a problem for me. It's consistent within the universe that fits House's world. Very nicely and very convincingly put. I think I will now back off some from my worries that House, the character, is getting too far 'out there’ and just continue to enjoy the journey.

Lots of good reading here, really good posts all, but I'm not in the frame of mind this morning to add much to the debates... Just wanted to say peggy06 that I felt like you did about them adding the PI just to -*test*-('") him out for a possible series...before I saw the episodes. I liked the character, but thought he was too much of a "nicer House" kind of character, which wouldn't work on its own. Maybe a show more like Psych, I dunno. But that said, it worked to give House someone to talk to when Wilson was gone, someone who, unlike Wilson, is not there because he chooses to be, but because he is paid. But, like Wilson, he is someone whom House doesn't employ nor is he employed by him. He's close to an impartial voice and that's what House needed to think, to bounce his ideas off. Even more, he needs to do the outrageous, crazy thing of hiring the PI to balance what he feels about Amber's death and Wilson's leaving. Both are huge, huge events and business as usual doesn't cut it for House. Like in Distractions, he went to great lengths from stalking an old grudge to taking LSD to hiring an escort just to be distracted from Stacy leaving. House doesn't do well with loss, so this was another of his big stunts to distract himself, gather data (which he just loves to do, as I just posted about a bit). Anyway, I thought they pulled it off within the show pretty well despite what might be described as a venal motive for putting him there. I enjoyed his visit, his flirting with Cuddy, which may have pushed House a little bit toward her. Plus, the brief blues thing they played was just lovely and I'll forgive anyone who puts Hugh Laurie on my TV playing music.

If you don't see a difference in degree between the S5 behavior and previous seasons, that's all there is to it and we will have to agree to disagree. Please do allow my right to a viewpoint, that's all I ask. Of course! And vice versa--you brought up very discussable points.

I remember hearing David Shore say that the P.I. idea came from the network but that he would not have gone along with it if the P.I. character had not worked with his story, with his artistic vision, etc. You may or may not believe David Shore, but I tend to take his words at face value. I have no reason to think he's lying to save face about the network forcing him to do something. And I do think DS takes a lot of pride in his work and is fairly stubborn, like the character he created. I think he stays true to himself and his vision, and I think the network trusts his vision. I can't imagine they'd force him to do something that he thinks would be detrimental to the show. (Yes, I know the Vogler idea came from Fox... that was in season 1, when the show was still young and unproven. Things are different now.)

The use of House to try out a character for a new show cannot seriously be considered as an expression of anyone's artistic vision. It's a commercial consideration. In the light of a remark that many found high-handed but I defended at the time, well, it's ironic to say the least. There's lots of ways for stories to come about and all that matters in the final analysis is whether it worked. For some Lucas did, for others he didn't, which is the same for the Vogler arc, which came about from a note from the network, and the same with the Tritter arc, which came about because the network wanted the drug use dealt with responsibly. The writers took the ideas and turned them into story. I liked Lucas because he and House had a good rapport, he allowed us to see that House spreads more than just misery as we saw that these two men, within the constraints of their commercial transaction, liked each other, which set up the Birthmarks episode where Wilson remembered what he enjoyed about House, and I always knew Lucas was not joining the cast as a permanent character. I don't regret his time on the show any more than I regret Ridiculously Old Fraud's and I liked him more than Tritter or Vogler, both of whom struck me as completely unbelievable. Vogler directing medicine because he gave money to the hospital??? Tritter setting up shop in the hospital on his vacation and reading personnel files without a warrant??? Lucas seemed to me to fit into House's world where personal boundaries exist for other people.

To me, the strongest eps this season have been Dying Changes Everything (which I admit could have used a little less Thirteen--but the storyline was strong and the House/Wilson stuff absolutely stellar), Birthmarks and Joy, all of which follow the throughline generated from House's Head and Wilson's Heart and House's scene on the bus. But you're right that it isn't quite an arc, just not standalone, either. The arcs have always been problematic in one way or another, with I think the Stacy arc being the strongest--she just went on a bit too long, the same as the hiring arc. The PI was such a mini-arc he doesn't quite rate the name--he was just there to bring out some things about House that helped set up Birthmarks, while giving House some fodder to interact with his team on a more personal basis. I know you don't like the digging into personal business, but if one can go with that, and I can, I thought his presence gave us a wonderful peek into Taub and set up that Thirteen has been quietly jumping the traces in her personal life, which set up her walking on the wild side episode.

One of the aspects of House's personality that I do not like is the degree to which he pries into others' private lives, especially in light of how he guards his own privacy. Stealing Stacy's file was probably the worst example of that (although I never did understand why she was seeing the same therapist that Mark was.) But the thing that bothered me the most about the P.I. was how out of character it was. House, the man who wears wrinkled shirt because he would never send his shirts out to be laundered, who orders his employees to pay for his cable TV and who has anyone and everyone pay for his meals, would never spend tens of thousands of dollars for the P.I.'s services. That's what tipped it past the point where my disbelief stopped being suspended.