Anatomy of a Relationship "Out of the Chute" 7.16

Anatomy of a Relationship
An Episodic Examination of Huddy in Love
“Out of the Chute” – 7.16


Each night I limit my kids to a dessert that is 130 calories or less. They can pick their desserts but they have to limit it to 130 calories. However. Every other Sunday we have an extended family dinner with a delicious potluck dinner. On these nights I give my kids free rein on what they can consume. It’s all you can eat! And they take full advantage of it.

This last episode shows House’s version of dessert time at my family dinners. House has been on a steady and difficult diet of good behavior and soul searching for six months, but now. The diet’s off, baby, and House is going whole-hog!

In this episode a bull rider suffered a complex partial seizure after riding the full eight seconds on one of the toughest bulls at the ro-dee-o. He’s frozen in place as the bull turns on him and smashes him to the ground then pummels his chest and head with his hooves. I’ll show you what it’s like to get stuck by sharp spurs, thinks the bull. Layne, the bull rider, has no idea what happened. He’s dazed and more than a bit confused. Thinking it’s a brain problem the team struggles to find ways to test Layne as most of his bones have been replaced with steel and titanium plates and pins. They’re extra careful not only for the patient’s sake but I think House’s team has destroyed three MRI’s to date. Not a good track record. The patient is finally diagnosed with a leak in his aorta, literally, a bleeding heart. Poetic. House’s genius saves his life in a brilliant surgical move, but Layne is forced to give up bull riding forever. House is interested when Layne pragmatically gives up that thrill. Layne says he loved those eight seconds on that bull, but now he’ll just have to find something else to love. He’s not entirely convinced himself of that fact, though.

Side story number one involves Masters developing a major crush on the smashed-up bull rider. Taub teases her mercilessly over it and Masters, herself, is appalled at her behavior. She chalks it up to her frontal cortex identifying Layne as a prime specimen of manhood and her natural survival of the fittest instinct just wanting to take a specimen of that manhood. Sorry, couldn’t resist. Yet, even with that explanation she still is mystified by her attraction to this man who is so clearly her polar opposite in every way. At the end of the episode she gathers the courage to ask Layne out, only to be snubbed by the cowboy. His embarrassed silence sends the mortified Masters scurrying from the room. We see how this mirrors our Huddy, however, Masters doesn’t make the big leap and remains unscathed, yet also still disconnected.

Side story number two has Chase messing with Foreman in a “Who’s in Charge?” contest. House knows what’s going on and eventually tells Chase to stop messing with Foreman. Someone has to mess with Foreman if House isn’t around. Chase is just filling in temporarily. That’s all.

And now on to Huddy. Well, this post will not be nearly as long as last week’s. That is for sure. We still have much to focus on in the relationship, but it’s also pretty straight forward. House has decided to sample every dessert on the dessert tray in the wake of his break-up with Cuddy. He has withdrawn all his money and checked into a five-star hotel. He has begun popping vicodin again and drinking to excess. To complete the break down he goes through six hookers in about 3 days. By my estimate. We also now know that House prefers all flavors. He decided quite quickly actually that if he couldn’t have Cuddy he wasn’t going to make the effort of being a “changed man” anymore. In House’s mind once he took the vicodin his commitments to himself, to Nolan, and Cuddy were no longer valid. He’s back to blatantly looking out only for himself. The reason for his return to this lifestyle isn’t only because Cuddy dumped him, however. House wants to make Cuddy hurt as badly as he is hurting. And he selects things that he knows will personally hit Cuddy. Cuddy expressed her distaste for his hooker habit early on. She also begged him to stay on Methodone because she liked the idea of a sober House. As far as spending all his money, I don’t know if this is a personal affront to Cuddy, but heck, he rarely pays for anything as a habit. She even had to buy him a toothbrush to keep at her house. Though he never used it. However you interpret the reasons behind those specific sins, House does it for the sheer guilt factor. He knows Cuddy is “The Guilt Queen” and knows that this behavior will make Cuddy feel even worse then she already does. She will blame herself for his downfall. And it works perfectly.

Cuddy is a guilt-filled soft jelly roll with extra guilt icing. Wilson comes to her after he’s viewed the state that House is in. He attacks her, although in a somewhat passive-aggressive way. He asks her why she dumped him. She knew he was an addict. She even told him she didn’t want him to change. Cuddy, near tears, hollowly says, “I was wrong.” She tells Wilson basically the same thing I’ve been saying in this post for the past few months. She should have read my post earlier and saved her some heartbreak…. Cuddy finally realized that she had gotten on the back of the crocodile (or fox depending on which version your fable was) in order to cross the raging river. She jumped off as quickly as she could and barely made it back to shore. But she’s exhausted. She further explains to Wilson that she knew House was a crocodile. She knew he wouldn’t be anything other than a crocodile. She knows he’s not to blame. “It’s my fault.” She says sadly. Poor Cuddy, although she didn’t know why she did, she fell in love with that House fellow and decided to take a risk. It ended badly. She can’t give him the second chance she knows he deserves because she’s finally realized she deserves more. And she does. Really. House is a jerk. But I’ll hearken back to the hitchin’ a ride on the crocodile analogy and I’ll leave it at that.

Poor Cuddy gets more shoved on her when Wilson shows up on her door step saying she has to talk to House. He needs her. Even if they don’t ever get back together. Cuddy agonizingly tells Wilson that she can’t solve House’s problem. She is House’s problem. Be careful you don’t slip in all that guilt Cuddy is oozing out of every pore, Wilson. Cuddy is fully aware that it was she who took a chance and approached House to try a relationship. House would have never approached her after the crane disaster. In fact, he was heading toward this episode at the end of last season before Cuddy swooped in to save him. I guess she only delayed the inevitable. Maybe she feels she should have kept things as they were. But then she wouldn’t have had those eight thrilling seconds.


House despite his dive into debauchery has regained his spot-on diagnostic skills. Even as lovely ladies of the evening are draping themselves across him he comes up with brilliant suggestion after suggestion that eventually lead to the diagnosis. And then, House comes up quite easily with the way to fix the problem. House was right. Being in a relationship with Cuddy did cloud his judgment and dampen his skills. It seems now that he’s free as a bird and back on drugs his mad diagnosing skillz have returned. He doesn’t care. He stands in the observation room and watches his team perform an extremely dangerous and delicate process on his patient’s heart and be successful. It should be the icing on the cake; the feather in his cap. House feels nothing. His team looks at him with worry. They realize House is not okay. House should be gloating. He should be getting bets paid off. Instead he walks quietly away.

Now House is even more at a loss. He used to get his rocks off by solving these difficult medical puzzles. Then he got his rocks off by well….getting his rocks off with Cuddy. Now it seems nothing can stimulate him. He returns to the hotel where a group of frat boys are whooping it up after a big win. House observes them as the bartender apologizes for their behavior. “I wish I could act like that. Just let loose,” the bartender says. “I guess it’s a little easier when you got no troubles. Parents paying your bills. Your whole life ahead of you.” House slowly puts his drink down and leaves.

House goes up to his room and pops more pills then climbs out on the balcony railing. Wilson arrives and sees people pointing up. He turns to find his best friend in an apparent suicide attempt. He screams, “NO!” as House launches himself off the railing only to splash down cannonball style into the hotel pool. The frat boys like this and jump in fully clothed with him. They hand him another beer. “What the hell are you doing?!” Wilson yells at him. “What do you do when you win?!” House yells out. “Party!” yells the drunken crowd. “What do you do when you lose?!” House yells out looking at Wilson. “Party harder!” come the replies. He slugs down the beer while Wilson walks off, disgusted and hopeless at his friend’s new motto.

It seems as though has House decided to throw his troubles away and just let loose. House maybe doesn’t want to commit suicide, he’s always voiced his opinion against that, but I think he feels that if he happens to die during his current good time party lifestyle so be it. He’s had those eight seconds with medicine and with Cuddy and now he is trying to find another thing to love. Unfortunately, he seems to be starting with the “Things Not To Love List” first. Something out there, House thinks, will bring back the old excitement.

One other point I’d like to bring up concerns another reason why House may be treating Cuddy so cruelly. In their only interaction with each other in the episode, aside from the shout out he gave her for spying on him via his team (and even had his hooker join in, bad House. Bad, bad House), is after House gets permission from the patient to essentially blow up his heart. Cuddy is at first all “old-school Cuddy” determined to stop this crazy doctor in his tracks. But House is vicious to her. He manages to drag out exactly what Cuddy is thinking and then hurls insults at her. He leaves her speechless and beaten. At one moment as they talked House looked like he may hold back; like his love for her would rein him in a bit. Cuddy stares up at her former lover. But just like the bull took advantage of the stunned patient, House rams his anger into Cuddy head on. He is determined to hurt Cuddy for the pain she caused him. I can’t help but wonder if this is learned behavior in House. We know House suffered abuse as a kid, but haven’t learned the extent. Is this how House was treated by his father? Did House’s father lash out at House anytime he felt like House had disappointed him? Something or someone has done a number on House to make him so miserably emotionally stunted. We’ve seen him lash out like this before at people who mean something to him. He knows that’s not how people who care about each other interact, but that seems to be all he can do.

So how is this new Party-Like-A-Rockstar House going to deal with is ongoing feelings for Cuddy? ‘Cause come on, we all know they still deeply love each other. This new crushing blow to House and his attempts at connecting with someone will surely cause huge ripples. By the looks of the promo for next week’s House those ripples are surf-worthy.

Thanks for reading. I’ll be a few days later in posting for next week’s episode as it’s family vacation time. Wish me luck….