House - Anatomy of a Relationship "Bombshells" 7.15

Anatomy of a Relationship
An Episodic Examination of Huddy in Love
“Bombshells” – 7.15


Okay. I’m having a hard time breathing right now. I just finished watching “Bombshells” and the pounding in my ears from those bombshells is keeping me from focusing as clearly as I ought to in order to write this thing. You must know, too, that I have not visited any other blogs or Huddy sites since watching this last episode. What follows is all me, baby. Okay, deep breath.

Many years ago Dr. Lisa Cuddy hired Dr. Gregory House to work at Princeton Plainsboro Teaching Hospital. Cuddy said no one else wanted House so she got him cheap. House, in addition to crediting his employment on his prowess in the sack, told Cuddy in all seriousness that she hired him because she sees things as they are and she sees things how they could be. What she doesn’t see that other people can see is the great chasm in between. Tonight, my fellow Huddies, Cuddy finally saw that chasm.

Also in this “special” episode, through Cuddy’s and House’s dreams, the audience learns what their subconscious’s think of their relationship. And it ain’t good. I did fear those dream sequences, but they worked out alright. They seemed a bit out-of-place and random, but hey, that’s dreams for you, right? Last week I dreamed I lived over a pizza restaurant in Chicago with Piers Morgan and Carol Burnett. Wanna guess my job? Wrong! I was a detective! So, we all know dreams can be weird. And in this episode they were also very insightful. I’ll have to get back to you on if my weird dream had any deeper meaning.

In the episode “Bombshells” the patient is a 16-yr-old boy who started vomiting blood. No evidence was found of a GI bleed or lung issue. Taub runs circles around the team in this episode as he puts all the pieces together …on the patient’s mental status. It’s still House who swoops in and solves the case, but Taub does discover the boy’s depression and altered mental state. The boy’s a potential timebomb. Taub wrestles with his conscience on what to do about the information he gathers on the boy’s Columbine-type behavior. Masters is no help as she plays his shoulder angel, his shoulder devil and his shoulder statistician. In the end House finally realizes that the boy has an abscess somewhere in his body; a puss-filled growth that is sending stream after stream of infection into the boy’s body. This abscess was caused by shrapnel from the PVC pipe bombs the boy liked to play with. Once they remove the shrapnel, the boy recovers. At the end of the episode, Taub decides to turn the boy and his dangerous behavior into the police anonymously as he mails the destructive evidence on the boy’s flashdrive.

Taub also struggles in a side story with his empathy toward the patient. Taub confesses to battling stress and depression and admits, although vaguely, to a suicide attempt. He wants to help this boy but with each encounter he finds the boy isn’t who he pretends to be. He’s a very troubled, disturbed young man and Taub grows concerned because he has witnessed similar behavior in himself. Taub puts his faith in the patient only to decide that his faith is unwarranted. Taub decides to try to protect the boy from himself and others. When the boy’s parents ignore Taub’s concerns, Taub realizes he has to mail the evidence to the police. He is disappointed with his inability to “fix” the boy and perhaps keep him from taking the same downward spiral Taub is experiencing.

And now to Huddy. My dear friends. Those writers over at the House lot are not going to be popular people this week. That portion of the [H]ouse audience that misses the in depth patient of the week episodes is still going to be upset. That portion of the [H]ouse audience that cheered when House and Cuddy got together is also going to be ticked off. Just about the only people that will be pleased with this episode are those people that LOVE to watch House spiral down into misery and destruction at the end of every season. Those people are gonna love this episode.

Huddy begins this episode. Cuddy wakes up to an empty bed. She calls for House and he’s not there. (Foreshadow) She gets out of bed only to have her ankle grabbed…by House, who’s been hiding under the bed for that very moment of total scaredom. Cuddy wonders if she’s dating a ten-year-old. (Foreshadow) She joins him on the floor for some kissing (finally) but leaves to quickly pee. She discovers blood in her urine and we dive right into the episode. I’ll give a brief rundown of the medical aspect of Cuddy in this episode. I think I need to get it out of the way so I can analyze the Huddy. Forgive me. After an examination of her bladder where nothing is found, Cuddy has Wilson do an ultrasound of her kidneys. He finds a mass. They biopsy the mass, but it’s inconclusive. So Cuddy has a MRI which shows what appears to be cancer of the lungs which has metastasized from her kidney. She’s (potentially) a dead woman. They take her in for surgery where they discover the mass is a benign tumor and the lung images were an allergic reaction to the antibiotic she was taking. She’s going to live! That’s the good news. Now for the bad news.

I start with a disclaimer. I am a college-educated, 42-year-old woman who is a wife and mother of four. I KNOW that these are just fictional characters in a television show. But. My heart is breaking right now over House and Cuddy and their inability to make it work no matter how badly they want it to work. House finally realized that he desperately needed Cuddy and had decided to give up the biggest part of his identity, his intellect and ability to solve puzzles, in order to be with Cuddy. But it seems House was still tired from his last emotional journey to keep up with the next one. At first, House is very supportive. Mostly because he doesn’t think anything is wrong. Remember, this is how House operates. His job is to see a symptom and assume the obvious causes and then treat. House doesn’t get vested in any patient until that patient poops out a spleen and is on the edge of death. House then steps in fully to get to the right answer. He reacts the same way in Cuddy’s medical mystery. The blood in her urine could be caused by all sorts of non-threatening issues. His lack of worry actually seems to comfort Cuddy at this point. House’s demeanor is flirty and casual and seems to calm Cuddy. But when the tests are inconclusive she ignores House’s “this is nothing” approach and dives further.

As Cuddy’s condition becomes more serious, House changes. He distances himself from the situation. He tells Chase to go be with Cuddy. He completely avoids his girlfriend. All through this Cuddy keeps her hope that House will step up to the plate; that he’ll be there for her in her time of need. As Chase quotes, “Love hopes all things.” Cuddy honestly feels as though House has matured enough to pull this one out. Cuddy’s subconscious thinks differently.

The dream sequences weren’t necessarily the highlights of the episode, although I enjoyed them. They were fun to watch, especially Zombie Foreman straightening that tie, but the insights they gave were great. Cuddy’s four dreams all showed big time doubts in House’s ability to man up. In the “Two & Half Men” dream House was indeed taking care of a 10-year-old Rachel Cuddy after her mother’s death, but the fathering skills were sorely lacking. In her “Leave It To Beaver” dream, Cuddy realized that the perfect life she envisions with House could never happen, just like the perfect life that show used to portray could never happen. In the “Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid” and “Cabaret” dreams, Cuddy’s subconscious is working overtime trying to warn Cuddy of what’s destined to happen: House will always focus on the wrong things and ultimately just not be there for her. In each of the last two dreams House is all talk and flash, then disappears. Cuddy writes this off to those crazy sleeping pills, but each time she looks like she knows what her brain is trying to say.

House’s dream sequence has him fighting his Zombie team while trying to get to Cuddy, who calls for him desperately. House’s subconscious lets him know that he’s failing to protect his lover. House takes the time to heroically take out the zombies, letting himself be distracted from Cuddy’s call for help, only to finally arrive at Cuddy’s bed too late. The Zombie team has attacked her and her screams have stopped. House wakes startled. He knows he should get to Cuddy’s bedside but Zombies (or Demons, perhaps) are keeping him away. Will it be too late when House can finally cope with the emotional drama?

When House hears that Cuddy most likely has kidney cancer that has metastasized (nee Death Sentence) he KNOWS he has to go to her. But there’s only one way he can do that. He has to take away the pain. Yup. Mr. Vicodin not only rears it’s ugly head, it screams and shouts his way back into the game.

Now, when Cuddy woke up from her Butch and Sundance dream and saw House standing there in her hospital room doorway, my heart leapt. He walked in and I thought, man, he’s been crying. Look, he’s so scared. He’s hardly talking. House has done it! He’s becoming the man Cuddy needs. Then he spoke and I knew. Yes, that’s how great an actor Mr. Laurie is. If this episode had shown before the Emmy’s, SAGs and Globes, Mr. Laurie would have won. Cuddy doesn’t notice House’s lack of expression. She is just happy. Her hopes were justified. “I knew you’d come,” she lovingly reassures him. She’s not only glad to see him, she’s proud he’s had this growth. The next scene is of House being the perfect boyfriend: he holds her hand, fingers laced while waiting; he stands by her stretcher as she’s being prepped for surgery, giving her a soft kiss IN FRONT of everyone; teasing with her about waiting to take a lover if she dies as she’s wheeled away. Hey, he is House….. Then he stares numbly down on her as she goes under. That glassy-eyed, unemotional gaze from House fully convinced me that he was stoned. This whole season House has had more facial expressions and a lightness about him, which I know some fans hated. Well, it’s easier to have facial expressions and lightness when you aren’t toked out of your mind! Cuddy’s brain tries again to warn her while she’s under anesthesia with a wild, weird dream; you know, like the kind you get after eating spicy food late at night. House is singing and dancing and acting crazy with wild, wide eyes and pulling her around with a giant candy cane. It ends with Cuddy waking up alone on a gurney. Then Cuddy’s brain is exhausted and decides if she’s not going to listen to it, it’s going to stop talking to her. It’s the last dream of the show, but Cuddy soon figures it out all by herself.

When Cuddy comes out of the anesthesia, House is indeed still there. I wondered if he was still stoned, but the expressive-filled face smiled at Cuddy. House tells Cuddy the crisis is over. She’s not going to die. And that’s why House isn’t stoned. The pain of losing Cuddy is gone. He can come out from hiding. As House looks lovingly at Cuddy and shows her her tumor (yuck) Cuddy tells him how capable she feels until something big like this comes up and opens all the fear floodgates. House gets his FINAL EPIPHANYTM and, with the crisis over for Cuddy too, she sends him off to save his patient. All appears well.

That night Julia, Cuddy’s sister, is just leaving when she mentions that she put Cuddy’s sleeping pills in the cabinet because Rachel always calls them candy. BAM! Cuddy’s left brain connects with her right brain and she puts all the pieces of her dreams and House’s behavior together. In her dreams, House was always eating candy. She thought it was because House was still a child emotionally, but now Cuddy realizes that House could never cope with this without his candy, his vicodin.

The confrontation at House’s apartment is heart-breaking. The look on House’s face when Cuddy accuses him of taking Vicodin goes from happiness to crestfallen. Cuddy tells him she knows he only takes Vicodin to numb the pain, but that he has to be able to endure the pain if he’s in a loving relationship, not escape it. Cuddy tells him “You’ll choose yourself over anybody else over and over again because that’s just how you are.” THANK YOU! Anyone who has been following my posts feel free to tell me “Yep, you were right!” House is selfish. That’s the one word you can always use to describe him. He can be funny or mean or entertaining or brilliant or ignorant or insulting or even caring at different times, but he has always been selfish. He’s always had a self-serving core. I’ve commented many times that everything he does is driven by the ultimate goal of satisfying his own needs. But in this episode, I felt like it goes deeper than mere selfishness. I think House’s main obsession is self-preservation. House is focused on his own needs and wants so much because his self-preservation level is so high. Look. House KNEW he should be with Cuddy during her ordeal. House WANTED to be with Cuddy during her ordeal. That much is shown on his face when he knows Cuddy is going to end the relationship and he’s begging her to give him another chance. Are we up to 850 chances yet? I think we get a knife set at 850 chances. What must have happened in House’s life that made him so locked up and cautious. I’ve talked about the fact that House might have experienced much more severe abuse as a child then he’s alluded to. Certainly, he’s had people he’s loved and cared about hurt him and leave him. Everyone has a built-in Flee or Fight response, but something has happened emotionally and mentally to House to leave only the Flee response. Dr. Nolan saw behavior in House that indicated possible neglect or abuse. He asked him why he sought out getting beat up one night while drunk. What did House do to warrant needing punishment, asked Nolan. Remember House’s soft sad response, “I don’t know.”

And that’s where I am with House right now. I don’t know what has happened to House in his past, probably childhood, that has stunted his emotional growth so much he cannot have a healthy relationship with anyone. At the beginning of the episode, Cuddy wonders if she’s dating a ten-year-old and perhaps mentally and emotionally she is. The patient, who reveals a new negative trait with each encounter, ends up being gravely ill due to an abscess. This abscess formed around a destructive mass forced into his abdomen which ended up infecting the body and nearly killing him. House has an abscess as well. At some point in the past a destructive mass found a home in House. Maybe it was abuse. Maybe it was a lack of attention: good or bad. But this mass has infected House and created this self-preservation that has killed every relationship House has ever had. I have been afraid that House would return to the state of not caring about even himself and try to commit suicide again. He tried it in season three after his run-in with Tritter. He would have most likely overdosed in the end of season six if Cuddy hadn’t appeared. And now after seeing the previews for next week’s episode (7x16) I’m glad that I saw promo pics from episode 7x17 with House in them. He’s standing on a hotel balcony, people!

The break-up scene. Oh, the break-up scene. Go ahead and admit you teared up. I did. Yes, I’m an idiot. Whatever. That scene was so sad. It was shot, on purpose I’m sure, like the final scene between House and Cuddy in “Both Sides Now,” the season five finale. In that episode as House realizes he has hallucinated everything, including a life with Cuddy, and his perfect world begins to crumble around him, Cuddy softly strokes his face, trying to give comfort. This time as she strokes his face House’s image of his perfect world with Cuddy is again crumbling down around him. His inability to deal with heavy emotional issues and his Vicodin habit has again ruined his life. His life again unravels. And this time as he sits on his bathroom floor contemplating the pill bottle no Cuddy shows up to save him. He looks at the doorway to find no one there for him. The third time is not a charm. Amid tears and heaviness, House downs the pills to escape the pain, which now must be climbing to unbearable levels.

Cuddy is also overcome by this break-up. She sobs at her dinner table as her sister looks on compassionately. This is also equally devastating to Cuddy because not only has she broken up with the man she’s always loved, her hopes have been crushed and her fears have been justified. Also, as mentioned at the beginning of this blog, her eyes have been opened to the huge chasm between the kind of man House is now and the kind of man Cuddy needs House to be. She’s standing suddenly at the very edge and is terrified, even surprised, at the width of the canyon. It’s too great a distance. She has too much to lose: as a mother; as a boss; as a person. She shouldn’t have to sacrifice herself and her life in order to help House find a way across that chasm. He’ll drag her down to the bottom with him. She has to cut the rope. But doing it breaks her to pieces.

I know I could rattle on much longer about this episode and its importance to the Huddy relationship. And there still is a relationship. They are still, in my opinion, soulmates; there is no other companion in the world for these two battered people. My hopes are still there, though not as high, that love will conquer all. But this is House. He has been pushed hard and is falling down the mountain. The rest of the season, I think, will show that tumble and its devastating consequences. I just hope when House finally hits the bottom, Cuddy will be there to help him up. But then I realize that Cuddy has probably and wisely started climbing the next mountain. House is on his own. Dang. I hope I’m wrong…..



Thanks for reading this SUPER long post. I tried to condense it, but really, did you watch that episode last night? See ya next week. Ahhhhhh.